Category Archives: General Ramblings

Birthday Bling

Posted on October 11, 2006 | 5 comments

Heh. I typed the title quickly and it came out Birthday Blong. That sounds kind of less appealing :giggle:

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. Yes, it’s true. I am now ‘in my thirties‘. Do you know, I think that sounds much older than just ‘30‘! I still feel like a babe in the woods (though I must say I think the last four months have aged me a bit).

What I wanted for my birthday: a night’s sleep and a day off. Hahahahaha. Niamh decided to wish me Happy Birthday at 11.45pm, 2.15am, 4.15am and 6.15am. Such a darling.

Here’s what I did score instead:

I must confess, I picked this out. That’s the only way to get exactly what you want, after all! Note it feeds my dragonfly habit :smile:. This has amethyst and fluorite stones on it, and as the woman who sold it to us waxed lyrical about the properties of the stones, and how I should ‘cleanse’ the stones by ‘bathing them in healing light’, I couldn’t help but think ‘yes, but I just picked it out because I think it’s pretty‘! It has a nice bit of weight to it, which I like, too.

OtherHalf, Niamh and Finn also gave me seasons 3 and 4 of Will and Grace on DVD (to go with seasons 1 and 2 from last birthday). And… what could possibly be inside here?

Only the most beautiful hand-made chocolates I have ever seen ๐Ÿ™‚ Too stunning to eat, I think (yeah, as if!)

Also, my Dad arrived home from Canada today. He came bearing a boxload of Canadian treats – maple syrup (of course), tea, coffee, maple butter, hard and soft maple-leaf lollies(/sweets/candies – the hard ones are wonderful – think barley sugar, made with maple syrup. Yum!), chocolate, apple-saskatoon jelly (whatever a saskatoon is – sounds like some kind of bird :giggle: ), and smoked salmon ‘candy’. I don’t know about that one – fish marinated in syrup sounds a bit suspicious to me!

No special plans for tonight – I am not quite ready to leave my baby to a sitter yet. Perhaps Niamh will grant me that night’s sleep tonight instead. (I won’t hold my breath though).

Clarification: I read this again and realised it kind of sounded like I turned 30 today, but actually, I’m 31. Hence, ‘in my 30s’!

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Things I Know Today

Posted on October 6, 2006 | Comments Off on Things I Know Today
  • If you try and feed yourself at the same time as you are feeding the baby, you will end up with crumbs in your bra. (Or soy sauce on the baby, if you happen to be eating sushi!) ๐Ÿ˜ณ
  • If you try using reverse psychology often enough on a 3 year old, they will turn the tables on you – Finn’s favourite phrase has progressed from ‘Look at me, look at me’ (Bart Simpson, anyone?) to ‘Don’t look at me, don’t look at me’ :giggle:
  • I am up too late, but it was worth it :drink: ๐Ÿ˜† G’night!

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Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids

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The Missing Post…

Posted on October 1, 2006 | 2 comments

… is missing no more. (If you’re thinking ‘what the heck…?’, see tomorrow’s post ๐Ÿ™‚ )

This is a ‘what I did on the weekend’ sorta post. What I did this weekend was… I wondered when we became ‘those people’. You know who I’m talking about. Those people who spend their weekend shopping for furniture, and who drop into Bunnings for two things and come out with a trolleyfull (for those in the US, I think Bunnings = Home Depot); those people who spend their weekend tiling the kitchen and planting the vegetable garden. I tell you what, weekends got a whole lot more expensive and a whole lot less relaxing since we became a SITKOM family! (Single Income, Two Kids, Oppressive Mortgage).

The absolute worst piece of evidence that we have become those people? The one that I’m ashamed to even admit to?

Yesterday, we had lunch at McDonalds.

Mortifying! :giggle:

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Brain Clutter

Posted on September 28, 2006 | 2 comments

Since the arrival of Child #2, I’ve finally come to understand that “cluttered house = cluttered mind” thing. Up to this point in my life, I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder. Add to that my less than perfect housekeeping skills, throw in the trails of abandoned toys, books and other miscellany that follow your average 4-year-old around, and finally stir in a generous helping of baby paraphernalia, and you can picture the disaster zone that is our house these days. Sigh.

