feeling pretty good

Had a good day today ... tried not to do too much.

Brought baby bath upstairs ... will need to wash it and put it into the change table.

Put baby teddy mat out on the line again today to enjoy the germ killing properties of sunlight and give it a good air out.

I washed it yesterday but it rained lightly just before I brought it in so I thought it needed an extra day of sunshine.

I will put out the bouncer cover tomorrow. It came off the line dry yesterday ... but after having some discussions with uni about the benefits of sun and air on our clothes and things ... I think another day of sunshine is a good idea.

I ironed a whole heap of size 00 and 0 clothes last night and have sorted them into boy and girl clothes.

The boy clothes will go into the baby's chest of drawers tonight.

Now I have the chest of drawers fully stocked with clean winter sheets and size 00000-0 baby clothes.

The baby's toy box is filled with the clean and ironed 00000-0 size girls clothing. I still have to iron the summer cot sheets, but once they are done I will put them into the toy box too, ready for use in spring and summer.

So once baby is born I will have easy access to a years worth of clothing and clean sheets.

I will leave the sorting of size 1-4 clothes for some time next year! There is not nearly as much in these sizes ... and most of it is girly stuff ... so since we think bump is a boy there probably isn't much point worrying about washing and ironing this clothing yet.

I bought a new cot mattress for the baby earlier in the week and that is sitting waiting in the cot.

I have also stocked up on some newborn size nappies and in the next few weeks will stock up on baby wipes.

Mobile desk

Uni has set me up at my new mobile desk and I am sitting borrowing Kt's chair.

It feels great and much more comfortable than being anywhere else.

The kitchen table has plenty of space but also lots of ants and needs to be wiped down before every use.

I think the desk top is a bit high, so I might have to find a chair that goes up higher than kt's chair... or use a couple of cushions.

This desk has a rollout keyboard tray, but unfortunately my laptop will not fit on that.

The change table is now in the babies room, and I am in the process of filing it and the chest of drawers with freshly washed and ironed clothes!

The second filing cabinet has been unpacked downstairs and I have redistributed our files throughout it. There is much more space for everything there now.

I am getting better and better at navigating the internet using the keyboard. I just needed a bit more knowledge.

I knew the alt key was involved I just didn't know how. Luckily I found some good help sites and I am away.

Now I can do a lot more stuff by accessing the keyboard and surprisingly it is faster in some cases!!!

I forgot to mention in recent posts that Kt's class has adopted some baby guinea pigs!

They are really lovely! All the kids have been bringing in snacks for them (apples, cucumbers, carrots, capsicum etc).


Ok well I better get back to my house cleaning and baby stuff sorting!

the rain is getting me down

While this time last year I was loving all the rain, this time around I have had enough of the fact that there has not been a break in the weather.

Things are getting serious ... I am running out of clean underwear!!!!

I must have a day of sunshine soon so I can get some washing done.

We do have a few clothes lines under the house but there is so much furniture and stuff under there now that it is hard to move around and there is not as much airing space.

I may have to resort to the dryer ... I hope it doesn't shrink anything ...LOL!

Uni finished cleaning and painting the baby's room at the end of February on his last five day break. He also shifted all the computer equipment and desks downstairs and set up the office.

I got the carpets professionally cleaned straight after that and it has just rained and rained for days.

I am trying to air out the baby's room (and the whole house) to get rid of the smell of paint and carpet cleaning but it has been a bit of a struggle keeping the windows open and keeping the rain out!

Anyway if all goes to plan we will be looking for some baby storage furniture tomorrow ... chest of drawers, wardrobe, a small upstairs laptop desk for me, another filing cabinet for the office and maybe a bookcase.

Doing all this should take my mind off the rain and get me motivated to continue with the nursery.

I am really happy with our wireless Internet connection too. I am upstairs in the lounge room on my laptop ... receiving a very strong signal.

I have yet to try it in the bedroom and Kt's room but so far, the kitchen and lounge room are great.

OK time to go and watch lost now.

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.

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!

well I have made a start on the artwork blog

It has been slow going, but I am fine tuning it and once I get the hang of how I want it to look and how I want to organize it I should be able to power along.

I have enlisted Kt's help to decide which pictures she absolutely loves and wants me to keep a physical copy and which ones are OK to scan into the computer and keep recorded on disk or on screen only.

Surprisingly she has been very co-operative about this and understands that we have to make room for the new artworks she does and we can't keep paper copies of everything.

It has been fun scanning the smaller pieces of artwork into the computer. I usually do a batch of 10 or 12 in one sitting ... this takes about 30 minutes or so.

The scanner zooms in on the picture part and selects what it thinks you should crop and usually it is exactly right.

Some artworks are too big to fit on the scanner screen so I have been taking photos of these ones and will process them all together as one batch.

Although blogger is slow to download photos, I have found that it does not go too bad on a good day.

I just have to be prepared to do other things while I sit at my screen.

Tomorrow is bin day and the recycling bin is absolutely packed, and downstairs we also have several full boxes of more recycling ready to go into the bin as soon as it gets emptied.

I think this always happens in January while we deal with the extra wrappings and boxes that come with Xmas presents.

