SPRING BREAK AND BRENDON'S OPERATION

Hello Everybody on the blog,

 

I looked SO COOL here don't you think?

A great thing happened at school today. The third term ended and we are going on our Spring Break which is about 10 days long. I am very happy about that. But one thing is bothering me. I am doing something a true friend would never do. I invited my friend over to my house for tomorrow, because it is Heritage Day. But now our friend, Fiona, invited me to visit her house in a beautiful nature reserve. I have never been there before, and all my brothers and sisters have. (Even Kieran).

I want my brother to tell my friend that I am sorry I ditched him like that. I feel very sad about what I have done, but I really do want to go to Kudu. It sounds exciting and a place to explore. Does that sound selfish?  When I come back I would have more time with my friend. I am very sorry about it. But he will still have fun at Heritage Day because people are bringing two great jumping castles and a waterslide and everybody is going to swim in the pool because Heritage Day is always the first day we all swim at the beginning of summer. They are also going to have a lovely braai, and I am sure he is going to have a fabulous time. It’s just that I feel bad and guilty.

Listen, you people that are reading this blog ~ take my advice ~ don’t ditch your friend like I ditched mine. You feel sad inside. I think my friend might not even forgive me. Not ever!  Please don’t make the same mistake as I did.  It's probably very selfish.  Aaah.  Oh.  Grunt!

The brothers that are coming to Kudu with me are Thabang, Erin, Carlton and myself. And then of course the whole of Fiona’s family. We are going to have so much fun and I am so excited.

We are busy cleaning the house for Heritage Day. I hope the swimming pool is clean by the time the people come. I hope my whole family has a lot of fun here on Heritage Day. We usually do, every year.



Poor Slobberdog.  Still sore because his bedroom was turned into a homework room!  Here he is getting ready for the night.  Sleeping under the Wisteria.  We took this picture about an hour ago.  SORRY SLOBBERDOG! :-(



We are hoping that next year we can go to the sea. We are all praying to God that it will happen. We love the sea. For my Mom at the sea, it’s paradise. I like it at the sea because we eat a lot of ice cream. But mostly I like those huge, warm waves!  I hope when we go I make friends at the sea like I did in 2008.

Lizzie thank you for the message and Ceri is coming to TLC on the 6th October! I am so excited! When I see her I am going to jump for joy.

FAMILY FOCUS

TAYLOR

Taylor is Joanna’s third heart kid. She is the only daughter in that family. So, you can imagine, she is quite a princess because the others are all boys. She is ten years old and is in Grade 3. When she was smaller she was quite naughty and always told tales and made trouble for us boys. My golly she could make up the worst stories you can imagine and the worst is the Mommy and Joanna always believed her!  But she is getting a whole lot better now that she is getting bigger.

Taylor is very pretty and has a lot of problems with the boys at school. There is especially one boy whose name is Tume and he follows here around everywhere and says rude stuff to her. He doesn’t care if he gets into trouble. He just carries on and carries on. Even when people tell his parents he doesn’t care because they think his behaviour is funny, and they laugh. But it’s not only Tume who runs after Taylor. There are other boys too. That’s why Mom is so glad that Amy and Khensani are in a girls-only school.

Taylor and Khensani have been very best friends ... forever, I think. They love to be together and always wander around the farm.  You can often find them in the guinea pigs run.  They love it there and sometimes they play in the playground and chat and play in Khensi’s bedroom with dolls, and clothes, and then they fiddle with each other’s hair and talk about girly things. Amy plays with them sometimes, but Amy is not a girly-girl like the two of them are. Amy loves to do sports and she is a big tomboy. She rather plays with the boys and does rough things with them. She prefers to play soccer than dolls, for sure.

When we stopped doing home-school and had to go to Aloe Ridge Primary Khensi also came to Aloe Ridge and Amy got sponsorship to go to a private school called St. Katharine’s. But then the following year (the beginning of this year) Khensani also go sponsorship to go to St. Katharine’s and Taylor was very, very sad. She cried and cried and didn’t want to go to school because Khensi was not there anymore. We felt very sorry for her.

But now Taylor has other friends at school and she has Khensi at TLC, so that is good. Taylor is much happier at school now, but she still misses Khensi a lot and jumps for joy whenever she sees Khensi coming home in the car.

