There’s nothing special about tonight, except perhaps all of the above apply. This week is kicking my butt even more spectacularly. Husband in Sydney, School holidays, and kids all sick. Monday night I had a miserable Niamh in bed with me with a suspected ear infection (though she did seem okay by morning, after medication and a night with Mum). Last night was Ro’s turn in with me, and tonight, well… he’s currently napping fitfully on my lap (one-handed blogging, y’all!) and won’t go down in any bed. This is after the excitement of a few hours ago when his big brother coughed until he vomited. Awesome times.

Blah. Let’s have a little recap on some of the good stuff that’s happened since I was last here, shall we? Good then. Point form ahoy:

We moved the babe out of our bedroom and in with his sister. This was monumental. And, of course, led to him finally, finally sleeping through the night. I should have remembered that from last time, really. Ok, so I did remember. I was just really reluctant to boot my baby out. So the sleepless nights – all my fault. Obviously. Next!

My blog turned five. FIVE! That’s a really long time to be saying nothing much at all. Less than 400 posts total… gosh, I really am a crap blogger! (But really… I have got to say, blogging was way less pressure back in the days. Now… I don’t know. Every now and then, I see a favourite blog go ‘pro’. Or ‘pro-ish’. Suddenly there’s Sponsorship. And Product Placement. Cash for Comment. Or competitions to enter, but only if you ‘Follow’, and Twitter and Facebook about it. Often, the original, entertaining, unique voice of said blogger is lost amongst it all. At which point I mercilessly drop them from my feed.) Ok, sorry. Rant over.

My best girl turned four. Way, way more exciting than the blog turning five. Niamh is such a party girl, she always has been. We had pretend party play for weeks around these parts. Culminating in a totally fun, but also totally soggy pink-and-green party at the Bundoora Children’s Farm. Kids don’t care. Rug ‘em up, they’ll have fun no matter what. And we did.

I am quite bad at point form-ing my thoughts!

Someone introduced me to the Sookie Stackhouse series. Thanks, Someone I read the books almost without coming up for air (don’t worry, I still managed to clothe and feed my children. Just.) Then I went out and bought Series One of True Blood on DVD, and we watched that over a week, then rinse and repeat with Series Two. Totally loving it. Series Three, of course, isn’t on in Australia yet, so we’ll be (cough, cough) waiting for that for a while.

After 44 months of breastfeeding, I finally closed up shop. (That’s non-consecutive months, obviously. I meant the total for all three children). I truly thought that would be harder for both Rohan and I than it was, but I just knew time was up, and we just… stopped. Now he goes to bed with cuddles and a few sips of water, and even (sometimes) for Dad, not me. Another monumental step. (And I just realised I can burn my maternity bras now. Or, you know, just bin them. Probably more environmentally friendly that way.)

There’s probably more good stuff. Just can’t quite drag it out of the brain cells right now. Between up there ^^^ and here, I managed to get Ro back into his bed, and the clock ticked over to Thursday… Must. Go. To. Bed.

Oh, but before I do, I also managed to get a few crafty bits and pieces in:

I finally finished off the doll stroller seat for my friend’s little girl:

Seen being test-driven here by our recently arrived good friend Gracie, another Bamboletta sweetheart to keep Molly company.

Also, I joined in with Sooz’s Useful swap. My original plan involved crochet, but then I stupidly managed to sprain my crucial-for-crochet-right-index-finger. So since yarny stuff was out, I broke out the fabric instead. This is only a peek, mind you, but I’m hoping the recipients love these – I certainly do, and I intend to make myself one or two now.

Once my finger began to recuperate, I started back on those tricksy DPNs (to help the recovery, you understand!):

And emerged victorious, with a smashing pair of red fingerless mitts to bring some happy to the coldcoldcold mornings we’ve been having.

Ravelry details over here if you are so inclined. I love my mitts

And, folks, as Peter Cundall used to say, that’s yer bloomin’ lot.

Long-time (long-suffering) readers may remember I did something similar back in the days (good grief, have I really been blogging so long? How can one person say so little for so long?). I did struggle some days, I’ll admit. Perhaps the inspirational Ideas Hub over at badskirt could come in handy this month!

Edit: Hmmmm, nope, not yet. What the heck is going on, I wonder?

Edit again: Nevermind, they eventually both came through. Wonders of technology!