Hopefully there will also be some space in this bin for the artworks I have photographed or scanned.

Uni is working hard downstairs. He has finished painting the bulk of the office ... doing 2 coats of light blue paint.

The whole room looks 100% better than before ... I better take some more photos soon.

He will be painting an old wardrobe and the window sills a contrast colour and I'm not sure what is happening with the ceiling (will have to go and have a look!).

Next will be recovering the old carpet.

Then I will organize some new curtains (and maybe look into getting a fly screen for the window).

Before you know it there will be office stuff in there and we can start work on completely emptying and painting the baby's room.

... and then refilling it with baby furniture.

The new mirror wardrobe for our room arrives tomorrow and there is a good space waiting for it.

I will spend most of tomorrow and the next day filling it with our stuff.

I am also on track with the "fortnightly shopping" ... although I completely forgot to buy fish fingers which I don't think we can do without for the next two weeks. Kt's palate is limited and fish fingers are a bit of a staple of hers unfortunately.

The fridge and pantry are looking much fuller after my shopping efforts earlier in the week and I was pleased to discover that I did not go over budget at WW even though I was buying 2 weeks worth of stuff and some of those things were bulk items like 400g coffee etc and I also had to buy some fresh food after my hassles at the markets.... read on ...

After two weeks break from the markets mostly for the purposes of sleeping in, I woke up earlyish and went to the markets this Sunday only to discover they were not there! I think this may have been as a result of the Greek blessing of the waters ceremony.

We were so low on fresh food that I went to the showground markets and picked up a few things there. I was VERY THANKFUL for my wonderful, wonderful ... can not say this enough WONDERFUL market trolley!!!

I only spent $10 and got a huge bag of nectarines, a huge bag of grapes, a big bunch of bananas and a couple of cucumbers ... good value overall, but this was all I could find and I had to pick up eggs, lettuce, carrots, capsicum, potatoes, sweet potato and similar from WW (at their horrendous prices) so we would not go without.

This is why it is a miracle that I did not end up going over budget (that is of course 2 weeks budget not just one)... although maybe forgetting the fish fingers may have helped the cause.

In the afternoon we went for another swim at the beach ... this time at Margate!

The water was lovely and warm and this time around we got out earlier before we felt cold and changed into clothes on the beach. I did a complete change of clothes for kt and I half dressed myself on the beach and wrapped the remainder in a towel and headed for the change rooms.

Margate beach did have a lot of seaweed unfortunately so when I took off my swimsuit I was covered in bits of beach debris.

I knew we would shower and wash hair at home so I just dusted as much off as I could and got dressed anyway.

Was completely exhausted by evening and slept for a good 9 hours with few toilet breaks (unusual) and luckily none of the bad dreams that have plagued me the last two nights.

Phew enough typing I am worn out now.

progress

Well we have our new fridge and freezer installed downstairs.

The freezer is packed full of food, the fridge will need to be filled because a full fridge runs more efficiently than a half full one.

We are set for Xmas as far as food storing space is concerned.

We bought a whole lot of pies and things from the last school pie drive of the year, so until we get that order I will not buy anything else for the freezer.

I am still clearing the computer room upstairs ... I am up to the sewing phase now.

Once I finish all my sewing jobs, I will put the sewing machine and all sewing supplies into a new location.

Meanwhile uni spent all of yesterday clearing space in the store room which will become the new computer room/office.

It is in a pretty bad state at the moment, smells awful and still has damage from termite attack, but it is almost empty and uni worked his magic last year to paint and vastly improve the look of the fish room, so he will no doubt do the same to the "computer room".

This room has the advantage of having a door that can be closed and locked(so will be safe from Bella), is raised higher than the rest of the downstairs rooms, so is unlikely to flood. Downstairs is also cooler usually than upstairs, but there is only one window in the room so will have to see how well ventilated it is.

We will still probably get a laptop for upstairs so I can use it in the evenings and not have to leave the kids (hee hee, the kids!) upstairs by themselves while I unwind with the computer at night (hee hee, that sounds a bit odd too).

At the moment our fish room has plastic wrapped baby furniture and other assorted odds and ends all over it.

The baby stuff will have to be unwrapped, cleaned and taken upstairs once the baby's room has been emptied and uni wants to paint the interior walls which have some paint peeling off them.

We are certainly going to be busy!

Uni has also cleaned and filled the pond and introduced some plants into it. The plants are so happy, they are growing and flowering like crazy. The pond leaks from the top, so once he has sealed the interior we will fill it up to the top, let it sit for a week or so and introduce some fish into there. We have noticed an influx of dragonflies coming to investigate the pond!

Yesterday Kt went swimming wearing her new rainbow swimmers!

Very cute!

We also did a lice combing in the afternoon and I didn't find any lice at all. There were a lot of eggs (nits) but 90% of them were ones that had already hatched (and those lice have been dealt with in previous lice combings/lice treatments) and there were about 10% unhatched ones which I believe were rendered useless by the hot hair drying I have been doing.

Very happy ... will now just continue to remove any nits that I can see until her head is completely clear.

Only 3 months worth of work involved in that success!!!

