About Kessia



I'm sure Kessia would think it highly appropriate to have a page dedicated to some of her favourite activities, especially as this might provide a few not-so-subtle suggestions for some really cool presents :-).

Picture Picture

Fairies and unicorns

One of Kessia's great loves is fairies. At Sydney Children's Hospital, they had the most magical fairy garden where we spent many happy hours. Kessia also loves unicorns! She's made a pet unicorn picture book, and writes stories about them. If you can find anything related to unicorns, she would love it.

Kessia already has quite a collection of fairy books and figurines, but I'm sure she'd love Shirley Barber's story about unicorns (which she heard about recently), a bag of coloured stone "gems" (which I wouldn't let her buy once), or fairy card games. Basically, she likes anything pretty or magical or pink.


Drawing and art

Kessia is a keen and excellent artist. She enjoys drawing endlessly and is currently producing the most amazing works of art, the latest being a huge 8 x A4 page mural of the ocean with whales, dolphins and sea creatures. Art supplies including large sheets of cardboard, paints, textas, artist sketch pads, etc would be ideal gifts.

Picture Picture
Last year, Kessia won the inaugural junior easter egg colouring-in competition in Port Vila. She really wanted to win and put a great deal of effort into her work. Her prize was an enormous 1 kg chocolate egg which took her months to get through!


Jokes

Kessia loves jokes and riddles. Her favourite book in hospital was "1001 Jokes for Kids". When she could barely talk, we would lean down very close, thinking she had something important to tell us, and would usually be greeted by the raspy words "Knock, knock" :-).

Another classic moment was the day after I thought Kessia was close to dying, when she was extremely weak. We had just buzzed the nurse to remove her drip so we could go to the toilet. Kessia started saying something, and thinking it was urgent and "toilet related", I listened very carefully and heard her whisper:

"You know how you have silent e's at the end of some words? Well, if 'joke' didn't have one, it would be 'jok'!"
I couldn't believe it as it was the most she had said in days :-).

Here's a few of Kessia's favourite jokes while she was in hospital:

Q: What did Baby Corn say to Mummy Corn?
A: Where's Pop Corn?

Q: How do you make a sausage roll?
A: Push it down a hill!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Gotta.
Gotta who?
Got to go to the toilet!

Picture

Food, glorious food!

On 24 September, we told Kessia she wouldn't have to have any more radiation treatment. It was like magic: her spirits started lifting almost immediately and by that evening Kessia was able to talk a little. And it seems ever since then, she has talked about food!

The first conversation we had that evening was about the "specials of the day" she would eat at Mummy Chang's Restaurant, faithfully recorded by our scribe, Michael Smith:

The following morning, 25 September, Kessia said she dreamt about "food, glorious food". That night she made another big list of all the food she wanted to eat when we got out of hospital. Kessia's list, together with a few conversational interludes, was again recorded by Michael: Kessia: (This is) making me hungry!
Denise: Oh, shall we talk about something else?
Kessia: No! [and smiles]
Kessia: [Smiles] I'm very hungry. Kessia: I roll my eyes at tasteless.
Denise: I do too [big smile]
A detailed conversation about the poor quality of hospital scrambled eggs followed, with Kessia rather aghast that they don't even have ham in them. She said they needed at least four packets of salt to make them tasty, but we only allowed her two. We then went on to rate hospital service, food presentation, taste, etc and concluded that we won't be going back there again! Picture We reminisce about a little shop in Port Vila called LTP which, according to Kessia, had the best tasting battered fish in town.

Other great loves





Updated 13th October 2002 Site hosted at immir.com.