Still feeling totally inspired by the handmade issue of mankind mag from my favourite design blog.
Q What is the blog author’s first name? ANSWER: Erin
use the first letter – LETTER: E

We like to keep lunch casual, I’ve found some fabulous BBQ recipes for the big day.
Q What type of meat is pictured on the rotisserie? ANSWER: Lamb
use the first letter – LETTER: L

Getting some great ideas for upcycling (my favourite craft) & enjoying the revamp over at this fabulous craft website.
Q They list everyone’s favourite mama as one of their inspirational sites. Which mama is she? ANSWER: Soulemama
use the second letter – LETTER: O

Looking forward to being able to buy handmade at the shopping shindig with the craft book Queen.
Q What type of car is pictured? ANSWER: Volkswagon Beetle
use the first letter – LETTER: V

All these letters unscramble to reveal: WHAT? is all you need.

LOVE (is all you need)

(Well… Love and chocolate, anyway! -Mel)

Geez, I hope I got the time right. My version of WordPress is a wee bit confused about Daylight Savings time, and I’ve never quite got around to fixing it.

The last two weeks, and most especially, the last three days, have been shit. (I’m not going to apologise for the language, because you know what, I’m done apologising for now). I shouldn’t and won’t bring dirty family laundry to the blog, but sometimes, I’m acutely aware that the distance between my siblings and I is not purely geographical.

I’m tired. Weary. Over the drama.

But most of all. I’m wishing that I hadn’t spent the last 24 hours Googling ‘slapped cheek disease’ and ‘pregnancy’.

(And yes… you may now feel free to draw conclusions – the whole world seems to be finding out by accident anyway)

I think I might need a hug.

By some odd chance of fate (the strangest coincidences keep happening to me lately – something in the air?), this lovely lady asked me yesterday how long I had been blogging. It occurred to me later that my ‘bloggiversary’ (cripes I hate that word!) must be sometime around now, and lo and behold, May 28 is it. Yep, I’ve been rabbiting on for lo these 36 months now. So Happy Birthday blog!

Now like all good crafty bloggers, I’m giving the birthday gifty to you Readers-slash-commenters bring the life to a blog, and I am so grateful to those of you who have hung around, especially over the last angst-ridden, sparsely-updated twelve months or so. Niamh and I have assembled this pretty little palette of Sugarlemon hand-dyed embroidery floss. All you need to do is delurk, tell me I’m Ace (or not!), and one random person scoops the lot.

Also, we made Birthday Scroggin. I can’t guarantee there’ll be any of that left when the time comes to send off the floss though

(Actually, the Scroggin has nothing to do with the bloggiversary, but it is very festive, don’t you think? Inspired by an old Kiddley post. Yum).

(Oh yes, and smilies still not fixed. Gosh I’m lazy!)

All of the archives from Million Stitches are here, and I’ve been through and repaired all broken image links (I think!) A few posts have been password protected, and except for the last few months worth of posts, comments and trackbacks are closed. You can always email me though

I wish I had more to share, but it’s the end of a rough old week. Off to get some family time in. See you soon.

I may be some time – I’m manually going through all of my archives, making sure all of the images are in the one spot, and not lost in the giant ether somewhere, among other little tidying-up chores. I’ve been blogging since May of 2005, and so far I’m only up to March 2006! It is starting to move along a little bit quicker now though, mostly because sometime around then I got a bit more organized with my image categorization.

Meanwhile, in the non-virtual world, I’m battling an unpleasant post-viral sinus infection, which is making me all kinds of grumpy, so the two-week school holidays have been a bit of a bummer. Still, we’ve managed a little bit of this and that – some catching up with friends, a visit to ‘Circus Ringbarkus’, and a wee bit of home crafting, and there are still a few days left yet, so it’s not all a dead loss.

Anyway, hang about, amuse yourselves, I’ll be back soon (I hope) in my new digs.

So Blogger have made that switch to OpenID support that I was talking about. For any of those of you on WordPress.com or Typepad (or LiveJournal or AOL/AIM) you can now use your identity from those platforms.

Alternatively, if you have a self-hosted blog, Simon Willison has easy to follow instructions to get yourself an OpenID which points at your own domain. So now, any comments I make on Blogger blogs will point back to my blog once more. Happy happy joy joy.

(Still can’t see the point of the ‘Nickname’, by the way. Since, essentially, it’s the same as Anonymous, why not get rid of the ‘Anon’ field. Surely commenters can just type ‘Anon’ in the space for a ‘Nickname’ if they don’t want to leave any identifying information?)

Edit: Oh *now* the official Blogger blog is talking. This exerpt particularly amuses me: “Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we’re strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.” Hmmmm.