in between internet connections

quick post to just say that progress is going well.

I have not logged onto the net for almost a week and have got plenty done.

Yesterday I completely vacuumed the house in preparation for tomorrows carpet cleaning.

Uni has spent the last 5 days of his five day break working hard at home. First he moved the computer and all the desks downstairs and set up our new office.

Then he came upstairs, cleaned the walls of the baby's room, painted them completely and the room is clean and empty apart from my temporary Internet connection space which consists of a small TV table on wheels (my desk), laptop connected to modem, footstool and beanbag which alternate as my desk chairs depending on my mood.

I will go crazy on the Internet today and then pack up my "computer desk" and all peripherals tonight so the room is empty for the carpet cleaner tomorrow.

Next week my permanent Internet connection will be established and I will be more accessible once again.

The month of march will be devoted to getting the baby's room furnished and filled...more on that next week.

Then the focus of April will be getting out into the garden (on all fours ... to try and get baby in the right position for birth). That will mean catching up on all my weeding. Thankfully because of all the rain, my plants have survived and are thriving with very little help from me. April will be cooler, there will be less mozzies, less rain, and my indoor work will be done.

today I have been well and truly spoilt

My beautiful girl Kt has been planning a special surprise for me for about a week now... counting down the days with great excitement.

She has gone to elaborate lengths all week and today I discovered just what they were.

Since saturday is my only sleep in day (and I can hear snorts when I consider 7am to be an early start LOL!)I was told that I definitely had to sleep in and that kt when she woke up would wake uni and not me.

Together they made some delicious pancakes for breakfast and I even got my very own H shaped one!

Then there was a gift of a beautifully wrapped I love mum mug filled with my very favourite flake chocolates. Uni was sent off to buy this on a secret mission during the week!

When I first walked out of the bedroom door I was greeted with an enormous card decorated by Kt and her aunty Is while uni and I were at our antenatal class ... and there were colourful balloons on the floor.

Probably my favourite moment was seeing the excitement on kt's face as she showed me everything!!!!

Really wonderful!

After breakfast we sampled some chocolate and then had a game of pass the parcel which kt prepared herself!

All in all a wonderful morning.

then no arguments on our way to swimming.

An excellent swimming performance and the desire to go straight back into the pool for more swimming immediately!

false alarm

Well it seems we got the best possible outcome for Kt (apart from leaving things as they were).

She will be in class 1B and her current teacher (and probably her current room) will stay the same. The other grade 1 kids that were in a prep/grade 1 composite class will join kt and her current grade one friends.... and the grade 2 kids that were in her class will be moving to a different grade 2 class.

The changes will come into effect on Monday.

I am so pleased that Kt gets to keep her teacher and so is she!

I am not sure yet how many kids will be in her final class .. it looks like they have skewed things so there are 17 or 18 kids in each prep class (very good numbers), 22 or 23 kids in grade 2 ... but they did not mention how many are in each grade 1 class. Hopefully it will be somewhere in between ... like 20 or so ... there were 26 kids in her composite 1/2D class.

email gem

Hi mum,

you can send a pregnant, headless sideways shot that will be fine.

I just don't want anything identifiable to end up on the net and be used in an odd and inappropriate manner ... but a headless belly should be fine!

they are actually the kind of photos kt has been taking lots of ... I have to remind her to include my head when she is taking photos of me! LOL!

in case I forget

After carefully explaining to my very favourite year one that the ice brick included with her lunch was only to keep her food cool, not to be drunk (it looks a bit like a little rectangular drink bottle) .. I forgot to mention to her that it needed to come back home with her lunch box. Needless to say it got thrown out with her lunch scraps ... well obviously if you can't eat or drink it you have to toss it! LOL!!!

mild devastation

Yesterday afternoon our school newsletter delivered some unwelcome news.

The school gets a certain number of teachers based on how many students they have enrolled. At the end of the year they figure out their class allocations and they do a count on day 8 of the next year to see if they have more students than they expected and therefore qualify for more teachers.

Well this year they did end up with more students and they did qualify for an extra teacher.

This is terrific because they can reduce class sizes by up to six students which of course is great .... but this year they are going to rearrange 7 prep to year 2 classes and make 8 classes.

So this means every prep to year 2 class will be affected in some way ... either having to move classroom or change teacher or have new classmates.

