thoughts from my head

I Feel Old

2010-08-23T16:35:00.005+10:00

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

2010-08-16T08:47:00.003+10:00

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

2010-08-04T10:33:00.008+10:00

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

2010-07-30T09:11:00.002+10:00

In our backyard. Fruiting. Excellent.

P-a-l-n. Plan.

2010-07-29T09:05:00.002+10:00

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

2010-07-28T08:22:00.007+10:00

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

2010-07-22T14:17:00.007+10:00

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

2010-07-15T10:24:00.005+10:00

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

2010-07-11T10:48:00.004+10:00

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

2010-07-01T11:21:00.000+10:00

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?

2010-06-28T16:48:00.003+10:00

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

2010-06-21T09:07:00.005+10:00

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

2010-06-08T08:55:00.004+10:00

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

2010-06-04T08:04:00.004+10:00

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

2010-05-12T08:20:00.002+10:00

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.

2010-05-02T07:58:00.002+10:00

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

2010-04-27T10:22:00.007+10:00

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.

2010-04-12T09:43:00.006+10:00

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...

2010-03-29T09:12:00.003+11:00

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

2010-01-18T14:23:00.002+11:00

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

2010-01-09T21:47:00.000+11:00

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

2010-01-06T09:39:00.004+11:00

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.

Christmas is ovah

2009-12-26T18:29:00.004+11:00

We had mostly successes with this years presents. My mum got Critter a Lego pirate ship, which he has completed, with hardly any help. Hubs' mum is sending another Lego pirate ship that was Hubs' when he was about 10... I suspect there will be pirate battles once both of them are here and made. He also got a LOT of clothes, a game of Trouble, and I can't remember what else right now. I'm in a turkey induced fog. Gosling got a dolly which she adores, some soft noise-making balls, which are kinda interesting, but not as much as the plastic carry case they came in (love babies), some awfully cute clothes, a couple of shape sorters, including the Tupperware ball, and again I can't remember. Hubs gave me the Stargate box set, bought at 6:30am on Christmas Eve, and probably spent far too much on it. He got Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii, the two Family Guy Star-Wars spoofs, and a radio transmitter for his Ipod for his truck (our car has an Ipod jack, but his work truck doesn't.) We got mum some CDs and DVDs, and tickets to go see the Gypsy Kings, which I made a cardboard rose as a clue for the envelope. We got my sister some VERY expensive towels. Mum gave us all money. The cat got turkey.

We all ate far too much turkey, except Critter who is allergic and had roast beef. We watched Elf, had a few altercations, and then dad and his wife came round and it got weird, 'cause what do you say to a pair of orthodox Jews at Christmas when theres ham on the table?

To top it all off, half of us had gastro, and then I gouged a chunk out of my toe on the rubbish bin, after putting on a load of the most horrendous nappies I've ever smelt. It hurts, and I'm not sure if the skin is still attached or not, as I taped it up with 3 bandaids immediately (I do not heal easily or cleanly, and it is entirely possible that it will STILL get infected despite being washed instantly and being covered with bandaids and antiseptic cream within a minute.)

Due to said gastro, we didn't get to go to church, so I feel weird and am greatly looking forward to tomorrow. The real point of yesterday was never lost sight of, and my heart sings with joy at the amazing gift of Life given by our most loving Lord, some two-thousand years ago.

Merry Christmas all! (again)

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2009-12-23T20:34:00.002+11:00

Today is Wednesday. Christmas is on Friday. The tree went up on Monday.

Oh yeah, we leave things to the last minute here.

Presents are (mostly) bought - the man says he will buy mine tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

Turkey will be coming out of the freezer tomorrow to start defrosting, and we will go to the supermarket to get last minute food stuffs.

And best of all, the bank has agreed to give us a bunch of money, and we exchange contracts tomorrow.

Some two-thousand years ago there was a miracle that I am eternally grateful for, in the form of a squeaky miniature human, sent here to save us all, fully human, yet fully divine. A young girl, an honourable man, a miraculous new-born.

This year, we have our own miracle. This is the fourth or fifth house we've gone after, and we were beginning to think the bank was going to turn us down, again. Instead, this is the second best Christmas present ever. (The first, obviously, being Christ. Just in case you weren't paying attention.)

God gives in abundance. Not necessarily when or what you expect, but always what is best.

Merry Christmas!

Babies are weird/clever

2009-12-22T13:04:00.001+11:00

Gosling turned 10months earlier in December, and has just recently discovered how to roll. Or should I say re-discovered. She originally figured it out at about 4 or 5 months (I think thats right... I'm not sure of exact dates), but she kept on banging her head on the floor when she did it, so she gave up. Seriously. She didn't roll for over 5 months, even though she knew how.

Recently, she somehow discovered that she would not bang her head if she rolled on a bed. Oh how she loved that discovery. The second I lay her down, she rolls over and tries to escape. And she laughs as she's doing it. Her other recent discovery that she can drag herself forward (no crawling yet, just slugging) makes things even more interesting, as she can be halfway across the bed in the time it takes me to grab a new shirt for her.

But.

She knows that she can't roll over on the floor. She lies there and cries because she knows she can't go anywhere. If I roll her over she's off like a flash, slugging her way across the room, but she will not do it herself.

This is where the clever/weird part comes into play. Its clever that she recognises the difference between bed and floor, that she can roll on the bed with no consequences, but its weird that she won't roll from her back to her front on the floor... even though that wouldn't hurt her, and she does occasionally try to roll onto her back on the floor, banging her head and ending up screaming.

I wish I could get into her head and figure out her thought process.

Curved seams/hems - the hard way, by hand

2009-12-17T16:58:00.003+11:00

**WARNING: Picture heavy. Click any pictures for biggerness.**

The night before my friend's wedding, I stayed over at her house, along with the three other bridesmaids, and Gosling. I was fairly certain by this point that I wasn't going to finish Gosling's dress, but I took it with me anyway, to work on while we were watching movies and eating junk. I'm a bit of a fidget, and find it very difficult to sit still - I have to be moving, all the time, and sewing counts as moving, meaning the rest of me stays fairly still, instead of constantly shifting in my seat, or bouncing my feet, or swaying my legs.

Anyway.

The other girls asked how I'd managed to get the yoke so flat - its very round, and round seams/hems have a habit of bunching and/or stretching. Thing is, I clip my seams. It takes a bit more time, but the end results are worth it. It also made the arm holes easier - clip hem and face, instead of binding with bias or trying to make the hem flat, neither of which work for me.

They didn't understand what I was talking about, and neither has anyone else I've tried to talk to about it, other than my mum (but she is a super-sewer so I would have been alarmed if she didn't understand - I'm serious, she once made a wedding dress and 7 purple tulle bridesmaid dresses).

I figure if that many people don't understand, maybe there are people out there googling how to get their seams flat, and maybe if I do this, it'll help them. It'll also provide me with a handy reference when I'm half asleep and can't remember how I did it.

So here we go!!

CURVED SEAMS/HEMS

Presumably, you have a curved piece of fabric, and either need it hemmed, or need to attach it to another piece as a seam. If you're just making a seam, you can ignore most of this, as all you need to do is CLIP.

The easiest way to hem a curve is to face it - you take another piece of fabric and use it instead of folding up your hem. So cut yourself a piece of fabric about the same shape as the curve you need hemmed. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it should be pretty close, or you'll still end up with those annoying wrinkles.

We'll start with an inside curve - like an arm hole on a sleeveless shirt.

There are two ways to do this. The first way takes longer, is harder, and (in my opinion, possibly influenced by my fear of the sewing machine) works much better if you do it by hand, but it is my preferred method, so I'm going to show you anyway. The other way will be explained with the outside curve (like the hem of a skirt) but the idea will work just as well for an inside curve. Why am I starting with the hard way? Because if you can do it this way, you can certainly do it the other way.

Mark your foldline on your fabric (if you use chalk, it doesn't matter which side - right or wrong - of the fabric you mark, as it will wash off. Do whatever is easiest for you to work with), then grab your scissors. Little ones work best.

If your curve is not a perfect circle, find the 'pointiest' bit, and cut a small triangle out of the 'hem' bit of your fabric at this place. Otherwise, just start in the middle. DO NOT CUT ALL THE WAY TO YOUR MARKED LINE.
**Note: on an inside curve like this, you CAN simply cut slits instead of triangles, but I find the triangles fray less and spread less, and if I always cut triangles, I don't have to remember whether to use triangle or slits**
**Note 2: This is the only bit you need for seams - with a slight change of order, as you sew your seam together, then clip, and tada you're done.**

Then continue all the way around your curve, cutting out triangles (or more slits). You can start each new triangle exactly where the last one ended (left side of photo), or you can leave a gap between them (right side), its entirely up to you, and doesn't really make much difference in the end. If you leave a gap and decide that your fabric is pulling too much later, you can always go back and cut more triangles (or slits if the gap is too small) in between. If you're cutting slits, just make them fairly evenly spaced, and fairly close together - about half an inch should be fine.

Now you need to tack down your hem. Fold it along your marked line, sewing as you go - big stitches, fairly close to the edge, about 1/4 inch. No need to knot the ends, as you'll just be taking it out later, but leave a decent tail so it doesn't pull out.

When you've finished, if you turn it over you'll notice the distinct lack of wrinkling or bunching. YAY, but you're not done yet. It looks very messy with that tacking stitch and the exposed edges on the inside, and will fray easily if it's put to use, so now you need to attach your facing. This is where it gets tricky, and may make you want to use the other way.

Put your facing over the inside, lining it up, and find the centre.

Turn the facing over, keeping the middle together, and pin it together. You only want it overlapping a little bit - no more than 1/4 inch. If you've done your tacking this far out, it makes a good guide.

Pin it together all the way around. It WILL be awkward and wavy. You can't help that. It will right itself once you fold it over. DON'T do the down-across-through pinning. Just poke the pin in, and push it all the way through like a nail, so you have heads on the INSIDE, on the facing, and points on the OUTSIDE - the proper fabric.points on one side, heads on the other

Now, sew it down. Easier said than done, as you only want to sew through the folded bit, not the outside bit. Sew as close to the edge as you comfortably can, and keep checking the other side to make sure you haven't gone through. Once you get a feel for the fabric, it isn't really that difficult most of the time, but if you can't manage it without going through, or you just prefer to have visible stitches on the outside, just make sure your stitches are small and neat, or use the machine so you can be absolutely certain its neat. If you really can't handle doing it by hand, the other way will work better.

TIPS:

Hand stitches: use two strands of thread, so if one breaks, the other is still there; either use backstitch the whole way, or a running/back combo - 3-4 stitches of each, alternating.

Use as similar coloured thread to your cloth as possible. That way, if you accidentally go through a little, it won't show as much.

Take out each pin just before you pass it - its easier to sew small stitches if the pins are not in the way, you don't need them any more once its sewn down, and the less pins you have, the less likely you are to stab yourself.

Once you've sewn all the way along, take out your tacking stitch, then fold down your facing. Depending on your fabric and your personality, you might want to iron it at this point. I don't bother, but might if it was a really floppy annoying satin.

So! You're almost done! All you need to do now is hem and secure your facing. This can be done all in one go, or separately. My husband went on a cleaning spree and threw out my practice cloth, so I can't demonstrate this bit for you with photos, but hopefully I can explain it properly and my awesome-mad-skillz drawings help a bit.

All in one go: Fold over a teeny tiny little bit of the free edge of your facing, making a tiny hem so the hem is on the inside, and sew through it to your cloth. You will be left with a visible seam on the outside of your piece, but you are FINISHED!

Separately: Fold over the same teeny tiny bit, and if you really want to be particular about raw edges, fold over again so the raw edge is fully encased. Sew this hem, and only this. Do NOT sew to your cloth. Once the tiny hem is sewn, you can sew the edges down - at the edge of your piece, at any seams (so you can attach it to the internal seam and don't go through to the other side) etc.

So there you go. Piece faced.

Gender Inequality

2009-12-10T10:25:00.003+11:00

When a man beats his wife, and she lets him, people urge her to leave, call her an idiot, and try to get the man in jail. Apparently when a woman beats her husband, he signs a contract saying its ok, as long as it only happens once a week. And it's all ok, because she feels really bad seeing him covered in bruises.

Anyone else think things here are just WRONG????

Fun With Photoshop

2009-12-04T12:38:00.003+11:00

Clicky any of the piccies for biggerness

I love Photoshop. I only have elements, not the full version, because MONEY!! and I usually only use it for my own amusement, and basic photo-fixing, but I LOVE IT. I take millions of photos of my kids, and while most of them turn out nice, with photoshop I can make some of them even better.

Like this:

Cute, no? Helps that the subject is pretty adorable. But, cute as it is with those massive eyes, its kinda dark. A few minute with my trusty phtoshop, and it becomes this:

which is so much better. LOOK at those eyes now!!

Or this:

Also better, but decidedly different.

By using different filters, layer effects, or even just changing the colour, I can change the image quite a bit. I can make some interesting 'artsy' effects,

make my little one rather creepy,

or even make the image look old fashioned.

I LOVE Photoshop.

noise in the small hours

2009-12-01T13:04:00.006+11:00

slowly, awareness comes. it is cold, and dark, and i do not want to be awake. my furnace-hot husband is curled up in a ball behind me, our backs pressed together, the only part of me that is warm. vaguely i am aware that i should pull the blanket up, but today is technically the first day of summer, and i stubbornly refuse to give in, especially as up til now it has been so hot we've been forgoing even a sheet at night.

i roll over, determining to go back to sleep, ignoring the slightly distressed tiny noises the man makes whenever i move away from him. after six years, they hardly register, unless he is facing me and i have to disengage his suddenly vicelike arms and reassure him i am not going anywhere. with my face pressed against his back he relaxes, and i allow consciousness to leave me again. as i slowly drift, a noise jars me back to the cold - obviously the reason i was awake to begin with. insistent and annoyed, my daughter is awake, and only milk will satisfy her. i pull the blanket onto the bed as i leave the room, and my husband barely stirs.

in the dark and the cold, the creak of the floorboards is deafening, and i am sure i will wake everyone. miraculously, only the mini-one notices, and her insistent annoyance becomes fear and sadness when i do not materialise next to her bed the moment she hears my footsteps. her sobs of anguish are only quieted when tiny outstretched arms and feathery soft head find their resting place on my shoulder. in the heat of yesterday, the sleepsack was her only nightwear, but now, in the dark, her pudgy arms are cold to touch, and i reach for a tiny soft shirt to keep her warm, before we return to my bed to nurse.

my footsteps still creaking, suddenly i freeze. a voice, loud in the darkness, and baby's head startles off my shoulder - i have to make sure and get more chicken so we don't run out. silent laughter racking my body, i try not move, as her tiny head swings from side to side and she questions into the dark, not understanding. i just didn't know anymore so i went and did it. my son has inherited my sleeptalking, and i wonder, not for the first time, how sleeptalker and nightnurser do not constantly disturb each other.

eyes adjusted to the dark, i see the skinny body sprawled across the bed. one foot hangs off the side, his head is pressed against the wall, toy-puppy gripped firmly by the arm twisted behind his arched back. satisfied he is still sleeping, i pull pirate-covered blankets over my cold skinned boy - when do we get to go back to the zoo for burgers again? - and make my way back to my own bed with the now-warmer-girl. tired and hungry, she cries again when i lay her down, never remembering in her half-awake state that i will be joining her shortly and the milk will flow. as we adjust ourselves to more comfortable positions, a sleepy arm is thrown over me, and she startles off, squealing with delight as she feels daddy's hand. he is oblivious, lost in the sleep i crave, and she soon resumes nursing, the possibility of daddy superseded by the reality of milk.

comfortable between two warm bodies, i search out the clock in the dark before i let sleep claim me again. 3-4-9 i see in blurry green. almost 5am, as we don't change this clock for daylight savings. slowly the dark becomes complete as tired eyes close, and sleep cautiously returns. i drift, warm and dark, till again i am jarred awake, by the 5am alarm calling the man to get up and ready for work. he stirs, moving away to end the jarring alarm, my back suddenly cold without his bodyheat to warm me, and then, silence.

slowly sound and warmth return, wakeup call ignored in search of rest. small body in my arms warm and still, save for twitching fingers and breath-raised chest, husband behind me asleep almost instantly, his constantly-hot-body keeping my back warm in the cold, hand holding his daughter's, his sleep-steady breath beside my ear lulling me to my own sleep once more, and blocking out all other noises in the small hours.

Accomplishments

2009-11-26T07:01:00.001+11:00

Done yesterday:

laundry
chocolate pudding
roast dinner - beef, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yorkshire pudding, broccoli, gravy
scrabble with the boy
standing practice with the girl
far too many dishes
more house-hunting

Plans

2009-11-25T11:53:00.002+11:00

What I want to do today:

waffles
chocolate pudding
tortillas
sewing practice
knitting

What will probably actually get done:

(No, that wasn't a mistake.)

So Far Today

2009-11-25T07:27:00.002+11:00

I've been mostly awake since 3am
the baby is being weird
she stinks
my eyelid feels like its on fire
I have killed over 30 fleas in the last hour
the rat came into the house
I have no idea what to do for dinner
the boy keeps arguing
I keep yelling at him
God loves me anyway
that makes everything better

I Never Wanted To Keep Her In Pink

2009-11-24T10:25:00.005+11:00

When Critterbug was a baby, we often had questions as to his gender. I didn't really understand that, as to me he looked like a boy (right from the start, to me he looked like a Boy rather than just a Baby), and he was always wearing 'boy' clothes - little jeans and blue shirts with monsters and trucks and stuff on them - but I understood that people didn't want to say 'what a cute little boy!' only to be told he was a girl, and we were just a little untraditional in our clothing choices, especially since it is generally deemed more ok to dress a girl in boy's clothes than it is to put a boy in girl's clothes.

