Swinging free

It's the eve of the twins' birthday and they're SO excited...but also soooo sad to be leaving 7. They've loved it. Anitakins once gave me a book about a little child who hid away because they didn't wanna turn 7, and I thought surely no kid felt like that - but turns out some do! After lights out tonight, we found both of them tucked up in bed with Cas "coz it's our last chance to cuddle with Cas when we're 7". Tara was also so excited at the realisation that at midnight she'd be older than Jadie for a whole 10 minutes! And they were both SO chuffed to get a happy birthday message from 2 other twins - Skye and Shannon in Jo'burg - THANK YOU!!!

Tone and I have been up till midnight drawing them cards. We decided that since we're always hassling them to do the 'meaningful' (ie. cheap) thing and make their friends cards - we'd better do it too!

And Tara's been bonding beautifully with Stumpie Star. She holds her in her arms, against her cheek and says "I love her. She's like my best friend." Kisses her all over. The skin is still incredibly sensitive and so usually she won't let us touch her stump - but we mentioned tonight that she'll only be able to get a prosthetic fitted once her skin has toughened up - otherwise it'll hurt too much. So she took it on board and raced around our room, on her bottom, touching everything with her stump - from magazines to clothes to wooden furniture etc. - and then she made each of us introduce ourselves to Stumpie Star - kinda like a ceremony - so that Stumpie could 'get to know us' she said. We had to each say "hello Stumpie Star, I'm ..." and then stroke & massage her and kiss her. Apparently now that Stumpie knows us - we'll be able to touch her and massage her more in the future. Tara says she feels like she's beginning a whole new life.

Pic today is from Monica - it was such a special moment for us -just a couple of weeks after Tara's op and she hadn't yet been out of her wheelchair - until this moment when, without us realising, she had hoisted herself out of her wheelchair (coz she couldn't yet hop) and onto the swing - and she was just SO happy, so free, and soooo proud of herself...