 
Hello Slobberdog’s people. There was this girl who went home early today and I wondered why? Then Taylor, my niece, told me that she went to Durban for TWO WEEKS. So then I said to myself ... how come when SHE goes somewhere the teachers don’t shout but when I go away for a week to my uncle Jerry everybody is cross with me?



Me and my brother Brendon.  The day before the op.



On Wednesday my brother, Brendon had to get up very early in the morning and he had to leave with Mommy and Pippa with Matthew. Brendon was going to have a big operation. He was born with a cleft palate and a hare lip and so he has had a lot of operations in his life. Yesterday, he had an operation that lasted 3 ½ hours and Mom says that is a very long time for an operation.

They had to take bone out of his hip and put it in the roof of his mouth. He has been going to the orthodontist for about two years to pull his teeth straight. After that the hole in the roof of his mouth had to be closed, because otherwise he blows air out of it like a whale does.



Braced Matthew

While Brendon was in the theatre Pippa had to take Matthew to the orthodontist because he has to get braces put on his teeth. Since then he has been whining and moaning about it being so SORE. Pippa bought him lots of soft stuff like ice cream and yoghurt ... marshmallows ... and he looks really sorry for himself while he is eating it. C’mon Matthew, don’t be such a woosi.

Then I want to tell you one last story.

You know my big sister, Zoë, works at the squatter camp, Jackson’s Drift, hey? So a few months ago she brought a lady here who had a little baby and the she asked us to look after the little baby for a couple of months because she said she couldn’t look after the baby properly because she had no money for food. So my Mom said, yes, we could put the baby in the nursery until the baby's Mom sorted herself out.

Brendon Pre-op

So the baby stayed here in our nursery and grew big and lovely for a few months. Then one day the Mom came back and said she was fine now and wanted the baby back. So, Joanna gave the baby back to the Mom.

Then yesterday when Zoë went to the squatter camp the people there told her that a terrible thing happened. That the mother of the baby had gone to the shebeen (the bar where they sell beer) and left the baby alone in the shack. And then while the mother was gone, the rats came and chewed the baby’s hand nearly off. The people were very upset and they said to Zoë that we should never have given the baby back to that lady because she is a bad mother and always sits in the bar and drinks beer and never looks after her baby.

Zoë was shocked and didn’t know if she should believe the people so she went to the clinic to check, and it was TRUE. The nurse at the clinic told Zoë she was so shocked to see that baby’s hand because she has never seen anything so terrible before!  The Clinic Sister sent the baby to Baragwanath Hospital.



Poor Brendon!

 School has closed for 10 days. It was a fun day and we didn’t do much work. I do miss my friends already. PLUS my teacher wasn’t so much fun today. She has been teasing me about my blog and has been saying “... he has a blog and they do all this stuff.”

So now I have a serious thing to tell you. My Mom, Pippa and my Principal had a meeting. They decided that school is too hard for me. My teacher told them that sometimes before half the day is up I am so tired, I have to put my head on the desk and can’t do anything anymore because I am so pooped. Exhausted. It’s because of my heart that I can’t keep up.  I feel kind of happy that they DID realise I was not just being bad or lazy.

So they all think that from next year I need to start being home-schooled because then I don’t have to get up so very early like the other kids. Especially winter is a big problem because then my hands swell up and my feet go numb and I start to feel very unwell.



Mom said I need a haircut.  My hair was meeting my eyebrows! 

I felt sad when Mom told me that story, but I think they are right. Still I know I will miss my friends at school and I hope I will be able to go to school and visit them now and again. I will also grow away from Jesse because our lives will not be together anymore and that makes me very, very sad. We fight sometimes, but we really do love each other and I think he is the only person in the world who really, really understands me.

It’s hard to imagine what life will be like all by myself here in the mornings doing work by myself. I wonder who is going to teach me and WHAT they are going to teach me. I wonder if I am going to grow up and be DOM. Stupid. I will have to read and read and read because once my Mom told me that if you read a lot you will never be stupid. At least I can already read well.

Then lastly, hello Hannah and Becky. I hope you are doing well. We are not getting comments anymore. We only had 2 this week. I feel sad about that. I think you readers didn’t like it when I told you about the poor people. I am so sorry if I hurt your feelings, I really didn’t mean it. It’s just that we live here and this is our life. Sometimes it’s not a nice life like other peoples’ because there is poverty all around, but it is still my life. And it makes me think about a lot of stuff, and I want to tell people what I am thinking.  I hope you understand.  So, we have to end now.

Goodbye Friends ... seeya later!
Cheers dears!