I Feel Old

The cupcakes I made for my birthday

It was my birthday on friday. I turned 28. Everyone keeps telling me that I'm still just a baby, but I tell you, I feel old at the moment. The weather is making my knees hurt, I just want to curl up in the corner and knit. Or die, that would stop the pain.

I'm not looking forward to next birthday, but I am looking forward to a few months time when the weather heats up and the pain recedes a little. Also, there should be FLOWERS!!

Until then I'm laying claim to the blankets and the asprin. And the chocolate.

Garden Prettification

One of the things* that excited me most about this house when we bought it was the garden potential. There are flower beds around the front of the house, filled with roses, irises, various protea, and a couple of natives - a grevillea and a lillypilly. The front of the yard, where a fence would go, is on an extremely steep angle, perfect for turning into terraced garden beds. The back year has garden beds around the edges, surrounding a yard large enough for a trampoline AND running around space, and theres a corner tucked away behind the garage** that's invisible from the house and therefor off limits to the children, but exactly the right size and position for a vegie patch. Sheltered on three sides by fences/trees/wall, but full sun most of the day. The eventual aim is to severely limit our reliance on the grocery store for vegies and herbs.

Unfortunately, the garden has not been top priority as far as expenses go. We had to buy furniture/kitchen things/laundry things. Then the oven died and we had to not only buy a new oven, but get an electrician and a plumber in to change it over from electric to gas. Then winter happened and this house is cooler than the other and we discovered we needed more bedding. Add that to the constant expenses of food, utilities, mortgage, car payment, clothes... The garden has been sorely neglected.

But recently things have started settling down. We found a new place to do our groceries, where a trolley containing 8kg of meat, 12kg of flour, 9kg of fruits/veg and various sundries only costs $130,*** and there is an Aldi right across the road from the market, so the weekend after hubby gets paid we stop in there as well and I stock up on the stuff they have super cheap - cheese which goes in the freezer until its needed, sultanas, canned tomatoes, cling wrap, etc. Combined with our new credit card****, we have a lot more wiggle room in our budget now, even with interest rates going up.

So we're prettifying the garden.

The easiest and cheapest prettification was the front garden beds. Pruning the roses, removing the agapanthas (they're everywhere, I hate them, and I think I might be allergic to them. They had to go), general weeding. It looks so much better, and cost absolutely nothing.

The biggest change was cutting down the trees in the back garden beds. Some moron planted a pine tree about 6 inches from the fence. Presumably the same person either planted, or at the least didn't remove, a camphor laurel. DUMB. Along with a couple of palm trees, and some other scraggly looking things, hubby removed 6 trees from the back yard, giving us (tiny) views of the lake, and space to eventually plant something attractive and useful - like citrus, or apples. And more than 6 inches from the fence.

The most exciting was discovering the banana tree is fruiting. Technically we didn't have anything to do with that, as it was here when we bought the place and they fruit on their own, but HOW COOL IS THAT??????

The most expensive thing has been the addition of some plants. In pots. Which made it even more expensive. But now we have 8 tomato plants, a lavender, a blueberry bush, and 2 pots which will have parsley and coriander planted in them as soon as it warms up a little bit. We also repotted the thyme and one of the basil plants that we already had.

We're not expert gardeners. I've managed to kill everything I've ever tried to grow, except the basil and the thyme. They just won't die. I can even kill lavender, and its supposed to be unstoppable. I suspect the tomatoes don't have enough space, and we discovered we'd bought the wrong soil for the blueberry, so its sitting forlornly on our deck waiting to be put in its pot. But the garden looks better, and if we kill the plants, we can always try again. Seeds are cheap, and we already have the pots.

But most of all, the children will get some experience in growing things, and hubby and I had a fun time tending our garden together. I think its the best date I've ever had.






* The others included the massive deck with potential views of the lake, an inside laundry, decent sized kitchen, 2 living areas, and a 2 minute walk to the local school. OH YES.

** Currently unusable due the third shed and massive amounts of junk/concrete/WEEDS, but hey. The space is there once we clear it up.

*** I know this is going to sound insanely high to Americans. But when you realise that COUPONS DO NOT EXIST, and the CHEAP price for chicken breast is $8/kg (about $4/#), well. Food is more expensive here. Shopping elsewhere, the meat alone could have cost that much.

**** My first ever. And yes, I know credit cards are generally a bad idea. But hubby sometimes has to go away for work, and he does NOT have a company credit card. Which means he has to spend our money. Which means I'm often left $300 short, with no chance of seeing it back for anywhere from 2-4 weeks. With the credit card, he can spend as much as he wants on customers without impacting on our ability to feed our children and pay for our house.

Not the Answer I wanted, but an Answer nonetheless

I have two absolutely beautiful children. Gosling is 18months old, and Critter will be 6 next month.


Gosling is slowly learning new words, with all people having become 'daddy' (Tall person with hair on his face who throws me in the air? Daddy. Other tall person with long hair who stays at home and feeds me? Daddy. Random people I meet at the shops/on the street/at the brother's school? Daddy), and all objects having become 'dut' (especially if they are yellow, say "quack" and like water), except trucks, which are brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm. She has a doll cradle, and is constantly putting her babies (dolls, bunnies, teddies, trucks, books, blankets, cooking implements) in, rocking them vigorously, and taking them out again. Lather, rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat, repeat, repeat. She tries to be gentle with the cat, and loves to do my hair. She's also become very interested in birds, and is constantly pointing them out to me whenever we are outside. She is my shadow, and wants to be wherever I am, and do whatever I am doing. From cleaning the windows, to wiping up spills, to sitting on the couch listening to music. Now if only her hair would thicken up so I can do cute things with it...


The Critter, my big boy, is a very smart little thing. He is reading at a level far above every other child in his class - well enough to have been pushed into the 2nd highest reading group in the 1st grade class. He is in kindergarten. He can read words like laughter, lamington, crocodile, and amused. I change the channel when the news is on because he reads the headlines and asks me what murder means and why did that man do it to his three children? He is interested in everything, and I find myself answering a never-ending string of questions on everything from how a jet works, to why there are so many different types of flowers. He is amazing with lego, and has been doing the 7-12 age group stuff since before his 5th birthday. He plays Auskick - kids version of AFL (aussie football) - and has kicked some very good goals. He loves to dance. And sing. And run, and jump, and do flips and play on the trampoline and play with the hula hoop andplaywithtrucksandreadandwatchtvand.. you get the picture. He loves life. He loves everything. He loves vegetables. We bribe him with broccoli to get him to finish his meat ('If you eat three more pieces of your steak, you can have daddy's vegetables.'). We fight a constant battle against eczema, and have a variety of asthma and allergy medications in the cupboard. Every time he encounters a new food, he asks if it has eggs in it. Or chicken. Or nuts.

He is the sweetest, most beautiful boy I have ever known. He hugs me when I am sad, pats my head and wraps his scrawny arms around my neck, and tells me that its OK and he loves me. He picks me flowers and draws me pictures. He wanted to marry his sister because 'she is so beautiful'. He wants to play with her all the time, and is always telling his friends about all the amazing things she can do - like walking, and eating her own food, and talking.

But ever since he could walk, the Critter has been running. Everywhere he goes, he runs, skips, or jumps. He climbs trees (I had to wash his hair before it was due the other day because he was covered in ants from climbing trees), rolls down hills, and jumps off steps constantly. The more he runs, the more energy he seems to have. The trampoline is in almost constant use when he is at home, and some days, it is the only thing that keeps me sane. He can not sit still, constantly jumping into and out of his chair, whether he is eating, playing lego, watching tv, or doing his homework. Every time he sees something, he gets distracted by it. It takes him 25 minutes to put on a t-shirt and trousers in the morning, over half an hour to brush his teeth, and he takes nearly an hour to eat a sandwich.

