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...

Pics from my camera

Watching the rain

Favourite spot

Safe co-sleeping?

The only recent photo of Mr T on the camera... his foot with some loo paper.

The gate, the kitchen and the dare

Here ya go Sif!  Isn't it beautiful?

And because I couldn't be stuffed tidying up the kitchen before I took the photo, I'll treat you with and additional annotated pic of our kitchen mess.

Clockwise(ish) from left:

• A mostly chewed (by Little V) grape on a crummy plate, as in a plate with crumbs on it, probably from someone's breakfast, sitting next to a plastic bag containing the stalk of the grapes and a few grape dregs
• An opened packet of biscuits and 2 dirty tea mugs from when my Dad came over a couple of hours ago
• The deep fryer.  I have no idea why it's sitting there
• A used glass and plate (probably from my lunch) and a bottle of dishwashing liquid
• A very grubby gas cooker with some very grubby dishes on it
• Knives, jug and cleaning spray (no, I don't Enjo)
• The sink with more dirty dishes, wine glasses etc...
• Very brown cupboards
• Some vases, a dirty tissue and a coffee machine we've borrowed from my inlaws
• A plastic bag full of something on the floor
• The dishwasher (full of clean dishes because I haven't emptied it yet), microwave and dirty teatowel
• The fridge, which is looking quite uncluttered except for a funky magnet my friend gave me a couple of weeks ago that says "she was the life of the tupperware party", some family photos and magnets to stick them up, a few other magnets (gotta have a Darth Vader magnet on yr fridge!), the kitchen timer and a laminated Little C with removable/posable arms and legs from the "pin the limbs on the C" game we played at his birthday party.
  

Do you dare to show off your as-is kitchen pics too? Yes, you do!

Is this a lame-o attempt at a meme? Yes, it is!

So if you're reading this, take a picture of your kitchen as it is right now and post it on your blog. Surely I'm not the only person with a bit o' kitchen mess.

...okay I'm going to clean it now before ANM gets home from work...

The excitement of fensage and gateness

So here I am drinking my second glass of wine for the evening.  Top qual cask wine too I might add. Yeah, I know, breastfeeding, but... meh.

I tripped over our kitchen fence yesterday.  We've had the kitchen fenced off from the rest of the house since Little C started to crawl because it's horrible and dangerous and we haven't got around to renovating it to appropriate kid safety standards yet. The fence was just one of those octagonal plastic playpens opened out and wedged up against the entrance to the kitchen.  The fence didn't have a gate so for the last three and a half years we've been leaping over it to get in and out of the kitchen. 

Yesterday morning I was carrying Little V and misjudged the height of the fence as we were coming out of the kitchen and managed to snap it in about a gzillion places and send a chair that it was wedged up against it flying across the room. Some helpful god must've been watching over me because I somehow managed to stay upright and avoid major injury to myself and the wee one. Little V barely batted an eyelid. The fence was cactus.

So off to the shops to buy a new fencey thing. ToysRUs had a heap of different kinds but not many that would fit our wide kitchen entry opening.  In the end we went nuts and bought a $200 (totally out of our pre-agreed budget) configurable fence/playpen with a gate in it. OMG OMG talk about luxury. A gate. A gate. It has a gate. For 3.5 years I've had to hurdle in and out of my own kitchen.  I now have A Gate! Ah, the small things...

Not so lucky was my poor, poor mother-in-law who yesterday tripped down a step (yes, one step) in her own home and broke her ankle in two places. Wishing you a speedy (and hopefully not too painful) recovery, A. *mwah*

Jazzing up twenny bucks

Mr T has been to a few birthday parties lately and it seems the done thing within nerdy 13 year old boy circles is to give money on such occasions.  This is absolutely fine by me.  I'm happy to avoid the stress of trying to find a perfect yet affordable gift for a kid I barely know.  

Simply giving $20 in a card is a little boring though, so this is what I came up with for the most recent birthday boy:

For those of you who aren't familiar with Australian coinage the coin is five cents.  The idea was for the birthday boy to think Mr T was giving him 5c for his birthday then as he pulled the coin out of the pocket, voila! he found $20 stuck to the back.

All the kids at the party thought it was hilarious!

I'm such a dag... but a creative one, huh?

10 months old today

...and it walks!

Nerd post - web host joys

Well, it's been a crazy ol' week for sure.