Its getting a little ridiculous with Gosling though.

Granted, she doesn't have a particularly feminine face yet (not that she looks masculine, she just looks like a 'baby' instead of a 'girl'), but when she's wearing a pink t-shirt, a pink velvet skirt with butterflies and flowers on it, a pink velour jacket, and pink tights with more flowers on them, she's holding a pink teddy, has a pink dummy (pacifier/binky) in her mouth, and has two pink blankets in her pram, people STILL ask if she's a boy.

That's right, its a boy. We're just trying our hardest to scar him for life.

Maybe once her hair grows out we'll stop getting stupid questions? In the meantime, despite not wanting a frothy frilly pink girl, I have resigned myself to the fact that if I want less confusion, I'm just going to have to have one, and I'll never be able to take her out dressed like this:

I Confess: On The Dress, There Has Not Been Much Progress

2009-11-19T10:02:00.001+11:00

This is approximately what it should look like when finished. The skirt will stand out more because of the underskirt, and I'm hoping to make a sash also, but you get the idea.

So, I didn't manage to get Gosling's dress finished before the wedding, which was a pity, but totally expected. The bride lent me a gorgeous little purple dress that had been her daughters, so my bub was cute and matching anyway. So glad I'm not the only one who has a stash of no-longer-needed baby clothes lying around.

I am continuing to work on the dress, and I'm quite happy with how its coming along. It doesn't look professional, but I never expected it to. I'm sewing it by hand, I'm making it up as I go along, its by far the hardest thing I've ever attempted (yes, I consider a dress to be harder than a stuffed toy), and I only have very short spurts in which to sew - we're talking 5 minutes here, 10minutes there - so yes, I'm quite happy with how things are turning out.

Things I've learnt thus far:

backtracking on a row of running stitch is nicer than doing a whole row of backstitch (thats nicer as in 'I prefer doing it', not necessarily 'looks better')
skirts are easy, except for the opening at the back for a zip/buttons
sewing is easier if you don't have a baby sitting on your lap
sometimes, my stitches are visible where they shouldn't be, and I DON'T CARE
arm holes are EVIL
it helps if you have your pattern figured out before you start the actual sewing
the needle threader is close to useless
clipping curved seams/hems makes them sit SOOOOOOOOOOO much prettier
pins are good, use as many as will fit
ARM HOLES ARE EVIL
I want to rub my face on the paler fabric because it is so nice and soft
I still can't use a thimble
I need to find my own scissors and stop using mum's
I really don't know if I'm up to hand sewing button holes, and may have to break out the machine when it gets to those.
ARM. HOLES. ARE. EVIL.*
Unfinished arm-hole. Needs to have a facing put on.

My current aim is to get it done by Christmas. That would be good. Don't know that it will happen. The fact that Gosling is now sleeping unwrapped most of the time should help, but this wretched heat makes me want to just lie down and sleep too, instead of sewing or cooking or cleaning or feeding the kids (did I just say that?)..

Having two separate needles helps too. I have a scrap of fabric in my pin box with the needles in it when they aren't in use, and I am in fact using two needles. One for the dark thread, one for the light. I have no idea why its making things easier for me, but I've found it a lot easier to switch needles, and keep threading each one with its own coloured thread, rather than using one needle and alternating thread colours. I know, my brain works oddly.

*The mostly-arm-hole-shaped facing I've used instead of trying to 'hem' them properly has made things a LOT easier. But what would have made it EVEN EASIER, is if I'd made the shell and lining separately and then put them together, instead of treating it as one piece. Then I wouldn't have had to bother with all the clipping and folding and facing and cutting and screaming and swearing and finger stabbing and trying to only sew through three-out-of-four layers.... Next time. Next time I'll know.

Brought To You By The Letters "E" and "W", and By The Number "2"

2009-11-18T15:22:00.004+11:00

Things Gosling doesn't (or does, but only partially) digest:

peas
corn
carrot
broccoli
olives
sultanas (golden raisins)
pumpkin

I can understand all except the pumpkin, considering it's well and truly mushed up when she eats it.

Ok. I'm done. You can go eat now.

:D

Photodump - My Garden

2009-11-12T14:01:00.000+11:00

WARNING!!! There are 20 photos in this post! Expect slowness!

All photos taken on a digital point-and-shoot. Photoshop was used to shrink&sharpen (sharpen not needed if I'd left them big), and watermark. No colour correction, no darkening or lightening, this is what you can get from a normal camera.

My Husband Is Not Special

2009-11-12T08:15:00.003+11:00

I have a friend whose husband is a cop. Another is married to a doctor, another a head chef. My father is a lawyer. My oldest friend helps businesses find solutions to their biggest problems, his father helps with the pipelines all across Australia. A lot of my friends husbands are, or are training to be, ministers.

My husband is the manager of a refrigeration parts warehouse. Before that, he worked on the counter in a warehouse. Before that, he drove a truck, delivering stuff from a warehouse. Before that, he was the heavy lifting boy in a warehouse. Before that he was tech support, telling old people how to connect their computers to the internet.

Its very easy to see what he does as less important than the other men I've mentioned. He doesn't save lives, or catch baddies. He doesn't ensure our country's sewerage, gas, and water are all working. He doesn't know the bible inside-out and backwards, read it in three different languages, and speak to a congregation every week about our Lord. The only people he cooks for live in this house.

He doesn't have a good singing voice, he can't play an instrument. His writing is incredibly messy, and he can't paint or draw. He doesn't have an extraordinary memory, and he doesn't make up amazing stories. He isn't drop dead gorgeous by most people's standards, though I wouldnt change anything about him.

He sells copper pipe and refrigerant gas, components for cool rooms and filters for air conditioners, stud finders and tape measures, and gloves. He drives a truck and delivers parts to the fridgies and plumbers and sparkies who actually use the stuff he sells.

My husband is not special.

But without him, when the coolroom at your supermarket breaks down, everything is wasted. He goes to work in the middle of the night to get stuff for the technicians so the supermarket doesn't lose $50'000 worth of dairy (true story. He left well before midnight and didn't come home till the small hours). He sells the parts to keep your local department store air conditioned. He supplies the people who service the steelworks.

All of us have a job to do. Some look more important on the surface, but none is without worth. Just as none of our lives are without worth. God created each and every one of us, and he gave us each a job. Who knows what that job is? I don't. You don't. Only He knows what we do and why. But none of us is unimportant.

Ugh

2009-11-10T07:29:00.002+11:00

I have about 4 posts half written, I'm just lacking the motivation to finish them off and actually post them. some of them might not happen at all because they won't be relevant anymore - time specific.

Last night's stint didn't help any. Gosling had me up 10 times. And then woke up for good at 6am because her brother's sleep-talking woke her.

And now she's sitting on the floor sobbing. Today is not going to be fun.

Someone send me soe chocolate??

In interesting news, despite getting a letter from Better Homes & Gardens saying my subscription was up, and me not renewing it (just can't afford it), I got one in the mail yesterday. I think the magazine people are stupid. Mum's subscription to a different magazine yields 3 copies. 2 sent here, and one sent to her address. They started sending the extra copy here after she renewed her subscription, and when she changed her address they started sending one there as well, instead of stopping the one(s) coming here. IDIOTS.

Oh well. They'll figure it out at some point, right? Or should I tell them?

Got the sewing bug..

2009-10-23T09:27:00.002+11:00

A good friend of mine is getting married in less than two weeks. On Nov. 1st she will finally become Mrs F. after a three year engagement, and 3.5 years after the birth of their daughter.

She wants everything to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T, but as they have a three year old, two cars, and a mortgage, on only one income, they don't have much spare money to spend on the wedding. Which is where I come in. Not only am I one of the bridesmaids, I'm also the resident Fix It Lady. I've always been good with my hands, and she's putting them to good use.

I helped her make the invitations, from an opinion here and there on materials, to shopping trips all over the city to get the best prices on the various components, all the way to twelve hours straight (I'm serious. I got there at around 11am, and didn't leave till well after midnight) sitting at her dining room table cutting and folding and printing and arranging and fixing and deciding and gluing, and reminding her to drink her tea - AWAY FROM THE INVITATIONS!!!!!!!!!!! - and calm down.

I'm currently helping her recover a guestbook, so that instead of being a hideous floral vomitsplatter, its the same dark, eggplant satin as the bridesmaid dresses and the back panel on her dress. The book was in Target, marked down from $20-something to $6.86, and when we got it to the counter it rang up as $2.53 so YAY, especially considering she found exactly what she wanted on ebay for $80+. Even factoring in the price of the satin, the paper, the ribbon, the buckle, the spray adhesive, and labour, its not costing anywhere NEAR the $80 she would have otherwise spent.

All this crafty-ness and money-saving has got to me though, and rather than buy something for my Gosling to wear, that would be far too much money spent on something she might wear a total of 3 times, I decided to MAKE HER A DRESS. Which is funny, because, you know, I'm afraid of the sewing machine. I bought two shirts from the local second-hand stores in two beautiful shades of purple, and proceeded to cut them into dress shaped pieces - making the pattern up as I went along*. And then, I realised that not only am I afraid of the sewing machine, but the only time I have to use the machine is when Gosling is asleep, and therefor not stuck to me like a barnacle. Which would be great, except for the noise, which would wake her up, and oops, barnacle again and no sewing.

Good idea FAIL.

Then my brand new packet of needles caught my eye. Can you see where this is going?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am sewing a dress for my eight-month-old-daughter by hand.

Someone give me some sanity pills, please??

*By 'making up the pattern', I mean I don't have a bought pattern I'm following. I traced the outline of one of her shirts to make the bodice, the skirt is easy as it's just a half-circle, and the yoke I shrank from a grown-up sized pattern I found online. All the pieces have had to be tweaked though, so I really am just making it all up as I go along. I've also never made a dress, so I'm not quite sure how to put it all together..

**The colours in these photos are not entirely accurate, but are as close as I could get them in photoshop without losing any detail - my selection skillz are not good enough to only do part of the image. Yes, these are photos of the actual objects in question. Yes, that is a standard sized needle - about 1.5" (3ish cm) long. Yes, my stitches are quite small. Yes, I am completely insane.

The boy is five

2009-10-12T18:08:00.004+11:00

I kept meaning to write this post, and never got round to it. Two weeks ago, Critter turned five. Which means its been over five years since I lay on bloodsoaked sheets in hospital, wondering how my baby could squeak before he was all the way out, and trying not to wonder if I was going to pass out. My sweet baby boy, my boogerface, my munchkin, my boyo is growing up. His vocabulary is increasing (he described dinner as delectable a couple months back. WHERE DOES HE LEARN THESE WORDS!!) almost daily, it seems, and his lego skills are enviable. I'm glad I have Gosling to be the baby, because Critter certainly isn't any more.

We had his birthday at the bowling alley, and my mum helped me to make a castle cake for him - he picked it out of the cake book. I love the cake book, but I might try to direct him towards something easier next time. The castle took 3 quantities of cake, and far too much icing. And I nearly had a meltdown trying to get the chocolate windows done.

I also made 4 dozen (48!!!) cupcakes for him to take to preschool. NEVER AGAIN.

Family: do we have to keep them?

2009-09-11T17:03:00.003+10:00

Today, my lovely sister accused me of loving Gosling more than Critterbug. Her reasoning? I buy her lots of clothes, and I make her food from scratch instead of buying it all in jars. Uh.... right.

Clothes: Critterbug is 5 (in 2 weeks!! EEK!!!) and has too many clothes already. He has so many shirts I've run out of hangers for his wardrobe. He also has some sitting in the storage room waiting for present-times, to replace ones in his wardrobe that are a mite too small. The thing is, at 5 years old he grows slower than a baby, and therefor doesn't need new clothes as often as a baby does. Gosling however grows like a weed. I have bought her a lot of clothes, but she's already grown out of 3 or 4 sizes since she was born, and a lot of what I've bought is in larger sizes - I bought it cheap so I don't have to pay full price when I need it, and its sitting in her dresser waiting till she grows again. Theres also the fact that some babies tend to need a lot of clothes because they have explosive nappies, or they throw up a lot. She does both.

Food: It is significantly cheaper to make food for Gosling than it is to buy it. What would cost me $11 on sale in jars can be made for about $2, a couple hours in the oven, and 5 minutes with a blender and icecube trays. I wish I had realised this when Critter was tiny, and had had the confidence in myself to actually do it. Because while my mother loved to tell us how she never bought jarred food for us kids, and always ground up our food at every meal, she never once offered to help me or show me how to do it, and as depressed as I was, I didn't think I could do it anyway. I mashed sweet potato for him a couple of times, but that was about it.

My sister says a lot of things that bother me, and usually I can ignore them, but this one has really got to me. Probably because I'm so scared that people might think its true. I don't love Gosling any more than I love my Critter, and I don't give her any more attention that I give him (i neglect them both equally. (JOKE! that was a joke people!!)), excepting that she's a tiny baby and unable to do things for herself like toileting and feeding, but I do treat her differently than I treated him when he was her age, because of the depression.

After Critterbug was born, I was so depressed I could hardly function. I contemplated suicide more than a few times, firmly believing that no-one would miss me, and that my husband and newborn son would be better off without me anyway. There were days when I would just sit, staring at the baby as he screamed and screamed, not caring. He was fed, he was clean, I had taken care of the basics, and he didn't want me to hold him, so I just stared, and thought "yeah.. so?" There are times now when I don't know what to do with Gosling. When she's been fed and changed, needs a sleep, doesn't want to be held, but screams when I put her down, and I end up just walking away, but I care. I keep an ear out to make sure she doesn't get too distressed, and I rack my brains trying to think if I've not thought of something. I don't hover over her when I know I cant do anything about it, but it makes my soul hurt listening to her cry. I don't just sit and stare at her, vaguely wondering why she's crying, but not caring enough to try and fix it.

I am constantly amazed at how relatively easy things have been this time round, and am incredibly thankful. She nurses easily, she eats with no problems and doesn't appear to be afflicted with allergies, she usually sleeps for 7+ hours in a row at night, and is generally cheerful. I have not been sent down the dark road this time, and having done it all before, I have more confidence in my abilities as a mother, too. I have enjoyed my Critter as a child, so much it makes my heart want to burst, but I merely experienced him as a baby. Now, I am enjoying having a baby for the first time, and I'm loving it.

Then my sister goes and ruins everything, and leaves me feeling like I'm being selfish for finding joy in things like pureeing food, or finding cheap clothes for my children.

Sometimes, I really wish we could choose our family.

Rambling in a non-creative manner about creativity, creatively. Creative, creative, creative. CREATIVE.

2009-09-11T09:04:00.007+10:00

This photo is TOTALLY UNRETOUCHED. I have NO idea how it did that, as my boys where out without me when they took the photo. Maybe it was through funky glass?? But anyway, thats how my brain feels today, and thats my excuse for the disjointedness of this.

Our camera died. First one of the reclining chairs ate it and it got all squashed and scratched up in the metal workings, then I left it on a bed and it somehow ended up 3 metres away on the floor under a chest of drawers.

It stopped working.

It would cost more to fix than to replace.

We bought a better one off ebay.

For less than the old one cost to begin with.

But its not here yet.

Why am I starting each new sentence in a new paragraph?

My english teachers would disown me.

So would my mother, who is also an english teacher.

ANYWAY. With no camera, I've been unable to take the million photos per day that I usually take, and have had to find a different creative (nearly choked on that word.. I so am not) outlet. Hello Sewing. Also Knitting.

I found some gorgeous wool (Mostly wool. Partly bamboo, partly soy. Also, how do they make yarn from MILK?????) super-cheap at Spotlight last time my mum was in town, and bought a bunch of it to make a blanket for Gosling (Spaceghost is now Gosling, btw). I am a Brand New knitter, and as such it is taking A VERY LONG TIME, but so far, I haven't managed to make any mistakes. So YAY.

I've also got a lovely purple shirt I'm ripping apart to make a dress for Gosling. I'm bridesmaid in a wedding at the beginning of November, and while this means I don't have to think about clothes for myself, I do have to figure out how to dress the rest of my family, since the bride insists everyone Get Dressed Up. This is easy enough for the boys - Hubby has a suit, and Critter does now too, thanks to $20 well spent at an op-shop - but what do I dress a 9 month old in, at the beginning of summer, thats dressy enough for a Formal wedding, but not so Special that I cry when she covers it in avocado and banana (have you noticed how badly banana stains??? ugh) and then has an explosive nappy? Hence a second hand shirt and a sewing machine, instead of a frothy satin concoction from a shop.

Still on the sewing front, I've been getting increasingly annoyed at my wallet and its lack of separate pockets. I like to pull our grocery money out each week and pay cash instead of sticking it on our debit card, so I always know how much we've spent. But the lack of different pockets in my wallet means that all the money gets mixed up together. Mum gave me money for my birthday, and I'm losing track of how much I've got left because I keep spending it on other things, because I CANNOT KEEP IT SEPARATE. Sooooooooooooooo, I'm trying to make myself a wallet type folder with lots of separate zippered off pockets to keep my separate money in. I've already hacked an older file folder down to size, and I'm on the search for decent fabric to cover it and make pockets.

The only thing really holding me back on the sewing front is my fear of the sewing machine. The overlocker (serger) doesn't scare me, and when we ran out of wipes last week and it was raining too much for me to go to the shops, I used it to make myself some cloth wipes from some old face washers and a flannel wrap of Gosling's that we never used because it was kite-shaped. They worked quite well actually. Terry towelling works very well for the gripping, and a spray bottle of chamomile tea helped wash off excess. Now that I've made them, I really should keep using them.