I do not remember the last time he actually ate all his lunch at school. Usually, at least half a sandwich gets eaten when he gets home, because he didn't eat it all before the bell went at lunch time to go outside and play.

He sits at his own desk at school, because he gets distracted too easily if there is another child sitting near him. He tells them how to do their work, wants to play, and does not keep his hands to himself.

There is a square taped on the carpet where he is allowed to sit, and none of the other children are allowed inside his square.

He has been kept in at lunch for playing instead of doing his work, telling the teacher what to do, and not keeping his hands to himself.

Again, he is in KINDERGARTEN.

Even when he's kept in, he still doesn't manage to eat all his food.

He has lost his jacket at school more times than I can count. He's on his third one now, the other two having vanished, and he's left it behind at least twice already.

He loses things at home too. I don't know where half his lego is.

He seems to find it impossible to actually look at people when they're talking to him. In the time it takes to tell him to go brush his teeth and get his PJs on, he will have changed his line of sight at least 3 times, probably swung at least one arm around like a windmill, and moved about a foot to the left - after being told to stand still with his hands behind his back, and Look. At. My. Eyes when I'm talking to you please.

When he was younger I assumed all children had boundless energy and didn't know how to stay still for more than a heartbeat. His teacher thought it was boredom and has been giving him harder and harder work, because he is a bright boy, and he does need more advanced work than a lot of the others in his class.

In my bible study last week, when we were each asked for things we'd like to pray for, Critterbug was mine. That we would find some way to help him, something we could put in place that would stop him being disruptive in class, help him find a way to concentrate, and bring a calm to our lives that we've never known.

Yesterday, I got my Answer. His teacher says a his behaviours are very similar to other children with ADHD. Giving him harder work to alleviate boredom has not worked, it simply makes him frustrated at the harder work. He recognises that he can not function at a table with other children and needs to be on his own, but it upsets him that he has to be separated, and he still has concentration issues. Lots of concentration issues. It is practically impossible for him to stay still. Ever.

Looking at a typical day in Critter-world, at the things he does and the things he can not do, and having looked at lists of symptoms of ADHD, I'm coming to agree with the teacher. While he doesn't do anything to the extent of the "troubled ADHD kids" you see on the TV* - hitting, screaming, climbing onto roofs, running non-stop, throwing things around - he does do a lot. He gets distracted constantly, can't stay still, flits from one thing to another, loses things a lot, fidgets, runs and climbs all the time, has NO volume control (actually, he has three volumes - shout, shouted-whisper, and so-quiet-he-can't-even-hear-himself), talks/sings/hums ALL. THE. TIME. (the only time my house is silent is when he is asleep or at school. even when he's eating, he's talking), doesn't seem to hear what people tell him, and interrupts a lot.

He's a good boy. He's sweet. He's bright. And he tries.

This was not the Answer I wanted for my boy**. This is not the Answer I wanted for our family. But it is an Answer with an answer***, with things we can do, if doctors agree with his teacher's suspicions.

And it's looking like the only Answer I'm getting.



*He actually does have a cousin like this, though I've only seen him post-medication, where he looked like any other 5yr old. Hubby tells me that before his nephew was medicated, things were pure insanity.

**After looking at everything I possibly could to prove to myself that there's no way Critter has ADHD and the teacher must be wrong (yeah. that failed), it actually looks like this is a possible answer to me as well. It would explain a LOT of my childhood behaviours, and a lot of the problems I have now, in regards concentration, distractedness, and forgetfulness. For example, I don't think I ever once did my homework on time - not because of laziness, but because I could never remember that I even had any, and the only way I can come even CLOSE to keeping the house in order now is to have a list of 3 to 4 things to do each day, taped to the fridge so I'll get distracted by them every time I walk past it. It works a little bit.

***The more times I write "answer" the more the word looks wrong. Do you ever find that?

Bananas

In our backyard. Fruiting. Excellent.

P-a-l-n. Plan.

Today's plan, in not-necessarily-correct- order:

• eat breakfast (yes, I really do need to remind myself to eat breakfast) (done!)
• get the boy safely to school (done!)
• vacuum the whole house
• comfort Gosling because the vacuum is a scary hellbeast
• find something to do in the bathroom while Gosling sits on the loo for half an hour refusing to 'go'
• make applesauce
• sleep when Gosling sleeps
• laundry - kid clothes
• laundry - nappies
• knit more of Gosling's blanket (and possibly finish the last 2 fingers on the glove)
• get the boy safely home from school
• work on some maths with Critter
• bathe both children
• leftovers for dinner
• spicks&specks, 9pm, ABC2
• make the husband choclate cake for dessert (microwave mugcake)

I suspect they won't all happen. The main ones are vacuuming, laundry, and Critter-school related. You think bathing should be a priority? My kids have just as sensitive skin as I do, and if they (or I for that matter) bathe everyday, there is much dryness and itchiness and pain and rashing. Skipping a day for baths is not a problem. Bathing them too often IS a problem. They get washed everyday - hands, feet, faces (and backside for the girl because hello, nappy changes) - but they don't have a BATH everyday.

Tweet Tweet

There is a bird nesting in my garden.


She is small, not much bigger than a sparrow, but there's no mistaking her for such a drab bird. She is mostly balck and white, with splashes of brilliant yellow, and her eye is bright white.


Her nest is tucked in the back of the grevillea, squashed up against the house. At first I thought it was died-back branches, but she nestled down into it, and became almost invisble. The spiky plant will presumably help keep predators away, even though she is barely 2 feet of the ground.


The small bowl of twigs, when she vacates her hiding place, reveals an unexpected inside - a thick white wall of fluff, perfect for cradling delicate eggs, of which she appears to have a pair.


She spends a fair amound of time out of the nest, and I don't know if this is normal, or if she isn't really that into being a mother. I guess we'll find out in a week or so, when there will either be small tweety things in the nest, or it will become simply an abandoned bowl of twigs.



We get a lot of birds around here. On any given day, as well as my little nesting friend (a New Holland Honeyeater) and about a dozen of her kin, I am likely to see any or all of the following (and I'm sure I'm forgetting some, AND there are more than I don't see, and can't identify by song):

• Masked Lapwing


• Laughing Kookaburra


• Rainbow Lorikeet


• Crimson Rosella


• Magpie


• Willie Wagtail


• Black faced Cuckoo-shrike


• Red Wattlebird


• Some sort of honeyeater, probably a Litle Wattlebird, but its hard to get a good look


• Sparrows


• Magpie Lark


• Indian Myna


• Crested Pigeon


• Spotted Dove


• Pelicans


• Silver Gulls (the proper name for those annoying seagulls - the Australian ones at least)

There are also Black Swans and a variety of other water birds in the lake about 3 blocks away, and the neighbour has chickens. It is never quiet around here.

Chicken Soup

Gosling, my girlchild, is 17 months old. It seems like only yesterday that I was told her heartrate was far too low (I originally thought the monitor was picking up me, because her heartrate was about 70bpm), and I needed a c-section NOW. They never used the word 'emergency', but not counting my husband, my son, and myself, there were about 15 people in that room hovering over the heart rate monitor, and muttering quietly amongst themselves as I changed into the hospital gown.

Critter, at 4-and-a-half didn't know what was going on, but he picked up on our stress and fear, and wouldn't stop crying. I wouldn't allow myself to cry, not in front of so many doctors, not in front of my already terrified son, but I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. My husband looked, if possible, even more scared than he did after Critter was born, and I lost so much blood that you literally couldn't see the colour difference between my face and my lips.

