A little something to look forward to

Well dear readers, this coming September my lovely husband and I will have survived 5 years of marriage. Add to this the fact that the last 5 years have included a PhD, full-time study for Dave, family health problems, and two small children entering our lives and thus making alone time all but impossible - and I bit the bullet today and booked us in for two nights here for our anniversary. If you click on the accommodation link you'll see the luxurious lagoon suite which will be our home for two nights. And there will be a couples massage package at the day spa complete with champagne and cheese platter afterwards. Our package includes dinner each night, breakfast each day, and a bottle of champagne daily - clearly I am going to be drunk the whole time. Counting down the days until these two days of bliss will be ours - and I'm sure that we will only discuss the children for 40 of those 48 hours away.

Toesday bloody Toesday

Like Sunday Bloody Sunday, except on a Tuesday - and of my toe - and the blood was more of the internal bruising kind and less of the kind where 26 civil rights protesters were shot dead in Northern Ireland. So really my incident with my toe is really nothing like it, but here's what happened nonetheless. But first - why am I blogging about my toe? Many many posts ago, Beck started Toesday - I can't remember when, sorry you'll have to find the post yourself - it will give you a chance to read all of her posts - go on, it's worth it :)

Anyway, I've never posted a photo of my toes - though I did post a gorgeous one of Charli and her daddy and their toes many moons ago now when she was only 6 weeks old. But I don't like my feet and they are usually not for public viewing. But my unsightly feet have just been made worse by slamming the little toe of my left foot into a bedside table (and no I was not drunk worse luck - I felt every spine chilling crack in my little toe as it happened). It swelled immediately. Today it looks like this....

It feels worse than it looks. And don't think I haven't complained endlessly about this since it happened....and made Dave look at it 1000 times since yesterday........ he did exactly the same thing last week - I kid you not EXACTLY THE SAME THING except on a different piece of furniture. And he had previously broken his toe so it probably hurt more. AND Charli threw herself on his foot after he'd just hurt it. But he complained not once. What a trooper. I on the other hand will be milking this for all that it's worth. Because that's just the kind of gal I am :)

(p.s. and the photo is out of focus because of the excrutiating pain I am in .... or just because I am a crap photographer)

A bit of DIY

Well I often lament that I don't have very good craft skills. People such as Beck have more craft in her little finger than I have in my whole body. But when it comes to larger projects that are home oriented and a bit more blokey then I'm not too bad. I've been known to make my own flyscreens for rental properties that allowed waay too many bugs in for my liking. And my latest project is to transform these chairs. Here is a before shot:



Four chairs and solid pine table were my mum's and she had re-upholstered the chairs in this fabric to match our new corner lounge as the tables and chairs were in her dining room. However, since the table and chairs are now in our eat-in kitchen being used and abused by a toddler who is none too careful with her food...... well if you look very closely you would see remnants of spaghetti, playdough, weetbix and the stray piece of mushed up corn...... I needed wipable chair coverings!!

So off to spotlight I went in search of upholstery grade vinyl, a staple gun, some upholstery tacks, and calico. Then it was off to Clark Rubber for some new foam padding. Home again and the maddening task of removing tacks and staples from the bases began......4 weeks later - maddeningly trying to get this done with Charli asleep as her DIY skills are still being developed ;) and this is the end result.......



I won't be winning any upholstery awards but it suits our purposes.

Little susie homemaker

With the PhD still awaiting comment and me starting to almost feel on top of motherhood with two under two - I am back to baking. This.....




was presented to Michelle today when she came to visit. A white chocolate cheesecake. I believe her words were "bloomin' bloody wonderful" - and it was if I do say so myself.

