It's been too long

I never know how to begin, after a long break from blogging... especially when there's so much to say and catch up on!

So I'm going to start by sharing something that happened tonight which made my heart melt... or sing... I'm not sure which. I just tucked Annie into bed, and whispered a goodnight prayer with her (about the day we'd had, the friends we'd seen, and asking God for a peaceful sleep). And then when I'd finished, she tightly screwed up her eyes and whispered "Papa, Sasha, Bubba, fishies, puppies... Eli... Meaghy... Amem" and then opened her eyes and smiled at me. She just prayed her first prayer! It was beautiful.

Our new baby boy, James Peter, arrived on Friday 21st June, (birth story to come at a later date... if I ever get to it). We love him to bits - Anthea loves him maybe a little too much! :) He'll be seven weeks old on Friday... the time goes very quickly these days. I'm loving being a mum of two, but still struggling to find time to accomplish anything more than basic necessities. More on that later too maybe.

For now though, I'll leave you with a few photos.

 

In a fog

Not sure exactly what I want to write here... it's been a strange few weeks...

I guess I'll just give you the short version.

August:

• Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th we went out to Gilgandra and spent the weekend helping Alastair's brother and sister-in-law get their house cleaned up and ready to put on the market. It was a massive weekend, I came home exhausted and aching in all sorts of places I never knew I had.
• Monday 27th I did a pregnancy test and got a positive result - I was 5 weeks pregnant, and we were so excited! Baby due 30th April 2013.
• Tuesday 28th - rang the hospital to book in to the Wollongong Hospital Midwives Group Program. If you don't get in early you miss out.
• Wednesday 29th went to the Dr and had all the routine blood tests you get done when you find out you're pregnant... but then that afternoon started bleeding.
• Thursday 30th - Anthea's 1st birthday. Went to ladies bible study in the morning and asked them to pray for me and the new baby because I was worried I was having a miscarriage.
• Friday 31st - had to drop Alastair in town early, then dropped Annie off at my mother's group before going to pick Alastair's dad up from a Dr's appointment (he had been in hospital with a gall bladder attack the week before)... turns out he'd had some bad news: there was a tumour on the gall bladder which has attached itself to his liver (which is 3.4cm - having grown from 3mm a couple of months ago), as well as a cyst in one of his kidneys, so he's waiting for a specialist appointment now. Then I got back to mother's group 10 mins before it ended and fell to pieces, thankfully in a place where the people know me well. Alastair came home at lunchtime to look after me and Annie, as we were pretty sure it was a miscarriage.
• Saturday 1st/Sunday 2nd - a quiet weekend thankfully, with Father's Day as well. My parents and sister came down for lunch, so that was really nice.

Most of September has been a bit of a blur, (my birthday included), miscarriage confirmed, Anthea's 12 month immunisations... all sorts of stuff. Such a strange time, with such a lot of mixed feelings and emotions. It feels like a fog.... a surreal sort of feeling. I wanted to talk about it, but didn't want to hear any more of the trite "your baby was not meant for this world" or "perhaps it was deformed/handicapped" comments which people seem to think are comforting. I do have a few lovely friends who actually just listened when I needed to talk though, so that is a blessing. And now life goes on...

Post titles are so hard to think of...

Meaghan reminded me today that I hadn't posted for a while... but I didn't realise that it's been nearly a month already!

So...

Anthea's vomiting bug is over and well and truly in the past. Hurrah! :) Now if we could just get these top teeth cut through! The bottom two came through no worries, but it seems that the top ones are causing her a bit of grief. One is through, and the other is bulging...  has been for about two weeks... but other than that, she's well and happy.

Oh! Stop Press!!! Amazing, brilliant, wonderful, exciting news! About a week ago, she began to open her mouth when I was trying to feed her! I have to go back a bit with this story... if you're not interested, skip to the next paragraph. :) It was around the beginning of July and I was at a loss as to what to do with Annie's solids/eating/etc, so after speaking on the phone with a Tresillian nurse, I'd cut her feeds down from 7/8 a day to 4/5... but it wasn't helping. Then I went to our local Family Care Cottage, and had a very encouraging visit with a lovely Mothercraft nurse. Turns out, that was the day that Annie came down with the vomiting bug, so it wasn't until probably 10 days later that I was able to actually put into practice the advice that she'd given me. And that advice was that I needed to cut her down to 2 feeds a day - morning and night (plus a 10pm dream feed if I wanted, for my own comfort). Whoa. It was just enormous, trying to implement that advice, and for two weeks Annie still refused food - even though she was going 12 hours between feeds. Until last week, when all of a sudden she decided to give up and just opened her mouth. I was almost at breaking point - it was doing my head in. So praise the Lord, I was able to hold out just those extra few days, otherwise I'd have probably gone back to 4/5 feeds a day and we still wouldn't have got anywhere! Now she's eating lunch and dinner every day, will open her mouth for mashed potato, pumpkin, peas, bolognaise sauce, chicken stirfry with rice, and yoghurt. We're still working on breakfast... it's a battle. Hmm... wondering if this is a foretaste of what's to come, as far as the battle of the wills... we'll definitely be praying for wisdom in channeling it in the right direction!