A few hours after her over-dramatic entrance into the world.

Apparently, the sprog likes to play tricks. She started yelling as soon as she was out, and I heard a very surprised "good set of lungs" from one of the multitudes of doctors, midwives, and anaesthetists standing at the ready should anything go awry. She was pink, and alert, and round as a pumpkin, and her APGAR was 9. They did all sorts of tests, on cord blood, and placenta, and uterine walls, and never could figure out what happened. Apart from an ear that looks like its had an earring ripped through it (it hasn't, she was born like that), my girl was perfect (if a little smaller than I remembered babies being).

The not-normal ear. As well as a bifurcated earlobe, the top is pointy. Her other ear is perfectly normal. She is certainly asymmetrical.

She has remained, in all ways, a perfectly normal child. She started crawling later than critter did, and walking, but still well within the normal range. She said her first word - her brother's name - at about 9 months, and is slowly picking up more recognisable words to go with the constant babbling.

Very pleased with the new-found mobility crawling gives, at 10months.

She has remained beautifully round (her upper arms are about the same size as her brother's - and he'll be 6 in two months), despite her charts saying she is at the low end of her age's weight range, and she looks like she's going to be tall like the rest of us. She also has the funniest spiral belly-button I've ever seen.

Come on. Tell me thats not adorable.

She 'helps' be with everything, handing me pegs when I hang out the washing, and random utensils when I'm cooking dinner, and if I clean up a mess from the floor without giving her a rag to help, she sits down and cries.

She steals my favourite scarf and tries to wrap it around her shoulders, walking around the house looking like an apple-green ghost with it draped over her head.

OOOOH!!!!! Its a green ghosty!

She will spend surprising amounts of time putting her dollies and teddies and bunnies and chickens in the doll cradle, patting them, rocking them, and then taking them out to put a fresh dolly/teddy/bunny/chicken in.

It's hard to believe how much my urgent c-section squalling pink girl has grown in the past 17months. A few weeks ago (or a few months? I never was good at keeping up with the passage of time) I started letting her use a spoon to feed herself. Now, she gets upset if I give her food without a spoon. Even if its toast. She's got really good with her spoon, and the only things that she still gets fed are yoghurt, and chicken soup.

Until today.

Today, I gave her a bowl *cough*ramekin*cough* of soup and a spoon, and she ate it all. Granted, I gave her mostly the lumps, with very little of the broth, and yes, her shirt was quite wet when she was done, but she did it. She ate a bowl of soup by herself, without help.

Watching your children grow into independent people is one the best feelings ever. But I think I'd like to keep her dependent for a little longer please.

Pantry, as promised

A while back I told you about re-organising my pantry (pantries), and promised to show pictures. I've had problems getting everything working on the computer, but now its all playing nicely together, so here we go!

Click any of the pictures to see them bigger.

Like I mentioned, the biggest problem with using one of the extra cupboards as extra pantry space, is that the doors kept getting in the way. Every time I wanted to get anything out of the pantry, I had to move everything off the counter, out of the way so could open the doors. Which was annoying, because there was a decent amount of space there for me to use.


Because of the way the doors opened, I couldn't even just move things over to the side - they would still be in the way. I would have to either put everything on the stovetop - if it was off - or next to the sink, and then move it back again.


I mentioned to Hubby that maybe we could take the doors off, and then we wouldn't have to keep moving everything. He said it sounded like a good idea, and the clever man removed the doors just like that. I reorganised the pantries so that mostly only the 'nicer' looking things were there like my canisters and the old coffee jars I use to store herbs, spices, and other powdery things, along with other baking stuff - baking powder, gelatine etc. The few non 'nice' items don't bother me the way a whole shelf full of oils and sauces would have.


Finding the hooks under the bottom shelf was brilliant. I can never find my measures in the drawer, and this way, they're right there where I need them. I also don't have to go rummaging in the towel drawer for my oven mits - they're hanging on the hooks in the pantry too! The counter space is easier to use (and theres even a little more of it without the doors in the way), and I can grab a jar of spice, use it, and put it back, without having to plan ahead (a little difficult when you add stuff at random the way I do when I cook) or move everything constantly. Because it's now open, it gives me extra incentive to keep it tidy, too.

The other pantry is not such a dramatic difference, and has actually been reorganized slightly since these pictures were taken, but it still easier for me with all my sauces together, all the spreads together, all my foil/plastic/paper together. It also serves as generic 'extra' storage, with excess bottles and packages sitting in the back behind the more frequently used items. Pretty much every shelf has regular use item in the front, and bulk storage in the back, from oats, to sugar, to bicarb, to teriyaki sauce, to olive oil.


I don't have any pictures, but I have actually commandeered another cupboard as pantry space, as well. It's one of those annoying corner cupboards that you can never quite reach everything when you try to use it as storage for plates, or glasses, or pots and pans, so I'm using it for things that won't fit in the other pantries. Juice, cordial, and soft drinks, cereal and muesli, and all our cookbooks and spare placemats.

Blah Blah Blah

• I'm knitting gloves.
• With only 2 needles.
• From a pattern designed for double-pointed needles.
• Which I'm altering to knit flat AS I GO.
• I may in fact be insane.
• We finally collected paintings from mum's house and hung them up here.
• Its amazing what a few landscapes will do to break up the expanse of lemon-yellow.
• I really need to get back into the habit of shopping at Aldi.
• And baking bread.
• And making yoghurt.
• I need more clothes-line.
• In winter I can only hang one load of wash.
• I have to hang on every second line or the clothes don't dry because they are too close together.
• This didn't seem to be an issue a few months ago when it was warmer/less rainy.
• This means I am using the machine EVERY SINGLE DAY when you count all the loads of nappies and cat-pee soaked rags I have to do.
• Our almost 14yr old cat can't seem to stay in his tray, so I have to clean pee off the floor EVERY SINGLE DAY.
• Gosling made use of the toddler toilet seat yesterday.
• There was a lot of applause and exclamations of "good girl!!!"
• The second time I put her on she fell off and bumped/scratched her head.
• I expect she won't be very enthusiastic about sitting on it today.
• I need to clear out her drawers.
• How can someone so small have so many clothes?
• Because she makes such a mess of them feeding herself with a spoon.
• And now she's shaking her bed so its probably time to go get her up.
• Bye.

Shampoo

Today I used shampoo for the first time since last November. Don't worry, I haven't been walking around like a grot with skeezy unwashed hair, I've simply been using baking soda and vinegar* instead.

Since we've been programmed by companies to believe that nothing can get clean without bubbles (hair, hands, teeth, laundry, dishes..) many people find it difficult to imagine that you can wash your hair without shampoo.

Trust me, you can.

Not only do I generally wash my hair less frequently when using baking soda, it takes less time to wash, and my hair is in better condition. This morning I spent over half an hour in the shower trying to get all of the shampoo out of my hair (I don't use conditioner, ever, because I would be in there for over an hour trying to rinse it out - my hair does not like that stuff) where as I usually take 15 minutes on a hair-washing day - I know this seems like a long time, but my hair is long, I wash it twice (not including the vinegar rinse), and in reality a fair portion of that time is spent washing my hair before I turn the water on**.

So why did I revert to shampoo this morning? The simplest answer is, it was cold. The more involved answer is, I didn't realise I had no baking-soda-solution until I was already in the shower cubicle, and I decided it was far too cold to go traipsing through the house to make some. If it was summer I might have gone and done it, but I already couldn't feel my toes. I'm not going to let that happen again. (I did briefly consider just not washing my hair and waiting till tomorrow, but my hair REALLY needed to be washed.)