In between Nappy Fabric Mountaining, Great Cloth Diaper Hunting, some fairly irritating web hosting dramas, looking after the kiddies, and all my usual weekly stuff, I haven't had oodles of time to myself this week.

I'm currently multitasking, or at least my computer is, deleting all the ibreastfed.com files from my 2nd host and then re-uploading them from a backup.  At least I'm really hoping I'm deleting the files from the right host. Eeek.  Yes, I am.  The joys...

I have 3 hosts for the same website at the moment.  

The first host I've been with on and off for years.  They are Australian, therefore they are expensive.  I am on their cheapest plan, which wasn't going to cut it for the Diaper Hunt, and all their other plans involved paying for a year in advance, which I didn't feel like doing for one month's worth of extra traffic.

So I found I nice eco-friendly WAHM-run host in the US that offered what I needed for a similar price to what I'm paying the first host, so I signed up.  They very kindly offered to move my site for me but it didn't work.  Well, it worked in that they moved my site, but it was somehow a version from early September, including an extra database and a whole bunch of files I had deleted before signing up with them... weird.  After they eventually believed me about the September thing, they sorta kinda fixed it, then I fixed it some more.  It looked fine from a user's point of view but it was very much cobbled together and the Wordpress admin area wasn't working properly which meant I couldn't change anything or add new content very easily.  

Ugh, so I had my site running perfectly on my first host but was a couple of days into the month and about to exceed my monthly bandwidth allowance, and I had the 2nd host which looked fine for users and had a generous bandwidth allowance but had major problems with it's admin interface. What to do, what to do...

Host 3: I found a really cheap (and huge) US host and copied all my files and database over to them.  It worked almost perfectly.  There was one teeny glitch with the DB transfer that I fixed very easily. So ibreastfed.com is now running through them. I have no idea why the 2nd host hadn't been able to transfer my site properly.  I guess I'll find out soon enough if it doesn't work for me this time... 

Anyway, that's the short version.  Exciting huh?

Exhaustion and bubbles

I'm so tired.  I'm sitting here typing one-handed (as usual) while Little V nods off.  My sale over at Nappy Fabric Mountain has been going nuts, which is great, but between finding and measuring and listing and unlisting fabric for sale I haven't had time for much else, besides looking after the Littles of course.

Mr T had his best mate Mr B over for a play this afternoon.  Do you still play when you're 13? I can't remember.  They arrived home and watched the end of Narnia with Little C while I made them a snack, then Mr T read some of his new book to Mr B. They're both into sci-fi/fantasy stuff and the new book is something to do with dragons... I think. Then they played Myst (Myst III, can't remember the proper name of it right now) for half an hour on the computer. I usually only let them do computer stuff for half an hour or so coz I'm so mean. They'd both sit on there all day if they could. They played with the Littles for a while and then we all went outside and blew bubbles!!! One is never too old to enjoy the bliss of bubble-blowing.

It appears Little V is now asleep.  He's snoring in my arms.  I think I'll go and put him in bed.

Want cheap nappy fabric?

Go and check out yet another me at Nappy Fabric Mountain.

I'm selling off my post-WAHM nappy fabric stash at ridiculously low prices.

Pathologising the nerd - a brief rant

Autism spectrum disorders (including Asperger syndrome and autism) are very real and often debilitating conditions. I am getting a little tired of uninformed people labelling anyone who is intelligent with slightly dodgy social skills as "autistic" or "an aspie". Just because someone is a nerd does does not mean they have Asperger syndrome or autism.

Mmmkay?

Birthday!

Saturday was Little C's 4th birthday. He was SO excited when he woke in the morning.  We'd put streamers up the night before and the look on his face when he saw them was... ahhh. :D Presents were opened and then I took the Littles to the shops to buy croissants (or secronts according to Little C) for breakfast, came home and ate our secronts and did the mad scramble of last minute party preparations.

Yes, I'd agreed to have a birthday party for Little C. He'd been planning it for months... I on the other hand had been desperately trying to pretend it wasn't happening.

So 10am arrived and it was party time. Amazingly, everything worked out beautifully and the only thing I managed to forget were the party hats, but I don't think anyone noticed. The kids seemed to have a fab time and there were only a few moments of slight disagreement between small people. A couple of families hung around for ages after the party finished so I guess we must have done something right. We rarely entertain and I always feel like such a gumby when we do. Luckily ANM has inherited his mum's good host genes and managed to remember to get everyone drinks, etc.