I can hardly believe that she'll be turning one on the 30th! It's so exciting - I feel like in these last couple of weeks she's really started to change from a baby into a toddler... she's so cute! But I won't go on and on. Photos next time!

Last week we hosted our home group's bible study, which was great, because it meant I was able to join in. Usually Alastair just goes. But everyone came to our house, and we had the most people we've ever had in our little lounge room - 13! It was a bit squishy, but we managed - thanks to the kindness and good humour of everyone involved. Oh, and I think that the copious quantities of caramel slice helped to make everyone happy. :)

I've had a lot of trouble with my back recently too... which always makes life as a mummy that bit more interesting. It's funny to look back and think about what may have landed me in bed for a day or two a year or so ago - whether it be a flu or a back problem - and then fast forward to the present... I've really learned to "suck it up" as they say! Which is a good thing I think... I was a bit of a light-weight before.

At our ladies bible study, we are going through a book called "Lies Women Believe" by Nancy DeMoss. We are only a couple of chapters in, but it seems good so far. Well, mostly. I guess it's one of those books where you take the helpful bits and leave the rest. Like, for example, the author starts each chapter with what she imagines an excerpt from Eve's diary would look like... which I don't really go for and don't think is necessary. But she has made some good points in the chapters we've studied, which has provoked some interesting discussion.

Today I changed my schedule around. Recently I've been stuck in a bit of a rut, where I write myself a list of things to do, but then I lose interest, procrastinate and get almost nothing done. So today I divided my day up into time slots of Annie's awake/asleep times, and set myself one or two jobs to do in each period. It worked, and my to-do list was so much more achievable! :) Over and above doing the usual washing, dishes and cooking tea, I managed to plant the strawberries out, wash the towels, clean the kitchen sink, get my ironing done, and go for a walk with Annie along the beach path, from Woonona to Bulli and back, which was a great idea on such a lovely sunny day!

There's a lot more I could write... like about helping our Iranian friends set up their budget to keep track of their finances... like about the group project baby quilt I'm co-ordinating with the church ladies which has turned out bigger than Ben Hur (through no fault of my own - grrr)... or about how I cleaned my house last week and ohmygoodness it needs to be done again already.... or the lovely cross stitch I got inspired to start...

But it's getting late, and this post is already too long... and if I don't post this now, it'll get saved as yet another draft....

By the way, I've been wondering... what do YOU, my readers, want to hear about when I post? Are my long posts hard to read and sometimes you don't even bother? Honest answers please. :)

Sick... Take Two

My post on 14th May said I was sick... well... I thought I was. But in the last few days, I've been sicker than I've been in a loooong time. Wow... being a mummy when sick just takes one to a whole new level of everything. Selflessness. Sacrificial love. That sort of thing.

Alastair had Thursday and Friday off work because he's been sick, and on Friday I came down with it - hard. And I'm so glad that it's now the weekend... I don't know what I'd have done without Alastair. He has been such a wonderful husband as we muddle our way through this new experience as a little family. Today he's feeling a bit better, while I'm feeling about 100 times worse, so he's been getting washing and dishes up to date and looking after Annie while she's awake so that I can just rest and sleep.

I think Anthea is feeling a bit under the weather too, she's a little bit sniffly, but not blocked up... and she doesn't have a cough or anything. But if she's feeling anything like we have, she could have a massive headache and/or sore throat.... so hard when little ones are sick. Last night I was up to her several times, and thought my head was going to explode.....

Anyhow, we've just been lying around really... last night I got all the photos on the computer sorted into folders like I've been meaning to do for ages, so that was a good thing. I've got a whole lot more to share with you all soon. :)

Oh, and today I discovered these articles, and thought they may be an encouragement to others as they were to me... :)

Motherhood is a Calling

Motherhood as a Mission Field

You cheeky thing!