Once I realised I was going to have to use shampoo, I welcomed it as an experiment. Its been so long since I used shampoo that I'd almost forgotten how different it feels, and I admit, I probably used a little too much - in my defense, my husbands shampoo comes out of the bottle a lot quicker than mine used to - but I don't really think the amount I used had an impact on the way my hair feels.

If I can possibly avoid it, I have no plans to use shampoo ever again. I've stopped colouring my hair, and haven't been to the hairdresser since last October, so other than my own laziness, there is no reason for me to use shampoo again.

Which is good, since I don't really like it when my hair feels like the nylon strands they use for doll hair.



WASH YOUR HAIR WITHOUT SHAMPOO:

You will need:

• squeeze bottles (I bought some, other people have had success with very well rinsed detergent bottles) (Actually, these are not absolutely necessary, just easier. For quite a while I made each batch as I needed it, instead of 'in bulk' and used it out of a pyrex measuring jug)
• baking soda (also called bicarb)
• apple cider vinegar
• water
• hair

NOTE: This is what worked for me, for my very-fine-but-gosh-theres-a-lot-of-it, naturally-dark-blond-but-coloured-lighter-for-the-past-4-years, hates-conditioner-with-a-passion -which-is-fine-because-it-hardly-tangles, almost-waist-length hair. The proportions you need will depend on your exact hair. I had to fiddle around a little till I found what works well. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't feel right the first couple times. Change your proportions till you get it right.

"Shampoo":
For every 2 cups of water, you want to add about 1-heaped-Tbsp bicarb. This becomes tricky, because Australian measures are different to US measures. For 2cups - 1pint (about half a litre) - you want about 1/8cup bicarb - for me, this is easier as 2 heaped tablespoons, since there are 3tablespoons in 1/4cups and I don't have a 1/8cup measure. 4cups - 2pints - 1quart (about a litre) - use 1/4 cup.

"Conditioner":
The proportions for the conditioner are similar, excepting that since vinegar is not a powder and therefor won't dissolve, you put your 1/4cup vinegar in your container and top up with water until you reach your 4cups (2 pints, 1quart, about a litre) of liquid.

- You may find that your bicarb solution is gritty. If that happens, you need to boil your water before adding the bicarb - while it is still hot. It will fizz like crazy, so do it slowly, but it will dissolve better.

- You may find, like me, that your hair washes better if you start it from dry. My best friend has to start hers from wet. Whichever works best for you, focus on your scalp. This is where most of the oil is, and you may find the ends of your hair dry out if you add too much soda there. For my hair, I use about 3/4cup per wash, pouring on a little, working it in, pouring more on elsewhere, working it in, etc etc. If your hair still feels dirty, and/or your scalp still feels oily after rinsing the soda out, do it again. The first time will loosen all the oil and dirt, and the second time will well and truly wash it out. Twice is usually enough, no matter how oily your head feels before hand***.

-"Massage your scalp" the same way you would with your shampoo. It works out all the dirt and flakes.

-Make sure you rinse your hair thoroughly between the soda and the vinegar. Ever mixed an acid and a base (alkali)? You don't want that on your head. If you don't believe me, put a teaspoon of bicarb in the bottom of a jug and pour in some vinegar. I don't imagine it would feel nice on your scalp.

-Use your vinegar solution the same way, but pour a little more through the rest of your hair, not just your scalp. Your hair will feel dry if you don't use some sort of acidic rinse to counteract the bicarb. Be sure to rinse it out well, too. The smell is not noticeable once dry.

-Apparently vinegar is better for brunettes, and lemon for blonds. I imagine you would use about the same proportions of lemon as vinegar, but here, vinegar is cheaper than lemons, so I haven't tried it (despite being blond).

-I like the smell of chamomile, so sometimes I rinse my hair - after the vinegar - in dilute chamomile tea, too. I've convinced myself that it makes it soft and shiny, but I may be delusional.




*Separately. Don't try using them simultaneously, it would be messy and feel terribly odd.
**Yes, I wash my hair before I turn on the water. It seems to get cleaner if I use the solution on dry hair rather than wet, and it saves water.
***Did you know the shampoo companies aren't just trying to rort you out of more money by making you use more? Your hair will actually get cleaner if you wash twice - the first time loosens everything (oil, dirt, dander, peanut butter...) and the second time washes it all away.

But What if You're Wrong?

Much as we may hope and pray that one day all will recognise Christ as Lord and Saviour, the plain truth is that many, many people don't. There are those who follow different religions, those who believe in some sort of God-like being but aren't really sure who has it right, and those who flat out do not believe in anything. When you die, you turn into dust, the end.

When discussing religion in general (and Christianity specifically) with people from either of the latter two categories, a common response seems to be "but what if you're wrong?" and lets face it, it is a possibility.

It is possible that the entire new testament is a false. It is possible that Jesus was deranged, and everyone who believed him was equally crazy.

It is also possible that I am crazy and imagining everything going on at the moment. There is a history of mental illness in my family, maybe I snapped and am currently drugged up to the eyeballs in a mental facility somewhere, spinning elaborate fairy tales to comfort myself. Perhaps the depression that plagued me as a teenager got the better of me. Maybe something went wrong during my c-section and I'm in a coma. Maybe I got hit in the head.

Its possible, but its not likely.

Lets face the possibility that our faith is unfounded for just a moment though. What if we are wrong?

Well, what if we are? I will have lived a happy life, bringing joy to my family. I will have spent time budgeting expenses so we never go hungry, and we can help those with less than ourselves. I will have made strong friendships with fellow misguided churchgoers, sharing tips on wrangling children and running a house, helping others and being helped in turn. I will have spent many hours singing joyfully, instantly lifting my mood, and hence lifting the moods of all those I have come in contact with. I will have been faithful to my husband, and he will never have to doubt that he is his children's father. My children will be well behaved and polite.

Do I need to go on? Even if I am wrong, I will still have led a happy and fulfilled life. If I am wrong, so what?

And if we are right, and Christ is the risen King, exalted Saviour, bringing us home to Heaven by His grace alone, and not by anything we can do, and all those who do not believe are cast out.. Well. I know what I'd rather believe.

Metabolism

I love weetbix. Just like any good Australian. I love them with a little bit of brown sugar, and enough milk that the outside softens just a touch, but the inside is still crunchy. This necessitates eating them rather quickly.

The fact that I love weetbix so much, is actually one of the reasons I haven't eaten them for a few years. I love them TOO much.

Something that is often asked on ads is how many weetbix you can eat. The serving suggestion is 2, but many sportsmen claim to eat 6, or 8. Football players mostly, big burly guys that you expect to eat half a cow for dinner and still have room for dessert. Or swimmers, who burn so much energy they are constantly eating just to stay in shape.

When I was 18, I would eat 10.

10 weetbix for breakfast. With sugar and milk. A cup of milk with each set of weetbix. Eaten by 2, that makes over a litre. A good tablespoon of sugar spread over the two weetbix, 5 times over, makes half a cup. and then I would have a glass of orange juice.

This didn't stop me eating during the rest of the day, either. When I was at school, I would eat two sandwiches for lunch - thats 4 slices of bread, 2-4 slices of cheese, and 2-4 slices of ham. Plus an apple, plus a muesli bar. And a glass of juice with lunch.

When I was working for my father, at 19, I didn't often have sandwiches for lunch. Instead I'd go to the local bakery and get a loaf of their cheese and bacon bread. And a sweet bun. And a 600ml carton of chocolate milk. And eat it all.