Number of photos not equal to amount of love

My dearest Mackenzie,
I have been thinking about writing this for many weeks now. You just turned 3 months last weekend while we were on holidays with Meegan and Sharon and their brood and I realised that although it was your first beach holiday I failed to actually take any photos of you at the beach. This lack of photos is also I'm afraid carried over to your home life and I have been remiss in taking as many photos of you as I took of Charli when she was your age. But I must explain why. Some of it as you will come to understand should you ever have children of your own one day is due to a simple time issue. I no longer have any. I no longer have the luxury of standing above your cot as you sleep and taking 20 photos of every minute little change in facial expression in a three minute period. However, some of the reason for the paucity of photos is merely because with time, I've come to understand that so much more enjoyment can be gleaned from actually experiencing moments with your children rather than madly attempting to capture them on film. You will therefore see that I've taken less photos of Charli as she's gotten older as well. Why? Because I now sit and marvel at her antics each and every day rather than trying to video them. Similarly, I find myself propping you up on my legs and just 'talking' to you for ages. Listening to your gurgles and attempts to 'talk' to me. I love it. And I dont' want to miss a minute of your smiles by racing for the camera. But I promise to take at least some photos each month - you know, so you know that you weren't adopted at age 7 or anything :)

Love Mummy

I brought reality with me....

This won't be a long post about the weekend away with Meegan and Shaz as to be honest I'm still recovering. Three adults, four toddlers and a 10 year old....... relaxing weekend away? Hardly :)
Still I do want to thank the girls for coming away with me and letting me see just how possible (or not as the case may be) it would be to holiday with the girls on a regular basis while they are still this young. Mostly the conversation that sticks in my mind is one I had with a gent in the lifts while loading all my stuff back into the car on Sunday morning. He said to me:

"It'll be hard to get back to reality tomorrow won't it?" Smiles.

I had Charli in my arms (as she wouldn't be put down) and was trying to steer a trolley full of the monumental load of crap that you have to take away with you when you holiday with two small children. I knew that Mackenzie was back in the unit screeching for a feed.

"Um, I brought reality with me."

He smiles sympathetically as he leaves the lift and says "yeah, been there, done that - it'll all be over some day".

Despite the stress that was this weekend I realise that I hope it won't all be over too soon. I'm not ready for them to leave the nest anytime soon. I love you princesses xoxox

One of those days...

Well dear readers it's been one of those days. And it's now nearly 9.30pm and I'm tired so this is going to be the reader's digest version.

Today the wardrobe man was coming so that we could finally have a grown up bedroom and not one that looks like two 19-year olds are sharing a college dorm room.

The weather forecast is 34 and humid.

I ring the wardrobe company and they are not due until 12.30pm - right when Charli will be due for her sleep.

At about 9.30am we're watching TV, I have 2 air-conditioners on and I throw a load of laundry in the dryer because I'm a lazy housewife who couldn't be jacked going downstairs into the hot day to hang the washing out.

I'm feeding Zie and she lets loose with a bottom burp to end all bottom burps and when I stand up I have baby excrement running down my legs onto the brand new turkish rug.

I call to Charli to get me the baby's sheet (i.e. wrap) and bring it to me. Charli looks at me with her new look "I know what you're asking me to do but you know, I just don't feel assed doing that for you right now".... I bribe her with something - it may have been an ice-block, I don't recall. She finally finds it in her heart to bring me the wrap so I can wipe up the mess rather than traipsing it through the house.

As I'm changing Zie's nappy, the stereo/TV goes BANG and I lose power - bloody hell - too many appliances, I've blown a damn fuse again. Now I'm becoming fairly accomplished at fuse changing so I head downstairs with a teatowel to take out the fuse....but then I realise that the computers have gone off - and that can't be right as they are on a separate fuse thingy...... I check the fuse and sure enough it's still intact. Hmmmm. Go upstairs, turn on the lights (again a separate fuse box) - nothing. At this point I call my neighbour (their car is there) but she does not answer and I suspect she is in labour (she is overdue to have her baby at this point).... so I leave a message saying I've lost power and am wondering if they have to. I don't hear back... which is fair enough :)
I call our neighbours over the road - and guess what? They have power.

I call energex. They are not aware of an outage in Mitchelton and they log a call to the service men.

My baby is screaming because it's hot and my toddler wants to play hot games such as pretend mummy is a horse-y and mummy let's jump up and down in this bleedingly hot weather!!

Energex arrive - the power box on the pole has totally shat itself and they log another call for a bucket truck to come out and replace it. this will be another 1.5 hours or so.

We are now melting in the heat.