But the sewing machine... well, maybe I'll be less scared of it the more I sew. Just need to find the right coloured thread, and then I can get started!

Fighting those jealous feelings

2009-09-10T09:00:00.000+10:00

My husband and I got married when I was six months pregnant with Critterbug. Now, while obviously we didn't wait for marriage*, I did wait for him. He was my first, and will hopefully be my only (since for him not to be, one of three horrible things has to happen). I was not, however, his first, and sometimes that bothers me.

I know all about his priors. Who, when, where. While some women prefer not to know details, my curiosity is far too strong, and I just had to know what I was up against. I also get a giggle out of his stories, and it gives me an insight into who he was, and therefor who he is. It doesn't bother me knowing about these other women. I know he loves me, I know he chose me, and I know that no matter his previous experiences, he wants to wake up every morning with me. But sometimes I get jealous.

There are women out there who have a piece of my husband that I will never have. Women he knew before he ever met me, women who make up a part of his life that I will never be a part of. Oddly though, its not them that I'm mostly jealous of (although there are occasional twinges). When we started going out, he was almost 23, and had calmed down a lot from his teenage partying days (he has calmed down even more since then). They knew the boy, I married the man. I think I got the better end of the deal. And to be jealous of them, I also have to be jealous of everyone else who knew him before I did. His best friend, who he's know since 5th grade. His mate he rented his first apartment with. The girl he had a crush on in high school, who only thought of him as a friend. And yes, there are occasional twinges of jealousy there too, but they are fleeting, mere wishes that I could have known him longer.

Who I'm really jealous of though, is those women who aren't in this situation at all. Those who never thought "how do I compare?" because there was nothing to compare to. Those who never thought "wait.. what number does this make me?" because they knew they were the first. Those who have never experienced any of the thoughts that have gone through my head over the last 6 years.

I wouldn't choose any other man to be married to, but sometimes I wish our lives had been a little different.

*This is something I both regret, and don't, at the same time. I regret that I was disobedient to God, but I most certainly do NOT regret the consequences of my disobedience: my son, directly caused by the disobedience; my marriage, fast-tracked because of my pregnancy (my husband believes in loooooooooooooooooooong engagements. like 3 or 4 years kind of long); moving back to Australia; my daughter; my husband's current job, necessitating a move for us out of the city. I struggle with this dichotomy of my feelings, but in the end I figure if God has forgiven my transgressions, I need to just forget about it and move on.

No Brains For Me, Thanks.

2009-07-16T13:37:00.004+10:00

I'm still feeling very blah. Spaceghost has been waking up A LOT during the night, no matter whether I: feed her 'real' food at dinner time (or breakfast time, or any other time) or not; feed her when she wakes up or just give her back her dummy; change her nappy during the night or just leave her til morning; keep her in bed with me or put her back in her own bed between feeds.

As a result, I've been getting even further below my needed sleep levels than usual, and I'm feeling like a bit of a zombie. I shuffle. I find it very difficult to speak, and would much prefer to just moan hideously. I am by no means looking my best (although I did finally manage to get some new razors at the shops - why have they been out for so long? - and my legs look a lot better now), but thankfully husband loves me anyway.

The only decidedly non-zombieness is that I most certainly have no interest in brains. Mine may be lacking, but I have no desire to eat anyone elses. Or any part of anyone else for that matter. I might murder you if you get between me and my chocolate, but I definitely will not eat you.

Its all a bit surreal..

2009-07-06T18:10:00.003+10:00

Spaceghost will be 5 months old tomorrow. She is growing like crazy, has started solid food despite all my intentions to hold off til 6 months, because I simply couldn't keep on feeding her 11 times a day (and she has taken to it like a duck to water, I think the poor little thing was hungry) and is generally happy.

So far, depression hasn't dragged me under, which is fantastic. I look back on the first few months of Critter's life, and theres a lot I don't remember. I mention to my husband things that Spaceghost is doing, and he says yes, Critter did the same thing. And I don't remember it at all. It makes me sad to have missed those things, and I'm so grateful that I get to experience them this time.

Despite things going so well though, I still feel a little.. off. Nothing quite feels real - its almost as if I'm in a dream. I love my baby girl to pieces, and I would do anything for her, but there are moments when I dont feel like she's mine. Its like I'm looking after her for someone else and I won't get to keep her. I don't love her any less, I just don't feel like she belongs with me.

I dont know if its because she was born via c-section (I had panic attacks for weeks after she was born because of the situation surrounding her birth), or because I didnt get to hold her for a few hours afterwards - they had to take her away to do tests because she had been in distress and they wanted to make sure there was ntohing wrong with her. Maybe it was because I was on such powerful painkillers after being cut open that I spent the first few days in a bit of a fog.

Or maybe this is depression hitting me in a way I haven't experienced before. I feel happy, so I doubt it, but my brain chemistry is a little crazy, so it could be, I suppose.

I'm not sure if I've healed completely from the surgery, either. I have a couple of friends who've had c-sections, and I need to ask them about it, but after a long day of walking or excercise, my scar aches. I've never had anything like this before, never even broken a bone, so I don't know if this is normal. I suspect it is, because it is such a large cut, and especially since I don't heal well to begin with.

I'm just not sure where things are going at the moment, and I'm not sure how to feel.

It grows up

2009-07-03T20:54:00.003+10:00

My baby Spaceghost has been acting odd recently. She's gone from feeding 7-8 times a day and sleeping for at least 6 hours in a row at night with at least one 2hour sleep during the day, to feeding 10-11 times a day with her longest night sleep being 3 hours and only sleeping in 40minute bursts during the day. Its driving me crazy, and I'm beginning to get frazzled.

I had ever intention of keeping her exclusively breastfed until she was at least 6 months old. We have a history of allergies in this house, and I wanted to wait as long as possible before having to deal with the crazy. I also think its better for them to hold off solids as long as possible - their little tummies aren't necessarily ready for 'real' food for a while.

Spaceghost will be 5 months old next Tuesday. Today I broke down and asked hubby to pick up some rice cereal on his way home from work. I mixed 2 teaspoons with about 4-5 teaspoons of breastmilk, and she ate almost all of it, throwing her head towards the spoon in anticipation and grabbing it to hold it in her mouth so she could get all the cereal off.

I think she was ready. If she sleeps for more than 3 hours tonight, I'll know she was.

5 years

2009-06-19T16:31:00.004+10:00

A year ago today, I was feeling like crap. Tired, nauseous, and I couldn't stop coughing. I didn't know I was pregnant.

2 years ago, I was trying to figure out what to wear for my dad's wedding.

3 years ago, I was reaching the end of my weight loss. 15 kg in 3 months, then I hit a wall.

4 years ago, I was probably trying to figure out how to stop my 9 month old from eating the cat food.

5 years ago today, I married my sweetheart and became the happiest woman in the world.

Not so sure about the chublet..

2009-06-16T17:46:00.002+10:00

The good part about having a roly-poly baby is that you know you don't have a problem with your milk supply.

The bad part comes when the the evidence of all that milk is expelled and you have to unfold roll upon roll on the legs to make sure its all clean...

Roll upon roll upon roll upon roll... her legs look like stacking rings.

I Don't Like The Way My Husband Does The Laundry

2009-06-11T11:16:00.002+10:00

I know, I know, I should stop complaining about nappy-fluff on the clothes and just be grateful I have a husband who knows that a washing machine even exists, let alone does the laundry at night while I'm feeding the baby and shoos me out of the room if I try to take over.

I love my man.

The baby, it keeps on growing.

2009-06-10T16:23:00.003+10:00

At 5 days:
At 4months, 3 days:
Teddy is comparatively much smaller now.

Feeling a Little Conflicted

2009-06-09T21:52:00.004+10:00

When I had Critterbug, I put on about 25kg over the course of the pregnancy. I lost 11kg the week after he was born, and I don't know how much after that. Then I started to put more on.

In 2006, I started the CSIRO diet, and lost 15kg in three months. WOOOOO. Then the weight loss stopped, no matter what I did. So I gave up. My weight stayed mostly steady till I got pregnant with Spaceghost.

Then I started losing weight. I lost nearly 5kg in the first few months, then gained about 20, for a total gain of 15kg. Which I have since lost. WOOOOOOOOOO. (Unsure of exact numbers. At least 15 but I haven't weighed myself for a month.)

This is where the confliction comes in. I didnt buy maternity skirts. I bought normal ones in a larger size so I could continue wearing them after the baby. I wasn't expecting to lose the weight this fast. And now? They fall off. And I have nothing that fits. And I am still losing weight, so I am reluctant to buy new stuff yet as it will not fit me for long. And I want to keep losing weight as I am going to be a bridesmaid in November and would like to look decent. But that would mean I still have no clothes that fit.

UGH. WHAT DO I DO?????????????

I Come From a Land Down-Under

2009-06-05T12:29:00.012+10:00

Where trees are grey

Grass is beige

Sheep are gold

Dirt is orange and red

And the road stretches on forever
All photos taken from a car travelling at 100-110km/hr (62-68miles/hr), some in the rain.

Generation Wired

2009-06-03T22:35:00.004+10:00

~~I was born in 1982. According to most of the things I've read, this makes me Gen-Y, although I'm sure I read an article somewhere that classes me as Gen-X. Just.~~

I grew up with computers. I don't remember ever not having one in the house, though I'm sure there must have been a point when we didn't. I learned to type rather quickly when my father used the computer as a bribe in and of itself. Half an hour of Typequick and I was allowed to play on the computer - maths and spelling games mostly, though Alley Cat and some dinosaur game were also popular. Eventually he made it a challenge - whoever out of my sister and I learnt to type the fastest, would get $50.00, and since my sister had no interest in the games offered as instant reward, I won.

Over the years I've learnt to work various operating systems. I was confused beyond belief when my father first installed something called "windows" on the computer, and refused to use it. If it was my turn and Windows was open, I would immediately exit to DOS so I could find my way around. "cd.." and "dir/w" were my friends. Then, just as I got used to Windows, it changed. He installed a different one, and the 3.1 I had finally figured out how to work was no longer there. Suddenly, I had to tell the computer to turn off before I could push the off button, or it got sulky and refused to work. Not only that, DOS had become a hard-to-get-to lesser choice, despite being necessary for everything I used the computer for.

The changes in Windows since have been comparatively minor (and occasionally welcome - no longer do we need to push the off button after telling the computer to turn off), but the changes in the computers themselves have been huge. For one, no longer content with floppy-floppy disks and hard-floppy disks, CDs were added to the computer. The number of available drives became ridiculous. Especially since at one point we had 3 separate hard-drives, because our machine wouldn't accept a drive bigger than 2GB could exist. So we had A: (floppy-floppy), B: (hard-floppy), C: D: and E: (hard drives) and F: our super fast 8speed CD drive which was the envy of all my friends. Half my games were either on the big old "floppy" floppy disks or needed a bootdisk to run, but the newer ones on CD ran so smooth on our super-fast machine. And what amazing games they were. Games that took up so much file space the manufacturers decided not to bother spreading them over 8 floppy disks, but put the whole game on one CD.

It wasn't just computers though. Our mobile phone was amazing. Dad could take this phone anywhere and it would work. It didn't need to be plugged into the wall, and it had almost the same number as our landline. It would be put on the table when we went to restaurants, partly so everyone could see we had one, partly because at nearly the size of a house brick, it was far too large to fit in a pocket.

My father also brought the internet to our house fairly early for my peer-group. We were online in 95, and at one point we were paying only $5.00/hr for access, with a 28.8 modem. Super, super fast. And with 3 telephone lines (not including the mobile) I could chat online to friends in the US while my father sent a fax for work and my mother was on the phone.

My children aren't going to understand any of this. Mobile the size of a brick? 28.8 speed modem that sings at you as you connect?? 2GB hard drive??? Computer game on a floppy disk????? Since before he could talk, Critterbug has been "talking" on a mobile barely bigger than his hand. The only computers he's familiar with are laptops, and I doubt he's ever even seen a floppy disk. People may complain that my generation are wired, constantly talking on their mobiles, facebooking from their crackberries and talking into the air with their bluetooth headsets, but look at our kids. They have no other choice. Its a wonder they arent implanted with computerchips at birth.

Things I Never Want To Do Again

2009-06-03T19:12:00.002+10:00

Drive 400km (twice!!) with a not-quite-5-yr-old who won't stop talking (despite having his own portable dvd player and 16 gazillion movies to watch), and a baby who feeds every 2 hours.

Other than that, it was a pretty good trip.

Adressing the Skirt Issue

2009-05-30T13:25:00.002+10:00

**Bible quotes taken from NIV unless stated otherwise**

I have a comment on the post about dressing the baby:

Anonymous said...

request lodged for clarification of reasoning: not wearing pants.

expressions of gratitude for same tendered.

Since I only know one person who talks like that, I know who posted it, but since she's chosen to remain anonymous, I'll not out her. I will give the clarification requested however.

The bible clearly tells us that we are to dress modestly:

1 Timothy 2(9-10)

9I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

Lets have a look at modesty.

From Wikipedia:

Modesty is most often rendered as humility, shyness, or simplicity. The general principles of modesty include:
Avoiding attracting attention to oneself by moderating one's actions or appearance;
Downplaying one's accomplishments (see humility);
Avoiding insincere self-abasement through false or sham modesty, which is a form of boasting.

and:

Standards of modesty usually discourage the non-essential exposure of the human body. This applies to the bare skin, hair and undergarments, and especially to intimate parts. The standards not only call for the covering of parts of the body, but also obscuring their shape, by means of suitable clothing. There are also standards covering the changing of clothes (such as on a beach), the closing or locking of the door when changing or taking a shower, etc..

For me, dressing modestly means keeping myself covered, to a certain degree. Not "showing off the goods" as it were.

I aim to dress neatly, to look nice - not to have people (men especially) staring at me because my bust is about to fall out the top of my shirt, or the entire world can see what colour underwear I have on.
I do not wear sleeveless tops, because I feel uncomfortable with everyone seeing my arms like that. I also rarely wear short-sleeved tops, reserving them for very hot days.
If I feel the neckline on a top is too low, I wear a singlet underneath. Too low means my bra is showing, my cleavage is showing, or I would simply feel uncomfortable if someone was staring there (then again I would feel uncomfortable if someone was staring anywhere for extended periods of time, wondering what was wrong with me.. but you get the point). I have a few tops that fit this criteria, but are otherwise fine, so I just toss a singlet underneath.
I avoid button-up shirts, because I cannot find any that fit me well. If they fit properly over the bust, the waist is far too big and I look frumpy. If they fit at the waist, the buttons pop over the bust and I look like a tart. Neither fits my aim of "neat and nice".
I do wear fitted tops. Loose and baggy makes me look and feel frumpy, and does not fit in with "neat". Note there is a difference between "fitted" and "tight". If everyone can see whether my bra is embroidered or not, precisely where my belly button is, and all the flab from having 2 children, thats tight. If people can see where my waist is, and I do not look like I've lost weight but never bothered to buy smaller clothes, thats fitted.
I do not wear pants. Every pair of pants I've ever tried on is too tight in the front and too loose in the back. There may be some out there that fit me properly, but I probably can't afford them. I've also never found a top that looks nice when standing, but is long enough to cover any waistband-falling-down in the back when sitting. Other people can pull of the long top look, I just look like an idiot. If that wasn't enough, baggy pants look stupid on me, and fitted ones just scream at the world to stare at my butt. Not want I want.
Skirts are A-line. Not only does a tight skirt still scream at the world to stare at my butt, I just look plain stupid. Everyone can see what kind of underwear I have on, and the not-so-slimness of my legs, also I have broad hips and end up looking a very peculiar shape. An A-line skirt is flattering on almost everyone, can easily be dressed up or down depending on what you wear with it, and they seem to be in fashion at the moment, so they're easy enough to find.
Skirts come to below the knee. The longer the skirt, the less chance of it blowing up and showing things you didn't want shown. The knee also provides a handy reference point. If you don't have a set length, its a lot easier to say "Well, I don't think thats as long as what I usually wear, but its probably OK," and before you know it, you're wearing a glorified belt.
A slip is worn under un-lined skirts. I have a few skirts that are unlined. One is a nice chocolate linen, that just happens to let the light shine through. A skirt is not very modest if everyone can see everything through it when I walk past a light. I have another, thicker, skirt, that is unfortunately pale enough that everyone can see the colour of my underwear. A slip comes in handy here. A slip is also handy for very windy days. my slips are all tighter fitting that my skirts, and no matter how much my skirt blows up, the slip will not. I do not always wear a slip because of modesty however. I have a lovely, thick, dark brown corduroy skirt that certainly doesn't need a slip to be modest - but the seams make my legs itch.

Its not just about the clothes though. Remember, modesty is also "Avoiding attracting attention to oneself by moderating one's actions or appearance". To this end, I do not wear a lot of jewellery. I wear my wedding and engagement rings, a necklace my husband gave me when he proposed, and earrings to match my clothes. Occasionally, I wear a necklace to match the earrings. This is not because of the "gold or pearls" bit. I do not believe this instructions bars us from jewellery. I do believe that too much or too flashy jewellery can draw attention to us, undoing any modesty our clothes may display. If I'm wearing 17 gold chains and fluro-pink earrings the size of dinner plates, I am not dressed modestly, even if I'm wearing a burqa. (I also do not wear a lot of bright colours. This is not so much about modesty as it is about comfort. I do not feel comfortable, or look good, in bright colours. I look good in brown, so you'll find a lot of it in my wardrobe.)

Back to skirts. A lot of people reference Deuteronomy 22 (5) as a reason not to wear pants.