I attended the whole of parade today

Kt now has two kippa paws in that little green reward box, neither of which came out today when I watched parade.

They have announced that there will be a platinum award for those students who have been consistently good all year ... always on gold, always following the rules.

I suspect the last week of term will be a big one.

I will make my pregnancy check up appointments early in the last week of term so I don't miss out on any of the end of year presentations.

Kt handed in word wall 6 yesterday and is yet to be tested on it. She is doing an amazing job!

Next week we have a prep to yr 3 fancy dress ball to attend, where the younger school kids will be dressing up and performing some songs and dances for their parents.

Can't wait! Should be lots of fun.

This first year of school has really been a big one. So much to learn, so much to remember ... not just for Kt but for me too.

Reading the newsletter every Wednesday night in case there is vital information in there relating to the next day. Helping to make hats, crazy hair or costumes for various fundraising or fun days. Bringing back library books and homework on the right days. Packing a good lunch every day and trying not to forget the water bottle ....

Battling lice ....

Incidentally the school newsletter mentioned wanting everyone to check their kids hair for lice in a coordinated effort on Thurs 12th Nov. I did a lice combing (I have been pregnant for 14 weeks on Saturday and we have been battling head lice that whole time)... there was one louse in her hair which I am not sure was even alive, and a whole heap of either old or hatched eggs.

I think it is over! I will continue to lice comb once a week until I find nothing ... but I think that I have finally become effective and quick at lice combing, and because I now tie Kt's hair up in a pony tail at the back rather than two cute little side tails ... there is less hair to hair contact with other kids.

I also drench the ponytail every single day in water with a few drops of lavender oil and tea tree oil mixed in.

This way it is on her hair not her scalp or head or neck and is only on the parts that are most likely to be in contact with other kids. ... and an added bonus is that it smells quite nice.

The final step in the equation is also drying her hair with a hot hair dryer right down to the roots. This is supposed to dry out the eggs and prevent them from hatching and I believe this has worked because a lot of the eggs I found during this last lice combing were intact ie appeared not to have hatched, but the absence of adult lice makes me think the eggs could be old ones that have stayed stuck on but never hatched because they got blasted with the hot hairdryer.

Will see what I find next week anyway and that will either confirm my theory or prove me wrong.

making room

I am on a mission.
There is nothing that is a more effective motivator for me than a deadline .. and I have one in May!

I have to look at everything in the house and decide if it really belongs where it is and whether we need it or whether something else could do the job better.

We purchased a second fridge and a freezer for downstairs. The freezer will replace the 30 year old one that we were given by Unis family. Uni remembers looking up at the freezer when he was a little kid.

Hopefully by replacing this freezer we will also get rid of the short circuiting problem that sets off our safety switch and shuts off power in the middle of the night at a frequency of about once a month.

If it doesn't fix the problem I will be going after the heaters in the fish tank as the next probable culprit.

The downstairs fridge and freezer will help us to stock up on food and store it effectively so that we don't have to keep everything upstairs in our current fridge.

At the moment our fridge is full to the brim from Sunday to about Wednesday and then slowly empties from Thurs to Saturday.

I used to get around this problem by market shopping on Sunday and spacing out my other shopping (Aldi and WW) over a couple days, but it started to feel like I was shopping all week and I kind of like having days when I don't have to go out anywhere.

I believe it will be hard and not very desirable for me to go shopping a lot with a new baby in tow ... or an older baby or even a toddler for that matter, so I think I will try to stock up on the days that I do go shopping and reduce the number of shopping trips.

Will take some organization but I think I will get there.

Uni has also suggested we buy a free standing pantry to put downstairs as well with the fridge and freezer ... because quite frankly I have been stocking up on non cold items and our upstairs pantry is a nightmare!!!

Absolutely full at all times and things are impossible to find!

I am loving the idea of an extra pantry ... maybe even two or three ... LOL!!!

I have to clear out the computer room and distribute its contents all over the rest of the house.

The linen cupboard will get an overhaul too because a lot of stuff is just stored in there haphazardly and these days any space upstairs is prime real estate and definitely not to be wasted!

In this vein of thought, I vacuumed the top of my wardrobe and will wrap up my keyboard and its stand and store them up there.

There are a lot of things I do not want to let go of, but having things out on display and ready to use at a moments notice hasn't really worked.

Uni wants me to find a place for the vacuum cleaner (I think he trips over it where it is) and I am thinking that maybe I should put away the ironing board too (at least every now and then).

Sure hope there is room for these things in the cleaned out linen cupboard!

We also have to find places for the computer and mine and uni's desk.

He wants the computer to go downstairs, that really won't suit me at all. He has suggested that we get a laptop for me. I am just not sure. More expense and I am already kind of attached to the current computer.

I don't want it to go downstairs where there is potential for flooding, Bella mischief and where I am unlikely to be able to spend much time using it (especially at night when the rest of the family will be upstairs).

I am not completely averse to the idea of a laptop .... just not sure ...although it seems to be common these days that people each have their own computer not a shared one.

Uni wants to get Kt a laptop of her own too when she is old enough to need it.

Yikes .... more expenses.....