I call the wardrobe company to check that any power tools they require are battery/rechargeable. They are not. They will have to cancel my wardrobe and come another day. This is not an option as far as I'm concerned as things are stacked against every wall and we can't move for the crap that is waiting to find its new home in the new wardrobe. Plus I've been waiting 5 weeks for this wardrobe. They suggest we could run an extension cord to my neighbour's house. I am reluctant to call the possibly laboring woman to ask if I can use their power (as it turns out she was labouring - or had already labored - they were up at the hospital having left their car at home and are now the proud owners of a new baby boy!!!)..... I hope that their laundry downstairs is unlocked and take it upon myself to okay this suggestion to use the neighbour's power. I run next door once I'm off the phone, extension lead in hand and plug into their laundry.... I am yet to tell them that I've stolen electricity from them but know they won't mind :)

The wardrobe man turns up and starts using power drills. My now hot and bothered baby is still screaming and my toddler, upon hearing the drills, totally loses it and also wants 'up' in mummy's arms... lord. After 10 minutes playing in the back yard energex come back and fix the electricity and finally I can ramp up the aircon, seat Charli in front of the telly, and set about cooling and calming the baby........ Having had no nap, Charli falls asleep in front of the telly jsut as the wardrobe guy is finishing up.....she looks adorable and I reluctantly let her stay on the lounge - knowing this will result in a less than long sleep but she looked so nice and cool.

So, wardrobe is installed. Electricity is back on. Toddler is asleep. Baby is calmer. All I needed at that point was stiff drink - something I indulged in later that day at Sharon's after my incredibly over-tired toddler screamed 'car' more than 50 times before I decided it was just best to take her for a drive rather than hear her incessant whinging.......

I just love these days when you are sorry that you ever tumbled out of bed in the first place - and speaking of bed..... Night.

Politically correct eskimos boost blog readership

Well how's this? I check my statcounter for recent visitor activity, because that's the kind of narcissistic gal I am :) and I find that someone in Boston Mass in the USA has been to my blog. I visit the link to see where they were directed from and lo and behold it's a google search. Apparently my post that mentioned that we should refer to eskimos in the more politically correct way 'inuit' came up sixth in a google search of 'eskimo politically correct' - how funny is that? Bet that person - no doubt researching something for school - was bitterly disappointed that I was unable to provide them with more useful information.

SPAM with manners

It's nice to see that if my inbox is going to be inundated with SPAM that it is at least polite spam. Today in my inbox I received a message telling me that a message that I had tried to send had failed. I hadn't actually sent a message to this recipient - it's one of those spams that say you've sent email even when you haven't. But don't you just love the politeness of the message?

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at rs1.inst.or.jp.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

And I think anyone trying to end a relationship could take some good advice from this email. Simple yet to the point. "I'm afraid this relationship is not going to work out. This is a permanent error. I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out". There's no ambiguity there is there? LOL

But Rembrandt was not afraid of baths

Or at least I am going to assume that he was not. And that is why painting would have been so much more enjoyable for him. Or at least his mother. Not that his mother was probably still bathing him when he was an artist..... but who knows, those artsy types can be weird :)

Anyway, the point of all of this is that today I decided to let Charli loose with some poster paints and her art easel. Partly because I wanted to paint her toy oven and thought that it was only fair that she too be allowed to paint, and partly because I feel that I've been a little remiss in not allowing my nearly 2 year old to discover the joys of painting. I was wrong. She should not have been allowed to play with paints until she was also old enough to date - and if her father has anything to do with that then we are talking at least another 20 or 30 years!!

So here is the artiste herself....



Though more paint seemed to end up on her than the easel...


And here is where the problems really began. See all the paint in her hair...??



It is at this point that I realise that wiping a wet washer over her to clean her up is no longer an option. A bath is called for....with hair washing......and much scrubbing. Which leads me to suddenly remember that as of a week ago my child is terrified of baths (or showers in case that was going to be your suggestion). And when you throw 'hair washing' into the equation, well toss me a valium and pour me a vodka because our house is about to become filled with screams of terror that rival those heard in any funhouse carnival across the country. My heart sinks as I realise that the bath is inevitable....... its that or let her stay on the back porch painting forever but somehow that doesn't seem feasible.