They will no longer have the two composite classes 1/2D or prep/1C ... all the grade ones will be with grade ones, the two's will be with grade twos and the preps will be with preps.

I am really annoyed by this because Kt was doing really well and really settling in. We may know by this afternoon if she will get to stay in her current classroom with her current teacher or exactly what will happen.

We all really like her teacher and hope she stays, and I liked the fact that because she was with grade 2's the teacher treated everyone a little bit more grown up and gave them more responsibility etc.

She will know more kids when the classes change, and she will still have a desk of her own etc... but to have had things go so smoothly and then have to change is a real pain.

I was so angry and upset yesterday.

This morning there were other mothers expressing concern too.

Apparently if there is going to be changes like this they usually don't let things drag on so long, they tend to get things organized and changed as quickly as possible. I am not really sure what the delay has been caused by ... my eavesdropping ability is not as good as it once was! LOL!!!

Anyway I will hopefully know more soon. And I am much calmer about it all today than I was yesterday.

email information from january

I have decided to stop doing my email diary this year as it just takes too long to go through all my sent and received emails at the end of each month. With a new baby on the way I am unlikely to keep on top of it so I will just post relevant news from emails I send to others in here and keep a record of it here instead.

So this post is a mish mash of news and events that I have relayed to others during January and would usually have been recorded in an email diary.

6th January

I was inspired by Grandma Pat taking Kt to both the state library and the museum
so I actually checked out the events section in the recent council newsletter and looked up the art gallery program.

They have different activities and workshops on different days so I signed KT up for a "clay animal" making workshop there on 15th January.

If we like and enjoy that one, we might sign up for a couple more during the
following week.

They have things like a painting patterns workshop and a handmade cards
workshop and a using watercolour workshop all for younger kids that sound
interesting.

There was even a pottery class but unfortunately it was for ages 8 and up!!!

Depending on how the weather goes we might all (J included) head over to
Alma Park Zoo because it has been several years since we have been there

14th January

Deleting comments in blogger

You can delete comments I have just done it. I am not sure about editing ... maybe you just have to delete and write a whole new comment? Haven't tried that.

If you find a post that has a comment you will see that at the end of that comment is the date when comment was written and a trash can symbol you click on the trash can signal and click on "delete comment" as well as ticking the remove forever box.

This completely removes the comment.


....

Holidays are going well ... we had a couple of great days of swimming at the
beach last week. Kt got to well and truly try out her boogie board and
she is really fantastic on it. Can steer herself really well and you
should see her legs go!

Uni is back at work again so things have slowed down a bit here ... but
we have been going to the playground the last few days ... a different one
each time.

Today Kt climbed one of the trees at scarborough beach railway playground
and got higher than she had ever been before. Thankfully she was able to
climb down herself because she was way out of my reach!!!

We have started to think about school again and while Kt missed it terribly during the first two weeks of holidays I think she forgot all about it these recent two weeks and is likely to spend the current two weeks not
wanting to go back ...

Never mind we will deal with that as we come to it.

I on the other hand am very much looking forward to the school year starting
... once the initial emotions have all been worked through. I have been making great progress on rearranging the house, but doing it uninterrupted for up to 5 hours hours a day five days a week sounds like bliss!


...I am wondering if you have in your shed at home a gardening tool of ours. Uni believes he had leant it to you once (probably a few years ago now) and so far we can't find it here anywhere, so we wondered if you might still have it?

It is a tree pruner thingy ... that allows you to reach up and trim high branches on your trees. It is like a curved saw on a long stick.

Our mango tree has gone beserk and is producing beautiful and very delicious
mangoes which up in the tree, and out of our reach, are completely at the mercy of the bats.

They usually take one bite of them and drop them to the ground and leave a wasted mango that goes squishy and smelly very quickly.

We are hoping we can cut, catch and enjoy some whole mangoes from the tree if we can locate that trimmer.

OK better keep going now ... I have been rearranging our clothes into our new wardrobe. I seem to have stirred up a lot of dust and am suffering from hayfever, I may as well finish the job now and hopefully my nose will recover by tomorrow.

This refers to new "built in" mirror wardrobe we got to replace all our old childhood storage furniture like chest of drawers, cupboards etc.

...