5 A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

I don't. For a start, there is too much difference between clothing in different cultures to simply say "Pants are boys clothes. Skirts are girls clothes." Fijian men wear a garment that is, to all intents and purposes, a skirt. (So do some Scots.) Even in european culture, trousers are a relatively recent innovation. Yes, in recent times, men have worn pants while women wear skirts, but prior to that, everyone wore dress-like garments. Can we therefor say women shouldn't wear dresses because men used to? Of course not. Its silly. Women now wear pants. Pants that are made specifically for women. They are women's clothing, like it or not. That doesn't make them modest, or feminine, but it does negate the "girls clothes/boys clothes" argument. Clothing is always changing, and I do not think "pants are boy's clothes" is a reasonable argument. "Pants reveal more of a woman's body-shape than is modest" however, is a reasonable argument, and its my reason.

Sometimes I Disturb Myself

2009-05-29T10:26:00.002+10:00

Yesterday, my fever-stricken Critterbug was watching TV while I did the washing (oh the joys of cloth nappies). One of the odder shows was on, one called "Sitting Ducks". Ducks who are friends with an alligator who get teased by the other alligators because he doesn't eat the ducks - he is vegetarian.

This led to one of my peculiar-almost-instantaneous-though-processes. I went through the following in the time it took to lean over and put one item in the washing machine:

Vegetarian alligator.. Fully vegetarian, or would he eat fish?
Things that eat fish usually taste kinda fishy.
Hey remember that giant guinea-pig type thing that is classified as a fish?
Probably looks kinda funny swimming around.
Hippos certainly do.
Hippos are cute.
I wonder what a hippopotamus tastes like?

Modest clothing for children

2009-05-22T11:18:00.002+10:00

Mini-sprog (Spaceghost) is growing so fast (if my ever-so-accurate measurements with the Wii-fit and a tape-measure are anything to go by, she's at about the 97th% mark for height, and she's nearly grown out of her 3-6 month sleepers, which is quite a feat considering she's not yet 4 months old and has only been wearing them for 6 weeks), I'm on a constant search for clothes. Critter too, but until I learn to sew properly I've given up on finding pants that fit him correctly. He just has to make do with everything needing a belt, or being a little too short, or both. There's no lack of good, cheap stuff out there, and with 3 second-hand shops a mere 15min bus ride from my house, I'm able to keep her dresser well stocked. On Thursday for example, among other things I found 2 brand new (seriously, they still had the tags on and everything) t-shirts in the next size up, for $1 each. They will be perfect when the weather changes and things start getting warm again, as I'm sure she'll be well and truly into that size by then.

Being able to get so much good quality stuff so cheap, the cost of her wardrobe isn't really an issue. What is an issue, is modesty. At the moment, its not a problem. Its winter, its cold, most of the time when we're out she's either wrapped up or covered in her pram anyway. However, when spring rolls around, it will be a different story.

I stopped wearing pants about 18 months ago. In fact, a few weeks ago I commented on my facebook than I do not remember the last time I wore pants, other than PJs. I remember wearing pants in September 2007, when we were painting the Critter's room, but I don't remember if I've worn any since. For me, a skirt is the more modest choice. The shape is less revealing, and I don't have to worry about showing my underwear to the world every time I sit down. I have never found a pair of jeans that really fit right. They're always too tight in front, with a huge gape on my back - the waist is the right size, just not in the right spots. For Spaceghost, I'm not sure this is going to be the case, at least until she starts walking.

In her admittedly-short-so-far-life, Spaceghost has only had two skirts, and one dress. I would love to have her in skirts, and once she's walking, since I'm the one who does the shopping, I'm guessing skirts will make up most of her wardrobe (I'm not going to just ban pants outright, my husband would flip out, and I want it to be her choice, which will immediately be "pants" if I militantly never allow her to wear them), but at the moment, pants are more modest. The skirts and dress she has are adorable - pink and purple, with flowers or butterflies embroidered on them - but they hardly even cover her nappy (this is admittedly contributed to by the fact that she wears cloth nappies and they are by default thicker than disposables). Skirts for babies are all made super- short, for some unfathomable reason*.

As I said before, since its cold at the moment, this isn't really an issue. I just put a pair of thick tights or soft pants underneath, and she is both warm, and adorable. Its cold enough that she would be wearing tights under her skirts even if they were longer, but it gets quite warm here in spring and summer, and I'm not going to have her in those teeny little skirts with nothing underneath. I'm not even sure that learning to sew better would solve my problems. At this size, when they spend most of their time lying down, everything rides up (I can't even begin to count the number of times I had to pull her dress down in church on Sunday. She did look utterly adorable though) so a longer skirt wouldn't do its job for long anyway. Once she starts crawling, a longer skirt may be a hindrance, causing her to trip. Especially if she does the hands-and-feet thing Critter did, rather than the hands-and-knees babies generally seem to stick to.

I think, for the moment, if I'm to have any chance of keeping my girl dressed nicely, I'm going to have to stick to pants. The current fashion for toddlers-preschoolers does seem to be calf-length skirts, and I'm hoping it stays that way so I have a chance to get decent stuff for her when she gets bigger. Since I have absolutely no idea what size she'll be by then, I'm not going to buy bigger stuff now. I'll stick to pants in her current size,or one-up for growth, until skirts become a reasonable option, and then I'll go wild. In the meantime, I'm going to practice my sewing skillz, so my Spaceghost can wear clothes no-one else has, and look right good doing so.

*If the length of most of the baby-skirts I've seen were translated to skirts for biggerpersons, they would be only just past the length at which I cough **belt** when I see someone walking past in one - when you hope you don't see them sit down, because you have no desire to find out what colour underwear they have on, if any.

Grocery Addendum

2009-05-22T10:43:00.002+10:00

$93.00

Oh yeah.

We rock.

This week will likely be a lot more however, as we are in desperate need of meat, and cheese, and milk, and fruit and veg. No non-food items I can think of however, so maybe it won't be too huge a shop...

Grocery test

2009-05-16T11:14:00.002+10:00

We havent been grocery shopping for over a week. We've run out of milk, and where its $2.79/2L at the supermarket, its $5.15/2L at the convenience store around the corner, so we need to go to the shops. But theres very little else we need.

Even with meat, the last shop we did was about $30 under budget, and this one is looking like a rather small shop (only about 6 items other than milk) so we should have a lot of money left this time too.

I'm wondering if this means next time will be a big shop? Remind me to let you know how it works out.

Too much money

2009-05-14T09:38:00.002+10:00

I want a new clothes dryer. The one we have is a good 20 years old, and is incredibly inefficient. The only time its worth using is when the clothes are so slightly damp you could almost mistake them for simply being cold. If I was to put half a load of wash in the dryer and push start, it would go for about 5 minutes and then stop, leaving me with hot wet clothes instead of cold wet clothes, or hot dry clothes.

Fortunately I live in a place where I can usually hang stuff to dry outside, and if I cant, it usually only takes 24-36 hours to dry inside.

There are times however when it rains. And rains. And rains. And then I wish we had a working dryer. The fact that the clothes line is broken and being held up with sticky-tape, and has a tendency to collapse if I put more than one load of wash on it, makes me want a new dryer too. Or at least a new clothesline.

Both those options cost money though. Money that we do have, but really don't want to spend. We have so far been living in my mother's house rent free (for a time with her, now as caretakers while she is interstate), but would really REALLY like to find a place of our own, which means we need to save. And save. And save. Housing prices may be down at the moment, but they are still incredibly high, and even with all the money I have saved up and invested from before I was married, we need A LOT to buy a house, and renting would mean we'd never be able to save, as rent is almost a much as mortgage payments.

Oh how I wish someone would just drop a bag full of cash in my lap.

Cutie Kid

2009-05-13T22:08:00.003+10:00

My husband is Catholic. I'm Anglican. Other than occasional teasing arguments about things like the Catholic Church being hypocritical for making "obscene wealth" one of the new deadly sins (seriously? 'pay us and we'll pray your dead loved one into heaven' and they're now outlawing being rich? HA! (and yes I realise they no longer do this, but I have to be able to tease my man about something.)), what this means is that he has a rosary, somewhere, and a crucifix that I feel uncomfortable with being up in the house (a plain cross would be fine, but a Jesus-figure feels idolatrous to me). So it isn't. Because he is a wonderful husband.

At the moment, as I have recently been pregnant and new-babied and am tired and exhausted and brain-fogged all the time, there is a bunch of stuff sitting on the hall table that needs to be put away, and the crucifix is part of the pile-o-stuff. Today the kid caught sight of it.

CRITTER: This is like the stone at church.
ME: What is like what stone at church honey?
C: THIS. It's like at church inside.
M: Ah.. yes, you're right, it is, and it's called a 'cross'.
C: Yeah and this is Jesus like how He died on the sad day (Good Friday. We discussed Easter this year and Good Friday has become The Sad Day, because He died, and death is sad. Kids are cute).
M: Thats right, He died on the cross, and on the Sunday He came back to life..
C: (interrupting) Yeah and so why do we have this?
M: Well when we see the cross it reminds us about when Jesus died and rose again, and how much God loves us to have done that for us.
C: Oh.. Mummy can I keep this in my room so I can remember Jesus all the time?

I told him he would have to ask daddy, because it's daddy's cross. He is totally adorable. And I'm impressed that he remembers so much about Easter. Usually things go in one ear and out the other with him until he's been told a few times.

Love

2009-05-09T10:04:00.006+10:00

Babygirl is three months old. She's been wearing 3-6 months clothes for over a month. Her cheeks are still enormous, as are her eyes, and she still has an Amazing Magical Disappearing Tooth. Her stares are intense, and her eyes are still blue, though considering Critter's are so dark brown they're almost black, and Hubby's and mine are greeny-hazel, anything could still happen.

She seems to be quite happy, smiling as soon as she catches sight of anybody, or even if she doesn't. Many the time I've gone to check on her, to find that she's smiling at the light coming in through the window. She talks when she smiles, often as not, and loves to hear us imitate her noises. Gurgling at her is a sure way to see her amazing smile.

Steve is getting good use, and she often falls asleep in her rocker gripping it. She is also fascinated by the toys hanging from the rocker, and just might have realised her hand actually has a use - she hit one of the toys the other day and then spent the next half hour examining her hand and watching it hit the toys. Not sure if she's doing it deliberately, but she does seem to be aware that its happening.

She thinks the baby in the mirror is hilarious, when I can get her to actually look the right way. She coos and gurgles and smiles like crazy, loving the fact that this other baby talks and smiles right back at her. The other mummy in the mirror confuses her, but doesn't upset her. Which is good. I much prefer her smiles to The Sad Face.

For some reason she still outright refuses to poo during the night. Which is nice, because it means I don't have to change her a million times when I'm barely awake, but it does mean... explosions during the day. And baths in the sink. Which she really rather enjoyed until the water got too cold. For some reason my kids like their baths HOT.

Speaking of night time, I can not figure out her rhythm at all. Some nights she wakes as early as 12:30 for a feed, others she sleeps till 7am, or later. Doesn't seem to matter when she gets fed or bathed, she has her own crazy rhythm, and she's not letting us know what it is.

I love this baby girl so much it hurts. My boy is precious, and I would die, or kill for him in a heartbeat (isn't it terrifying the first time you realise that you are absolutely capable of kiling, if your baby is in danger? Gave me nightmares for weeks). I do not love Spaceghost any more than I love Critterbug, but it is different. He is my precious, gorgeous boy, my firstborn. She is my daughter, my baby, the one I never thought I would have. And my love for these two does not in anyway diminish the love I feel for the one resting in God's arms, who never got to rest in mine. The more there is to love, the more love there is to give.

I survived April without spiralling into the waiting blue, but the sadness lingers. Hugging my children helps. I think I'll go do that now.

April is Over

2009-05-06T11:12:00.003+10:00

The fact that I didn't descend into a pit of despair bodes well, I think. If April didn't bring on the depression, maybe I'm safe this time round.

Budget Budget Budget*

2009-04-28T12:22:00.000+10:00

NOTE: numbers used in illustrative spreadsheets are random - you didn't think I'd let you see my actual income and expenditure did you? Due to this being a MADE UP budget, the numbers don't work as neatly as my real budget does. Use your imagination.

I'm still very much in post-baby fog, so this might not be the most coherent post on earth, though it looks OK to me. Please accept my apologies.

Also, click the picture for a bigger view.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to show her how I use my budget (we still need to sit down one day so I can show her properly.. we keep getting distracted by things like op-shops and screaming children). She had gone to her bank account for some reason and couldn't figure out where all the money had gone. Now, I'm no expert, but I usually have a pretty good idea of how much there is in my account (and generally manage to save a fair amount). My husband generally does not.

He readily admits that he's not so great with money. If he needs to save for something, he can do it, no worries, but saving just because is a bit tricky. If he sees 'spare' money, he wants to spend it. What this means in a practical sense is that he's given me complete control over our finances, and rarely looks at the bank account. He doesn't want to know how much is there, so he can't be tempted to spend it. He knows in a general sense what he's allowed to spend - eg. he knows groceries should be around $200/week - but he leaves the specifics up to me.

This means that I need to keep a constant eye on where our money is going, since if we end up broke, ITS MY FAULT. The best way for me to do this is having it written down, and checking our spending frequently. Theres no point saying out loud "I will only spend $800/month on groceries" if you don't have it written anywhere to keep track. So I've drawn up a spreadsheet, with an 'estimate' and 'actual' column, and every thursday I open my bank account online and check whats been spent where, filling in the blanks in my budget as I go.

This helps for two reasons.

Firstly, the estimate column is what our goal is - how much we should be spending in each area - and seeing how much we actually spend, compared to what we planned on spending lets me know if maybe we need to re-think our goals. Some things never change - for example our car payments are the same every month, and our phone bill should be, since we're on a plan and rarely go over our limit. Other things, like groceries, are less predictable, so the 'estimate' column is more of a guide, a number I'd rather not go over.

Secondly, checking it every week lets me know if it was a one off blow-out - did we go over our grocery budget because we had one week where we had to buy toilet paper AND dish washing liquid AND laundry powder AND tissues AND restock our meat supply - or if we have been consistently going over by a little bit each week, perhaps meaning we haven't been paying as much attention to purchases as we ought.

My budget spreadsheet also carries over from month to month, with sections for the current month, the current quarter, and the whole year, so I can see at a glance how much we've spent over different periods of time, and if there are any trends - do we spend more on petrol at one time of year? More on groceries? More on eating out?

I have a monthly calendar at the bottom of each page, so I can see how many thursdays - when hubby gets paid - there are per month, so I know how many units of salary and groceries to put in. This also lets me know if I'm likely to need to transfer money from the savings account into our everyday account for things like insurance payments - if the payment is due monday, chances are I'll need to transfer some back, since there won't be the funds for it until thursday, and when thursday rolls round, I can simply transfer the extra back to the savings.

I've also set it up so that negative numbers show in red - every time we go over budget theres a big nasty red mark on my neat and tidy page, glaringly obvious, and begging not to happen again. I'm a shocker at keeping my house clean, but I like my computer to be ridiculously tidy, so having the glaring red really helps me try to keep things in check.

Absolutely THE most important thing in any budgeting is to make it work for you. This set-up worked for me, obviously, or I wouldn't still be using it 5 years after I first drew it up. It might not work for you. Your brain may not work the same way mine does. There are lots of different guidelines out there, find one that suite you. Also, don't be a slave to it. The budget is a guide, an indication of what you should be spending. Draw yourself in some wiggle room, and don't freak out if you go over a little. Maybe you need to rethink the numbers, but maybe it was a one off. If you are consistently going over budget, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, but don't beat yourself up about it.

If anyone is interested in more pictures and/or detailed explanations, or would like a blank copy to play with, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

*Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget MONEY MONEY!!
Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget MONEY MONEY!!
A Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget Budget SAVINGS SAVINGS! Savings, Savings, oooooooooooh Savings and Budget Budget Budget.....

(sorry, couldn't help myself, the badger songs gets in my head every time someone says budget)

Can't I Keep Her A Baby Forever?

2009-04-28T07:47:00.005+10:00

I've just finished cleaning up an ENTIRE glass of milk from the floor.

Mr Snotface decided he didn't want to drink his milk this morning. I told him that was fine, but if he didn't drink it, he's obviously sick, and wont be going to preschool. So instead, I get "I have to go to the toilet." Classic excuse, one he uses a LOT to get out of things, but I can't take the chance that this time he's actually telling the truth - I really don't want to be the one that makes him poo in his pants because of some milk.

Since then, three things have happened, because he is being Mr Snotface today, instead of the sweet Critterbug I'd rather see:

In his attitude laden stomping, he spilled the ENTIRE glass of milk, and then, despite being desperate to go to the toilet, he just stood there, staring at it. Not making any effort to clean it, or even ignoring it and continuing on his stomp to the bathroom. Just standing like a lump.

He is now in his bedroom wailing hideously because I told him he has to wear a different shirt - I don't want him getting one of his only 2 unstained shirts covered in paint and marker at preschool. So he put the other one on, and screamed when I said "not that one please either" in a calm voice.

I am now siting here praying for peace and patience, and that God will miraculously stop me from strangling him on the walk to school.

Are we absolutely certain theres no way to stop the aging process so I can stop Spaceghost before she gets to this point?

***UPDATE*** Imediately after posting this, what do I hear? He has turned the tap in the bathroom ALL THE WAY TO FULL to brush his teeth. Despite being told at least once a week that it is not to be turned that high. Somebody better calm down at school today.