So into the bath we go. The screaming begins. Shampoo is added to the equation and the screaming ramps up a notch. Normally I try and gently wash the shampoo from her head but by now she's thrashing so much and has managed to get paint and shampoo into her eyes and the screeching is doing my head in... I realise that if it's going to be this painful it may as well be fast and painful so I do something that will speed up the process but was also guaranteed to send her into a frenzied panic (and I was not disappointed). I turned on the shower. To my shock and surprise, when presented with enough motivation, my two year old can flip herself out of the bath onto the floor...... of course I had the shower hose in my hand so when i turned to try and catch her, water flew everywhere and there was no option at this point except to throw myself into the shower (fully clothed) with her and just hose her down. My ears are still bleeding from the noise!

So there you go - art time at our place ended with a toddler sobbing in her bed and a mummy desperately wishing that it was not too early to start drinking at 10am (that is too early right?). Let's hope Dave appreciates the masterpiece she did him.

People in glass houses....

So on my current theme of de-cluttering and cleaning I've been reading some interesting stuff on hoarders and their personality types (not surprisingly to me, hoarders are known to have perfectionist traits). Now it is fair to say that one thing I most often nag my husband about is his inability to throw things away. His favourite catchphrase is "it might be useful one day" and lo and behold the other day he took great delight in pointing out to me that he was indeed using some of the old wood that he had stored up under the house. I was monumentally proud (rolls eyes) LOL

Anyway, in my recent days of de-cluttering I realise that I too hoard to a great extent it is just that my reasons for hoarding are different. While Dave hoards things in case they may one day become important, according to a website I found about obsessive compulsive disorder, I seem to hoard things that one day in the distant past were important to me. Apparently my inability to throw away a little box of badges (the kind you stick on your shirt - I used to collect these for god knows what reason) means that I am afraid that in some way I am letting go of some part of my life, no matter how seemingly insignficant. And I can totally understand that. When I open this box of trinkets and see the Tangalooma badge that I got at Grade 5 camp or the TAA wings I got when I flew on an aeroplane for the first time when I was 10 years old. ..... well these things make me smile. And they prompt memories that were long since forgotten. Perhaps it is for this reason that I find it so difficult to let these seemingly small and insignificant objects go. But then what does one do about the clutter? Is there some way to retain these memorabilia without your house becoming like this?

Motivation to de-clutter dies after realising it's not that bad

Dave sent me a website address today to make me feel better about just how cluttered our house is not....... I no longer feel the need to de-clutter like a maniac. I'll just keep it neat like a normal person does. I have de-registered from FlyLady after receiving a total of 39 emails from her yesterday regarding keeping my house clean. I spent so much time reading the emails there was no time left to clean.

Who put the cat amongst the pigeons?

So how is my Day 2 of keeping the house clean going I hear you ask? Well, firstly let me say that the sink is again not polished. Nor will it ever be....this is not a suggestion I am willing to take on board in the hopes that it will somehow improve my life. I am willing to take that risk. I did manage to shower and put on some make-up but at the point when my hair was about to be done everything went a little pearshaped so I'm afraid I failed on being totally ready to start my day 'dressed to laces' according to FlyLady.net

In the interests of balancing my new 'de-cluttering' with other forms of entertainment, my godson and his mum visited this morning and when charli suggested we 'eat chits' (translation: feed the chickens) I thought that would be something fun for the kids to do together. Note: we don't own chooks, we are just feeding them for our next door neighbours who are away at the moment. Charli absolutely loves feeding the chooks and in fact it has become her catchphrase every morning "chits? chits?". I have to convince her that mummy is not ready to face chickens before she has had breakfast and at least got out of her pyjamas. Somehow going to feed the chickens while still wearing my pyjamas just does not seem right. I'm not sure why. I am sure they would not be offended.

Anyway, so over we go to feed the chickens (two eggs today!!) and there is a pigeon flying around in the caged henhouse!! How he got in there I have NO idea but the fact is he could not get out and was going psycho! So we let the chooks out into the yard in the hopes that the pigeon would just mosey on out the door and fly away....... but nope (stupid bird) - he just keeps flying around in a mad panic and then hitting the floor. I go to walk into the enclosure further than my customary 1 m when i spy this HUGE spider in a web at about face height and all thoughts of valiantly saving the pigeon are erased from my mind - he can figure it out himself! I decide to leave the chooks in the yard for the day and hope the pigeon leaves the henhouse before nightfall when i'll have to return the henhouse to its rightful owners.....

