On the mend...

We're nearly better, we just have those lingering coughs and sniffles that seem to hang around for ages and ages. Anthea is now sleeping 5-6 hours in a row at night... which is a far cry from her straight 10-11 hours pre-sickness, but still much better than the 2-3 hour stints she was doing while sick. I hope she gets back to her normal sleeping patterns soon. She's being so cute at the moment, having just figured out how to clap her hands... she sits up after a feed and claps with a big grin on her face. :)

Anthea and I went to a 1920s themed party on the weekend, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately because I am so dodgy, I didn't take a single picture at the party :( but there are sure to be some floating around somewhere at some point and I will see if I can post a link to them. However, I do have a few which Meaghan took of our preparations. My beautiful friend Donna made my costume the day before (!) because she is just one of the most amazing friends ever and loves to bless me. :) Anyhow, she got a a little carried away.... and before I knew it, Annie had a headband to wear too!

Not much else to report really. My house needs a good clean, but we're in the middle of a rainy week, so why would I bother when dirt, mud, squashed snails, sand, worms, leaves, and everything else you can think of is going to get tramped inside as soon as I'm finished. :P

I'll try to do a proper catch-up-on-photos-post next time.

Oh, I nearly forgot! My sister Meaghan has joined the blogosphere!!! This makes me very happy. :)

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

Sick

I'm all coldy and fluey... nose running like a tap... sneezing almost constantly... sinus headaches... aches and pains... Anthea's out of sorts too, poor darling... and right now, Alastair's doing after hours work.

Plus, we just seem to have a lot of other crap to deal with at the moment.

Not such a chirpy post this time.

May I present: photos from the last couple of months!

                     Chomping on my toe (yes, it was clean!)                    All rugged up in Canberra

 Tired out after church... she fell back to sleep as I was getting her out of the car!

 Trying Easter hats on at the shops                   Very precious first Easter egg!

                   Trying on the hats we bought in Melbourne             Looking out the plane window

 I can play the piano already!

 Daddy's birthday present from Aunty Meaghan was a Superman suit for his baby!

Have I shown you this before?

I just found this photo... it's an old one (December last year!), but one of my favourites. I promise I'll post more recent ones soon!

I love crossing things off lists

I'm having a productive week, since all the busy-ness seems to have settled down. Crossed off my to-do list so far are:

• change sheets
• wash towels
• purchase and wrap 21st gift for Bethany
• ironing
• cook chocolate chip biscuits
• clean kitchen sink
• buy singlets appropriate for breastfeeding
• renew Bicycle NSW membership
• RSVP to two invitations
• mending
• pick up free PixiFoto
• clean bathroom sink and mirror
• dissemble and wash fans before packing away for the winter
• make little curtain for the pram
• cook pavlova for American guests we're having over tomorrow night

I've still got a few things left to do tomorrow, but on the whole, I'm feeling happy about my pottering around this week. :)

Now, in my second-last post I mentioned a few things I wanted to post about, one of them being the "12 Random Things" meme which I did, also Facebook, and photos of our little girl. So today I'm going to tackle the Facebook thing, and next time the photos - hopefully on the weekend.

So... where to start. Last November I deactivated my Facebook account (see this post), and had it deactivated for a few months. However, I missed the ease with which I was able to keep in touch with my family - especially Lachlan, since he's overseas. But, I loved not being in contact with so many random acquaintances who had gradually "friended" me over the years... I LOVED not seeing their silly status updates... and that got me thinking - maybe they loved not seeing mine too! :P Oh, and after deactivating, only TWO people (outside my family and my close circle of friends) noticed that I had gone from FB and chased me up. TWO PEOPLE. Out of nearly 200 friends. Haha. "Friends". :P

Alastair was also particularly concerned about the security breaching with FB, and their harvesting of information - something to do with them setting cookies in your browser and seeing everything and having access to everything that you look at....? Along those lines anyway.

We started to talk about how I was missing keeping up with people - and yes, I know that if the relationship is only Facebook-deep then what kind of a relationship is it anyway. But still, it's the little bits of involvement in people's lives... the people that I'm actually related to, or am really truly friends with. So we hatched a plan. :) If I used Facebook only in Google Chrome (set aside that browser to use for FB only, so that FB couldn't see what else I was doing when using Firefox or IE), and if I culled a whole lot of my "friends, then we would both be happier about having Facebook in our lives.