What A World, What A World

2009-04-27T10:27:00.005+10:00

After dropping my son off at preschool this morning, I sat down at the bus stop just around the corner to let my legs calm down before I walked home (the preschool is just over 1km - about 0.6 miles, or 3200 feet - away, so I walk if pain and weather permit - 2km, 3 times a week. But it has been rather cold here in the mornings and my legs itch like crazy if I walk more than about 100metres in the cold.. I don't know why, but they always have. It drives me crazy). As I was sitting at the bus stop, I started to wonder if maybe I should go down to the shops, since the bus stops right there and there was nothing urgent at home that needed doing.

While I was trying to make up my mind, and was talking to Spaceghost, trying to find the quickest way to make her laugh at me, a man who had been standing at the stop for a few minutes walked over to me. "D'you think you could lend me $2.50 for the bus fare?" he said, to which I responded "Sorry, no," as I only had $3 in my wallet, and had almost decided to catch the bus down to the shops.

Then I started to feel guilty. Home wasn't really that far away, and there is another stop for the same bus just around the corner from my house. I could easily give him bus fare, then make my way home, grab more money out of the change jar (and change Spaceghost's nappy while I was there) and head back out again.

Just as I was contemplating this, the bus pulled up. And the man pulled a pre-paid ticket out of his wallet and got on the bus.

He didn't need my money for the bus. He already had a ticket. That made me a little mad. And also put me in a bad mood, so I no longer wanted to go to the shops. Instead I'm sitting here watching my precious girl gripping her blanket and twitching in her sleep, and listening to the washing machine.

People suck.

The Cost of Clothing Babies

2009-04-17T11:37:00.003+10:00

Last week, at just over 2 months of age (literally, 2 days past), my daughter Spaceghost graduated to 3-6 months jumpsuits for sleepwear. We could have continued to clothe her in 0-3 sleepers, but only if we left the crotch snaps undone to leave room for her cloth nappies (diapers) and cut off the feet. Despite the rolls on her thighs and wrists, and the Mega-Cheeks (tm), she is quite slender for her height (90th percentile height, 50th weight at her check last week. Critter is the same, only even more extreme - he needs size 4 or 5 for the length, but only size 1 around the waist), so separates still fit her in 0-3. In fact, her jeans are constantly falling off because the waist is too big for her, even though they look like capris, ending halfway up her calves.

My first thought? This girl is going to cost me a FORTUNE in clothes!!* My second? OP-SHOPS ROCK!!!

I try not to buy my kids' clothes full price if I can help it. There are times when its unavoidable. Like when they've pooed all over their clothes, and then vomited all over the spares, and the blankets got dirty too, so you HAVE to buy something so the poor little thing doesn't freeze. Critter did that to me a couple of times when he was tiny. Spaceghost hasn't. Yet. And I do like to buy them new clothes. I become overwhelmed with the cuteness of some of the little clothes I see in Kmart or Target or BigW.. like the two little tops I bought Spaceghost at Kmart the other week. Totally adorable. But honestly, theres nothing wrong with second hand, either.

At my local shops, there are three second hand stores. An Anglicare, a Vinnies (St. Vincent de Paul society), and a Smith Family. When I went by the other week, the Anglicare was having a 3-2-1 sale, to get rid of summer stock so they had room for winter stock, and everything in the store was $2.00 - thats 2 pair jeans and 1 overalls for Spaceghost, and jeans for Critter, for $8.00 - and on Saturday, everything was going to be $1.00. A shirt in Vinnies for Spaceghost at $2.50, and my shopping trip was complete. Not only that, they were in different sizes, so I already have things for when she grows, and she won't be dressed in the same thing as all the other kids her age, because they are previous seasons stock.

Even better, there is an Anglicare depot a few suburbs away from me, where they just have bins of clothing to go through yourself. Nothing is sorted in any way shape or form, but they sell the clothes BY THE KILOGRAM. This resulted in me picking up 12 items for the girl and 4 for the boy for $9.00 - went shopping with a friend, ended up with 3kg between us, and just split the cost. Some of the items were ever so lightly stained, but for 50c each, when they'd cost about $9.00 each new, who cares?

At the rate she's growing, clothing this girl of mine could cost a fortune, but it isn't going to. And anyone spending $20 for a shirt that will be outgrown in a matter of weeks needs their head examined.

*This would be even more true if I shopped at Pumpkin Patch, where a t-shirt for a 2 month old costs more than $20.00 - and they arent even the most expensive kids clothes around! Totally adorable, totally worth it at op-shop prices, never being bought full price in this house.

Taken For Granted

2009-04-07T15:00:00.004+10:00

On sunday night, when I went to do the dishes, nothing came out of the tap. Which was strange. I turned it round to cold, and water BLASTED from the faucet, but when i swivelled it back to hot, it dribbled back to nothing. I checked every other tap in the house, and there was no hot water anywhere, so I informed my husband, who decided it was too late to do anything, and we went to bed.

On monday morning - yesterday - when hubby got up to get ready for work, there was still no hot water. In fact, since we're going into autumn now down here in the southern hemisphere, he informed me that the water hitting his feet was like - and i quote - "the icy cold fingers of death". Sometimes he's a little melodramatic. In any event, we ended up having to boil the kettle and fill the sink in the bathroom so he could in effect have a sponge bath, and then he braced himself to wash his hair with the cold water from the shower. That can't have been fun. I didn't risk it, and decided to take my chances at stinking down the house.

When he got home from work yesterday afternoon, he had a look at the hot water heater, and since he couldn't see anything obviously wrong, we called a plumber, who was here in about 3-4 hours. Turns out the valve to let water into the heater had collapsed. We weren't getting any hot water because there was no hot water. The water heater was happily sitting there heating the air inside it, because NO WATER COULD GET IN. So he replaced the valve, and now we have hot water again. YAY. (On a down note, the heater is ten years old, and they have a lifespan of ten years. I see a new hot water heater on our horizon soon...)

Being without hot water all day was annoying. Having to boil the kettle, or put a pot on the stove every time we wanted something other than near-freezing was very much a bother. But it got me thinking about how privileged we are to have such easy access to a plumber, so we can have hot water. Even to be in an area that has running water.

When my mother was an infant, her family didn't have access to running water. My grandmother had to walk to the well with a bucket, and I gather it was quite some way away. This was only a little over 60 years ago. In the USA. Yeah, I had trouble believing it too. But there are people who still live like that, or worse. Whose accessible water not only isn't running, it isn't even clean. And hot? Only if it's summer.

Most of my country* is in drought (so maybe I did good by not having a shower?). We in the cities aren't allowed to use a hose on the garden, and further inland farms are lying vacant because there isn't enough water to grow anything, so the farmers can't afford to keep farming. Sydney's (where I live) water supply is at less than 60% capacity, and hasn't been anywhere near full for 7 years. But we still HAVE water, and it's clean. And when the heater is working, it's hot too.

There are so many things we take for granted, but any of them could be gone at any time. I think I'm going to pay more attention from now on.

*The rest of the country is flooded. Thats right. It's either parched, or under water. This place is CRAZY.

It'a nearly EEEEEEEASTERRRRRRRRRRR

2009-04-05T15:38:00.003+10:00

So, as I'm sure you've noticed, Easter is coming up pretty quick. MIL bought a truck full of chocolate eggs for the Critter while she was here when Spaceghost was a tiny thing, so there's his chocolate intake taken care of. I shall try to think of something to get for hubby, and at just 2 months, Spaceghost is just a teensy bit too small for chocolate at this point.. don't you think?

So now, I only have one dilemma. When do I make my hot cross buns? Should I make the dough on saturday night and then stick them in the oven Easter morning? Or should I make the dough before Church on sunday, leave them to rise during church, and cook&eat them after? It's quite a dilemma, since I'd love to eat them for Easter breakfast, but they're best fresh&hot, so I don't want to make them in advance and freeze them or something...

NOT FAIR. Time is annoying.

ugh

2009-04-03T10:45:00.003+11:00

Not having a good time at the moment. The kids are sick (how does a breastfed baby get a cold? Thats not supposed to happen), hubby and I arent feeling too crash hot either, Spaceghost didnt eat much yesterday, I'm having trouble sleeping, and theres various other stuff going on thats causing stress in my life, like cats, and jobs, and weddings.

On top of all that, my internet is being slow, and I'm having a lot of trouble loading anything. My solution? Hit the enter key REALLY REALLY HARD when trying to refresh a page. I know it won't make it work any better, but I feel like it will, and it makes me feel better to smash that button.

If only the rest of life was so simple.

I'm not TRYING to be vague...

2009-03-28T21:22:00.005+11:00

Spaceghost either sleeps for 8-9 hours at night, leaving me to wake up in pain with stiff nursing pads, or spends all night merely drowsing, and GRUNTING VERY LOUDLY, occasionally accompanied by very loud farts.
She DOES NOT poo at night, so at about 7am I usually have to changer her nappy, and the cover, and her clothes, and the nappy she lies on (we use terry squares, and I keep one under her wherever she is because she is a very up-chucky little thing and its easier than changing her sheets 40 times a day)...
She needs to burp at least twice each feed (midway through and after), or she just cries and cries because her tummy hurts.
Critterbug wants to help. Which is sweet. But he keeps doing things I don't want him to do.. like shove soft toys in her face, or try to put her dummy in when she doesn't want it.
I have far too much laundry to do.
I need to finish making the bear.
And the quilt.
And the clothes.
And the wraps.
My cut is not healed yet. 7 weeks, and it's still scabby instead of scarred.
The Very Old Cat has a thyroid problem... so now he has to have a pill twice a day, possibly for the rest of his life. Otherwise he will eventually die of: starvation, or heart failure, or liver problems. Luckily he is easily tricked by cheese (have you ever tried to force a 1m/3ft long cat to eat something it doesn't want to eat? not fun).
All the little 0000 clothes are now too small. We've just done a clear out of Critter's old clothes, and I am NOT in a state to get rid of any of Spaceghost's clothes yet. They are going into a spacebag until I'm ready.
Baby clothes are so CUTE!
I am totally pre-occupied with baby things.
I never thought I would be so drawn to pink frilly clothes.
Not that I really have much choice. Have you tried buying baby girl clothes recently? PINK PINK PINK PINK PINK. And occasionally PURPLE.

She Needs Me

2009-03-21T13:23:00.002+11:00

Spaceghost is 6 weeks old today. She started smiling (a bit) a few days ago, although she won't do it consistently, or when anyone other than me is around, so I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined it, and I'm sure other people are wondering too. She still sleeps fairly well, nice long stretches at night (though I prefer it when she wakes up at least once so my breasts aren't exploding), and is such an efficient feeder that she's only on for about 10min at a time. I've tried putting her back on for more, thinking she can't possibly be done, but she either pulls back crying when the milk hits her tummy - obviously full - or she just clamps her mouth shut and downright won't take any more thankyou-very-much.

I love her more than I could have ever imagined was possible before I had kids. The rush of amazement and joy and protectiveness that hit me when Critterbug was born, it hit all over again with Spaceghost when they pulled her from my belly and waved her at me over the sheet. Mum told me that when she was pregnant with my sister she was scared - how could she possibly love another child as much as she already loved her first (me)? I never had that fear. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I loved her. As soon as I suspected I was pregnant with my lost dear one, I loved it.

She's so small that I doubt she loves us yet. She's affectionate, very snuggly, and despite the inconsistent smiles, she has a definite happy face that she makes at us. The most striking thing however is how much she needs me. Not just the obvious stuff - milk, clean nappies, bathing, helping her to sleep - she needs to be close to me, to know that I'm there.

After she feeds - whether we're lying in bed, or sitting on a chair - she pulls her head back, shuts her eyes tight, purses her lips, and raises her eyebrows. She arches her back, straightens her legs, and waves her arms, stretching. Then she throws her head forward and wiggles it around, until she's made my breast into a comfy pillow, and falls asleep on me. If I dare to move her, she whimpers.

I made the mistake of having a shower the other day. When I got out, she was screaming so hard I thought she must surely lose her voice. As soon as I put her on my shoulder, she started to calm down, and eventually she fell asleep. But she continued to whimper, her voice muffled because her face was buried in my neck, and her little hand was pawing and scratching at my arm, making sure I was still there. Every time I moved, she tightened her grip. In her sleep.

She might now love me yet, but she needs me, and thats a wonderful feeling.

We are all individuals!!!

2009-03-07T21:45:00.004+11:00

Spaceghost is 4 weeks old today. Due to being born in February, this means she is also one month old today. I know there is still a vast opportunity for change, but so far, she has been incredibly easier than Critterbug was.

For one, she actually feeds. Bra down, baby on, 25 minutes later she pulls off. Critterbug did not. Bra down, baby on, baby off, screaming, baby on, baby off, more screaming and flailing of arms and legs, baby on, choking, baby off, screaming, baby to daddy, formula out, baby drinks formula, mummy pumps milk while crying. Lather rinse repeat in 2-3 hours, replacing formula with expressed milk.

For another, she sleeps. Anywhere. Bed, car, pillow, floor, pram, someone's arms, bath... Critterbug would sleep in someones arms, but would awaken screaming the second he touched his bed. For months he slept in his pram, because it was the only thing that worked. Put him in the pram, walk him up and down the street for an hour or so, and leave him in the pram once he fell asleep. Spaceghost, on the other hand, will even put herself to sleep if she is put in her cradle after being changed and fed. I AM AMAZED.

Isn't it funny how we expect them to be the same? We recognise as adults that we are all individuals (I'm not!). Even as children, we recognise ourselves as our own separate people. I for one HATED being dressed in the same clothes as my little sister. We weren't even twins, and my mother dressed us the same. I hated it. Yet for some reason people often seem to expect subsequent babies to be the same as the first, just like I expected Spaceghost to be the same as Critter.

And I'm really not sure why, since even the pregnancies were vastly different. With the Critter, I had morning sickness till the day he was born (admittedly not as bad after the first 3 months, but decidedly still there - just nausea instead of run to the nearest container), and the nausea even lingered for some months after he was born. I didn't dare let myself feel hungry, because hunger would turn to nausea in a few minutes. With Spaceghost I think I was only actually sick three times. Critterbug demanded I eat nothing but cheerios and macca's chicken nuggets, Spaceghost couldn't abide sugar. Pre-eclampsia with my boy, perfectly normal with my girl. 4 hour labour ending in hemorrhage the first time, baby in distress leading to emergency c-section this time.

The fact that one is a boy and one a girl should stop me from treating Spaceghost as a little clone of the Critter, just in case the incredibly obvious personality differences weren't enough. I only hope if I am ever blessed with another (looking incredibly unlikely at the moment) I won't fall into the clone trap.

Because I'm having trouble thinking

2009-02-24T09:05:00.003+11:00

A friend tagged me on facebook. This is supposed to test how much you remember about your firstborn.

1. WAS YOUR FIRST PREGNANCY PLANNED? no.... very much no.

2. WERE YOU MARRIED AT THE TIME? not when we got pregnant.. he proposed the night we found out, and we got married when we were 6 months along

3. WHAT WERE YOUR REACTIONS? tears. swearing. fear.

4. WAS ABORTION AN OPTION FOR YOU? absolutely not.

5. HOW OLD WERE YOU? 21. i turned 22 a month before he was born

6. HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT? i peed on a stick. isnt that the usual way? ok ok.. i'd been feeling ill for a couple weeks, but since i had a cough, i assumed i was sick. then i realised i was late, and we freaked out. thats when the stick came into play.

7. WHO DID YOU TELL FIRST? boyfriend (now husband).

9. DUE DATE? sep. 18 2004. or possibly sep 28 2004. they couldnt make up their minds.

10. DID YOU HAVE MORNING SICKNESS? you mean the part where i had to leap out of bed over my fiance in the middle of the night to make it to the bathroom to avoid vomiting all over the bed? yes. i had that.

11. WHAT DID YOU CRAVE? mcdonalds chicken nuggets. at one point they were all i could keep down.

12. WHO/WHAT IRRITATED YOU THE MOST? i really dont know..

13. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CHILD'S SEX? beautiful little boy.

14. DID YOU WISH YOU HAD THE OPPOSITE SEX OF WHAT YOU WERE GETTING? no, but i THOUGHT i was probably going to get a girl. boys seem to be a bit uncommon in my family.

15. HOW MANY KILOS DID YOU GAIN THROUGHOUT THE PREGNANCY? 25kg (55lb)

16. DID YOU HAVE A BABY SHOWER? nooooooooo

17. WAS IT A SURPRISE OR DID YOU KNOW? gender? surprise.

18. DID YOU HAVE ANY COMPLICATIONS DURING YOUR PREGNANCY? pre-eclampsia.

19. WHERE DID YOU GIVE BIRTH? royal prince alfred

20. HOW MANY HOURS WERE YOU IN LABOR? 4. he came fast.

21. WHO DROVE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL? hubby. went in for an appointment, and they decided to keep me and induce me.

22. WHO WATCHED YOU GIVE BIRTH? hubby, and a couple midwives. the only doctors i saw were one who stitched me up, and one who put in a canula.

23. WAS IT NATURAL OR C-SECTION? natural.

24. DID YOU TAKE MEDICINE TO EASE THE PAIN? i had 2 panadeine - i believe in the states this is called tylenol3? paracetamol (acetaminophen - tylenol) and codeine. and i didnt get it until i was pushing. they forgot to give it to me.

25. HOW MUCH DID YOUR CHILD WEIGH? 3.795kg (8lb 6oz)

26. WHEN WAS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY BORN? 29th sep 2004

27. WHAT DID YOU NAME HIM/HER? critterbug. duh.

28. HOW OLD IS YOUR FIRST BORN TODAY? 4yrs, 4months, 26days

What a difference a day makes..

2009-02-21T20:56:00.000+11:00

Today, my daughter is 2 weeks old.

Today, my daughter held up her head and looked around the room for a good few minutes without flopping hillariously.

Today, I managed to step into the bathtub without needing to use my hands to lift my legs, or leaning my entire weight on the bathroom sink.