15th Jan

Kt and I did go to the clay animal modeling workshop today .. we actually saw you in your car on our way there.

We were both stopped at the Oxley and Anzac ave lights. You were first in line to turn right into anzac ave and we were waiting to continue along Oxley ave ... we were one car back though so I didn't think you could see us.

Kt had fun and it seemed like a very interesting class. I think we will definitely do more workshops there, if not this year then perhaps next year again.

There were about 12 kids in all and a teacher and an assistant, and there was plenty of time to get everything done.

They took them into the gallery to look at some clay animals that had been done by aboriginal artists and also got some animal books for them to refer to.

They drew a picture of some of the animals they might like to make and then headed back to the library meeting rooms to do their artwork.

I left at that point to borrow books from the library and when I came back an hour later they had done two models each and were heading back into the art gallery to play with blocks and do drawings and other play activities until their parents came back.

We got to bring one clay model home and the other larger one will be fired and we can collect it in a couple of weeks once it is ready.

...

How I announced our pregnancy to those who did not yet know

Hello and Happy New year everyone,

I had intended to do a Christmas and New year newsletter type email to everyone, but have had a lot going on at the moment and have not managed to get around to it until now. Very difficult to get things done during school holidays!

Basically the big news for us this year is that we are preparing for the birth of our second baby in May!

We have been madly rearranging the house, converting the current computer room to a baby's room and shifting the computer and office furniture elsewhere. This has involved us going through 11 years of accumulated stuff and deciding how badly it needs to be taking up valuable space in the "prime real estate" areas of our house! Just about everything we own has been moved to a new place in the process! Even with both of us working on the preparations at a steady rate I don't know if we will be ready in time!

I don't remember having to do this much work last time, but I guess we had only been in our house for 5 years then and we still had "spare" rooms at that stage ....


Just cruising along very happily at the moment because we are in the blissful stage of regular kicks, plenty of movement and a big belly (but not uncomfortably big yet) and no more morning sickness!

I hope that everyone is well and happy and has a wonderful 2010.

Will keep you posted on how things progress.


.....


18th Jan

Hi Jenny,

Thank you!

I think there are advantages to having been through it all once before ... but you certainly do go in with your eyes wide open rather than full of only dreamy and sometimes unrealistic expectations. So I guess that means I am optimistic, a bit daunted, mildly terrified, yet occasionally calm ... LOL!!!

Kt is pretty excited about it ... I was not sure how she would take the news because she always seemed to be happy about being the only kid. She has indicated some concern that I won't have time to look after her any more and that the baby will get all my attention (maturity beyond her years!). I will have to try my best to keep things balanced as much as I can ....

She has been very affectionate towards the baby (ok well actually my belly) though and is interested in what is going on in there and likes to feel kicks and hear about how things were for me when she was in my tummy! Many stories and fond memories there as you can imagine!

She stayed overnight at her grandma's house earlier in the week and when she came home she rushed over to me and said Mum I missed you and gave me a big hug and then straight away asked how Mr "bump" was and gave my belly a gentle pat!

She was also the first one (apart from me) to feel a kick ... as the baby would often liven up and start doing somersaults whenever I would give her a big hug! And there is no doubt that Kt's will be the most familiar voice for the baby ... she talks more than anyone else in the house :-D

So, so far, so good!

Ok I guess I'd better get back to paying some attention to my girl!

...

22nd Jan

I seem to be destined to have an earth baby! Kt was meant to be a virgo if you remember ... and Mr bump as Kt calls him is obviously planning to be a taurus!

...

23rd Jan

Yes not long to go now. (return to school)

I am hoping the experience will not be as gut wrenching as the last two years.

We picked up Kt's book pack from school on Thursday on our way to Alma Park Zoo.

We had a good look at it yesterday.

I always used to love all the new stationery at the beginning of the year!

She has about 4 year one books with the red and blue lines in them ... I didn't think about it previously but we will probably need to cover them with contact ... haven't done that for years!!!

I finally got the laptop out and plugged in last night, I have had it for a month now without using it! My desk has enough space on it now to sit comfortably!!!

Spent a few hours getting myself familiarized with the new machine ... still have lots to learn and only just getting the hang of selecting things and dragging and dropping etc.

Still haven't quite figured out scrolling yet .... I keep doing things by accident and then not knowing how to repeat the action!!!