Dinner wasn't any better. If we had pizza, I would eat a pizza. By myself. Thin crust, yes, but not home-made, and I'd eat 1/3 of the loaf of garlic bread too. Milk with dinner as well.

Sometimes I made myself pasta - from a packet. You know the kind - add milk, water and butter, microwave for 10 minutes. Serves four. I'd eat the whole packet, plus a couple slices of bread to mop up the sauce.

What did I look like when I used to eat so much?


I looked like that. That is a 17 year old Sarah. Who hadn't started eating 10 weetbix at a time yet, but would regularly eat 6 (with all the accompanying sugar and milk) and one time ate 4 cheeseburgers, 20 chicken nuggets, 3 large fries and a thickshake within half an hour, then went to the movies and had a large popcorn and three packets of sweets (snakes, maltesers and violet crumbles for anyone wondering). I looked approximately the same until I had my son when I was 22.

HOW COULD I LOOK LIKE THAT????? On a day when I ate 10 weetbix for breakfast (with milk, sugar, and orange juice), pullapart for lunch (with finger bun and chocolate milk), and pizza for dinner (with garlic bread and milk) I would easily consume 5000 calories. Thats nearly 3 times what my current suggested intake is.

I HATE my metabolism.

Ponderous Thoughts

Jenni at One Thing has posted a series of "would you rather" questions, asking about things like Twilight, vomit, Robert Downey Jr., and sheep's brains. (Um.. not all in the same question.. that would be weird.) The last question was "Would you rather answer all of these questions, or come up with 10 of your own?" I answered her questions, as I'm not sure I'm capable of coming up with 10 of my own, but there are 2 that I've thought about quite a bit over the years.

The first one is easy, and coming up a lot at the moment: Would you rather keep coughing all night, or actually take some of that disgusting cough mixture?

Coughing usually wins. That stuff truly is FOUL. And it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on my cough.

The second one is harder, but one that I'm extremely unlikely to ever have to properly think about again. Would you rather go into labour entirely alone, with no opportunity to get someone to help, or have your waters break spectacularly in the middle of a shopping centre?

Hmm. Solo Birth, or Extreme Embarrassment? Before I had kids (and I used to ponder this while I was pregnant with Critter, so I'm really not just making this up), I would have taken the Solo Birth. I probably would have died of embarrassment if my waters broke in the middle of a shopping centre, and women all around the world have babies all the time, without the aid of a plethora of medical staff. We've been doing it for thousands of years. Our bodies are MADE to do it.

Then I had Critter. I was in labour for only 4 hours, he got stuck, and I lost a lot of blood. I was on iron tablets for over a year to get my iron count back up, and I have NEVER had a problem with iron levels. After that, I started thinking that maybe I wouldn't be one of those women who could do the whole solo birth thing. Then again, my mother had fast labours, and hers were relatively uneventful.

And then, I had Gosling.

Knowing that a four hour labour with the first child is VERY FAST, and that labours tend not to get longer with subsequent children, my husband already insisted that we head to the hospital at the first signs of labour. In the end that wasn't necessary. At my 39 week check they ended up deciding I needed an emergency c-section, when the baby's heartbeat dropped so low I thought the machines were just picking up me. That was probably the most terrifying day of my life.

If I ever get pregnant again, Solo Birth is not going to be an option. I will camp out on the hospital doorstep for the last month if necessary. I am just not someone who can have a baby alone. I hate having babies in the hospital. I hate the fact that pregnancy is treated as a disease as much as a natural process, and that birth is considered impossible without medical intervention. But, without medical intervention, there's a possibility that I could have died having my first child, or that my second would never have made it out alive.

And really, after an open-door hospital birth and a c-section, so many people have seen me naked that a little amniotic fluid in the middle of Westfield probably wouldn't even phase me.

Knitwit

I'm teaching myself to knit.* My mother knits, in fact I think she even knitted a lot of my baby clothes, seeing as when I was born it was the tail end of winter and we lived in Melbourne (I know she didn't make any for my sister, born mid-summer in Darwin, that would probably have constituted child abuse). She tried teaching me when I was younger, and in fact I think I even made a scarf. But I am 27 now, and I can't have been much older than 8 then, and with nothing in the intervening years, I couldn't remember anything other than "two sticks, wrap the wool.. um.. help?" which isn't really that useful.

To be Absolutely Honest, mum showed me again last year when she was up for a weekend, and I wanted to make a blanket for Gosling (who so far has a beautiful Steve, and blue hand-me-downs from Critter). But, in true mum-manner, she cast on for me, then showed me how to make the stitches, believing that casting on would be too hard for me. Um, hello? I'm 27, make clothes without patterns, and have taught myself to sew and cook, but casting on is too difficult? Alrighty then.

Anyway.

The knitting went slowly for a while last year, a row here, a row there, whenever I had a free moment, but then summer came along and I got more interested in sewing. And stopped knitting until a couple of weeks ago. By which point I had forgotten everything and had to find instructional videos online. Which would have been easier if our internet hadn't decided to play up on the night I decided to pick up my knitting. Sigh.

I've discovered that I'm actually not too bad at it. I can in fact cast on -and off!! - by myself, and while I'm not a speed knitter by any stretch of the imagination, I don't feel like I'm going at an absolute snail's pace, either. So far I've limited myself to the knit-stitch. I know my tendencies to jump in at the deep end, but I don't want to confuse myself, get frustrated, and give up. So until I've finished at least 2 more blocks, there will be no purling for me.

I've also discovered that I can knit and watch TV at the same time. Not only does it give me something to occupy my hands with - something WARM to occupy my hands with on these cold, cold nights (we still don't have any heating), but I knit better when I'm slightly distracted and not paying full attention. As soon as I start thinking too hard about the stitches, my speed drops off, and my tension ends up all over the shop.

Gosling's blanket is not going to be a masterpiece. I haven't managed any major mess-ups so far, but my tension is still wonky, and I am, after all, a beginner. But I will have made it with love, with my own two hands, and by the time its finished, I should be a fairly accomplished knitter.




*Interesting note - I originally spelled this "teasing myself to knot". Which is just as appropriate. Knitting is a lot like one giant knot, and I'm almost certain I'm teasing myself as much as teaching.

Shoelaces

Critterbug started school in February. He is 5 - he'll be 6 in September. Until now he's has shoes with some form of velcro fastening, because thats really all there is around. But this year he also started playing Auskick (little kid's AFL - aussie football). He's incredibly uncoordinated, but he has fun, and he looks cute in his uniform.

Theres just one problem. The spikes. They have laces.

He's a smart kid. He can count by tens, by twos, and probably fives if I asked him. He can do simple addition and subtraction sums, and is reading and writing amazingly well - if you ignore the fact that he seems unable to differentiate between capital and lowercase letters. He just picks one at random with no thought as to what should be used. He also uses words like "delectable" to describe dinner. No, I don't know where he picked that up.

Do to the smarty-pants factor, he's picking up the whole shoe-tying thing pretty well. He's got the concept, just needs a little reminding occasionally, and his complete and utter lack of coordination doesnt seem to be hindering him too much.

No, the problem isn't with him. Its with me.

Oh don't be stupid, of course I can tie my laces. We weren't allowed to play in the playground at school until we could tie our laces, becasue the teachers refused to tie everyones shoes at the end of lunch everday, and we had to take our shoes off to play. I learned pretty quick.

The problem isn't that I can't tie my laces, the problem is that I can't tie his.

My husband taught him how, and he does his VERY DIFFERENTLY. I can't make my fingers do his way.