So... I whittled down my "friends list"... it wasn't very hard.... I got it down to 52. I now have 57 friends, since we're starting to get to know people from our lovely new church, the number has gone up :) - and when you think that probably nearly half of them are family and extended family, and some of my friends have three or four siblings, then I feel that's an achievable number of people for me to be in touch with, and a nice Facebook to have. :) I don't have to listen to the moany, crappy status updates from randoms I hardly know, those ones who I was just "aware that they were there" and was just "keeping up with the goss". My "news feed" only contains (well, 99% of the time!) the things that people I love are doing, and because I have way fewer friends, it doesn't get updated as often - so no need to check it all the time.

It's working well. For now. We'll re-assess it if we need to. :)

12 Random Things About Me

I never do these memes that go around, but for some reason I am inspired to do this one... :)

1. I like cooking a little more now that I'm married. Still not real inspired about main meals, but getting better at my baking and desserts. I have made two pavlovas in the last two months - and both worked out!

2. Budgeting is my "thing", and I check my spreadsheet probably once a day. Is that slightly obsessive? I love it when the car registration renewal arrives in the mail... and I find that we have just the right amount in the car rego column.

3. I think I have the cutest baby in the world, (pics next time, I promise!) and I love being her mummy, (mostly).

4. Going on from no. 3: being a mother has taught me so many things already - in just 8 months! I shudder to think what I'll have learned in 8 years if I keep going at this rate.

5. And leading on from no. 4: I haven't actually learned all the lessons and passed all the tests that God as provided for me on the mummy-front... I continually slip up and fail. What I'm working on at the moment? Learning to be more flexible and easy-going. There must be a balance, somewhere. :)

6. I am finding this little exercise quite hard - I don't think there ARE 12 random things about me! Perhaps I am just a boring person.

7. A clean house makes me supremely happy. I don't even mind the cleaning part, but I find it difficult when I can't get more than 2 minutes of a job done at a time. I tend to be pretty disgusted in myself when the only thing I have to show at the end of the day, is that I've actually managed to have a shower.

8. I like chocolate more than I should, and give in to temptation in this regard too regularly. I saw a mug today in Officeworks, which said "I can resist anything, except temptation"... that about sums up my relationship with chocolate.

9. There are only so many times I can laugh about being vomited on in one day. (Hence I have given myself a two week break from trying solids with Anthea again.)

10. My family are some of my favourite people to hang out with, especially my sister. :) I'm so thankful that we live close enough to be able to visit each other quite easily.

11. My husband wears an enormous, red tartan, adult-sized wondersuit (all-in-one suit) to bed in winter. I guess that's not really a random fact about me, is it. Well I have to sleep in the same bed as it, so I'm counting it as one.

12. I find it hard to start from scratch in the the friend-department, as we are doing at the moment in our new church. We have decided to try to make more of an effort to get to know people there, and have  invited one couple over for dessert on Friday night, and another for lunch on Sunday. I'm half scared, half excited. It's quite cool though, getting to know these people as "Alastair and Carla", not with them already knowing one of us and having to get to know the other. :)

There, I did it! :)

Where does time go?

Goodness gracious me, we have been so busy! I feel like every post I do, that's all I say, but it's true! I've got to make a few changes I think. Well, one change has already happened - I had my final assessment for the Community Pharmacy course last Friday, so now, the pressure is off! Hopefully, the next thing I hear from them is receiving the certificate and transcript in the post! :) So that is definitely a weight off my shoulders, I was quite nervous about Friday, but my trainer was lovely and it all went very well. Another change I want to make is to do shorter posts more often. And not just "I'm so busy, this is what happened this week" kind of posts. I want to write the sort of things that people like to read... glimpses into the hearts and lives of myself and my family... the little things that make us happy... and that sort of thing.

