ok, london. we arrived at our hotel by 11 am, so we thought, hey, let's take the train into london! it turned out that camilla had the entire day off of work, so we met up with her for lunch at a pub outside of victoria station at 1 pm. great auntie cam is wonderful! she sends her love to everyone.
from the pub we walked to a small park (grass and pigeons to chase, but no playground. london is not especially child-friendly, there are no playgrounds in the whole city as far as we could find out!). then we walked over to trafalgar square and dipped our feet in the fountain (it was odd to be in london on a hot day with the sun shining!). then we took a double-decker bus (nina insisted) past big ben, parliment, and westminster abbey and ended up back at victoria station. quite a whirl-wind day, but very fun.
we stayed at the gatwick hilton, which is connected right to our airplane terminal. very easy! a scary thing happened while we were on line to go through security though: the man directly in front of us had a seizure. it was scary for the girls (and us too!). maggie is as empathetic as nina was at her age, and started wailing. nina was upset and confused by the seizure and by maggie getting so upset, so we cut to the front of the line to clear out. it's not like having two crying kids was going to help the poor man out any, the airport security was right on the scene clearing people away and calling a doctor. i had to explain seizures to nina over and over again, and she ended up processing it as the man having "reflux of falling down," whereas she has "reflux of coughing," which is not nearly as bad. she also wanted to be reassured that no one in our family has seizures. so, we've talked about it many times now (she keeps bringing it up again), but i think she's mostly over it now. i haven't heard about it today anyway.
aside from that, the flight was great. quick! we got to vienna at 2 or 3 and took the bus with oma back to baden.
and maggie's still asleep! hm, it's been over an hour, so she should be up soon. after this nap we're headed to some kind of fair in baden, should be fun!
oma and opa are great, of course they love seeing the girls. nina is there with nick right now and i'm in the apartment we're staying in (which is fantastic too).
ok then, more updates soon!
Penelope's recital - December 7th 2019
4 years ago
3 comments:
Thanks for all of the updates!
All is good here-- I had my glucose screen (normal) and my iron levels were good. Gained 6 lbs in 4 weeks. Appointments every 2 weeks now!
On another note-
You have got to try to watch a clip from last night's 20/20 at some point. I caught the last segment and it was about a pretty severely autistic Canadian girl, now 14. She had early intervention and a lot of it, multiple therapists...her parents have never given up even though it didn't seem like there was much progress. Then one day when she was 11 or 12 she went over to a computer and typed - "hurt" and "help", and then she threw up, she was sick. After that they kept on her with the typing, making her type for anything she needed and to express herself, and, although she may go slow, all of this very intelligent and clear stuff is coming out- like her being able to explain what it is like being autistic, why she does what she does and how she feels and sees things. It is unbelievable, and so much that I can't help but wonder if it is really true (they insist it is, she is not helped along with the typing). She even has a blog now. see http://carlysvoice.com
i think i saw this girl on larry king once! i didn't know her back story, but she typed her answers to the questions and the computer spoke them. but she didn't get much time on larry king (i think it was larry king anyway). neat though, i would really like to see that. what station does 20/20? or maybe it's on you tube?
and wow, i can't believe you're doing appointments every two weeks! you're almost there!!!!!!!!!
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