None of these were true yesterday.

What a difference a day makes.

Five years ago today...

2009-02-17T18:25:00.000+11:00

... my life ended. Sounds dramatic, I know, but it really did.

I was 21, twelve-thousand km (seven-thousand+ miles) from home, had very little family nearby (none of it immediate family), was unmarried, and had just found out I was pregnant. I was totally in love with my boyfriend, but terrified he was going to take one look at that evil little stick and run away. My life was over. I cried so hard it hurt.

Life started again within minutes. Boyfriend didn't want to run. He still loved me, wanted to keep the baby, and proposed on the spot. I kept on crying, but it was happier tears now.

But it was a different life.

My old life really did end. The life of Young-Sarah. No major responsibilities, always enough money, time to have fun. A carefree life, and one that matched my friends'. We weren't living in the same country, but anytime I went 'home' I would fit right in, we would have things in common. We could go out and do silly things. Stay out in the city till five AM and catch a cab home. Spend all day on the beach and eat whatever we wanted for dinner. And boyfriend and I could do whatever we wanted. We could stay up all night playing video games. Spontaneously decide to go to a museum 3 hours away from home. Drive to Vegas for the weekend with no prior planning. Go to the movies every night for a week. Not any more.

I think I like my new life better. Filled with cuddles and the smell of new baby, tiny clothes on the clothesline, and terry towel nappies scattered through the house. Brightly coloured toys that make far too much noise, and long nights in bed with a small body snuggled against me. A 'big boy' intent on teaching his sister to play soccer, and tiny hands eager to help with anything sister-related. Prayers to look after 'the baby', even though she now has a name, and a four year old's arms anxiously waiting to hold her.

My life ended February 16th 2004, and I've never been gladder.

Meet Spaceghost

2009-02-12T20:52:00.004+11:00

Erin Jacqueline
3.52kg (7lb 12oz, I think) 51 cm (20 inches)
Born Saturday feb. 7th, 6:41pm (I think) via emergency c-section, after her heart-rate dropped to 70bpm.

Now home and sleeping wonderfully, but I wish she would feed a little more, as I have far too much milk and it's a bit painful.

Her brother is excited, and nervous, and doesn't really know how to cope, but he's trying.

Daddy is wonderful.

We are all happy.

This has not been a great week

2009-02-06T11:06:00.003+11:00

Spaceghost can't seem to make up its mind whether to be super-low-down causing me aches in rather uncomfortable places, or all-stretched-out making it hard to breathe. Combined with the weather, this makes for a rather uncomfortable Sarah.

But I can deal with that.

What I'm finding harder to deal with is the fact that my father is currently in hospital with septicemia.

On wednesday afternoon, at nearly 4pm, I was getting ready to leave the house to go pick up critterbug from pre-school, when the phone rang. Since I had to leave the house in less than 10min and was only halfway dressed, I ignored the phone, and checked the answer machine just before I left. I heard something along the lines of this:

*VERY QUIET VOICE* mumble mumble mumble dad, mumble mumble mumble north shore private hospital mumble bone infection mumble mumble mumble

I turned up the volume as high as I could on the machine, but my father gets a bit incoherent when he's sick, and that was all I could make out.

Figuring there was nothing I could do to sort out the message, I left the house, and continued on my way to pick up my son. I texted my sister when I got to the bus stop, since calling dad would have resulted in more incoherence. She didn't have much more information. He was unwell, presumably some sort of infection, but they couldn't find it. They suspected he had an abcess of some sort, and were going to do a scan to figure out what it was. The were trying to put him on antibiotics, but couldn't get an IV in because his veins kept on collapsing. And of course, he thought he was dying. My father is a bit of a hypochondriac, and always thinks he's going to die whenever he has an operation, but this time he actually sounded very very sick.

Yesterday she had more info for me. They suspected septicemia, and he still thought he was dying. My father has rheumatoid arthritis, and therefor a compromised immune system. He doesn't get sick very often, since his body his constantly fighting everything including itself, but when he DOES get sick, he gets SICK. And in much the same way that AIDS sufferers tend to die from some random other infection that they can't fight because of the AIDS, apparently RA sufferers tend to die from mass infection. He's had a few scares in the past 10 years: an incompetent doctor who gave him 10x recommended dose of Methotrexate, making him extra-ordinarily sick, and thereby cutting it out of his treatment regime since he developed some sort of allergy and couldn't take it any more; an abcess on his spine which spread infection elsewhere (his elbow looked like someone had put a tennis ball under the skin, and felt like over-ripe fruit), and when trying to remove said abcess, the doctors managed to break his neck, though thankfully the spinal cord was undamaged. And now this.

Today I got a text from him. "seems clear i have septiccemia improving now hopefully home mid next week with aintibiotic drip pump sewn into me. will know more after scan monday."

I'm praying that he'll be OK, that he'll get over this the same way he's gotten over everything else. But I'm scared. Septicemia is not something to be taken lightly.

On an entirely different note....

2009-01-30T15:49:00.000+11:00

My family is in Wikipedia.

I'm more famous than you.

And this would be why I hate summer..

2009-01-30T14:53:00.004+11:00

Weatherwise, we don't have it too bad over here in Sydney. We had a couple of shocker days, and had to take iceblocks to bed one night, but its calmed down, and while it's still far hotter than I would like, it's now nothing like the south, where poor Lizzie has been melting away (my mother lives there too, and is still walking over 1km - about 3/4 mile - each way to and from work every day, because there are apparently no taxis).

But we have something Lizzie hasn't mentioned for a while.

As I was putting away the dishes from the drying rack yesterday (we do not have a functional dishwasher, everything is washed by hand and left in the drying rack on the counter to dry), I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. There were so many dishes it was hard to see what was going on, but as I cleared more and more away, it became apparent exactly what I was seeing.

The chopping board evidently hadn't been cleaned as thoroughly as we thought, because IT WAS COVERED IN ANTS. They were running around all over it, congregated mostly in one spot, which is where I'm assuming it got washed the least.

So I picked it up and dumped it in the sink, running hot water over it until I couldn't see any little writhing black bodies any more. Then I took everything off the counter, got out my can of bug spray, and I sprayed the heck out of the entire area. And the windowsill, where they all tried to flee to, and where I found another gazillion of the nasty little things.

And then I washed everything. Again. Twice.

I don't care about the water restrictions, THERE WERE ANTS ON MY DISHES!!!!!!!!!

Thirty-Seven-plus-Five

2009-01-29T14:16:00.002+11:00

Almost there. Almost made it. Just another couple days, and we'll be technically Full Term. Not that anyone would panic if I went into labour today, I'm sure. Two days, at this stage of the game, is not going to make much of a difference. A month ago it would, but now, not so much.

I'm tired. I'm cranky. My hands and feet are puffy. I ache all over. I'm disinterested in food. And I've reached that point in the pregnancy. You know the one. The point of Get This Thing Out ALREADY. Most mothers who make it to full term get there.

For some it comes after 36 hours of labour, at which point the doctors usually agree, and start taking steps - generally toward a c-section.

For some, usually when prior children have come early, it happens as soon as that due date rolls around.

Some reach that point after some sort of complication crops up. High blood pressure, or PUPPS, or extremely hot weather, or any of myriad other things seemingly designed purely to make a pregnant woman's life uncomfortable.

Then there are those who never reach it, whose babies are desperate to come out early, and who spend weeks or months thinking Keep-It-In, Keep-It-In, Keep-It-In, hoping the baby will stay in just one more month, or week, or even day, getting stronger and stronger, and therefor be more likely to be healthy once out.

Last time round, I reached that point at either 39 or 40.5 weeks, depending on which due date you go by. My blood pressure was unstable, PUPPS was in full force, I wasn't sleeping, and I couldn't even step into or out of the shower (combined shower/bath, VERY DEEP bathtub) on my own. I wanted it out, and I wanted it out NOW. They made me wait another week.

Apart from the weather, nothing has been too bad this time. My blood pressure has stayed at a reasonable point, apart from a couple of high readings to begin with. Gestational Diabetes has not descended upon me (not that it did last time, but there's always the chance). PUPPS has (so far) not made an appearance, and apparently it is unlikely to. The bathtub is causing some difficulties, and sleep is a bit of a challenge. If I lie on my left side, there's a patch of skin on my leg that starts tingling and then it feels like I'm being skinned, and if I lie on my right side, my leg collapses when I stand up. Generally however, things this time are better.

So why do I want to Get This Thing Out ALREADY? Because people won't stop bugging me. Every time I wince, my husband thinks I'm going into labour. Every time I call my mother, she thinks the baby has come. Every time I talk to my sister, she asks if it's come yet (it's like she really thinks we're going to just not tell her for a week or something). I can cope with all the "How are you doing/feeling?" I understand. People are interested. That doesn't bother me. But honestly.

My whole body aches. I will occasionally wince when I move. This does not mean I am going into labour RIGHT NOW HUSBAND AND YOU MUST TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL. Nor does every phone call to my mother mean the baby is here. She lives a long way away. Am I not supposed to talk to her between now and when I am holding the child?

This has been happening for at least a week, and it's getting on my nerves. Yes, the baby has dropped. Twice. Once to basketball-under-shirt point, and then even further. Yes, this is a good indication that things are progressing. Yes, I am now having uncomfortable contractions almost every day. My body is practicing. It's normal. But the sprog could hold on for another 4 weeks yet.

I want my baby to stay safe and snug for as long as it needs, but honestly, I also want to just Get This Thing Out ALREADY!

Not stupid, just different. Very, very different.

2009-01-21T16:51:00.003+11:00

“Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.”

Maybe you've seen it on a T-shirt, maybe a sticker on a car. Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, but its everywhere. Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them. Yet another dig at our other halves.

Sometimes its tempting to believe though. Sometimes they do things that are just so... different. Their minds don't work the same as ours, and its easy to mistake this for stupidity. I'm sure they think the same thing about us.

One of my jobs is laundry-put-away-er. This also translates to clothes-sorter-outer-er, since I'm the only one who knows what all we have. A few months back I told hubby I was frustrated because I couldn't fit everything in his t-shirt drawer, and he told me to just go ahead and put in storage anything I didn't think he wore any more – if he missed something, he'd ask for it back. So I attacked that drawer with a vengeance, culling madly as I went. You would not believe how much better everything fits now.

Anyway.

Since there was space to actually see the clothes, and since I'd noticed hubby having trouble finding what he was looking for sometimes, I decided to sort the clothes in the drawer in a more easily accessible layout: light t-shirts in one pile; dark t-shirts in a second; sleeveless under-shirts in a third; and shorts off to the side. It was easy to see what I'd done, no pile was disproportionately bigger than the others, and it ought to make his life easier.

Or so I thought.

A couple weeks back I saw him wildly rummaging through his drawer, and then he asked me if a particular shirt was in the wash. I told him no, but since its black he'd be better off looking in the dark pile than the light pile. He looked at me as if I'd grown a second head.

Sarah: There's a light pile, a dark pile, a singlet pile, and a shorts pile.
Hubby: Are you sure?
S: Yes, I did it when I got rid of everything months ago!!
H: Why didn't you tell me?
S: I thought it would be obvious, since everything in that pile is light, and everything in that pile is dark, and I've always kept your singlets separate!
H: Its only obvious now that you've told me!!

He didn't see. He absolutely did not see that one pile contained light clothes, and the other was mostly black. He's not stupid. My man is a smart man. He does stuff I don't even pretend to understand, and makes it look easy. But his mind just doesn't work the same way as mine.

Boys aren't stupid. Just different.

it gets worse

2009-01-20T20:25:00.003+11:00

its spread. no longer am i content with re-arranging the house, now im cooking extra too. is this going to continue till spaceghost is born? how do i have the energy to cook extra, but not to stay awake to watch tv??

on an up note, mini-ultrasound today to check head position, well and truly head down. being so far along, its unlikely it will turn breech, though not impossible. i'll take unlikely though. its been pointing the right way for a while, and seems quite comfortable.. too comfortable almost, when it gets the hiccups.

on the other hand, i'm not sure how much longer its going to stay in... im getting occasional almost-painful contractions. ive been having the painless variety for a while - stomach feels hard and tight for a few seconds then goes soft again - though its sometimes hard to tell if its a contraction or merely the baby pushing.. they feel pretty similar if spaceghost is in the middle nad not being all pointy off to one side. but these ones... if im sitting too upright (rather than half lying down), or curled over too much lying down, its very uncomfortable, and just when it reaches the point that i think 'does that actually hurt?' it stops. i never experienced anything like this with critterbug, so i'm not sure what it means. obviously my body is preparing for sprog-arrival, but does the fact that its so... obvious mean its closer than i think? its supposed to stay in for at least 2 more weeks, and id really rather it didnt come this early.

not fun.

HELP!! I'VE STARTED NESTING!! act 1: the linen closet. scene 1: the mess

2009-01-19T15:54:00.009+11:00

spaceghost is due to be met sometime in the next 2-6 weeks. this is slightly terrifying, very awe-inspiring, and is bringing out my non-existent cleaning instincts.

this would be ok if it translated into mopping the floors, washing the clothes, or even re-organising the pantry.

but no.

i want to re-arrange the entire house.

partly this is necessity. theres a lot of stuff in the house that needs to GO, and we really do need to re-arrange some things to all the furniture fits.

but for some reason, the most pressing thing in my mind is the linen closet. it does desperately need clearing out though, so this might end up being A Good Thing.

most people have a linen closet of some sort. a cupboard somewhere that is full of sheets and towels and table linens. ours is next to the bathroom, and since there is almost no cupboard space IN the bathroom, it also contains things like toilet paper, tissues, and feminine products.

it is a decent size, buuuuuuuuut only the middle panel is a door, which means theres a lot of stuff hidden around the corners thats hard to reach. and please ignore the colour.. my mother picked it out nearly 10 years ago. it will be re-painted (probably white) sometime in the hopefully not too distant future.

once the doors are opened however, we see that in this house, that decent size is NOT BIG ENOUGH. i come from a family of packrats. i turned 26 last year, and we still have terry-towel nappies (diapers) that my mother used ON ME WHEN I WAS BORN.

see that shelf of towels? remember what i said about there being more space either side of the door? ALSO PACKED FULL OF TOWELS. there are no sheets there. no tablecloths, no boxes of tissues, no more toilet paper (i stock up when its cheap. that toilet paper goes all the way to the edge wall). JUST TOWELS. it is an absolute nightmare trying to get anything out, or put anything in, or find the towels we need. some of those are probably 20 years old. some of them havent been used for at least 10 years. packrats, i tell you. as well as the big bath towels you can see, there are also teatowels and face cloths hidden in there. i can never find them. im not even sure what they look like anymore.

you may be thinking the top shelf looks comparatively empty. i cleared it out a while ago, and threw away, among other things, boxes of tampons bought in 1993. there is now nothing over a year old up there, and most of what IS up there is toilet paper and tissues, stocked up when cheap.

other than a hot water bottle and a blanket, im really not too sure whats on the bottom shelf. there are some more blankets, probably a doona or two, and possibly a tarp. i think there was some more hot water bottles? and since its my mothers house, sheets. i dread looking for things on the bottom shelf, because everything down there is so bulky. its nearly as hard to get anything out as the towel shelf, and harder to make them fit back in again.

and before someone wonders why we need so many blankets, let me assure you, THAT IS NOT ALL. we also have a blanket box that is so full it wont even close. and another blanket in my room because i cant find room for it anywhere else (although with the crazy weather the past week we've actually been using it), and 2-3 kid size blankets in the kid's room. oh and another doona or three in my mother's wardrobe. dont ask. i dont. it makes my head hurt.

again, you may be wondering at the relative emptiness of the next shelf up - where you can see yet another blanket, by the way - containing, as it does, only one layer of things. well i forgot to take a photo before i cleared out that shelf. i took everything out, and put back only tablecloths/napkins, one set of sheets, and the pillowcases that got washed without their matching sheets. then i shoved the cloth nappies in the corner while we waited for the new drawers/change table to be delivered. but do not fear!! for your eye-gouging pleasure, i took a photo of the pile of sheets that used to be in there, and are currently sitting in my mothers room, so i can ask her when she gets here on the weekend if she reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally needs them all, and which ones can be safely thrown away.

TADA!!!!!!

