Finn has been taking a huge interest in the digital camera lately. Digital is great for kids – there’s instant gratification, and they can take as many pictures as they like. So, what does a three year old boy take photos of when given the chance? Well, himself, of course!
I also love this image he took of trees in silhouette, taken in a nearby bush reserve.
Comments Off on Things I Know Today
Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids
Tagged baby, toddler psychology
I’ve been feeling kind of… isolated?… displaced?… bereft?… something, these last weeks. It’s due to a combination of things, not least the increased difficulty of getting out and about with two kiddos. But I’ve come to realise that I’m really missing where we used to live. We’ve been here ten days shy of a year, and I’ve never quite found my groove – probably because I’ve been either pregnant and exhausted, or sleep-deprived and exhausted, that entire time.
It’s not like this is an unpleasant place to live, it really isn’t. But I miss the wonderful local shops where the staff knew our faces, if not our names, the kid-friendly cafes where we could while away a sunny morning or lazy afternoon, the wonderful bookshop…
Anyway. This place just doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere and energy about it. But it is not without benefits. Yesterday, we took off to a community/educational farm not far from here and spent a few hours puttering about.
We found a shady place for our lunch…
Met some of the residents…
Explored the community vegie patches (which put great shame to ours 😳 )…
Did some of this…
And some of this…
It was very peaceful (at least until the splinter incident, which was traumatic for all involved, but Finn most of all). A very nice way to spend the first 30 degree day of the season.
… is missing no more. (If you’re thinking ‘what the heck…?’, see tomorrow’s post 🙂 )
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:
Damn, I’m sorry. That was a really bad, punny title. Can’t help it, I’m cranky. Post-partum hair loss is the pits. The absolute pits. About three months after Finn was born, my hair started falling out – I still recall the horror I felt the first time I put my hand to my hair, and came away with a handful. It sinks my stomach just thinking about it. It was so utterly, utterly depressing, having a rapidly receding hairline. I really quite like my hair, you know. (And I can’t say that about many parts of me.) I was thrilled when it finally stopped, at about 7 months, and I started growing little wispy bits of fringe.
Anyway, almost since I first discovered I was pregnant again, I have been steeling myself for the advent of the next fallout. Three months came and went, and no hair loss. I found myself daring to think maybe this time would be different. Nup. It has begun. Crap. Crap. Crap.
Spare a thought for my poor vacuum cleaner in the coming months. I should probably cut my (remaining) hair a bit shorter now, to save the plumbing, too.
The good news? (Because I’m trying really hard to see a brighter side!) I read recently that worms apparently really like to eat hair (kind of ick, I know). So I’m collecting what I lose to put into our super-groovy new compost bin, and hopefully this will lure the worms in, and we’ll have some lush, rich compost in a few months time. It gives me a bit of a warm cycle-of-life kind of feeling, to be returning something to the Earth, despite how depressed it makes me in the meanwhile.
Bah. Forgive my self-indulgent moaning. I’ll get over it. It will grow back. I’m off to find all my cool stretchy headwraps now 🙂
(a.k.a ‘Gratuitous baby shots’ 🙂 Enjoy!)
PS. There may have been some editorial license taken regarding the order of the pictures. Maybe :giggle:
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 🙂 )
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?!
Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids
Tagged exercise, gestational diabetes, new baby, sleep
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 🙂 )
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! 🙂
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Family, General Ramblings, The Kids
Tagged cross-stitch, new baby, sleep
Wheee! Karin sent me this wonderful scissor fob made with her very own lampworked beads. Isn’t this beautiful? 🙂 If you haven’t checked out Karin’s etsy shop, go do it now! Her work is lovely, and I am truly honoured to be a recipient of this gorgeous fob. Lampworking is something I long to try one day… but I’m thinking we’re going to need older kids, a bigger house, and more money before I get around to it!
Speaking of children, and pretty things…
Some of you have hassled me for more photos, so here you go. Despite all my best efforts, Niamh’s (stunning) smile continues to elude the camera. These two shots are about the closest yet.
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!
Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids
Tagged census night, employment, parenting