Only on chapter 4 of the manual though so I should be a bit wiser in a few days!

...

30th January

School has been going well.

Swimming too although she is not keen to go anymore because sometimes it is hard. Last week they did most of the lesson trying to dive and kt had a lot of trouble with that.

I was pretty sure the teacher would not do the same thing today, but I think Kt was dreading it. As it turns out they only did one dive at the end and I would have to say it was quick, but it looked pretty good to me!

I have just this morning finished my photolog ... complete with the 2008 pictures I found.

Natural lice treatment - more dejavu LOL!

If there are nits and eggs and suspect lice and itching:

You use the vinegar in conjunction with the shampoo for massaging in
and when hair is almost totally dry apply the lemon undiluted
in the scalp, neck /upper back and especially around all edges
where the hair meets flesh (i.e face, ears:back and outer cavity, neck)

For prevention on days you get letters from school,
you can use a very weak, dilution of just vinegar with water
for the first rinse to degrease the hair,
no need to massage it in with the shampoo if there is no actual presence
of eggs or lice, and when hair dries apply a teaspoon of lemon juice.
For prevention it can be diluted with a little water but not if for treatment!

The full amount of juice -undiluted- in any day has only been
1/4 of a small lemon

necessity is the mother of invention

I had another recent clothing crisis ... instigated by a growth spurt ... well basically my belly grows noticeably every single week!

I also decided I could not waste any time allowing my varicose veins to get any worse so I bought myself some knee high compression stockings. I will switch to full length ones as the weather cools although I wish they had stay up ones that grip onto your upper thighs instead of the regular pantyhose kind that I will just have to leave sitting tucked under my belly.

Firstly I believe the stockings are having a positive effect and I basically wear them from the moment I get up until I shower at night. I have 4 pairs and I hand wash each pair the day after I finish wearing them.

They are hot and they look funny especially when everyone is wearing short shorts, thongs, strappy sandals etc.

So I decided my best option was to try and wear them with some longer skirts.

One of the dresses I bought for myself last year had detachable straps so you could wear it as a short sexy dress or as a long skirt. It is scandalously short and I have not been able to wear it as a dress so I just think of it as a skirt now ... but it gave me an idea.

I need clothes that give me sun protection for when drop off and collect Kt from school so strappy dresses or even strappy tops are out.

I need clothes that are cool because I am really feeling the heat.

I need to wear the stockings to help my veins.

I don't want to look daggy when I go to school.

I want to be comfortable.

All this can not be achieved with one wardrobe so basically I wear something nice, sun protective, less comfortable and warmer for my pick up and drop off to school and also for going out shopping etc.

When I come home I switch to older, cooler, more revealing, comfortable clothes and I change back again in time to collect kt from school.

I have been doing this since last year but it has been absolutely essential this year.

So these days when i am at home I can be found wearing knee high compression stockings, short shorts and singlet style tops. I don't get too hot, I don't get uncomfortable, I can clean and move and sort things out without worrying about getting dirty and I can head back to school later looking respectable again.

My good clothes stay good, relatively clean and fresh smelling, my old favourites continue to wear and be worn and be useful.

I also looked back through my wardrobe again to see what I could do about finding suitable dressier things to wear and discovered that I could turn my other maternity dress into a longer skirt by turning the strappy sleeves in under the material and pulling the dress down below my waist, while wearing a long t shirt on top.

I can also do this same thing with a black flowery dress I like to wear ... I just have to fold the sleeves and top part under my belly, the skirt part of the dress sits on my hips and I put a t shirt on the top.

There was also a dress i got given that came from Greece. It had a boob tube type top bit with elastic that goes above your breasts, more elastic that sits below your breasts and then the skirt part.

Before i was pregnant it looked kind of feminine and nice although not my usual style. Once I was pregnant it fit well and was comfortable .... soft thin elastic but really made me look frumpy.

Now I just wear it as a skirt with both the upper and lower elastic below my belly. The material that used to cover my breasts forms a few ruffles and folds which appear underneath my t shirt, but just look like they are decorative.

Wearing it this way turns it into a fabulous skirt that I am likely to wear a lot, pregnant or not, and I am unlikely to ever wear it the other way (as a dress again).

So I am feeling very creative and inventive and happy to have found more wearable things in my wardrobe!