• Cross the laces, tuck one under, pull tight. CHECK.
• Make a loop. CHECK.
• Wrap the other lace around the loop. CHECK.
• Pull the wrapped lace through the hole and form a second loop, pulling it tight. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He makes a loop BEFORE he pushes it through the hole!!! I CAN'T DO IT!! I get in theory that you end up with the same result, I can see that you get the same result, but I can't make my fingers do it! They get all twisted and dumb and just won't do it!!

And it's made me curious. Is this simply an individual difference, caused by someone in our respective pasts figuring out different ways to do it, or is it a larger scale difference, anerican V australian/english?

I'm so tempted to just have the kid use bunny ears. Make my life easier by far.

I never thought I would be so excited about my pantry.

The kitchen in our new house is odd. Decent amount of counter space, though not as much as I would like, decent sized sink, huge fridge space, TINY PANTRY CUPBOARD. Its about a foot wide, and has nowhere near enough shelves to make good use of the available space. Fortunately, theres a lot of other cupboards in the kitchen. A LOT. so the oddly tall one in the middle of one of the counters has been designated pantry#2.

Hubby took the doors off for me a couple days ago. So now, I can work on the counter in front of it without constantly having to move everything to get stuff out. BIG YAY.

However, because its open, I had to do some reorganising. Only relatively 'nice looking' things are in it now - my cansiters and old coffee jars full of herbs and spices. And my recipe box.

Alos, whoever lived here before was very clever. The bottom shelf is fixed, unlike the rest, and is quite high up. Underneath it they've affixed some hooks, which allow me to hang my measuring cups&spoons, AND oven mits, so they're always handy and I don't have to go searching for them! WOOT! Easy access to utensils most likely to be used over there, and plenty of room underneath for my canisters.

My computer is still borked, and hubby's isn't accepting the memory card from the camera at the moment, but as soon as I get it sorted, rest assured, you WILL be bombarded with before and after shots of my food storage.

I still can't believe how excited I am about this.

The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Adorable Shoes

Yesterday, we bought Gosling her first pair of shoes*. Gosling has only been walking for a few weeks** and athough she can make it from one end of the house to the other, she still often does so with frequent falling. If she's going down even the slightest slope, she buils up speed faster than she can figure out how to stop, and ends up smashing her face most spectacularly. She can walk, but she's still relatively unsteady on her feet.

The shoes aren't helping.

I wasn't insane enough to buy her 'proper' shoes, with hard soles and buckles and who knows what else - these are soft leather shoes with suede soles, harder than socks, certainly, but soft and flexible enough to move with her feet.

She hates them.

They are absolutely adorable, a soft pink, with embroidered flowers and just a touch of sparkle. The kind of shoes I would have loved when I was a little girl, but always had to put back in favour of sensible black that I could wear to school.***

She cries when I make her wear them.

Looking concerned about the shoe situation.

It breaks my heart. I put her shoes on, and she sits, and looks at them. She starts to stand up, then sits again, and her face falls. Tears well in her eyes, her lower lip juts out, and then her whole face starts to quiver. If I pull her up and hold her hand, she walks with no problems. This is how I know the shoes arent hurting her. If they hurt, she wouldnt be able to walk even with me holding her hand.

Obviously, something about the shoes is hindering her ability to walk on her own. Her fat little feet can't quite feel the ground, and the straps touch her ankles where she's never had pressure before.

This was never a problem we had with the Critterbug. When he started walking it was the beginning of the warm season. We couldn't find sandals the right size for him, but running barefoot in summer isn't an issue, so we let him. Even if we had found him shoes, however, he was such an enthusiatic walker he would have just dealt with it, Within days of figuring out walking, he was running, and he hasn't stopped running since. Gosling is a little more timid about the whole walking thing, but doesn't have the luxury of spending her first few walking months barefoot. It is fast and suddenly coming up for winter, and even if we never went outside, our house doesn't have heating.**** She simply has to have shoes.

And I simply have to steel my heart against her giant blue eyes and quivering lips, and ignore her lying on the floor crying, all because of a pair of adorable pink shoes.




*My sister will insist SHE bought Gosling's forst pair of shoes when the bub was a few months old, but since they are unwearable and ridiculous, they don't count.
**Its been about 5 weeks since she could take more than 2 steps without falling down, and about 3 since she could consistently walk any distance worth bothering with.
***Schools here have a uniform, usually involving black shoes. I hada pair of black school shoes, a pair of sneakers, and sandals for summer. I don't think I ever had sparkly pink shoes until I bought myself a pair at age 22.
****We now have a functional oven, but even if I were to bake all day, every day, the temperature in the house would only increase by so much.


EXTRA extra notes:
1. Naturally, after I write this post, upon hearing awake noises from her room, I got Gosling up out of bed. I put her shoes on, determined that she would get used to them, and plopped her on the couch to take photos, because SO CUTE. There was some confusion and annoyance, because of the shoes, but then, she started smiling. And laughing. And climbing down and running around as if she was barefoot. This post is now meaningless and pointless and FALSE, but it was true when I started writing it, so its staying here. Also, the whole situation is just as likely to change back tomorrow, or even after her next nap.

Making me look like a liar.

2. Yes, I have a very pale couch and two kids, one of whom still smears food all over her entire body when she eats, and the other of whom is a 5yr old boy who does not understand the meaning of "walk, don't run!!!!", "stop jumping", or "stay out of the dirt". I obviously like to be frustrated.

Home, even in the cold.

It is mid April, and the weather has started to turn. The sky is bright and clear, amazingly blue today, and the sun is shining like crazy, but there is a definite chill in the air. Blankets have been put on beds (except Goslings - she still moves around so much that all it would accomplish is either a suffocated baby, or one who wakes all night crying because she is tangled), and I'm keeping my eye out for singlets (tanktops, wifebeaters, whatever you want to call them - sleeveless undershirts) for the kids every time go to the shops. Today is colder than yesterday, and summer clothes have been well and truly abandoned, even by the boy who runs so much I'm amazed he even notices the cold. Critter has tracksuit pants (his only pair) and long sleeves on, and Gosling is wearing tights that don't quite come up past her nappy. I would be sure to overheat if I were to wear a sweater, but I too have given in to long sleeves, and, for once, socks.

This might not seem that strange to anyone else, until you realise that I go barefoot most of the time - including outside in the middle of the night. I keep my feet bare if it is at all possible.

But my toes were slightly numb and looking a little oddly-coloured.

And we do not have a heat source in this house.

There are two gas outlets, one in each of the main rooms. The house however, did not come with gas heaters to go with the outlets, and they are rather expensive to buy. Oil column heaters are cheaper to buy, but they heat less efficiently, and are very expensive to run, especially as electricity prices are set to increase quite a bit.

Normally I would kill two birds with one stone at this time of year, and simply use the oven more. Roast dinners would become more frequent, providing us with good food, incidental heating, and abundant leftovers for quick dinners and lunches. Bread would be started in the morning so the heat from the oven would keep me warm while getting the rest of the day's work sorted. Cookies and muffins would appear on our menu with greater frequency.

But this year, our first cold season in our new very-own-all-ours house, our oven isn't working. The stovetop heats, though the temperature controls leave a lot to be desired (one burner appears to have two settings - veryextrasuperhot and lukewarm - and the other three will take upwards of half an hour to boil a small saucepan of water), and the grill (Americans may be unfamiliar with this term, I think my husband said it is referred to as a broiler?) seems to be in perfect working order (though with a never-stops-running 5 year old and a just-started-walking toddler in the house, I dislike the fact that the grill door has to be left open if it is on), but the heating element in the oven itself has decided to stop doing its job.