As you may or may not be aware, for the last several (probably three) months I have been trying to start Anthea on solids, and she just has not been interested. I have tried all different types of food, and prepared it many different ways. I've tried to make it a game. I've been stressed about it. I have been given oodles of advice from oodles of people. I've been in tears over it. And so on and so forth. So, in the end, we made the decision to just forget about it for now - she's obviously thriving. She's reaching milestones, cutting teeth, still sleeping through the night... she must be fine. Every so often I give her the option of trying something off my plate, (I'm over preparing "baby" food for her if she's not going to eat it!) but it's usually met with tightly closed lips and a turned head. If she deigns to open her mouth and taste it, then the response is always the same: she spits it all out with an expression that says "that was FOUL - what on EARTH did you just put in my mouth?" so yeah, I'm over it.

However... yesterday, I had her on my hip, and decided to eat a chocolate muffin for morning tea. She looked interested (as usual) and lent towards it with her mouth open. Hmm... that bit was new. So I thought, "who cares, what's the harm in trying, she'll spit it out anyway", and let her look at it more closely. And then - shock - she took a bite! And it didn't get spat back out... she looked a bit shocked at first, but then seemed to enjoy the taste and swallowed it! AND THEN SHE WENT TO TAKE ANOTHER BITE! Right, so there's nothing physically wrong, she IS capable of swallowing food and not just milk. That's good to know. :)

I decided to then try a piece of pear, just eating it myself and making out that it was the yummiest thing ever. Again, she lent in for a taste, and I thought, Yay! We've had a breakthrough! But no, she spat it straight back out, and then gagged on what was left. :(

Aha... I'm onto you, little one.Your new little tooth is quite sweet, I see! :P

Out of the fog

Ahh... cup of tea in hand, baby in bed for her afternoon nap... it's an overcast, cool day, our dinner (casserole) is in the slow cooker, and I actually have time to feel cosy and blog. :)

This week has been good so far. It started with being encouraged at church by the lovely early childhood nurse at church, to just do what I think is the right thing to do as far as Anthea is concerned. My cherub has, for the last two weeks, been quite out of sorts, not sleeping through the night (argh! she's slept through since she was about 6 weeks old - what's happened?!?!), and I've been a bit disillusioned with the whole Joy of being a Mummy. I thought maybe she was hungry, surely that's why she was waking in the night! If I could just get her to eat some food, we'd be okay again - right? Not right. She wasn't interested, and I was getting frustrated trying to force it in. I'd also been told that by 6 months, babies should be on about a 4-hourly routine, so I was trying to change her routine too. TMI, we used to say... Too Much Information. I think that's what can so easily happen to new mummies, when we feel out of our depth and that we don't know enough, we second-guess everything and then just trying anything that might work. And there are so many sources of information and advice.... so it can all get very confusing. Plus, we seem to have been through another layer of skin on my nipples this week - excruciating. No fun at all. How does that happen, after the baby has been feeding with no worries for months?!?!

So anyhow, Monday morning saw me start Annie back on her 3-hourly routine with no solids. I put her to bed when I saw her tired signs and knew she was tired, even if she hadn't been up as long as she "should have been". She had three good sleeps that day. I gave her a dream-feed on Sunday and Monday nights. Tuesday I was also fairly strict with her, put her to bed when I thought I should, and didn't offer solids. By her 9pm feed on Tuesday night, I had decided to skip the dream-feed... and she slept through til 7am. I was so ridiculously pleased with myself... it had worked! I knew what was best for her, because I am her mummy! And the Joy came back. :)

I guess that may be one reason I feel like I've come out of the fog. For some reason, looking back over the time since Anthea has been born, the whole lot feels like a fog... but now, looking forward, it's like the sun has come out and I'm optimistic about what lies ahead - I can do it! In God's strength and with Alastair's help, of course. But even though the day is dreary, I'm not just moping about, getting bogged in monotony... I'm doing things and striking them off my To Do List! :) Last night I even did the ironing while Alastair was at bible study. :)

Tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary, so that was pretty exciting. :) We went out for dinner to the local Indian restaurant, and it was really yummy. Anthea came too... we strapped her little seat to the chair and she chewed on a rusk... and some teaspoons... and a napkin... and was very good for her first time in a restaurant. :) We dressed her up all pretty too, so everyone thought she was just a little darling. :) We have decided (at this stage - it may change, but for now), that since Alastair's family has been through the trauma and horror of divorce, that we want our anniversary to be a special occasion that our whole family (even though it's little at the moment) looks forward to and celebrates together - the fact that the mummy and the daddy love each other is a special gift, and it's a gift that not every family has. We can go out for dinner as a couple at other times, but feel that this is a really important thing for our kids to be aware of, and to celebrate with us!