I did go out shopping last week and picked up a few tops ... one was a green maternity top (just because I wanted to see if they really are better than big tops) and also it was on sale for only $7 down from an original $18.

I also bought a couple of size 14 t shirts that will go with the new "skirts" I have created... and also a couple of size 14 long sleeve shirts that I can wear in winter when I am breastfeeding and while my tummy will still be big. Size 14's are roomy, not tight around the breasts, and are long enough to cover my belly.

I am feeling like I am pretty much covered now both for clothes for the rest of the pregnancy and clothes for the rest of the year and early next year while my size continues to vary....until I am back to wearing my regular clothes.

Hopefully I can avoid the shops (at least for clothes shopping for me now for a little while).

I also do not feel like I have overspent or wasted money on things ... maternity wear really is exorbitantly priced and everything I have purchased has been at a good special, or will be wearable for some time beyond the pregnancy too.

I have also borrowed some things and thankfully I kept my maternity wear from last pregnancy and every bit helps.

busy day

Yesterday was very busy so today I am taking it easy.

Suspect I will spend way too much time on the computer!

My printer is not working. Very annoying and it is only 8 months old. I just put in all new ink cartridges, coloured things print but black things don't!

Yesterday I went to woolies to do my fortnightly shop. I think I went well ... a tad over budget, but will be well stocked up and each coming fortnight will need to buy less and less.

When I tried to get out of the store I got stuck behind an old lady with some very unusual transaction to do which took forever. I just made up my mind to swap over to the other checkout and another cheeky 80 year old who was behind me in line raced me there and GOT THERE FIRST!

This is NOT FAIR!!!

So then I waited in line behind her ... still not sure if I had made the right decision or not.

Finally got out of the store, loading things in the car and realized to my horror that I had forgotten to buy milk ... which is the main reason most times for even going shopping in the first place.

Seriously contemplated leaving it for another day but then thought I may as well do it since I am here now and I will not want to do any more shopping this week ... I have done plenty in the last few days.

Went back in again and finally got out. Headed off to buy prawns at morgans for a prawn roll dinner that night for Uni, Izzy and Kt.

Once I got home I unpacked everything, emptied the dishwasher, refilled it, made lunch, emptied the dishwasher again and part refilled it.

Put in new printer cartridges and printed out about 10 pages with no black ink appearing.

Sent some emails ...

Picked up kt from school.

Did homework with her

Made prawn rolls for dinner, made myself an early dinner with prawns and rice, ate it, jumped in the shower, Izzy arrived and uni and I headed off to the antenatal class.

More about that in pregnancy diary although perhaps not immediately.

After kt was safely in bed aunty izzy and I had a good long chat and then of course a late bedtime.

I had to have a snack before bed because as always if I stay up beyond 11pm I get ravenous.

Then headed off to bed for a dream filled night full of babies and hospitals and births.

Office progress and baby clothes

I have managed to put away a few more things from the office, and I cleared two drawers in the baby chest of drawers.

Uni is finishing the floor of the computer room downstairs now that he has painted all the walls and the stationery cupboard (which used to be his old wardrobe).

We aim to have the downstairs room ready for the computer and other office furniture by the end of the month (Feb).

In that time I will empty as much stuff out of the upstairs computer room and when it is completely empty (most things will go down to the new office) he will clean and paint the walls and then we will start filling it all with baby furniture and toys and the transformation to baby's room will be complete.

I sorted through all of kt's size 00000-00 clothes today and organized them into sizes and boy or girl colour piles.

The boy colours have been put into the two empty drawers in the baby chest of drawers and I will wash them and iron them again and fold them and sort them into summer/winter clothes in the coming weeks.

The girly coloured clothes I will keep until after the birth (just in case) then I will decide what to give away, what to keep as mementos for kt and space permitting whether to keep any clothes for my future nieces or nephews.

I may do this either soon after the birth, or wait until Mr bump grows out of each size of clothing so that there is a mix of both colours.

Seeing kt's 00000 size clothes astounded me as they are soooo very tiny. I still marvel that she was that small.

She was pretty surprised and delighted when I showed them to her!

Have had plenty of feel good hormones circulating around my body this afternoon and someone has been sticking either an elbow or a knee out the front of my belly to make his presence known!