ALLLLLLLLLLL those sheets where on that one shelf. all of them. none came from the surrounding shelves. this is why i can never find anything. i discovered pillowcases my sister and i used before we were in bunk beds. which means they're at least 15 years old. i discovered sheets i'd never seen before. i found a fitted sheet im not even going to bother to ask about because the elastic disintegrated when i opened it to fold it neatly.

there are un-attached pillowcases. there's a queen sized doona cover with only 3 pillowcases. there are sheets so stained i wouldnt use them as an underlay. i understand the need for spare sheets. my bed has 3 sets - two lovely silky-feeling lightweight summer sets, and a totally ridiculously luxuriant 1000 thread count set that i got mega-super-cheap. the kid's bed has three sets (two simply wasnt enough when toilet training). the baby will have a few, because i know from experience that 2 is not enough for a baby. but there are at least 5 doona-cover sets in there, and only one bed with a doona. which has another set on it. there are also at least 3 single sheet sets, and no single beds in the house.

i dont have much energy these days, and i have a million other things to do besides my nesting-clearout, but i will be posting pictures of the progress as i finally get this mess sorted out.

wish me luck!!

even more you never needed to know about me

2009-01-17T20:27:00.004+11:00

well its taken me over a year to get another 100 posts, so i figure its time to bore everyone with useless information about myself again.

that and i was going to go to bed early but my hips are hurting and the baby is being uncomfortable so i figure i might as well stay in relative comfort (compared to the pain of lying in bed) on the reclining chair for as long as possible.

i learned german at school for 5 years.
ive forgotten most of it.
and yet i still occasionally use german words instead of english.
i always wanted to learn spanish, because my mother speaks it.
i also learned french, indonesian, latin, and mandarin for 8 weeks each - we took each of the 5 languages for 8 weeks, then picked which we wanted to continue with.
i have rather large feet.
my second toe is longer than my big toe.
i have very high arches.
i HATE wearing shoes. my feet are perpetually filthy because i only wear shoes if im 'out'. not outside the house, out as in somewhere else. i dont wear shoes outside unless its high bindii season, and i only wear shoes inside if im too tired to take them off.
i find it incredibly difficult to put on a pair of socks that ive already worn. i can wear worn clothes if necessary, but worn socks make me want to gag.
even if i only wore them for 5 minutes before taking them off, and didnt put shoes on.
i used to learn piano.
i never practiced.
the teacher said i played very well.
i wince when i hear people hit off notes while singing.
except my husband, because im used to it.
i sing very quietly, partly because i CANT sing loud, partly because i dont want to hear myself hitting off notes
i cant stand hearing recordings of my voice - talking or singing. i hate my accent, and dont think it sounds anything like me.
my voice is deeper than it sounds to me.
i am very, very pale. i mentioned this in the last list, but its worth mentioning again.
i can, in fact, get sunburned in the time it takes to hang out one load of wash.
i had a tan once. a recognisable tan that is. i was about 10, and we spent a month on the gold coast. i do actually have a tan at the moment, but you wouldnt believe me unless you saw how dark my arm is compared to my stomach, and you aint seeing my stomach.
speaking of stomachs, ive only developed ONE new stretch mark this time round. WOOOOOOOOO!! possibly this is because ive only gained about 12kg, instead of the 25 i gained last time - lots of which was swelling might i add. but still, WOOOOOOOOOOO!! (even though i started out a lot heavier than i did last time too.. shhhh.)
my skin heals so slowly however that the old ones are still very visible so it doesnt really matter.
at age 13, my hips were bigger than my mother's were in her 30s.
and i was skinny when i was 13.
i am built to carry children - strong legs, strong back, broad hips.
judging from the pain, my body forgot this after critter was born. i didnt have anywhere near this much pain last time round.
i have naturally very loose joints, so the joint-loosening-pregnancy-hormones wreak havoc on me.
after critter was born i couldnt lift anything without my wrists strapped for over a year.
i cant do pushups because my wrists are too weak to support me.
im working on strengthening them.
i did ballet for 11 years.
i had to have 6 months of half hour one-on-one lessons consisting of nothing but ankle strengthening exercises before they would let me go en pointe because my ankles were so weak.
if i sit on the floor with my legs stretched in front of me and straighten them as far as they will go - ie. backs of knees on the floor - my heels are about 3 inches in the air.
my arms bend in a similar way.
i can touch my thumb to my arm.
i can tuck my thumb behind my fingers.
i dont really think its that big a deal, but everyone else thinks its amazing.
i find it difficult to type when my nails are short because i can feel the keys too much.
i hate sensation on my fingertips, so i keep my nails long to protect them from feel.
i had my ear pierced at about 8. i think. id have to get my school photos out to be sure, and i cant be bothered.
i had my other ear pierced at 24.
i think the first one must have hit a nerve, because it made me throw up, and i dont remember it hurting that much.
my husband just sent me a text and made me near jump out of my skin.
i think i dont have the footrest on this chair up high enough.
because i can feel my ankles and toes beginning to swell.
but oddly, not my feet.
good golly my phone is loud!!!!!!
i have never broken a bone.
wait.. i have. my nose.
possibly more than once.
its a little crooked, very sensitive to touch, and sometimes a little hard to breathe through.
if i ever had plastic surgery, it would be to straighten my nose so i didnt have to breathe through my mouth.
my ears are at different heights.
very noticeable when i put glasses on and can see over the rim on the right lens, but not the left.
my eyelashes are long enough that i have to wear glasses far enough down my nose to be uncomfortable because otherwise my eyelashes brush the lenses and it feels creepy.
actually, if i look up, my eyelashes just about touch my eyebrows.
but then my eyebrows are pretty thick, so...
there is a lot of food i wont eat.
some of it is because of flavour, some is texture.
eg. i love the flavour of oranges, and drink orange juice everyday, but cannot eat oranges. the feeling in my mouth makes me gag. also if the juice is pulpy. only in the last year or two have i got to the point where i could eat mashed potatoes.. the feel put me off.
when i was 2, i reached onto the table and pulled my mother's bowl of soup off and spilled all down my front.
the skin bubbled and the hospital put me in gauze wrappings.
i have no visible scarring, but the skin where i was burned is a little less sensitive than elsewhere, and doesnt tan (although as previously mentioned, you'd hardly notice anyway).
i also cant eat soup.
i have had 4 stitches, not related to childbirth. (i dont know how many i had when i tore having the kid. i thought i counted about 30, hubby insists it was only 15. probably somewhere between. i needed three shots of anaesthetic to get them all, i know that.)
one just above my hairline, when i smashed my head on the corner of a windowsill after jumping on my parents bed and falling off at about 18 months old.
3 on the back of my knee, where a removed mole turned into a HUGE horrible purple scar and was removed, when i was about 6.
i dont go under very easily with general anaesthetic. when i had the scar on my leg removed, i didnt fall asleep until the operation was over, though i didnt feel it.
i get this from my father, who also doesnt zonk. my mother on the other hand doesnt wake up easily. first one in, last one out, and still groggy.
i have tea-stain birthmarks on my legs.
i have freckles on one shin, but not the other.
also my shoulders.
there is a tiny piece of oyster shell or gravel or something in my right foot.
the only pants i wear are pyjamas, and they all have eeyore on them.
i love eeyore. (the spellcheck wants to correct this to eyesore. that makes me giggle.)
i didnt have a boyfriend until i was 16 (rather unusual amongst my friends).
i regret him.
and the next two.
i met my husband a month or so before his 23rd birthday, and we started going out within a couple weeks.
that was nearly 6 years ago.
we moved in together when we'd been going out for 9 months.
a month later i got pregnant.
but we didnt realise (or were too scared to confirm it, take your pick) for 2 months.
positive pregnancy test 5 days before our 1 year anniversary, after a couple weeks of denial.
4 months later we got married and moved to australia. (BACK to australia for me, since im from here anyway.)
i do not recommend having a wedding (4+ hours drive away from home, with your mother- and brother-in-law in the SMALL CAR as well as yourself and husband, and hence no room to stretch), packing up a home, and moving halfway across the world at 6 months pregnant. the car ride was particularly not fun. MIL is a worrywort, BIL was a surly teenager, i was dead tired and had a baby playing soccer with my bladder, hubby was concentrating on driving and ignoring his mother at the same time, and we were in a ford focus. at least on the plane i could get up and go to the loo whenever i needed. there arent many places to stop and pee on the road from las vegas to lancaster CA.
i also do not recommend high blood pressure during pregnancy. not fun.
i do recommend chocolate.
and glace cherries.
and cheese.
not just while pregnant. these are good foods ALWAYS.
when i was 19 and tired of everything, i grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut my hair till it was about 2 inches long all over.
this is much recommended over other things i could have done with those scissors.
i much prefer having long hair, although it is currently refusing to get much longer than my shoulder blades.
when i was 10 i could nearly sit on my hair.
i cheat with the colour. its naturally a sort of goldish-light-brown-blond colour... every couple months i go to the hairdresser and make it more blond, though for a while there i was making it darker. or trying to.
i dyed it black once. needed 2 packets of dye, left in for an hour before the colour would stick, and it washed out in about 2 weeks. it was supposed to last for ages, but my hair doesnt accept dark very well. even done professionally at the hairdresser it fades to half strength in about 3 washes.
i will never dye my hair black again, because apart from not being worth the trouble, my husband prefers my hair light, and i would do anything to make him happy.

attack of the dumb

2009-01-17T18:06:00.001+11:00

my son has been suddenly rendered stupid, and i dont know why.

i dont know if he's just Being Four, if he's tired, or if theres something wrong with him that makes him incapable of thinking after about 4:30pm.

he's a smart boy. he knows left from right, can whistle in tune, he can read his alphabet, knows the associated sounds with most of the letters (although hes been doing weird things there lately too), and can read any number under 100. he's constantly telling me how much things cost when we're at the shops. and yet, today, its all flying out the window.

for a start he's insisting on reading everything from right to left, and upon being told to read from the left, he asked which way that was. i stared at him until he stopped being silly. then he insisted that the number 4-0 is one he doesnt know. he knows every other number except that one. it took 5 minutes to get him to call it 'forty-oh' and upon being told theres no such number, silly person, he looked at me as if ive grown another head. we then had a conversation like this:

me: forty-oh isnt a number. listen to the other numbers. if 2-0 is twenty, and 3-0 is thirty, and 5-0 is fifty, what is 4-0?
critter: um.... forty-oh.
me: no. you arent listening. if 3-0 is thirty, and 5-0 is fifty, what is 4-0?
critter: forty-oh?
me: no. go to your bedroom and sit down and think about it, and then come and tell me what number 4-0 is. (because at this point, after a day of him refusing to be more than 2 feet away from me at any given moment, including getting up and running after me and trying to open the door when i was ON THE TOILET to find out what i was doing; and telling me every 2.8 seconds to LOOK AT ME when im already watching him; and mummy? mummy. mummy. muuuuuuuummy. mummy? MUMMY!!!!! muuuuuuuummyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, im ready to scream, and quite frankly 5 minutes of him being elsewhere will stop all sorts of things from happening)
critter: I DONT WANT TO!! (as he's running to his room)

this continued for another ten minutes or so, with him intermittently coming out and telling me that he doesnt know any numbers, and me telling him to go back to his room and think.

eventually it got to the point where i couldnt take it any more.

me: what number is 3-0?
critter: thirty
me: SO WHAT NUMBER IS 4-0!!!
critter: forty (looking at me as if he's been telling me that the whole time)

he is so lucky. i was on the verge of shutting all the doors and going to bed, leaving him to fend for himself till daddy gets home at about midnight.

ants in my pants

2009-01-16T14:26:00.003+11:00

or wasps in my garden to be more precise. i havent been able to go out back to hang out the laundry for about a week, and ITS PERFECT DRYING WEATHER.

my son has been cooped up inside, because he likes to play right under where the nest is, and he isnt interested in playing in the front yard.

we changed dinner plans because my husband didnt want to risk BBQing with the wasps out there.

after locking the cat inside, and grabing all the cleaning rags i could find and blocking up the inch wide gap between the laundry door and the wall, and finding an old towel to stuff in the 3 inch gap under the door, and manouvering the Box-Of-Heavy in front of the hole in the door where the cat ripped the dog door out of it (my cat is about 9kg - 20lb - of pure muscle. he wouldnt fit through a cat flap, and the dog flap wasnt sturdy enough to contain him... he moved the Box Of Heavy on a regular basis until we put an extra 10kg on it), hubby sprayed the nest with roundup (we had no bug spray and figured weed killer would probably be toxic enough) and sprinted back into the house, and then when it got dark he smashed it and sprinted back into the house, but evidently some survived, because its being rebuilt.

im feeling antsy. the fact that i CANT go outside makes me want to. i want to just go out there and sit and read. or lie on the trampoline... not that id be able to get onto it at the moment anyway.

these wasps are nasty little rotters too. about 15 years ago my sister was outside jumping on the trampoline (different trampoline. it disintegrated a few years back and we bought a new one for critter) and suddenly she started screaming. there was a wasps nest around the side of the house, FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR away from the trampoline, but one had wandered to the back fence where the trampoline was, flew up the sleeve of her t-shirt and stung her under the arm at least 5 times. i am not letting my son go out there and play less than 2 feet from the nest, if thats what they do at 65 feet...

at least we have working air conditioning now so i can keep it cool in the house.

a rose by any other name...

2009-01-13T09:35:00.003+11:00

my son, critterbug, knows mummy and daddy's names. occasionally he calls us by them, which results in hard looks. and usually confuses me for a couple seconds, since i am almost never called by my name.

my husband almost never calls me by name. i get 'love', 'honey', 'babe', 'sweetheart', 'darling', anything like that. 'sarah' is usually (recently) if he hears a bang and thinks ive fallen over, or in a fit of exasperation because i havent heard him calling/talking to me. or when ive called him by name in a fit of exasperation, and he retaliates. because i dont call him by name either. not to his face. talking about him to other people i will, but talking TO him... no. its weird.

but not because his name doesnt fit him. it does. when i look at him, i dont think he has the wrong name. some people dont seem to fit their names. you meet someone called george and just go 'no... you should be alex'. i never thought i should be sarah. playing make believe as a child, i always renamed myself emma. i still sometimes think my mum gave me the wrong name - i was named after my great-grandmother, sarah emma. something i didnt know when i wanted to be emma.

critterbug's name fits him, too. both critter, which we do actually call him, and his real name. one of the first things we did when we found out we were going to have him (after a few weeks of numb 'i must be dreaming, because this is an absolute nightmare' and terror, followed by terror of a different sort when i thought i might be miscarrying), was to buy a baby name book. we went through it and picked out the names we liked, and settled on a girl's name and a boy's name, since we werent going to find out what the baby was till it was born.

we found out we were pregnant in february, the due date was september, and the names were picked sometime before june. i know that, because we moved to australia in june, and the names were picked long before then.

this time... we still really like the girl's name we didnt get to use, and are keeping that. we've decided to use family names (as in names from family members, not surnames/last names) as middle names, so where critter gets 'lee', from hubby's father's middle name, the girl's name gets 'jacqueline', my paternal grandmother's middle name. even though my cousin already used it on his baby. WE HAD IT PICKED OUT FIRST!!! ahem. anyway.

the problem we're coming up against is boy's names. like i said, we had critter's names picked by the time i was 6 months, and weve been holding onto a girl's name for the past 4.5 years, but at 8 months, we still cannot come to a conclusion on boy's names. keeping with the family thing, the middle name will be 'dan' or 'daniel', after my maternal grandfather, depending on which fits with the first name better... but thats where we hit a dilemma. we have 4 names we like, and none of them are jumping out at us. ive always liked 1, but hubby insists he will call the baby by a nickname i cant stand if we pick that. im not sure if hes joking or not. we both like 2, but neither of us like the inevitable aussie shortening, which WILL happen. again, we both like 3, but dont like where everyones mind jumps at the mention of it. (nothing dirty!! just the inevitable 'oh.. from XYZ-movie??') he originally picked out 4, and i was skeptical. the more i think about it, the more i like it, but now he isnt sure if he still likes it, and insists he was joking when he picked it. he says he likes it, but its too oldfashioned.

we are doomed, and the baby, if male, will be 'spaceghost' on its birth certificate, im sure.

thoughts are running round my head too fast

2009-01-05T20:31:00.004+11:00

ive been sitting here watching my stomach jump and bounce and jerk around for the past hour or so, as my husband watches top gear on the TV. i dont know why (maybe it likes stir fry?) but the baby has been excessively bouncy this evening. and it is all on the right side of my stomach.

seriously.

i feels like theres a bowling ball in my stomach, but only on the right. the left side is all squishy and empty. there is no baby there. its actually rather uncomfortable, and i wish it would move. i mean.. it IS moving, rather excessively, actually, but i wish it would move out of the way.

at this stage with my critterbug, i was incredibly uncomfortable, and very swollen. but i dont think i was in as much pain as i am this time round. i dont remember my back being this bad (after we put planks under the mattress - 40yr old cast iron bed with springs as support is NOT good support), and i dont remember my hips being so sore. ive put on a lot less weight this time round - 10kg so far, about 25 with critter, although i lost 11 in the week after he was born, since a lot of it was me being swollen - and ive been a lot less sick, with morning sickness subsiding after about 3-4 months, instead of continuing, albeit rather mildly, the whole way through.

being so close to babytime, im beginning to wonder what else is going to be different, or similar. will labour feel like hours of excessive period pain again, with no discernible worsening and lessening? (seriously.. i want to know what contractions are supposed to feel like, because i was just in pain the whole time till the baby popped out. i have no idea how to time something that doesnt give you any indication its happening.)

will i tear again? will i hemorrhage again? will anything go wrong, and will i experience a c-section?

will spaceghost be bigger, or smaller than critter? will it stare at me the way critter did? will it be as squeaky?

will i have the same troubles breastfeeding? will i be afraid to bathe it for the first few months again? will i sink so low i dont care when it cries? will i need medication again? will i notice?

will i remember enough to know when 'dry skin' is actually 'eczema'? will i notice allergy signs? will i finally figure out the 'different cries'?

WILL I REMEMBER HOW TO FOLD A NAPPY?????????

why did i sign up for another one?