The fan and light are still functional, which tricked us the other morning and meant that our breakfast of biscuits and gravy was cooked at the last minute in the BBQ, after discovering that the oven, which should have been preheating for over 20minutes, was stone cold. I don't think we've ever used the BBQ before 10am before.

This house is less drafty than our previous residence, especially now my brilliant husband has boarded up the cracks in the floors of the children's rooms, but it is also only weatherboard and clad construction, not the hefty insulated double-brick of mum's house. The lower ceilings mean less space for hot air to disappear into, but the comparatively flowing openplan living areas, with only one door between front and back of house, mean it is harder to shut up a space and hold that heat where it is needed.

Tomorrow will be worse than today. Today, after a couple of days of slightly upset stomach on Gosling's part, I find I am almost out of nappies, and have tossed the clean, but unusably wet ones into the dryer (a practice I greatly dislike, but am terribly grateful for on days like today), instead of waiting for them to dry outside on the line. With only three left, and nappies taking at least a full day to dry on our line, the only other option was to let all hang loose and simply clean up messes - an option much better reserved for warm summer days, than chilly autumn ones.

A welcome side effect is the hot air being blasted into the house from the dryer - an experience we will have to do without, tomorrow. Tomorrow, everyone will be in long sleeves and wellcovered legs again, and I may even have to pull out a blanket to keep cosy on the couch as night falls and the chill deepens.

Our house is still lacking in many things that help to make a home. Heaters and a functional oven are the most obvious at the moment, but there are many other little things missing. Placemats for the table, paintings for the walls, shelves for Goslings room, shoe-racks for ours. A desk in a corner where I can keep my sewing things (instead of taking up half the dining table). Some sort of cupboard for the laundry-linen-closet, a coffee table and rug for the living room.

But even without these things, even without heat, and even with the curtains that grate on my nerves and sickly-lemon-yellow walls, with drab boring kitchen cupboards and bare lightbulbs, with leaking gutters and taps that only recognise the three annoying temperatures 'cold' 'lukewarm' and 'lava', I'm beginning to really like it here, in my white clad house with the green roof and rosebushes.

I'm beginning to feel at home.

Since Last We Spoke...

• We moved in to the holiday house. Which, by the way, was about 1 block from the beach. It took a few nights for me to get used to the sound of the ocean.
• Critter started school. (How can my baby be so big?)
• Gosling turned one. (Seriously! How can my babies be SO BIG!!!)
• We moved in to OUR HOUSE!!! Our very own house with ROSE BUSHES!!!
• Gosling's vocabulary consists of the usual baby babble, plus her brother's name, "hello", "nigh-nigh" (very occasionally), "dadadadad", and a brrrrrrrrrrrrrrm car noise, predominantly made when playing with a toy car.
• Critter can read. Not just "cat", "dad", "hit", but "where is my hat? this is my red shoe", and "the buffalo jumps in. let's have a swim". SMARTY PANTS!
• Gosling started to walk, and can now get herself halfway across the room without falling down.
• She is more likely to get up and walk if there is music playing.
• She is extraordinarily fast when she crab-crawls, and will do this if she REALLY wants to get somewhere fast.
• We somehow managed a 1.5hr drive with a 5yr old, a hungry 1yr old, and a terrified, blind, bigger-than-the-baby 13yr old cat, without anyone being injured or yelling.
• The cat has settled in fairly well. He didn't eat or drink for the first couple of days, but oddly, his blindness seems to have been a blessing. He can't SEE that everything is different, so because it all still smells like his people, he's just accepted that we've moved some things around and it's all fine.
• We bought a very expensive couch, which is balanced by the fact that we got another couch for the kid's area, AND a TV unit for less than $250. YAY SALVO'S!!!
• Our bedroom has a REMOTE CONTROL FAN AND LIGHT.
• There is one light in the house with NO off switch that we can find, so we're leaving it bulb-less.
• The walls of the house are all yellow, except the kid's area which is hideous 70s wood panelling.
• We can't afford paint at the moment, and don't have time to paint even if we could afford it, so I'm learning to live with yellow. I'm never going to love it though.
• We bought a wardrobe and toybox for critter's room, splashing out on custom stuff so it would match and he would have a decent looking room instead of the jumble he's been living with, and after getting the truck loaded up and driving for over an hour to get it home, getting it down the sloping front yard and into the house, miraculously without scratching the hardwood floors, WE DISCOVERED THEY'VE MESSED UP AND STAINED IT THE WRONG COLOUR. Yes, it looked paler than we were expecting when we picked it up, but we assumed it was to do with being in sunlight rather than a dark bedroom. So we took it back and it's being fixed.
• I have to learn to cook with a small oven. My cookie tray keeps the door open.
• We are also learning creative pantry-ing, as although we have a decent amount of counter and otherwise-cupboard space, the 'pantry' area is about 1/3 what I've previously lived with. Some of the other cupboards have been taken over.
• There is NO LINEN CLOSET. The enormous laundry is going to have cupboards installed, and part of our wardrobe is being taken over, because at the moment, there's no-where to put towels, sheets, or even toilet paper.
• I've discovered a laneway that turns the 5minute walk to Critter's school into a 2minute walk. Unfortunately this makes it tempting to leave Gosling asleep when I leave to pick him up at 2:40, and she's been asleep for less than half an hour after being awake since before 7am. I DIDN'T leave her, and never would, but the temptation is there, and I don't like it.

And lastly,

• My computer is borked. The battery life is approximately 7minutes, and the power cord has to be held at just the right angle and pressure or the machine thinks it isn't plugged in and turns off, so I've been using hubby's machine. THIS IS VERY ANNOYING, and means that I won't be around much, even though we actually have a decently working internet connection here, unlike the holiday house which had little to no reception and would cut out for no reason intermittently.

I Don't Know How to Use a Dishwasher

In about August my husband got a promotion. His company opened a new branch, and he applied for, and won, the position of branch manager at the new branch. This is Awesome (and the extra money is nice), but it does present a few difficulties.

The new branch is over an hour's drive south of where we currently live, and with hubby working 7am to 5pm, we don't get to see him much. He gets up at about 5am and leaves before 6am every morning, and he doesn't get home till well after 6pm. Some days he doesn't get home until nearly 8pm, if he's had to stay back for some reason and the traffic gets bad. He's also "on call" 24-7, meaning that if someone calls in the middle of the night and needs something, he has to go in and open the store to sell them stuff - not fun when the store is so far away.

Because of this, we decided to move down the coast. He's been desperate to get out of Sydney since we moved here, and this is the perfect opportunity. After a few setbacks we've found a house and the bank has agreed to throw money at us (contracts are exchanged, just waiting for the tenants to vacate in March and then we settle), and Critter is enrolled in school - which presents the other difficulty.

The house is due to settle mid-late March. Critter starts school at the beginning of February. That gives us about 6 weeks where we are living over an hour away from his school, and I don't even drive. Things were looking tricky. Hubby could take Critter down with him every morning, let him play in the warehouse for a couple hours, take him to school, pick him up after school, let him play in the warehouse for another couple hours and then come home. Except that I don't relish the idea of waking a 5year old at 5am every morning to get ready for school, and its hard enough spending 12 hours a day away from my husband. I don't think I could handle having the boy away for so long too.

So hubby came up with a good, if expensive, idea. We are renting a "holiday home" for 8 weeks. Its in the suburb we will be living in. Its 4 houses away from the beach. Its fully furnished, so all we need to take is clothes, food, and Gosling's cot. And we're moving next Sunday.