Even if I was a better housekeeper I doubt I’d be keeping on top of it all. I honestly did not realise that with a second child, in terms of workload, one plus one suddenly equals three. I’m sure it will improve as Niamh gets older and they start to occupy one another, but for now, the equation just isn’t favourable.

At night, after the small people are in bed, I desperately want to be being creative. I want to be stitching. I want to be sewing. I want to be crafting funky little things. I want to get back to dyeing, and I want to be working on some web stuff. But all those things I should be doing (dishes, laundry, clearing up…….), they’re still there! And I feel guilty doing fun stuff while the work’s still waiting. So I have this never-ending ‘to do’ list occupying every space in my brain, and I just feel completely and utterly overwhelmed by it all, and of course, nothing’s getting done, fun or otherwise!

So. Enough of the problem. I’m working on a solution.

I do love this comment I found on finslippy’s blog :

There are 24 hours in the day, which is plenty to get things done. If that doesn’t seem enough for some reason, you can cut back on sleep, which will give you an additional 6-8 hours. Plenty of time.

Yep, that should work!

What I’m doing (or beginning to try to do, at least), is working on my packrattiness. I’m starting to declutter. Less stuff, less to clean up, right? There is so much in our house that we just don’t need to have, and I’m finally starting to do something about that.

I’ve unpacked boxes of books labelled (I kid you not) “Packed in 2002”! We’ve been through those and other books and set aside two boxes for secondhand sale. We’ve set aside a box of kitchen gear to donate to the op shop. I’ve been through my accumulated craft miscellany and ditched a boxload of that (some went to Finn’s pre-school). I’ve set aside a variety of stuff (craft, stitching, baby gear) for ebaying. I’m feeling good about the start I’ve made, though I know there’s so, so much more to be done, and it’s still really hard for me to do. It will make a difference – our house will be more useable, and hopefully it will start clearing the way for me to get to the fun-stuff more often.

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Arse O’Clock

Posted on September 18, 2006 | 2 comments

Like many babes of her age, Niamh often goes through a period of crankiness sometime in the late afternoon/ early evening. If I manage her day-time sleeps just right, we can avoid it. (There must be exactly three naps, and the last nap must end later than 3pm. Who knew you needed to be a project manager for this gig?!) Anyway, if we do hit ‘arse-o’clock’, as it is affectionately known in our house, there are a few options. There is the option of me feeding her to sleep for a (brief) fourth nap. That can take a little bit of time though, and be somewhat inconvenient unless OtherHalf is home early to provide Finn with some distraction. I can stick both kids in the car and drive around for awhile. This has many shortcomings – usually it results in Finn falling asleep, and not Niamh, and what with the cost of fuel just about requiring a second mortgage these days, it’s not my preferred option. I can stick Niamh in the pram and trundle down to the nearby playground with Finn, but again, the pram doesn’t seem to put her to sleep very efficiently, and this option has the added frustration of Finn complaining about his tired legs as soon as we get, oh, about 50m from the house!

Anyway, yesterday – having been out much of the day, and unable to keep to Niamh’s sleeping requirements, we hit arse-o’clock with a vengeance. But lo! I had a bit of a brainwave. I popped her in the sling, and jumped on the stationary bike – voila, multitasking! Not only did I get a spot of (seriously needed) exercise, but the motion of my body lulled her off to sleep nice and quickly (it took 5 minutes and 48 seconds, according to the readout on my bike!) I even managed to catch up on some news, as the bike fits into an alcove-y thing near our television. Ahem… I only managed another five minutes of cycling though, before I staggered off… told you I was in serious need of exercise! (On a somewhat related note, I keep forgetting to mention that I got the all clear on diabetes at my six week follow up test ๐Ÿ™‚ )

Postscript: I’m posting this retroactively – I started writing it last Wednesday, finished writing it on Thursday, then got interrupted and never quite managed to post it. See how slowly things get done at Casa de Million Stitches lately?! After last night, I’m hoping that may change soon… of course I can’t tell you what happened, because that would be incurring the curse of the jinx, wouldn’t it?!

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I’m Loving…

Posted on September 7, 2006 | 4 comments

Being addicted to Flickr :giggle:

Originals here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9!

I’ve been avidly reading a number of craft blogs for a while now. It’s interesting to observe that while the stitchers as a group are largely blogging on Blogger and hosting their images on Webshots or similar, many of the crafty girls (and boys?) are hanging out with Typepad and Flickr. Are they a more progressive bunch?