Yesterday, Annie and I visited an elderly friend, whom I know from my pharmacy assistant days - oh so long ago! :) I had only been to see her when Anthea was quite small, so she was thrilled to see how much she's grown. Mrs. Woollard is a beautiful 88-year-old Christian... one of those people that it doesn't matter what she's talking about, she will always find somewhere to insert a "the Lord is so good to me, I don't know what I'd do without Him!", or an "I'm so very blessed", as she tells me how she was praying for all 15 of her great-grandchildren before I arrived, asking God to bless them, to keep them, and to bring them to Himself. She is frustrated by a little bit of memory loss since a recent flu she had, but was asking about how Alastair is, and how our church is going.... just a shining light she is. I always feel warmed by her presence.

This week I've also.... (drumroll please)... cleaned my house! :) Yay! Well, nearly. I haven't cleaned the kitchen sink or changed the sheets... but the rest is done! I am nearly delirious with excitement, because as of this morning, my basin is clean at the same time as my shower! Cleaning the shower is one of my least favourite jobs... made even less favourite when the baby starts to scream in the middle of the job.... and the absolute WORST part of it is getting the hair and gunk out of the grate on the drain - that bit always makes me heave. :( Made all the worse, of course, because I am losing so much hair at the moment - I'm going to be bald soon, I just know it...

Speaking of hair - I went and got a haircut. :) It's up to my shoulders, with a fair bit of layering, and now that I'm used to it, it's okay. :) I just needed a bit of a change - and I've been wearing it out with just a headband, so that makes me feel different and that is nice. :)

The other exciting thing is that I've finally finished my Community Pharmacy workbooks!!! Maybe that is also part of why the fog seems to have lifted - I no longer have that hanging over me... it was such a burden! It's not completely finished, I still have a last appointment with my trainer (not til mid-April) to finalise the last of everything, but the study part of it is done, and that's the main exciting thing. :)

Okay, so this is very long and maybe not everyone was interested in all that. :P I think I was writing it as much for myself though, so not to worry. Next time I'll have to post some more photos... OH, THERE WAS ANOTHER EXCITING THING! I nearly forgot!!! Anthea can sit up now!!!! On her own! :) It was pretty special to witness that. :) She's gone from size 0 Bonds wondersuits to size 1 this week too.... mmmm.... :) my chubby bubby.

Update... finally!

The mastitis has cleared up, the baptism is over, and I've basically had a week at home - so good. Thanks to a number of things (including an email from my dear friend Andrea), I realised (after one of my Mummy's Magnificent Meltdowns on Tuesday night), that I have been pushing myself and my baby too hard in my efforts to be Super-Mum... and that I had to take a step back and re-evaluate everything. So this week, the floors have stayed in their needing-to-be-vacuumed state... we've eaten more meals from the freezer... and basically all I've managed to accomplish each day has been the washing and dishes. But, I have felt more rested and I have a happier baby for it... I have a more peaceful (though dirty) home... and my husband has come home from work to a happy wife... and that's what counts. Darling Donna always reminds me that some people actually have a DIRT floor in their home... SOME dirt on mine isn't the end of the world. :)

Today I had planned to go up to Newcastle with one of the mums from church to be a support to another of the mums, at the funeral of her dad... but with my tiredness and Anthea's fussiness, I had to opt out. I really wanted to be there for Jill to show my love, but my prayers will have to suffice, and I'll catch up with her next week or something... maybe a cooked meal will show my love more...

And so begins my life as Not-Super-Mum... and my life learning to say 'no' more often. Problem is, in order to get better at it, I have to practise...

"Not-Super-Mum"... sounds like a good alias... :)

Anthea is asleep at the moment. :) She sleeps well at night (7-8 hours), but I'm struggling with her sleep routine during the day... in that she doesn't actually have a routine for sleep during the day! She feeds 2.5 - 3 hourly, then some awake time... but sometimes she stays awake for the whole time til her next feed, and I'm not sure that she's supposed to!!! Anyhow... trial and error.... :)

She's growing up so much. The nine and a half weeks since her birth have passed so quickly!

In mid-October, we did a Friday-to-Tuesday trip down to Melbourne for Alastair to do the "Around the Bay" 100km bike ride, stopping overnight each way with Alastair's Nan in Benalla. I think I might finish this post in pictures...

Daddy with his baby, at his favourite landmark:



Anthea having morning cuddles with her Great Nan:



Outside Nan's unit before we left:



Having a picnic:





Cuddles with Aunty Donna:



All snuggly and cute:



Last Sunday was Annie's baptism day - 30th October 2011:



















And that will have to do for now... I have a few other photos I wanted to put up, but they're attached to various emails, and I need to find them, save them, etc, before I can put them up...