A can 'o' worms

Next on my to-do list is something to feed my new babies with.

I bought this beautiful set up from my local council and put it up in a dim corner of my front yard.

I thought the kids might enjoy it but I'm the one obsessively checking my new pets, they are fascinating little guys. Peel back the circle of carpet I've cut to fit on top of them and see them run for cover! Well, squirm and heave for cover is perhaps more correct. Maybe I'll take of photo of them next time, I know you want to see my half eaten kitchen scraps crawling with worms.

Actually, I might get me another box of them there wormies, the literature tells me they should eat about 500gm of kitchen scraps a day, but we seem to generate more than that. 

Next: when I was at the farmer's market last week, I bought a feijoa tree.

And I lost my 2 yr old.

But here's the feijoa tree:
(And the 2 yr old turned up too, more about that another time but I am sporting a few new gray hairs.) 

Yes, very glamorous looking isn't it?

This little guy can apparently live happily in a pot, as long as remember to I prune it. 

Obviously, a bigger pot will be needed at some stage and MAYBE one day I'll get to plant it in the ground.

Here's Mr 5's cyclamen he picked out last week, isn't it geeeeorgeous?

And today we tootled back to the garden centre (it was cold and raining and they have an indoor playground AND a cafe, it's a winner all round!) to pick up some tulip and anemone bulbs. 

Looking forward to getting down and dirty tomorrow, our one full day with no swimming lessons, gymnastics or pre-school, woooo!
Down and dirty in the garden, that is. 

A favour from the bloggy world, please?

I know a mum on the other side of the world to me, who's 3rd baby is due in August. 

She, Cadi, is a single mum with 2 boys and she's a second grade teacher to boot. 

Earlier this year, this mum's partner passed away, just three weeks after they found out they were expecting a baby.

I found Cadi through my sister, when she put a call out to the blogosphere for an Aussie to please send a 20c coin for her son's project on the platypus.

I happily obliged.

As a delightfully unexpected thank you, Cadi is knitting my two boys pilot hats,

and no, they won't be pink as per the above link!

You can find her blog and read her story here: MaeheGirl. 

The favour

Cadi has been nominated for the Richmondmom.com Dream Baby Shower

by her cousin. 

There are some lovely prizes to be won, massages and a photo session for a new bub among other things.

The winner is generated by votes and votes can come from anywhere in the world. 

Now, Cadi has not asked me to put this out here for all to see, but when I found out she had been nominated for the Dream Baby Shower I wanted to help out in some way.

So if you are so inclined, please send a vote her way. 

Voting opens Saturday 5th June.

 She is listed under her legal name of Claudia Thomas. 

Scroll down the page at the above link to find the nominees, they are listed in alphabetical order under last name.

Thank you to everyone.

Uh oh

When the heater turned itself off and would not come back on yesterday, brrrrr, I went looking for the cause.

Only to discover that the fridge was off, the dishwasher had stopped, the computers were off and the washing machine had stopped too. And various lights would not come on through out the house.

First up it made me realise how much power I was drawing, eek, and then I went looking for the cause.

The safety switch had flipped, so I went round unplugging and switching off, until I was able to turn the switch back.

Ok, everything seemed fine.

Until the evening when I slung a load of cloth nappies in the washing machine and it wouldn't go beyond beep, beep, beep, graunching sound, switch off. 

Uh huh.

Our last washing machine (really old second hand top loader) cacked itself on a load of cloth nappies too.

Two years and eight days ago, to be precise.

Where's the paper work with the warranty?

Oh, the warranty's two years?

Not two years and eight days?

With thoughts of this running through my head...

I rang the store, who rang the warranty people, who said they WILL cover it under warranty, woohoo!

Ahh, modern conveniences, where would we be without them?

In a river, beating clothing on rock I suspect.

On the to-do list....

Ok, well I'm somewhat over my conniption fit and am managing to ignore the fact that we're supposed to be in house-buying mode.

Instead, I tackled one of the things I've been wanting to do at our 'new' house.....

I bought these two little guys:

Baby blueberry trees, already with little nubs that will apparently turn into real blueberries, if I can keep the birds off them.

They should grow to around 1 metre high and will do fine in pots, so that's where I intend to keep them.

