All alone with my PMS

ANM is out with his friends tonight. He doesn't go out at night very often, and even then it's usually when there is some crisis at his work that needs sorting. I think last time I blogged about him being out at night I got all productive and made muffins, but I really can't be stuffed tonight. I did get some nice yogurt on special today, so might go and scoff some of that instead.

So yes, it seems I have PMS from hell this month. It crept up on me and I turned into nightmare mother/wife all of a sudden a few days ago and gave everyone, including myself, a bit of a fright. Maybe I need to research some herbal somethingorothers to deal with this because I certainly don't fancy going through it on a regular basis. Surely women weren't designed to be hormonal fruitcakes for one out of every four weeks for their entire childbearing years? That would just be crappy design, surely... I wonder if only Western women get it?

Anyway, I'm off to eat my vanilla blueberry yogurt in peace. Hopefully I'll be feeling more sane (and eloquent) tomorrow.

Alan Rickman - celebrity crush

I love Alan Rickman. There, I've said it.

"Who?" I hear you ask. No, not some young muscley guy with scarily perfect whiter than white teeth. You might know him as The Metatron in Dogma or Severus Snape from the Harry Potter movies or that old guy in Love Actually. Yeah he's older than both my parents. Is that ewww? Probably.

I developed my crush after I saw Truly Madly Deeply when I was um, about 16. Oh, his voice! It's just so luscious. Mmmm.  And that movie was the first love story I fell in love with.

Aaah, Alan.

The Metatron in Dogma

... and I think I've just shared a little too much.

Preschool boy

I've just realised that I never blogged about Little C starting preschool.  Well, I suppose there's not really much to say except he started preschool and is loving it, so instead of blahing on I'll spam you with some photos of the boy on his first day.

Air guitar - the preferred pose for all photos

Standing "very still"

Pretending to be interested in something up in the sky while trying not to laugh at the strange woman insisting on taking a gazillion photos.

ibreastfed.com, the Great Cloth Nappy Hunt and prizes galore

The Great Cloth Nappy Hunt is on again this month and ibreastfed.com is sponsoring. How does the GCNH work? You register for free here, then until the end of March you visit participating sponsor sites (including ibreastfed.com of course!) to hunt for the Diaper Decisions nappy icon to earn entries into the 89 random prize drawings, including three grand prizes worth over $500 each! 

As I don't sell any products on ibreastfed.com, EcoToys has kindly donated a super cute and cuddly organic cotton cow toy to the Nappy Hunt prize pool on behalf of ibreastfed.com. Visit EcoToys to check out their wonderful range of safe and environmentally friendly wooden and organic cotton toys.

AND if you publish your inspirational breastfeeding story on ibreastfed.com during March 2009 you will enter the draw to win this beautiful Baltic amber teething necklace donated by Selkie Designs. The necklace prize draw is open to anyone, anywhere. You don't need to sign up for the Nappy Hunt for this prize draw. Click here for details.

Little V has one of these necklaces and I've noticed that the days I forget to put it on him he is less of a happy chappy than on the days he wears it. Amber is believed to have pain-relieving properties and my poor little mite is currently getting his four canines and his first set of molars all at once. 

Wanna play? Visit ibreastfed.com today to find out more and join in the fun.

The unhaunting

We've lived in our house for five and a half years but it has never felt like ours. I've felt more at home in rental places that I've lived in for twelve months than in this house. One room in particular in our house has always felt... creepy. ANM and I have both had very strange dreams and odd feelings in that room and Little C has spoken of a man in his room (yes, it's his bedroom) in the middle of the night. Locked doors in our house have regularly opened and closed at random. It's a little freaky when you're minding your own business and the dead bolted front door suddenly swings open, or the back door bangs closed on a windless day.

Skip to the point...

A couple of weeks ago some people who happen to be mediums and mediums in training came to our house. None of them had been here before but some of them knew that slightly odd things tended to occur here. They immediately picked up on a presence, and not knowing the layout of the house, went straight to Little C's room. Yes, there was a ghost residing in our house and Little C's room was also his room. He was an unhappy fellow and had been here for a long time.  He had lived here before his early death at the age of 36. My visitors were able to provide many details about his life... and death, many of which I've since been able to confirm with my neighbour who new this fellow when he was alive.

This man/spirit/ghost didn't want to leave our house (his house) and initially felt quite threatened by my visitors. Eventually they were able to calm him down and convince him that it was okay to go and we sent him off to the light with love. Yup, just like in the Ghost Whisperer ('cept I couldn't see him... they could though). The poor fellow had been stuck here, worried about judgement for things he had done while alive. Now he is at peace, and so at last are we. 

The house finally feels like it is ours. It has taken me a couple of weeks to get used to the new vibe, or lack of vibe, but I think I like it! It's much lighter and happier here now. 

Filling in the blank months

Holey moley (or moly?) I've missed blogging but y'know life takes over sometimes... Waah, two whole months of not blogging leave me with so much to say, but no idea where to start. Here's a brief synopsis of the most exciting bits.

December: 

Christmas preparations and Christmas (duh). This was of course Little V's first Christmas and Little C's first totally-obsessed-with-Santa Christmas. I don't know how many times we went and visited Santas at the mall, but by Christmas time they knew us quite well and one in particular seemed to enjoy making me sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with him in front of all the other parents and kiddies. 

We had a great Christmas. A trampoline was erected (jeez, I'm old and I still snigger at that word), family was loved, presents were given and received and good food was ingested with gusto. At one stage there was a little too much gusto involved in V's ingestion resulting in a very scary blue baby moment.  The offending piece of food was eventually extracted from the wee one's trachea and Little V quickly returned to his usual pinkness, with a post-choke breastfeed to comfort the teary boy (and freaked mum).

January: 

Little V turned one. Woohoo! He made it. I don't know why one is such a big milestone these days when infant mortality is so low, yet I still breathed a sigh of relief that we'd made it through his first year with everyone still alive and relatively sane.

I had a weird health crisis that remains unexplained after almost 3 weeks of tests. Apparently it's not a stroke or a TIA or a migraine or multiple sclerosis or a brain tumor or any one of a heap of other things I've been tested for, but what it is remains a mystery. Ah well... I've done enough stressing about it now, so I'm just going to concentrate my energy on getting better. Any spare healing vibes would be much appreciated.

Oh yeah, I turned 34 last week. ANM bought me a cool necklace off Etsy. Yep, my husband actually registered an Etsy account just so he could buy it for me. Love him. 'Tis steampunk in theme, which reminds me I've been meaning to watch Steamboy for aaages. Mmm, will go and do that now, I think...