Practising being two July 28, 2008
The Young Man is now eighteen months old…. and as my Mum says he is practising being two as in the terrible twos. Overnight my lovely natured baby has turned into a throwing things, having tantrums, not wanting to eat boy. 95% of the time he is still lovely but that other 5% of the time can be a real pain.
The hardest thing is working out how best to deal with this new behaviour. As much as I want to tell him ‘off’ when he throws things I know that he is really only doing it for attention so me telling him off is only giving him what he wants – albeit in a negative fashion.
Luckily Adman’s workload has dropped off and he has actually been at home for three weekends straight now and home every night. Its been wonderful and really nice to be family again.
My Mum is housesitting for friends for the next 7 weeks which will be even nicer as we will be able to get into our little family groove again.
Our house plans have just been finalised and are off to Council for consent shortly so hopefully building will begin in the next month or too.
Fingers crossed
Yesterday July 12, 2008
Yestereday was one of the worst days we have had for a while… so bad I don’t think I can even write about it yet… but lets just say it involved a court case, family escaping a violent domestic situation and us being stuck right in the middle of it both.
Luckily Adman and I are of the ‘glass half full’ camp so we know that things will get better and we probably won’t (dear G*d) have another day like that for a while
Just one more June 30, 2008
I love chocolate. In fact I love it so much that if its in the house then I would eat it for breakfast. Actually that is exactly what I did on Saturday morning. The night before Adman and I had shared half a bar of cadbury’s fruit and nut while we watched a DVD. The left over choc went in the fridge. When I got up the 6 am in the morning with the young Man I nibbled a couple of squares, at about 7am I thought I deserved a couple more squares (well actually maybe it was about eight!!). After breakfast while doing the housework I snuck a few more pieces while Adman wasn’t looking.
Later in the day Adman went to the fridge to get some of the chocolate…. surprisingly there was only a corner left – I feigned ignorance and then put the blame squarely on my Mothers shoulders. Now my lovely husband loves me so much that hebroke the left over chocolate in half and shared it with me.
did I feel guilty? No way – when it comes to chocolate guilt goes out the window!
The good, the bad and the unmentionable June 26, 2008
Its been six months since we moved home and moved (temporarily) in with my Mum. It looks like its going to be at least another 6 months before we will be able to move into our own home. Currently we are waiting for the plans to be finalised and then they need to be approved by our Council before building can even start.
Mostly living with Mum has been fine (although the Adman may have a differing opinion) but there have been times when I have been tempted to start looking at rental properties – if it wasn’t for the fact that we are managing to save a whole heap of moohlah I am not sure if we would be able keep it up.
But of course there are some benefits to staying with Mum including….
- She pretty much does all the washing (which is the bane of my life)
- If I need to work late she is able to pick up the young man and start getting his dinner etc sorted
- She does the dishes every night after dinner
- Adman and I are able to go out in the weekend and we have a built in babysitter
- When Adman is away for work Mum steps in and helps out with the Young man – Adman has been away for over 50% of the time for the last two months so it has been much appreciated
But then again there are some pretty annoying/bad things about staying here…
- Her constant nagging about the fact that we don’t make our bed
- she is obsessed with having a nicely mown lawn – which means Adman pretty much has to mow her lawn most weekends
- She constantly tries to keep the lounge tidy whereas Adman and I see no point in doing a tidy until the Young man goes to bed
- She is so noisy when she gets up in the morning to go for a walk that most days the Young Man gets woken by her door slamming
And of course there is the unmentionable…. well I don’t really need to go into too much detail but lets just say that a squeaky bed always seems louder than it really is!
All growed up June 25, 2008
The Young Man is now almost 17 months old. He is no longer a baby but I can’t quite call him a boy or even a toddler yet.
He climbs everything and can even climb by himself into his highchair, and try to strap himself him.
He still isn’t the worlds greatest talker but every day he is learning more and more words. His latest word is ball… but he pronouces it like baoooollll. For some strange reason he seems to have a canadian accent.
He still loves going to his carer and and excitedly calls out her name all the way on the drive to her house. Unfortunately she is going on a 8 week holiday at the end of the month and he is having to go to another carer. I am hoping that the transistion will be fine especially since he has been to her a couple of time before. But who knows…. they are fickle young things these children.
This box is his favourite toy at the moment- he likes to put things in it and then put the lid on it. He has even tried to put the lid on when he is sitting in it!
I know it won’t last for long but at the moment he likes to help with the housework!