The boys came with me to the garden centre, so not only did we come away with the blueberries and the recommended azalea mix for planting them in, we also brought home a flowering cyclamen for Mr 5, some flowering violas for Mr 2, 2 pairs of kid sized gardening gloves, 3 trowels and 2 miniature spray bottles.

But that's ok.

Mr 5 is always pestering me to buy flowers, so now he has his own.

Mr 2 is so taken with his flowers that they are residing on a stool beside his bed tonight.

Mr 5 hates getting his hands dirty, so with his gloves he will hopefully get into the dirt with me instead of just instructing me how to do it while watching from the sidelines.

Mr 2 loves to get dirty so his gloves are really just for show.

And we had no trowels, so now we have three.

And the spray bottles? 

For spraying each other, of course!

I also got rid of some things on freecycle and have more being picked up tomorrow, and that's strangely a very uplifting feeling.

Onwards and upwards! 

Trying to Let. It. Go.

I've been having some 'moments' lately. 

Moments when I need to take a great big breath, roll my eyes (inwardly), bite my tongue and Let. It. Go.

And it doesn't even involve the kids.

It involves house buying....or more to the point, NOT house buying despite being offered the more than perfect opportunity house wise, price wise and location wise.

And it involves my nearest and dearest.

We have a five year old who needs to be enrolled in school for next next year, so to my mind, getting this house thing sorted out needs to become our priority. We will be changing suburbs, so enrolling him in school round here does not make much sense.

But, apparently, everything in life needs to be in PERFECT ORDER before you can buy a house. 

If everything is not in PERFECT ORDER, the house cannot be bought despite being practically handed to you on a plate.

(Keep in mind the market is HOT, supply is very limited, prices are higher every time I turn around and we have been house hunting for over 18 months.)

So.

I can either create World War 3 in our house and potentially in our marriage

or

I can Let. It. GO.

Let It Go.

See? There it goes.

Instead I will get a quote to fence the front so the kids can go outside by themselves.

(Something we never did because of the supposedly short term nature of our stay here.)

I will build some raised garden beds so I can grow some veggies.

(Never done, same reason as above.)

I will plant another lemon tree alongside the shared driveway and take drastic action on my current lemon tree which looks very forlorn. I've been itching to plant more fruit trees at our 'new place' but will make space here instead.

I will free-cycle some things I was planning on selling because I would like more space....now.

And I will enroll my five year old in the local school. 

Deep breath. Deep breath.

Just one of those days really....

Today has been one of those days. 

You know, one of THOSE days.

The boys were at it before breakfast, as my eldest just seemed to have climbed out of the wrong side of bed.

But eventually I got everyone sorted, hubby off to work with a packed lunch, kids happy doing DIFFERENT activities at OPPOSITE ends of our very small house and it seemed the perfect time to jump quickly in the shower.

OK, now a TMI warning, people....I think my brothers read this blog....this warning is for you....skip over the next paragraph and pick again at the purple text......consider yourself warned.....

I'm in the shower, trying to remove my Diva cup. Follow the link if you don't know what that is and want to know....remember the TMI warning!

(Actually I have a lunette but it's the same thing.)

And it took me about 20 minutes to get the darned thing out, I kid you not.

I thought it was gone for good.

Ok, any sensitive readers, it's safe to come back now 

And during this 20 minute time window the kids had migrated from their opposite corners of the house and were raiding my desk drawer. 

Which I had cleverly forgotten to lock.

So there were push pins all over the floor and the kids were fighting over who got the pedometer and there was stickytape over everything.

Eh, that part's fairly normal.

But then I combed out the freshly washed bad haircut.

And it's clearly obvious it's a BAD haircut.

You know when you've had your hair cut and you're thinking hmmmm, I'll just have to wash it myself and then we'll see how it looks?

Well, I got it cut last week and it wasn't my regular gal and the cut wasn't quite right.

So I went back last night for a bit more off (I have thick, longish, wavyish hair and if it's cut right, it's wash 'n' wear, which is perfect for me)

And this morning after washing it I realised it had gone from a not-quite-right cut to a really awful cut.

Think, a cross between this 

and this

but more mullety looking.

Omg.