My parents bought this house in 1987. Other than 8 months up the coast when I was 5, and my not-quite-2-years in California, I've lived here since then. My husband has lived here since coming to Australia, my children have never lived anywhere else. I have 5 days left in this house.

I'm very excited, and I'll admit to being a little nervous. We only bought the very very basics in groceries this week, in order to use up as much of whats in the cupboards as possible. I'm trying to remember where our suitcases are, so I can pack up all our clothes. I'm also trying to figure out the best way to transport 2 pot plants, and how to take 2 cars down, when we only have one driver. But my biggest concern? I think the new house has a dishwasher, and I don't know how to use one.

Of Roots and Proper Pronunciation

I've noticed that I refer to my father as 'my father' and my mother as 'mum' throughout this post, and I find that rather interesting. I was brought up to call them Daddy and Mummy respectively, and seeing as they each referred to their own parents thus until their passing, it would be acceptable, and possibly, to them, even preferable for me to continue to do so. While I love my parents, I do not get on with my father particularly well, and my mum less well than I would like, and the terms 'my father' and 'mum' reflect this.


My father was born in England at the tail end of WWII. His father had served in the British navy during the war and became a politician, and later a door-to-door salesman, his mother could best be described as a socialite. She claimed to have had tea with the Queen, been kidnapped by a sultan, and run off to join a circus at 16. I'm serious. His family lived in Jamaica when he was very young, and when they moved back to England and he started school, he was sent to boarding school. He went to Clifton College, and upon watching Monty Python movies, noted which teachers John Cleese based the characters on - he was a year ahead of my father. My father moved to Australia with his first wife when he was in his early 20s, moved back to England a few years later, moved back to Australia after marrying my mother, and is a LAWYER.

Mum was born 362 days later, in the U.S.A. Her father was a farmer who had served in the U.S. army in Britain, opting to stay at desk work instead of taking the better paying job as a sniper, because he couldn't bear to take a human life. Her mother was a "war bride", a British girl who fell in love with an American soldier, and went back to the states with him. She had what the doctors called "muscular dystrophy", but still went out every day to fetch water from the well at the log house my grandfather built, when she had two young children. When mum was 15 they moved back to England, for better medical care for her mother, and mum left school, not being able to stand being in the 'babies' french class - she hadn't learned french in the U.S.A. She had various jobs, among which was taking tours in Spain and teaching rudimentary English. She married my father when she was a secretary at the same law firm he was at, and they moved to Australia. Some 20 years ago she started work as an ENGLISH TEACHER (teaching the language to overseas students) and is now head of department at an English Language school for overseas students. She re-started her education at the age of 50 when she went to University in order to earn more.

What was the point of all that? Well, there are a few main things to take note of:

• My father is ENGLISH, and was raised fairly upper-class.
• He is a LAWYER.
• My mum is an ENGLISH TEACHER.
• She was raised in the U.S. by an English mother, who wanted to make sure she spoke properly.
• She has a masters degree.

These have contributed to my upbringing quite a bit. We never had much money when I was young, because my father never learnt how to save, but by golly we were taught how to behave well, and speak properly.

I was born in, and have lived most of my life in, a country where Steve Irwin's accent, while ridiculed, is actually quite normal, the 8th letter of the alphabet is habitually pronounced HAITCH, the c-word is a far too common nickname/greeting/insult, and when an ad on the TV got complaints for using the word "bugger", they issued an apology ad, using the word about sixty-gazillion more times. Despite this, I somehow ended up with an almost-English accent, and often say/pronounce things in a way that makes my American raised (British-born, but he claims it doesn't count) husband walk around with his chin tucked under and his teeth sticking out, being "British".

I distinctly remember my father teaching us that the 'h' in any 'wh' should always be pronounced, before the 'w'. Thus:

• Hwale
• Hwether
• Hwip
• Hwat

Am I alone in this? Is it a very English thing? Is it just downright wrong? Should I bother trying to teach my children this pronunciation? Critter has somehow managed to pick up an almost South African accent, so I hold hopes that he at least won't sound like a Queenslander, but should I try to push the Hw while correcting him to AITCH?

Gallows Humour

At the very beginning of December, I found out a good friend was pregnant. She comes over most weeks, we lets the kids run riot and enjoy what is sometimes the only adult conversation we have all week, other than our husbands. (And seriously, do boys necessarily count as adult conversation? I'm not sure the merits of one wrestler over another, and just exactly why golf is so wonderful really count.) That week, she had been feeling 'odd', and while she wasn't *ahem* late, she decided it would be worth a test anyway, so she bought one on her way over.

Due to not being late, the line took a looooooooong time to come up, and was very faint. So she used the one I had left over from last July with Gosling, just to be sure. We looked at those tests, and while those lines took a while, both of them were definitely there. By August, we would have 4 kids between us.

We've joked in the last couple of years that she's been stalking and copying me, trying to imitate my life. Her little girl is almost exactly 18months younger than Critter, and people often think they're siblings when we're out. (Her husband is half-greek and mine's mostly-half-italian, so the kids have ended up with olive skin, but somehow they've also both ended up with blondish hair and super-dark eyes. Gosling is the only one who's blue. I'm sure people think all three are mine, since she is a tiny blue eyed brunnette.) The new one was going to be 18months younger than Gosling - the same 4.5yr age gap as mine have. We laughed and joked, she took my leftover pregnancy vitamins, and we made plans for her to borrow our cradle, and to swap strollers once her bub was born, so she could have the baby one, and I'd have one better for a toddler.

When she came round a couple weeks later, she mentioned that she hadn't been feeling sick yet. At all. Morning-noon-and-night sickness had hit early with her daughter, but so far, all she'd had was tiredness, and she was beginning to wonder. She wasn't worried yet, but she was wary.

Then, that weekend, the weekend before Christmas, the facebook posts started. "K is having an exceptionally ***** day." "K is planning on getting very sozzled this silly season." "Super strong pain killers+couch+tea+chocolate = my day." I didn't want to believe it, but when she rang me in tears there could be no doubt. The bleeding had started on saturday, and an ultrasound had confirmed there was no heartbeat.

We talked. We cried. We agreed that all those stupid things people say really don't make you feel any better, they only make you want to scream. "There must have been something seriously wrong with it." Well thankyou, now I have an image of a badly deformed baby in my head and I'm already upset. "At least it happened now. Think about how much worse it would be if you'd been further along." My baby died and I feel like my heart has been ripped out. I do NOT want to think about how much more it could hurt, and quite honestly I'm not sure I believe you at the moment anyway. "Well your baby is in a better place now." I DON'T CARE I WANT IT HERE WITH ME IN MY ARMS!!! And perhaps the worst, "Theres nothing you could have done." I KNOW that, but you just aren't helping.

For me, now, some two and a half years later, some of those idiotic things people say are a comfort. To know that if my baby had survived it might have been in constant pain, but now it is safe, and will never know pain or fear, that is a comfort. To know that it wasn't something I did, that I do not have to live with guilt that somehow I caused it, that is a comfort. To know that my baby is resting in the eternal circle of God's loving arms, safe and waiting for me, that is a comfort. But in the beginning, none of that helps. All you want is to cry, and scream. To be angry. To blame yourself. Odd as it sounds, believing that I could have stopped it helped sometimes. To come to terms with the fact that it was out of my hands was hard. And all I wanted anyone to say was "I'm so sorry. Can I do anything for you? I'm here if you need me."

For her, one thing seemed to help. "Well, I see you haven't given up copying me, but you're running a bit late you know."

We laughed until we couldn't breathe, and then everything was just a tiny bit better.