Category Archives: eliza

Eliza & Juliet riding their bikes

Eliza riding her bike by herself for the first time. Note the pedals are strapped to her feet to help and the pedals arms are fixed – no lazy coasting on this bike. The bike has really improved her strength since we got it.

And little Juliet loves chasing her around on her little trike. She is almost up to to a big girls bike too.

Eliza gets her new bike

After two weeks of repainting Eliza’s new bike from white and blue, to flamingo pink and yellow. Eliza gets to see her new bike put together for the first time and take a ride.

(This video was taken back in late 2013 – just starting to catch up with actually doing stuff with them)

Baby Juliet and Fiona.

This time for sure – a catch up

So it’s been a while. Again. The last 4 years have been a blur and every time I think of writing a bit I think about the massive post I would have to write to catch everyone up so the next little one made sense.

This is not that post. Probably.

The last 4-5 month I’ve been rediscovering WordPress, both for future work and personal reasons. Been a lot of fun.

Personally and professionally the last four years have seen a lot of changes – as most four years would. To try and summarise in some kind of order.

  • Discovered Eliza has Cerebral Palsy just before she turned two. Legs are moderately effected with no other obvious issues. Today she can walk unassisted, has Botox treatment 3-4 times a year, and will be looking into further surgical options in 2014.
  • Travelled to Hobart, Tasmania in mid 2011 to see Fiona’s brother get married. Got caught up with the volcanic ash problem that grounded planes for a week.
  • Announced we we expecting our second baby in June 2011.
  • August 2011, moved to Dubbo. Fiona’s mother and gran still here, better work opportunities for both of us.
  • Fiona starts working at Dubbo Base Hospital as midwife.
  • Jan 16, 2012 – Juliet Ava Quinn arrives. A few days late, but otherwise a great if not nervous pregnancy. She is almost two now and a bundle of energy. Mobile very early, but the vocabulary hasn’t been as fast as Eliza which is not unusual.
  • Late 2011 – Late 2012. Apart from Juliet, a pretty crappy year. Went to way too many funerals and said goodbye to some good friends (Gran, Lizzie, Sam & Agusta, Darren, and even our dog Jhett). Work wasn’t great for Fiona or myself, but at the end of the year we finished on a positive step with Fiona moving into a Community Nurse position.
  • 2013 has been a good year. Nothing fantastic, but going forward, and so far no one has died. Well lots have died, but nothing we have had to suit up for.
  • Eliza has just finished her second year of childcare, Juliet her first. Ideally Eliza might have started earlier, Juliet later, but here we are. Both love going to school (usually) and with Fiona matching her work days with them, we all have a bit more organised time.
  • Eliza has gotten a bike made for her by TAD and getting good riding it. We had a lot of fun turning it from white and blue into pink and yellow. Will post a video soon.
  • Dubbo has been great. Made lots of new friends, work has been good, plenty of old friends have visited, and overall we are pretty happy.

Well ok that’s pretty much covers it and brings most things up to date. Really do hope I post more – have been working out how to use YouTube to post all the great videos we have been getting of the kids.

See you soon.

Eliza Quinn arrives

First the great news. Fiona and I had our first baby last week – 20th May, 2009. She is called Eliza Scarlett Quinn. More on why later.

She arrived 2 months premature. 30 weeks and 5 days. But she has been an amazingly strong little thing so far – was only on direct assisted breathing for 48 hours or so, and was breathing just air by herself after a few days. She will be in her incubator for a few more weeks and wont be home until around her original due date of July 23. But we go to the hospital several times a day to see / feed / care for her.

She is awesome.

She does have her own domain already at elizaquinn.com.au – but nothing is there yet. Soon.

I have started to post a few pictures of her on my FlickR site – flickr.com/photos/michaelquinn/ Not a lot so far but I am going through lots of them and doing a bit of a crash course on iPhoto 09. More soon.

Fiona is doing great – no problems at all. Dad is getting over the shock of it happening way before he was ready – but expects it won’t be the last time that happens.

Anyway. Will write more on it soon….

As always – big plans to blog more blah blah blah. Please follow me at twitter.com/michaelq Most of my ramblings come out there for now.

Shine on.