So I spent the morning catching glimpses of myself in the mirror and alternating between laughing helplessly and thinking oh crap oh crap.

Which probably didn't help the mood in the house, as I had to drag the kids apart every 5 minutes, despite the fact that I'd just set up 2 separate cubbies for them to muck about in, taking over approximately half the house. They still managed to find their way into each other's pockets.

At the point when they were finally playing independently of each other, and me, it was of course time to pack up for Mr 5's swimming lesson.

Mr 5 DOES NOT like to be dragged off to a lesson of any sort when he's knee deep in bionicles, so declarations of "I am NOT going to my lesson" were to be heard as I bundled them out to the car. 

We all got in for a 'fun' swim before the lesson started, with me giving the "10 minutes to lesson", "5 minutes to lesson" countdown that parents know so well.

Well, lesson time rolled around and Mr 5 was NOT going to his lesson. It didn't help that his regular teacher wasn't there and there was a ring-in. Of course that would happen today.

Eventually, after threats and bribery, which were rendered  partially useless by the fact that Mr 5 kept repeatedly sliiiiiiiiding himself under the water whenever I turned my head to keep Mr 2 in view, he went to his lesson. Reluctantly.

Mr 2 is quite confident in the water despite the fact that he is submerged up to his chin and would be submerged nearly up to his nose except he bounces along on his toes to keep his cute little face out of the water. It's very funny to watch and a few mum's commented on his water confidence today, but I also notice I have the fairly close attention of the lifeguards.

Probably not helped by Mr 5 sliiiiiiding under the water and looking like he's drowning.

So, lesson over, more 'fun' swimming and two time-outs-sitting-on-a-chair-at-the-side-of-the-pool for Mr 5.

At that point I gave up any pretense of being in control and let them stay in the pool for about 2 hours, until we all resembled very old prunes.

And none of this did the bad haircut any good at all.

Add in the meltdowns...plural....before dinner and at bed time from an emotionally over wrought and over-tired Mr 5 and it's all over for the day, except I still have to wake up with the bad haircut again tomorrow.

Oh crap oh crap oh crap. Helpless laughter.

Then I remember the funeral I went to yesterday and am just thankful that my kids are here at all.

Keeping heads up in the chaos

Life has continued to be maniacally busy lately, with Mr H turning the big 5.

 That coincided with several family members arriving from out-of-state so it was the perfect opportunity to throw together a family only party. 

Hot on the heels of that was a late night cupcake baking blitz for pre-school, and coming up this weekend  is a combined birthday party with some of the kids in our Mother's Group. 

 Family are visiting again from interstate this weekend so our couch is being given a new lease of life as a bed, and hubby is away overnight on a golf trip.....great timing that one, ha!

Add to that, Mr I-just-turned-2 is doing without his daytime nap more often than not. 

And sadly, we have a funeral to go to on Tuesday.

Our friend's 8 year old boy died last week, after being in and out of hospital for much of his life. 

The family were nursing him at home and he went quietly in his sleep.

Very, very sad. His story is here...Ethan's Blog.

I look at my two healthy, robust little boys and thank the Lord I have been so fortunate.

Back in our wee home again...

We had a fabulous 2 weeks house sitting at the mansion, we've been home nearly a week now but since I left my camera cable there, I've waited until I got it back before posting.

Well, I had been planning to get all up to date on my blogs while I was there, but despite having every convenience known to man (and woman), the internet connection at said mansion was..........well, completely crap actually.

So hardly any internetting was happening at all, just as well there were many other things to occupy my time with.
Although I think I substituted watching tv instead of logging on (they have foxtel: America's hardest prisons, anyone?) hardly productive but fun nonetheless.

So, we....

dressed up

went swimming

had friends over

ate at somewhere other than our small wooden kids table

bounced

hung around outside in the altogether (well, one of us did)

created (think star wars battle droid, come on, use your imaginations!)

buried and dug up dinosaur fossils

made some fabulously coloured playdough....like how it matches the cutting boards? Ha!

and were very glad the dogs didn't have fleas.

Now we're back home it's kindergarten, gymnastics, swimming lessons and NO daycare....yes, I've given up my one free day a week, watch me stay sane.........