However not 10 minutes later a huge black cat is chasing the pigeon around the henhouse and then heads out for the chooks. At this point i just want to get the chooks back into their henhouse before they get attacked (no chicken is gonna die on MY watch!) - the pigeon finally got smart and took off out of there and the chickens got chased by two over-enthusiastic toddlers back into their cage. And so ends another rather non-productive day in my household - not one thing was de-cluttered but I'd be keen to hear FlyLady's take on how to manage all of her housework and keep the cats out of the henhouse. Surely even she couldn't manage it???

Day 1 of de-cluttering - a sparkling sink?

well according to FlyLady, in order to start on my 31 day path to de-cluttering my house and restoring order to my otherwise dis-orderly home and life, today I was meant to undertake just one task. This task was to set me on the path to a cleaner and brighter home life. This task? To shine my sink! yes you heard it folks, take a scrubbing brush and silver polish and shine the kitchen sink. I have to ask WHAT THE ?? My urge to shine my freaking kitchen sink was somewhat overshadowed by my desire to even SEE MY LOUNGE ROOM FLOOR. Now there is a task that needed doing. But my kitchen sink?

So I did what FlyLady specifically said not to do and I leaped to Day 2 to see what monumentally important task was on the agenda for that day - and to be fair "get up and get dressed to laced shoes including hair and face" was an improvement on the kitchen sink polishing suggestion. I do find that one of my downfalls is not showering until sometimes midday. Not that I don't think that I have a perfectly decent excuse for poor hygiene practices some days. With a toddler who is nearly two and a newborn who has good intentions of sleeping but is kept awake by the aforementioned toddler, well you can imagine some days that the priority of hair washing takes a major backseat to just staying sane. But I digress......

So today I made it my task to get up and dressed before any of the children could awaken - a task made more urgent by the fact that the dishwasher repairman was arriving at 7am - or midday - or anywhere in between. I don't know why companies like to do this to you - in this day of modern technology when they have service calls logged on high-speed computers and mobile service vans equipped with all of the technology one could want - is it too much to ask that you narrow my service call timeframe to a little under 5 hours? But then I shouldn't complain really.... it's not like I had anything more important today than to polish my sink.

But back to getting dressed before midday..... I did take objection and refuse to go the laced up shoes - one doesn't really need their boots on to polish sinks or change pooey nappies in my opinion. I did however let my hair see a brush for the first time in two days and if 'doing my face' was achieved by the splash of water thrown in my eyes and the quick swipe of lip gloss across my lips then allow me to tick that task off for today.

I had a go at the de-cluttering in 15 minutes thing but to tell an a-type-personality that she has to 'de-clutter for 15 minutes and then stop and do this again tomorrow until all the clutter is gone' - well, why don't you just tell me to take a blunt kitchen knife and draw it repeatedly across my arm until it falls off in a bloody stump on the kitchen floor (I bet FlyLady has a great suggestion for cleaning blood stains off linoleum though don't you think??). I mean really, as if I could just stop cleaning after 15 minutes. If you want to de-clutter then you have to get serious about it - at least spend 2 hours moving the clutter from one room to the next until it all ends up in one room at the back of the house and you can close the door and pretend that room does not exist. So that is what I did. The lounge room is now looking half-way presentable and the kitchen is on the road to being fully de-cluttered by tomorrow. Of course we can no longer open the door to the computer room and David is just going to have to understand that it's time to give up his computers and get a new profession because, well I'm sorry honey, but we just can't get to the PC's anymore. We all have to make sacrifices to live a clutter free life.

I'll let you know how Day 2 goes.

Carla

Because I too need to de-clutter

To dear Michelle and Meegan and all my other friends who feel the need as Autumn is approaching (okay well not really but one day soon!!) to de-clutter their lives..... here is an extra special website by FlyLady - I'm starting on her baby steps beginners daily plan tomorrow..... I'll let you know how I go! Have fun de-cluttering and let me know how you go.

Carla

A Swiper Catastrophe

I am putting clothes away. Charli is watching Dora the Explorer. She comes running in, face full of concern.