Anyway, the crafty blogs have been making me itch to do something more than stitching for quite some time. Because, you know, I just need a new hobby, I have waaaay too much spare time on my hands :giggle: So lately I’ve been hanging out on Flickr too. I’m loving the Pools and Groups over there, it’s an ever-inspiring place to be. The above is a little put-together of just some of the wonderful things that have grabbed my attention lately.

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September!

Posted on September 1, 2006 | 4 comments

Soooo… didja miss me?! Sorry, my August blogging was kind of pathetic, really. For several reasons, not the least of which was a week of nights of two-hourly waking. Being sick really threw Niamh’s sleep out a bit, and also she seemed to go through a huge growth spurt, so she was hungry, hungry, hungry. I’m not sure how I survived that week – I was a bit of a zombie. On one bizarre occasion, I actually lost 2 hours. I could not, for the life of me, remember what happened after I got her out of bed for a 2am feed – next thing I recall is putting her back into bed… at 4am! I wasn’t sure if I’d put her back after the 2am feed, then got her out again for a 4am feed… or if I just fell asleep holding her. I’m thinking probably the latter, which is a little scary!

Things have calmed down a bit since then, but still we haven’t had the sleep-through. Even dropping down to one feed a night would be fine, but at the moment she has one longish (5 or 6 hours) sleep, starting sometime between 7 and 8p.m., then usually feeds at 1-something-a.m. and 4-something-a.m., and is then ‘up’ for morning by 6.30. Ack. And of course, I’m no good at going to bed at 7p.m. – I do actually like to stay up a bit and have ‘a life’ of sorts, (that’s code for ‘stare blankly at the television, or catch up on a blog or five’ – no energy to actually stitch or do anything useful!) So I go to bed by 10… 11… ish, and I don’t get that one long sleep. I know you’re all going to tell me to go to bed earlier – don’t bother, I already know what I should do. It doesn’t work for me. I’ll just have to hold out for her to drop a feed, instead. It’s just desperately difficult to avoid comparing her to Finn, who slept 8 or 9 hours in a hit from 6 weeks old (ok, not every night, but pretty routinely). She’s a different baby from Finn in pretty much every way, and really, I enjoy the fact that she’ll sleep in 2 or 3 hour slots during the day, where he only ever took 45 minute naps. That way, I get to spend time with Finn (when I’m a zombie, I’m not sure that it’s ‘quality’ time, but it’s time with him nevertheless), and recharge a little bit.

But that’s enough baby talk. I’m sure you’re all bored to tears – which, frankly, is another reason I haven’t blogged of late – since babystuff is pretty much all-pervasive in my life right now, I didn’t want to scare everyone off by talking about it all the time! (Which reminds me… hello to all my new(ish) readers ๐Ÿ™‚ )

I have no stitching to show you, but I have started Mirabilia’s freebie Bumblebee (and I have some frogging to do, darn it), so hopefully having a small project on the go will spur me on a bit. I also spent some time on Dragonfly Jewels, but I spent so much time mucking about with a minor colour change that I got sick of it (plus, my hands are really dry and icky, so stitching with silks is a bit of challenge at the moment). I had also hoped to do a bit more stitching on my Noah’s Journey, before it sets off on a worldly adventure in the UFO Round Robin I’ve joined, but since I’m marking assignments again this weekend, I’m not sure I’ll get that in.

Anyhow, that’s where I’m at. There’s some other stuff I’ve been trying to form into some kind of coherent blog post/s… if you’re lucky I’ll get to that before October! ๐Ÿ™‚

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Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Family, General Ramblings, The Kids

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Occupation: Blank

Posted on August 8, 2006 | 12 comments

This afternoon I (finally) received Niamh’s birth certificate in the mail. I am completely bewildered by why it is necessary to list parents’ occupations on a birth certificate. When I filled out the form, I intentionally left the occupation field blank for myself, because a) I don’t know why they need to know, and b) for some reason I’ve never quite relaxed into the ‘stay-at-home-mother’ label.

Tonight was Census night in Australia. Since completing the census form, I’m left feeling like I come off as a right lazy sod. No, I am not employed. No, not even part-time. No, I am not actively seeking work. No, I do not do volunteer work. Yes, in the last week I did some house and gardening duties, but not “30 hours or more”.

