36 months later

Birth Day















Big One Year old girl












My 2 year old girl about to turn three .... pretending to be an angel... Beck she loves the wings








Dear Charli,
Tonight is the eve of your third birthday and as if it were yesterday I can sit here and remember exactly what I was doing 3 years ago tonight.

This evening I have just put you to bed and you held my face close in your hands and you whispered: "Do you know what tomorrow is?"
Yes my darling girl I know exactly what tomorrow is. It is the third anniversary of a day that changed our life forever. The past few months have been difficult ones, for me, for you and for us as a family. Illness, ear infections, post-PhD depression, sleeping difficulties and tantrums (by both you and I) have marred the beginning of 2008 a little. But despite all of this, I sit here and shed a tear for the three years that seem to have gone a little too fast, though I know that there was many a night of sleeplessness or days of whinging that I have wished them away, desperate for these difficult years to be over.

Your favourite at the moment is to remind me (a lot) that I get cross with you. Thankfully I've taught you well and you are also quick to point out that you know I still love you. The other day you even told me you didn't like me very much, but that you still loved me, and your emotional intelligence astounds me some days. Of course this is balanced out by regular 2 year old behaviour that manifests in 'drama queen' ways for you - one such instance being the other morning when I - still half asleep - was subjected to you sobbing for 5 minutes in front of Dora the Explorer because you couldn't see the TV... IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU CHARLI, WHAT IS WRONG? I yelled exasperatedly.... when you started rubbing your eyes I even had a moment of panic, thinking your vision had been harmed in some way. But no. It turns out that your couch was NOT ON THE EXACT RIGHT ANGLE TO THE TV. God give me strength. It's mornings like that when I think that it is quite likely that I might stroke out before i reach the age of 35. But then you turn around and smile at me like butter would not melt in your mouth and I'm back to wondering how I could ever be angry with you at all.

Charli girl. We love you so much. Your daddy, your sister and I think you are wonderful. Never stop being exactly who you are.

Love Mummy
xoxox

Alive but not well

Been a while huh? I've thought of blogging often. Late at night I find myself composing short blogs and paragraphs in my head, things I should post about that are funny or so tragic I figure it will give someone something to laugh at... or something to commiserate with me about. But unfortunately they've not yet written the technology that will take these in-brain musings and simply transfer them to the computer. By the time i arise the next morning i am confronted with yet another unmanageable day in my life and the blog is once again relegated to backburner of my life. So much has happened since january 3rd when I last posted. I could write for hours on the hell that has been 2008 thus far but something tells me (and my unstable emotional state supports this) that it's best not to relive the full extent of the horror but rather to just jot it down in dot points. Of course it's not going to sound as tragic that way and I will no doubt come across as a drama queen who needs to just take a valium and put things into perspective - and that could well be the case - however.....

January.

1. We decide to move in Sharon's house
2. I start packing up the inside of the house WEEKS before the move... Husband, whose job it is to clean up the living nightmare under our house, leaves it until approximately 7 days before our move....
3. The garbage skip cannot be put into our front yard and only barely fits onto the front footpath - much to the annoyance of the postman
4. the council decide the week before we have booked the removalists to come and tear up our entire gutter/footpath region to re-pipe. I have a heart attack that the removalists will not be able to move us. despite buckets of rain it gets done in time
5. the general stress of moving and changing over utilities and packing boxes with two small children 'helping' caused me to have a mini-stroke most nights
6. 18th jan - we move - the less said the better. STRESS
7. the day after the move we've arranged a friend to babysit so that dave and I can attend - child-free - his sister's engagement party. we look forward to a night out as adults. we barely talk to each other or anyone else that night as we are so exhausted we can't function.
8. we get home to our babysitter saying she was about to call as our youngest has a temp nearing 39 degrees
9. we give her panadol, she has a slight - what we think is heat rash
10. by 2 days later the rash is worse and i call the Qld health number. they take me through a gazillion questions about her symptoms (does she have a headache? how the hell do I know - she doesn't talk yet!!). They say not to worry unless I wake up in the morning and rash has spread
11. I wake up in the morning and the rash has spread.
12. I spend this week dealing with the clearing up of crap still at our old house (turning out to be 1000 more trips in the car than expected) AND with a child that has Roseola - turns out not to be a problem but before we knew what it was there was a little bit of worry involved.
13. Throughout all of this there are boxes
14. and more boxes
15. and many more boxes to be unpacked
16. I think by now it might be the end of January. it's hard to say, my life at this point is lack of sleep and unpacking boxes.

February

1. Unpacking boxes
2. Annoying tenant at old house keeps texting me with inane questions such as what is Optus phone number as we didn't leave the white pages in the house - for fuck's sake man..... call directory assistance. Sheesh. Call the real estate agent and put a stop to him calling me.
3. In this month we have an array of birthdays and I'm pretty sure that I was sick about three times - as were the girls. Having been on sleeping tablets for a month to control the 'moving anxiety' I also experienced a charming side effect of rebound depression - I recall a day of lying on my bed crying wishing I could just leave life behind me... a horrible feeling let me tell you. A trip to the GP got that under control..... sort of.
4. Late in February i get a call from mother-in-law telling me that my father-in-law can get in for his knee surgery about 6 months earlier than planned. Which is great news. Except for the fact that I then had to enrol Charli in childcare as she didn't think she could cope with both of them while he was recovering, which was fair enough - but the prospect of childcare freaked me out.
5. Took charli down to local childcare - she loved it so much and cried so hard when we left that I booked her in to start immediately.
   
6. First three days of childcare I dropped her off wihtout tears (Seeya Mum) but picking her up was an emotional ordeal. She would spy me, burst into tears and cry "i've missed you so much mummy"..... By the fourth day, the drop offs were heart wrenching. And they've not got better in the last 5 weeks. "I don't want to go to school" starts the day before and continues until I leave the childcare centre a hollow of my former self and drag myself to work.
7. I love my job - LOVE IT - but beginning each day with your child crying and saying they "just want to spend the day with you mummy" - well it's enough to drain the hardest-hearted person

March

What can I say about March really. Thus far 2008 has been a sleepless, illness-filled year and March has been the worst. Nights of Charli not going to sleep until 3am, 12pm, 10pm and then up again by about 4am with pleas to watch TV. By night 3 I could freaking care what she was doing as long as she let me sleep. The irony is that for the first time Zie started sleeping through from sundown to sun up - I think they tag team me. "Okay, I'll sleep well this month, you drive her crazy!!". It turned out to be an ear infection... the first of three we've had now this year. Anti-biotics seem to keep it under control momentarily but then the minute she gets another runny nose - a constant this season now she's in childcare - then she gets another ear infection. I'm assured that they'll clear up by the time she's about 4 or 5 - excellent!! Only another 365-730 more sleepless nights :)

On top of all this I seem to have developed the chronic sinusitis problems that plagued my mum for years..... a prospect that fills me with dread. On Saturday just gone (we've skipped over March, join me in April now)... I flew to Cairns for a job for 24 hours - the plane trip was a nightmare - having never flown with a sinus infection before i could not have imagined the pain that would engulf my head and ears on descent. I don't recommend it folks. I spent yesterday laid up in bed wishing I could breathe.

The problem with life at the moment is that so much crap has gone on that it's hard to focus on the funny and good things - the things that should be remembered, but I'll give it a go....

The good things

okay this post has been interrupted by receiving energy bills from our old address because our energy provider never cancelled our service as requested.... so as trivial as that seems its just one more blah in my life to deal with right now.... I'm off. I'll be back to report on good things soon... I hope.