When the kiddy party finished we had a couple more hours to get organised before the grands and greats arrived at 3:30. Little V finally zonked out just before they arrived and slept for aaages so I had to wake him up so the olds could get their fix of ubercuteness. We were exhausted by the time they left, but a good time was had by all.

After a busy day Little C usually crashes in front of the telly straight after (or sometimes before) dinner but 8:30 came and went and he was still up playing with his new hoard of toys. We'd made a few gentle attempts to get him to go to bed but he wanted to keep playing... and playing, even though he was obviously really tired. It was getting late and ANM and I were exhausted and wanted to go to bed so we started to be a bit more directional in our suggestions and eventually Little C burst into woeful tears and sobbed that he didn't want to go to bed because he didn't want the toys to disappear. Poor little guy had thought that his new toys were just for the day of his birthday. Once I'd explained that they'd still be there in the morning he happily popped into bed and fell deeply asleep.

Photos? You want photos?

Opening the long-awaited Speed Racer helmet he's been drooling over in the shops all year.

Modelling ze helmet

Speed Racer cake

Graduating to the big potty - elimination communication update

We've been practising elimination communication (EC) part time with Little V since birth and have been using a potty bowl from when he was a few days old. Since he's developed into a strong 9 month old wriggletot we decided it was time to move to something that he can't sproing off mid-wee, quite so easily. 

It's been a week now since Little V graduated to using the Big White Potty. Initially he wasn't too happy about the change and I'm not sure that he even realised the BWP was a potty for the first day, but he did eventually work out what he was supposed to do with it and is now happy to use it for its intended purpose.

For those who care, the one on the left (the BWP) is a Baby Bjorn no-spill potty which I don't think you can buy any more, and the one on the right is the potty bowl from The Potty Shop. There's a pic of Little V on the bowl in this old post.

I can't believe I'm blogging about potties...

Fun with noodles

A couple of days ago the small boys were wanting lunch as they tend to do around the middle of the day, and I was feeling kitchen-creativity-challenged so made them some plain two minute noodles. Much fun was had, especially by Little V, who'd never had more than a taste of noodles before.

For me the fun really started when it was time to clean up and I realised how sticky cold noodles can be so I hatched a (ahem) brilliant plan. I took Little V (who as you can see was covered in the stuff) outside in the sun. I thought surely the warm sun would dry up the noodles nice and fast so I could simply pick them off him. I failed to take into account that a child plastered with cold sticky noodles crawling around in the dirt would probably attract dirt... and I ended up with a baby plastered in cold, sticky, dirty noodles. By this time I too was covered in noodles, so we both jumped in the shower. Little C wanted to join us of course, so a noisy and crowded shower was had by all and water somehow ended up all over the bathroom.  

The water dried up eventually.

I'm still picking noodles out of the carpet, but I don't mind.

Food co-op score

Yesterday morning I went with my friend A to check out a new playgroup we've been talking about for a while because our usual Thursday morning gig has become a tad crazy and overcrowded. The new one was lovely. Nice bunch of parents, great toys, lots of breastfeeding a-happening and the Littles had a ball.

The big and rather unexpected bonus of this playgroup is that the church that hosts the playgroup also runs a food co-op that as playgroup members we're eligible to join.  The food is mostly normal supermarket food at ridiculously low prices.  The only catch (if you want to call it a catch) is you can buy only one of each item to make it fair for the people who don't happen to get in first.

So this is what I got for $6.20:

Not bad, eh?  I wouldn't normally buy some of the more junky stuff but as I was taken by surprise by the fact that the co-op even existed plus was holding a squirming boy in one arm and a big cardboard box in the other while trying to write down my order list and put items in the box as I went, I don't think I did too badly.  I'll be much more organised next week. 

3K?

What would you do if your government suddenly decided you give you $3000, for um, happening to have 3 kids?  It's something to do with the global financial meltdown and I don't even pretend to understand why giving us this money will help with the crisis, but anyway, yes, we're getting 3K before Christmas, for real!  Ethics aside, I'm excited.  This means we'll finally be able to enclose our front courtyard and carport so the Littles can play safely while I hang out the washing and do other exciting outsidey type things. Squeee!!