Where are all the questions about how many hours I spent settling a crying baby, or how many hours I spent dressing/undressing/changing uncooperative small children, or how many hours I spent waiting in doctors’ surgeries with sick children, or how many hours I spent getting up during the nights to breastfeed a baby/ reassure a distraught child after he woke from bad dreams, or how many hours I spent inventing fascinating things to do with paste-and-paper, or how many hours I spent making faces out of playdough, or how many hours I spent reading Dr Seuss books? Nowhere, that’s where. I got to tick a box which said “Yes, I spent time caring for my own child” (no, not even children), which surely does not differentiate me from millions of ‘working‘ parents who would also answer ‘yes’ to that question.

Grrrr.

Excuse me while I feel like a non-entity for a while.

Maybe I’d feel better if the census had been next week, when I could answer could answer ‘yes’ to the part-time employment question and all of the questions which go along with that (I start marking student assignments this Friday, yeehah). But it still wouldn’t validate the way I currently spend my waking hours. This little blip of paid employment will pass, and I’ll be ‘just’ a stay at home mother again.

I fear I’ll be waiting a long time for the kind of validation I’m missing. And that’s why I’m not quite relaxed about the ‘SAHM’ label.

(By the way, I know I’m doing a valuable and important job, and I know that you know that. I’m not trying to solicit validation from you, merely wondering why Society at large seems to have little respect for stay-at-home parents. It’s simply that I find it challenging to shut out the voice of Society when I think about my ‘job’.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start the night-shift!

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Magic Moments

Posted on July 28, 2006 | 3 comments


Q: what happens when you’re busy extolling the virtues of your second child to anyone who’ll listen?

A: while your back is turned, said child turns unexpectedly into demon spawn.

D’you think it’s because I dressed her in red?

Ok, perhaps that’s a little strong… but seriously, we’ve had some hellish nights of late. Little Miss Sunshine has decided to strenuously resist going to bed in the evening. I think I may develop RSI from all the pat-pat-patting. Alternatively, she goes down easily, but makes up for it later. Take last night – she screamed blue murder between 2.15 and 3.00am, then ‘slept’ noisily and restlessly in bed with me until 4.45am, then woke up, but was too tired to feed properly… cue more screaming. And so on…


Grrr. I can only hope that this is one of those times when an ‘unsettled’ period is followed by a big leap forward… preferably in night-time sleep patterns. It is, however, conceivable that this could be related to teething. I know, it sounds far too early – she’s only eight weeks old. But I cut my first teeth around 2 months, and Finn cut his just before he turned 3 months, so I’m expecting more early teeth (oh joy!)

Anyway, I wrote the following several days ago and didn’t get around to posting it – partly because it was far too saccharine sweet, very unlike me! But I’m posting it now, because I just have to remind myself :blank:

Having a Winter baby is a whole different story from having a Summer baby. In the beginning, I started feeding Niamh in bed with me at night because it was so damn cold, I couldn’t bear to leave the warmth of my snuggly doona. Now, after weeks of broken sleep, I think I’d be incapable of anything else. I’m just too darn tired. Now, she wakes up and cries for me, and I get her out of the cot, into bed with me, and onto a breast, all while I’m just barely awake myself ๐Ÿ™‚

After she finishes on one side, she dozes off. I lie her on my tummy, her head just within kissing distance, and watch those delightful little smiles that happen as babies drift into REM sleep. (According to Welsh folklore, newborn babies smile in their sleep when they’ve been kissed by fairies, which I think is terribly sweet).

This is my favourite time. This is the time when Niamh is mine, all mine. I don’t have to share her with anybody, and nobody else is clamouring for my attention. And I know that despite the exhaustion, despite my desperate longing for a full night’s sleep – when it comes, I’m going to miss these midnight cuddles.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to experience another magic moment – apparently dirty nappies don’t change themselves!

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Clickthrough

Posted on July 19, 2006 | 5 comments

I recently removed the ad-killing CSS I use to block ads in Firefox. (Don’t ask why, it’s complicated!) I loathe web advertising, it clutters up everything these days, and I do plan to either switch the CSS back on or install AdBlock shortly. But I’m getting away from my story…

This morning, for the first time ever (I think), I clicked-through! An ad on someone’s blog caught my eye, and I just had to go and check out nerd ABCs for babies. These are just hilarious, I love them!

(Oops, I just gave them more advertising… for free, what’s more)

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