Bestest Carrot Salad recipe ever… June 24, 2008
In lieu of a proper post here is my recipe de jour…
I am going through one of those phases when I don’t really feel like cooking but I still want to eat something yummy (perhaps it’s called the midwinter food blues?). I am sick of casseroles and mashed potatoes I want something tangy and light and most of all tasty…enter stage left my simple and delicious carrot salad
Step one: Grate as many carrots as you think you will need ( 3-4 is usually enough for a side dish for 3)
step two: add finely sliced red onion and a handful of flat leaf parsley and mint
step three: add salt and pepper, olive oil and juice of one large lemon
step four: mix well and leave for about 1/2 hour
step five: add feta cheese to salad just before serving and mix again
Step six: eat and eat until your heart is content (I usually keep some in the kitchen that I can eat on the sly later on)
the common cold June 12, 2008
My nose it runs and runs
My eyes weep and weep
My ears ache and ache
My throat screams raw
That’s right the illness that the rest of the household has succumbed to over the last few weeks has finally reached me.
I had been successfully Avoiding it by early nights and lots of vitamin C. However over the weekend I was offered a massage. I desperately needed it as my back, neck and shoulders were hard as rocks. The massage made that all feel better but I knew that all those toxins got shaken up and it was all over red rover. By Monday morning I had a tickling nose and a scratchy throat. Monday night saw me lying on the couch unable to move.
Of course this week has been a week where I haven’t been able to take time off work – meetings that I have had to attend – so there has been no time for me to even think about recovery. Now its Thursday and I am still sick and feeling like crap.
Hopefully the weekend will bring me respite or at least a chance to laze miserably on the couch.
Wood June 6, 2008
Life has escaped away on me lately. I seem to be hanging on by a thread. Not that there is anything majorly wrong or anything that I am unable to cope with but I just feel like if I don’t watch it – it could all just slip away.
Although in some ways our house/building is coming along nicely there has also been some dramas. The previous owner is trying to take us to the small claims court because of some native timber on the site. When we purchased the property we asked if the timber would be removed prior to settling. We were told that the owner didn’t want it and didn’t have time to clear the timber or any of the other rubbish on the site. Adman and I spoke to a friend who made flooring out of native timber and he recommended that we could use it for flooring. A week after we settled I had a phone call from another friend to say that someone was out at the land milling the wood. It turned out that it was the previous owner who had decided that he wanted the wood and he was milling it. The long and short of it is that we ended up having to trespass him and he has now decided that he will take us to court to get the wood -even though his lawyer who dealt with the property settlement has told him (and us) that he has no legal right to the wood.
Its frustrtaing and is taking up alot of time and effort – something I don’t seem to have much of at the moment.
I feel like I need to take some time out and make sure I ( and we) are happy with how our life is going but I also feel like we shouldn’t bother as in a few months things will be turned upside down when we shift into our new house. But until then I guess we just have to keep on keeping on.
Status Brown May 9, 2008
We have always been really lucky with the Young Man and never had to deal with the whole exploding nappy situation…. well until last weekend. The Adman and I had planned a trip away to the coromandel to stay with friends and although I was looking forward to it I knew it would be hard work. I didn’t think however that the actual trip there would be the hardest part.
We left just after lunchtime as the Young Man hadn’t had his morning sleep so we figured we would get a couple of hours on the road with him asleep. Uh No…. He slept for exactly 40 minutes. About 1 1/2 hours into the journey he started getting really grizzly. We still had at least another 2 hours to go so we didn’t really want to stop. In our wisdom of very experienced parents (ha) we decided he was grizzly because he was tired and we should just ignore him and eventually he would go back to sleep. After about 1/2 an hour of constant grizzling and occasional high pitched screams I decided we needed to stop. The plan was that we would stop at the next town and have a coffee and let the Young Man have a bit of a stretch.
As I started to get the Young Man out of his car seat I suddenly realised what the problem was…. he had pooed. And not only had he pooed but it was everywhere. Poor little man. Poor Me having to try and tidy it up.
Usually when I need to change his nappy when we are out and about I do it in the back of the station wagon however it was filled to the top with all the baby paraphernalia. So I attempted to change him in the passenger front seat. Close your eyes and imagine a baby slipping into the back of the seat while poo is being smeared all over the leather seats and the baby is trying to get away from the poo but all he is actually doing is getting it all over you. That’s the picture I was having to deal with.
While all this was going on Adman was doing goodness knows what. I finally managed to get most of the poo off the boy but still needed to get the poo-ey clothes off him. This needed to be a two person job so I asked Adman if he could help out. Around he comes and pulls out a handful of wipes – oh not wait – it was the last handful of wipes- and proceeds to start wiping the poo off the seats. Too bad about the baby covered in poo or the wife covered in poo – obviously the seats were most in need of cleaning up.
So there we were standing next to the car in the main street of small town NZ with a butt naked baby and a Mum covered in poo and a Dad rumanging through the back trying to finding more wipes. Eventually we were all put back together and back on our way. I think it wasn’t until we got home that I actually recovered.