2009-01-05T08:37:00.003+11:00

things are not so cheery in the house of kaeus right now. the critter has always been strong. both physically (pushed himself up on his arms to look around the room less than an hour after birth. the midwife was surprised), and strong willed. lately the strong willed part has become... excessive. he will not do a single thing he is asked/told, and resists any and every form of discipline, right down to "look at me when im talking to you please."

and its driving me insane.

he has a pair of sunglasses. he's not allowed to wear them inside the house. he went and grabbed them a few minutes ago and sat down to watch TV with them on. i asked him to take them off please and give them to me, because we dont wear sunglasses in the house. he took them off, and put them next to him on the couch. so i asked for them again. he looked at me and grinned. i stood up to turn off the TV and he started shouting NO!! NOOOOOOOOO!! and nearly threw them at me trying to stop me from turning off the TV. and after i got it turned off, he turned it on again. discipline ensued. so did screaming. im sure the neighbours think im a child abuser the way he screams if i so much as take a toy out of his hand.

and it happens all the time.

it started getting more frequent a couple months back, and its got to the point that he is being sent to his room at least once a day, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

every child has off days. every child has off moments on good days. every child has tantrums when they get over tired/over stimulated.

not every child has them every single day, only an hour after waking up.

not every child has to be taken out of church because they wont stop swinging a rope around their head, and tries to hit their mother and take the rope back when it is taken away in an effort to get the child to calm down.

not every child... right? tell me it wont necessarily happen again when spaceghost is 4. tell me this is a phase.. that its hormonal.. that despite his apparent enthusiasm, he's acting up out of jealousy over the as-yet-unborn-new-baby.. that he will go back to only occasional tantrums and be generally sweet natured again.. because i really dont want one of Those children.

blahdiblah

2009-01-04T21:29:00.003+11:00

ive been feeling spectacularly BLAH recently. so much so that i cant really think straight. partly this is caused by the dreaded baby-brain (anywhere from 4-8 weeks left. i refuse to let it come before 38 weeks), partly its the heat. I DONT LIKE THE HEAT. and the baby is making it all worse.

i lie in bed at night, all the sheets tossed off, wondering if i should go get some ice cubes to cool myself off, and hubby is curled up tightly next to me, sheet AND blanket pulled up to his neck, COLD.

this morning, he was wondering whether he ought to put on long pants instead of shorts, and i was wondering if i should take a fan with me to church, or whether i should just stay home and sit in a bathtub full of icecubes for a few hours.

we have an airconditioner in the house, but i feel bad using it when he's obviously cold - if it was actually hot id be fine, but evidently my heat regulating abilities are going wildly haywire.

and it wont be helped much by going to bed with 6 pillows tonight in an effort to keep my feet up and the swelling down.

only a few more weeks to go, and ill be so distracted by the little screaming wriggler i wont even notice.

only a few more weeks.

husband-unit

2008-12-23T19:22:00.004+11:00

seen this a couple places and since im totally lacking in motivation right now, here we go.

1. He’s sitting in front of the TV: what is on the screen?

anything. probably news, or some scifi show like babylon 5.

2. You’re out to eat. What kind of dressing does he get on his salad?

honey-mustard.

3. What is one food he doesn’t like?

pasta. lasagna counts as pasta, macaroni does not.

4. You go out to the bar. What does he order?

some sort of beer. little creatures or hoegarden probably.

5. Where did he go to high school?

somewhere in the mojave desert in california.

6. What size shoe does he wear?

um... 10 i think. same as me. possibly he wears a 10 1/2?

7. If he was to collect anything, what would it be?

swords.

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich?

um... i dont know. ham/turkey/cheese/lettuce, or peanutbutter and jam, probably.

9. What would the Husband eat every day if he could?

oatmeal raisin cookies. i made some the other day. he asked me not to make any more because he eats them too fast and hes trying to lose weight.

10. What is his favorite cereal?

muesli. how boring is he?

11. What would he never wear?

pink. ive tried. he has worn a dress and makeup (and a very long wig) for halloween, and he let me put lots of little butterfly clips in his hair, but he wont wear pink.

12. What is his favorite sports team?

um.. i think the swannies. YAY!!! we'll make an aussie of him yet!

13. Who is his best friend?

hopefully me? but since i dont think it meant spouses, id say this one girl he's known since they were 12 or something. the only woman i know isnt a threat when he says 'i love you' to her.

14. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn’t do?

tear my toenails off instead of clipping them. he doesnt mind the talking in my sleep though.. he thinks thats funny.

15. How many states has he lived in?

in australia? one. in the USA? three i think. and england also.

16. What is his heritage?

english (mother) and italian (father) mostly. also a little french i think. on both sides. he just looks italian though. my wog boy.

17. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind?

white chocolate cheesecake with raspberry goo on top.

18. Did he play sports in high school?

yes.. american football and basketball i believe.

19. What could he spend hours doing?

video games. internet. gardening. BBQ.

so thats the husband unit.

thats what i like to hear

2008-12-21T20:50:00.001+11:00

conversation this morning with the kid, while i wsa in the shower:

"mummy, are we going shopping today?"

"no sweetheart, we're going to go to church."

"CHURCH???????????? WOOHOO!!!!! yippee!!!!!!!!!"

and then he skipped out of the room whooping and clapping.

enthusiastic much?

blah.

2008-12-15T17:05:00.004+11:00

lack of motivation overwhelming.

think ive got all the christmas presents sorted.

why is the kid not sleeping?

sun far too bright.

renal ultrasound on critter came back normal. no problems with my boy. yay.

do not want to do dishes.

forgot to hang out wash.

cant think of how to cook the chicken for dinner. probably go with honey soy..

blah.

its that time of year again

2008-12-10T08:41:00.002+11:00

i need to make an appointment with my hairdresser. ive been putting it off. i cant just let my hair go raggedy for ever, but im dreading seeing her again. because its nearly christmas.

i havent been feeling so great the past few weeks. ive been snapping at people a lot, and ive been having trouble sleeping. i feel sad for no reason, and i just lack the motivation to DO anything. i was wondering if post natal depression had kicked in early, and then i realised. its nearly christmas.

christmas ahs always been a time of anticipation and excitement for me. the one time of year i WANT to get up a little earlier than usual, so the day lasts longer. seeing peoples faces as they unwrap the presents ive found for them. seeing their faces when THEY see how much i enjoy the presents theyve got for me. the beautiful heart-lifting christmas church service. TURKEY DINNER (i love turkey. id eat it all year). seeing family happy and joyful (for the most part) and the usually less antagonism than other get-togethers. and recently, my son, my little critterbug, so caught up in the excitement of things he doesnt quite understand yet, and the amazing crash and burn afterwards.

until last year. last year was a struggle. i dont remember much of christmas day. a few snippets of getting presents, and i think i managed to spill gravy on my clean white skirt.. the rest is a blur. there was something missing last year, and its still missing now. the addition of my giant belly is helping fill the void, but there will be a gap in my christmas for ever, i think. smaller each year perhaps, but there none the less.

last april i lost a baby. it would have been due around christmas day. last year, the baby was all i could think about. even when we painted critterbug's room that september, the excitement so evident in him (his own blue room! that he painted! and a BED!! with PIRATES ON THE SHEETS!!!!!!!!) wasnt enough to drown out the little voice in my head reminding me that there should have been a space left in the room for a cot, and a new set of drawers slowly being filled with baby clothes, waiting for december and the new baby.

and to top it all off, my hairdresser's first child was born last december. within a week or so of when i suspect i was due. every time i saw her, glowing and smiling and expanding, my heart broke a little. i was so happy for her, and so sad for me. and i was so angry at God. she hadnt wanted the baby, didnt think she was ready yet. she was taking precautions. she had even taken the morning after pill, and the baby had still stuck. why hadnt mine? what had gone wrong? why did she get to have a baby, and i only got to loose one?

im not so angry anymore, although it still hurts. if i had had that baby, i wouldnt be having this one. i would still be feeding the baby, and my baby-making-abilities last time didnt kick back in until the kid was about 15 months old (that surprised the doctor) - three months after he stopped feeding. theres also my husband. the chances of him agreeing to a third are very very slim. (not that he really agreed to this one. we have a habit of accidental conception.)

but seeing my hairdresser still hurts. seeing photos of her son, how big he is, how much hes growing. all the things i didnt get to see with mine. and seeing her now is going to be very difficult. her son turns one soon. mine would be having a birthday soon too. there should be extra presents under the tree in the other room. there should be extra time management needed to actually get my hair done.

its not as hard as last year. and next year will be easier again. spaceghost will be taking up most of my attention, i'm sure. and the year after that, there will be something else to fill a little of the gap.

but christmas will always be a little empty. now i really need those christmas day services i love so much.

because im booooooooooooooooooooored

2008-12-05T16:39:00.005+11:00

survey a friend posted on myspace. some of the questions made me giggle, so heres my answers.

1. if your doctor told you TODAY that you were pregnant, what would you say?
no... really????? so... thats why i keep feeling this little person inside me moving??????

2. Do you trust all of your friends?
to different degrees.

3. Would you move to another state or country to be with the one you love?
he did for me, and i was willing to STAY overseas to be with him... yes. if he wanted to move, i would follow him anywhere.

4. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?
yes, but we dont necessarily know what the reason is, and might never know.

5. Can you make a dollar in change right now?
i can make 20.

6. Which one of your friends do you think would make the best doctor?
the one whos nearly finished becoming a doctor

7. Are you afraid of falling in love?
im already in love. im afraid of falling OUT.

8. Is there someone who pops into your mind at random times?
no, not really

9. Whats your most favorite scar?
uh... what? i guess the one on my head that makes my hair grow oddly...

10. When was the last time you flew in a plane?
few weeks back, when i went to adelaide to visit my mummy.

11. What did the last text message you sent say?
something about being sorry for the bad day hubby was having, and how much i love him. im very very sad.

12. What features do you find most attractive in the preferred sex?
'the preferred sex' you mean blokes? intelligence. i cant stand idiots.

14. Fill in the blank:

I love: my family

15. What is a goal you would like to accomplish in the near future?
keep this baby in for the next 2 months

16. If you were to wake up from being in a coma for an extended time who would you call?
if he wasnt sitting next to me, my hubby.

17. How many kids do you want to have?
more than hubby will let me, which is probably good for my mental health.

18. Would you make a good parent?
well i hope i AM a good parent. the kid seems to think i am..

19. Where was your default picture taken?
doesnt count here. no picture.

20. Whats your middle name?
my grandmother's first name. im not telling you what it is.

21. Honestly, whats on your mind right now?
how can he have SO MUCH energy, and why does my leg hurt.. am i really hungry? i just ate. my nails need cutting.

22. If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?
mostly things to do with ex boyfriends. you dont need details.

23. Who was or will be the maid of honor/ best man in your wedding?
hubby's two best friends were. if we ever get round to doing the fancy church thing, im guessing my sister, and i dont know who hubby's best man would be.

24. What are you wearing right now?
so glad i didnt do this when i was eating breakfast.. um.. a linen skirt, and a tshirt that im very glad still fits. yay for knits! also the requisite underwear, a hair elastic, a necklace, but not my rings :(

25. Righty or Lefty?
righty

26. Best place to eat?
la botte d'oro. my absolute favourite restaurant, been going there for about 20 years or so. LOVE it. or on the couch with my family. its a toss-up.

27. Favorite jeans?
i no longer wear jeans, but most of mine came from jeans west, because other brands just dont fit right.

28. Favorite animal?
can i say my husband? never mind. cat.

29. Favorite juice?
toss up between apple&blackcurrant, and orange. i love them both.

30. Have you had the chicken pox?
yes. i was either 2 or 3, and it was just after christmas.

31. Have you had a sore throat?
i had such a bad sore throat i didnt eat and hardly drank for a week. i lost 5kg (11lb). have also had tonsillitis.

32. Ever had a bar fight?
i dont drink, and am rarely in bars. the worst fight ive ever had fullstop is when i hit my sister after she wouldnt stop telling me how bad a mother i was. because stopping your not-yet-walking-baby from falling out the door face first onto a concrete step by hooking your foot under him and pulling him back to safety constitutes kicking the baby.

33. Who knows you the best?
hubby.

34. Shoe size?
10

35. Do you wear contact lenses or glasses?
used to have reading glasses, might need distance glasses now.. but they want to recheck my eyes when bublet is about 6months to see if they correct themselves - ie my blurry eyesight may be pregnancy related.

36. Ever been in a fight with your pet?
the cat is crazy. i have been damaged by him, yes.

37. Been to Mexico?
no

38. Did you buy something today?
no

39. Did you get sick today?
no

40. Do you miss someone today?
no

41. Did you get in a fight with someone today?
ive had an argument with my son, trying to get him to sit still and eat instead of bouncing all over his chair and the ground and kicking his table and rolling around like a lunatic..... does that count?

42. When is the last time you had a massage?
i have NO idea.

43. Last person to lay in your bed?
me. i was still asleep long after hubby got up to go for a run this morning.

44. Last person to see you cry?
hubby. he had a bad day, i said the wrong thing, he snapped at me, pregnancy hormones make me cry at everything.

45. What was the last TV show you watched?
in the night garden. shudder.

46. What are your plans for the weekend?
house cleaning, and putting up the christmas tree. and possibly christmas shopping. and i think hubby might be doing some gardening, depending on the weather. and also i need to wash the sheets if its not raining.

47. Who do you think will repost this?
uh.. no-one?

48. Who was the last person you hung out with?
critterbug.

49. If your significant other asked you to marry them TODAY what would you say?
id ask him if he'd lost his memory, since weve been married for nearly 4.5 years.....

buying stuff, and stuff

2008-12-05T13:30:00.002+11:00

the christmas presents dilemma is beginning to overwhelm me. i have a couple things for hubby (what do you get for a guy who goes out and buys the ONLY thing you thought he wanted?) and im sure theres a bunch of stuff scattered around the house for the kid. we got something for my sister, and mum has given us a suggestion for her - the same perfume we buy her every year. boring, predictable, but at least its something she needs. the big dilemma is my dad, and still hubby.

dad well... this one is really tricky. for two reasons. 1) he's jewish, and therefor doesnt celebrate christmas, but i know he's going to get us something, so if i dont get him anything, i feel horrid. 2) WHAT DO I GET HIM???????? im NOT getting him another harmonica. he has a million of the things and they all sound awful. and i cant think of anything else. UGH.

hubby well.. ive got him a couple movies, and a book... and i dont know what else to do. do i need to do anything else? if it was just me, id say it was fine, but this is stuff from me, critter, and the as-yet-unborn-spaceghost (because it was just too brilliant to pass up). which makes it seem like really nothing at all. and i dont know what else to get him. UGH. cant get him a nice watch, because he was given one by dad a couple months back, and isnt really a watch person, so having 2 would be pointless. i dont want to get him nice clothes, because he's steadily losing weight and i dont want to get him something that he wont be able to wear soon. seriously.. all his clothes are currently falling off.. hmm.. maybe i should get him a nice belt? but thats so BORING.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

having the baby steadily suck all my brains out isnt helping any, either.

they grow up too fast

2008-12-05T10:02:00.004+11:00

my son turned 4 in september. and already, he hardly needs me at all.

he can:

brush his own teeth
wipe after using the toilet (YAY. one of my least favourite jobs)
use the toilet on his own
wash his hands WITH SOAP on his own
climb into, and out of, the bathtub ON HIS OWN
change the channel on the tv
load the dvd player
put away cutlery and crockery (except knives)
wash dishes
put away his clothes
get dressed (including socks and shoes)
draw a spaceship
draw an elevator (!!!!)
beat me at bowling on the nintendo wii
race daddy in driving games on the wii
write his own name
recognise all letters, and the sounds that go with most of them
almost read basic words like cat and dog (he read 'stop' a few weeks back, but then regressed)
read numbers up to 99. he constantly tells me how much things at the shops cost - with 100% accuracy

he hardly needs me at all.

i cook his food and pour his drinks, but he grows like a weed and soon he'll be tall enough and strong enough that he'll be able to get his own drinks and find food in the fridge if he's hungry.
i wash his clothes, but he knows what buttons to push to start the machine, so he really only needs me to put the laundry powder in, get the clothes out of the machine, and hang them up - hes not that tall yet. if we had a front loader, he'd only need me for the laundry powder, which is stored about 6 feet up, because he can hang things on the rack inside.
i turn on the taps for his bath, because he hasnt figured out how to balance the heat yet.
i change the sheets on his bed, but hes getting pretty good at that, only the corners give him trouble.
i push the start button on the dvd remote, but he'll figure that out soon enough and he wont need me at all.

except when he wakes up in the middle of the night in tears because of a dream he cant remember, and nothing will comfort him except for mummy's cuddles.

i fail.

2008-12-05T09:53:00.001+11:00

usually i can cook. pretty well. at least, my husband likes my food.

but im not my mother.

the ultimate bob the builder

2008-12-04T11:24:00.003+11:00

when barack obama won the US presidential election, a lot of my friends on facebook made comments about america being run by bob the builder. i didnt realise obama had been using bob's catch-phrase, but what disturbed me was that some people left comments to the effect of 'who?' not knowing who bob the builder was. i have a four year old son. i will never have that problem.

ive been thinking recently though, that before obama stole bob's catch-phrase, bob stole it from someone else.

sometimes things happen in our lives that we cannot comprehend. we cant understand the reason behind it. sometimes things go so wrong that we cant even begin to imagine how to put things straight.

but there is one who can, if we ask.

our lives dont always go according to plan. our plan that is. i didnt plan on being pregnant before i was 22, unmarried and half a world away from my family. to be honest, i didnt plan on being pregnant at all. ever. i looked at my life, at all the problems i had, at how i dealt with things, and decided i wasnt cut out to be a mother. i didnt want to inflict my insecurities and issues on some poor sweet little person who would look to me for everything. so i decided never to marry. someone had other plans for me.

someone knew exactly how my life would play out, before i was born. before my parents were born. before this world came into existence. someone knows what will happen to me in ten minutes, an hour, a week, a year, a decade... someone knows exactly what will happen to me and around me, for ever.

it might not be what i want, it might not necessarily be what He wants (sex before marriage = bad. still happened, and He knew it would), but it is what He knows. and when things go wrong in my life, when i am suffering, and scared, and dont know what to do, there is someone who does.

if there is one thing in this life that i am absolutely certain of, it is that when everything is broken and in my life is in pieces, there is someone i can call out to, who knows all my pain, and sorrow, and all my joy and gladness too. someone who is great beyond all reasoning, and who knows exactly how to set things straight.

can He fix it? yes, He can.