"Uh-oh, Siper wa, Siper Wa, uh-oh. Mummy!!"
I look up, knowing full well what this means.

"Swiper {the fox} fell in the water did he?"

"Yes, Mummy! Siper, Wa, uh-oh, uh-oh"

This tirade of painful concern for Swiper the Fox - who is known for always swiping everyone's stuff, so I'm not so sure why she is concerned, I say let the fox drown - could have gone on for hours so I thought it best to intervene and lay her little troubled head to rest.

"It's okay Charli, Dora and Boots will save him."

I say this with a degree of authority that comes with having seen this show once or 65 times in the past 6 months. Plus Dora is essentially the queen of good deeds so let's face it, she isn't going to let that pesky fox drown.

Charli looks at me - the mummy who always knows best. She nods her head wisely. Yes, if mummy says that Dora will save him then it will be so. She smiles and walks away. Oh if only she will always believe me as she does at this moment.

What shall we do with a drunken sailor...

On the road to rehab?

One questions one's parenting skills when, after a few weeks of teething hell and copious amounts of panadol, nurofen and even naturopathic teething relief liquid later, one finds one's toddler playing in her room with a syringe, telling all of her teddies to 'open' while she pretends to squirt some form of pain-relieving drug into their stitched mouths. After each one she smacks her lips and says 'yum'.... too many drugs for her lately do you think?

A day for important events

Today is an important day. Not only is it the fourth anniversary of losing my mum, but I believe today would also have been Michelle's dad's birthday (am I right Michelle??) and.... dum da da dum...... Charlotte decided to grace this important day with her first sentence. Not that we were terribly impressed under the circumstances.... 8.30pm, still faffing around awake in the lounge - high on some sugar product that was no doubt offered to her today on an outing with her grandparents (!!, no probably not, they are not the type to offer her 'bad' foods, but why she is so awake at this time of night is a mystery to us!!)... and I say "charli I think it's time for bed" and she responds with (wait for it). "no sharli stay here"...... charming. Her first sentence is a defiant stance against bed time. This does not bode well.....

Is there an off switch?

I thought it about time for my own amusement to record Charli's vocab to date. Many of the following words are contextual - if you didn't have the visual you'd have NO IDEA what the word was but I'll include them all anyway as we seem to understand her most of the time :)

Mummy (today was shortened to Mum which was all too grown up!!)
Daddy
Nanny
Betts (Aunty Bekk)
Debbi
Sharli (Charli)
Sophie (just learnt that one today... normally she just gets called....)
Puppy!!
Dog
Mouse (for any creature that has whiskers including cats and bunnies!!)
Mop or Motz (milk)
Bubbles
Bar (Bath)
Beer... we're sure she isn't saying Beer per se but can't quite figure out what it is...... today in context it might have been 'better' but we're not sure!!
Sorrwee (Sorry) - this is also a new word..... most hilariously used to apologise to anything that she may bump into including table legs and the bed head... yesterday she accidentally stepped on my foot and bent down to kiss my feet and apologised..... will lap that one up while I can!!
Tank you or Ta
Biss you (Bless you) - for when you sneeze or cough or make any similar sort of sound!!
Bir (Bird) - she still seems to have problems with the ends of words
Narna (Banana)
Apple (for apples, plums or any other fruit that is vaguely round!!)
Cheese
Sketti (Spaghetti)
Side (outside)
Wotz (walk)
Bots (books)
Box
Blocks
Baby
Zie (for Mackenzie)
Pig
Slippy (sleepy)
Wee (this can mean a multitude of things, this week it means 'weed' as we've been gardening)
Pool
Spa
Up
Wa (water)
Chair
Wheel
Key
Hot
Ow (said a lot as she frequently walks into walls!! - she may have a motor skills problem!!)
Ear
eyes (for eyes and for glasses)
Mouth (this is used to refer to Zie's dummy which she often finds not in her mouth and then wants to give her.... despite Zie not liking the dummy!!)
duck
shoes
shirt
strawberry

okay - will have to come back and edit this post each day as I keep waking up and thinking of more words... and then I realise that each day I could be adding words and I may as well just in about a year add a link to the webster's english dictionary!!!