We are having a quiet weekend... it's been a long time coming. Today I vacuumed and dusted, and it was good to restore a bit of order in this place. I took the blankets out of a blanket box, and put toys in it instead - which means they're more accessible and we can get them out to play with more often. They're the noise-making, interactive type, which Anthea has just started to like. She can now sit on the floor and bang on her little piano toy - it's so cute to watch. Uncle Lachlan was pleased to see that she's already started playing. :)

The last weekend in March was very special, as our dear friends the Careys came down from Queensland and stayed with my parents, so we were thrilled to be able to spend some time with them during their time here. It had been probably 18 months since we'd last seen them, and we loved being able to introduce them to Anthea! Andrea also came up with her kids - so it was almost like old times! If Lauren and her family had been able to be there, it would have been just perfect, but never mind, another time. :) Andrea was a big encouragement to me as a new mother too... gently helping me to troubleshoot some of my fears and dramas regarding Anthea's routine, and challenging me to chill out about it a bit more. Which was perfect timing and JUST what I needed. :) Oh and I'm so thrilled, she's just started blogging - I've been telling her that she should for ages. :)

I've started going to the ladies bible study at our new church - well, I've been twice. :) I like that it has a broad age-group... from grandmothers down to young single women. And there are thoughtful, heart-felt discussions to be had. I have made a new friend too, the lovely Jade. She is a year younger than me, and is married with a 3.5 month old baby boy named Eli - the only other baby at church. I had her over for morning tea last week, and apologised for not having the floor vacuumed before she arrived... and she laughed at me! "Oh Carla, I never vacuum! You shouldn't have worried!" :) She's a more laid back than me, and I think we'll balance each other out... I have good feelings about our friendship. :)

Easter was a busy weekend too... we went to visit my grandparents in Manly, for the first time since Annie's birth! How terrible is that?! We've seen them a several times, but hadn't actually made the effort to do the trip just to see them. They seemed to really appreciate the visit, and I was quite impressed with how easy-going they were and how well they managed having us and a baby. :) Meaghan stayed overnight on Easter Sunday, to help me on the Monday to prepare for having friends and family over for dinner for Alastair's 34th birthday. (I cannot believe that my husband is 34!!!) We don't have much room in our house, so we had our little party out under Jim's carport, which he cleaned up beautifully for us in the days beforehand. Joel and Katherine stayed over that night, for the first time, and that was lots of fun. They got to have morning-cuddles-in-bed with Annie too... :)

That Tuesday I threw caution to the wind, and decided to head up to the Sydney Royal Easter Show with friends for the day. At first I wasn't sure if the idea was brave or stupid, but it turns out that it was brave - and it was actually REALLY good for me to realise that I could do something like that with Anthea, and that her getting a bit out of routine isn't the end of the world. She seemed to handle it really well, was a bit tired the next day, but overall, it was quite a liberating experience. Oh, I also discovered that I no longer get a thrill out of scary rides - they just don't do it for me any more. So that's good to know.

13th-16th April we flew to Melbourne for the weekend... just for fun. Mum, Dad and Meaghan came too, and we had a ball - mostly. One of the days I got food poisoning, and had an horrendous afternoon at the factory outlet centre - getting to know the toilets there quite well. It was just awful. I had to feed Anthea on a seat outside the toilet with Meaghan beside me, so that at any point I could give Annie to her and run in. :( I found Willow Tree figurines half price, and the maternity bras I paid $60 for early last year, I found for $28, so they were a few bargains. Other than that though, the trip taught us a few lessons... that a holiday with a baby is very different to a holiday as a couple - not bad different, just different different... and as the parents, we were more tired than we expected, so the sight-seeing we'd planned was just hard work.... not bargaining for a half hour here or there for feeds... and stuff like that.  On the whole though, it was good. Anthea flew really well, and slept in the pram when we were out during the day, but unfortunately didn't enjoy seeing Carlton play Collingwood at the MCG - she and I spent most of the time in the parents' room.

So those are the major things that have been going on... but there are lots of little things too, such as making a vegie garden and planting out lots of seedlings; watching Annie learn to play with her toys; getting her first Pixifoto done (with the voucher from the Bounty Bag - yay!); and her first tooth coming through just the day before yesterday! :) She's growing up so quickly - I can't believe she'll be 8 months on Monday!

Before I go, just for a laugh: Alastair took Annie out this afternoon for a couple of hours so that I could get some stuff done. I sent him a message while he was away, to say that I'd thought of cooking spaghetti bolognaise for tea, and did he have any other suggestions, but that McDonalds, Caesar's (chicken burgers), or burritos would not be considered. The message I got back? "You took all three of my suggestions and broke them into shards and stabbed me in the heart with them." :P And you thought *I* was a drama queen. :)

Next time, I want to post photos, do the 12 Random Things meme that the girls have been doing, and also I want to write about Facebook and how I'm doing it differently now,  and how much better it is. :)

I'd better go, Anthea's just woken again....

Hmm...

Sat down to write a post, and all I've managed to do is rearrange my blog. :P