Author: Renae

Living life as a wife, a stay at home mama of 3 kids under 5, a marriage celebrant, a craft and sewing amateur, a cooked breakfast lover, coffee enthusiast, extroverted socialite, and most recently, someone who is trying to keep a tidy house. It's tough I tell you!

Parenting 2-year-olds is not my forte

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Oh man today feels like it’s NEVER going to end. And it’s only 1:30pm. I feel like the afternoon is going to stretch out forever. It’s mostly my own fault – I didn’t plan an activity for the morning, so we just hung out at home after getting back from the gym. By 10am the kids were bored and even though I was trying to do puzzles with them and read them stories, they were underwhelmed and looking for something “fun” to do. I just didn’t have the energy for a playground outing, and the weather was rubbish so outside play wasn’t an option.

Parenting a 2-year-old is just an exercise in diversion tactics and redirection; constantly steering them away from breakable things, and finding out how durable (or not) other things are. And even though my darling Jules is letting me sleep through the night, I’m still being woken up by my darling 2-year-old at least once, mostly twice a night for various things so the exhaustion is still there.

Darby really is such a delight, and I have to remind myself that he won’t be like this forever. Chance was the same at his age, and look at him now! So big! They say the days are long, and this one so far has been going on for a week. Thankfully it’s playgroup tomorrow morning which the kids love, and it helps tire them out! I really need to look into a regular Monday morning activity! Any suggestions!?

11 weeks

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I’m not going to lie; I lost count after 8 weeks. I had to look at a calendar just now to double check his age. But here he is. 11 weeks old.

Family life is extra sweet with him around. He smiles for his siblings and Mama and Dadda and is still sleeping like a champion. The kids adore him!

There is so much going on right now and things are up in the air for our plans next year which stresses me out, so I’m really just trying to focus on the wonderful day to day stuff with the kids. We should know more in the next week about what 2018 has in store for us. Until then, I’ll be enjoying this little face…

Wouldn’t you?

I swear they’re in it together

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Why is it that when one of my kids is being an absolute angel, the other is being a complete pain in the neck? I’m referring to my two older kids here, and it’s like they decide between them who is going to play nice and who is going to try and push me off the edge.

This morning, Chance was the one who was driving me absolutely bananas and Quinn was being a perfect child; she was helping me tidy up for the cleaner and she pretty much did everything on her own. Chance, it seems, had decided that being six is boring, so it was like I had two two-year-olds on my hands, with him and Darby doing their best to be as silly as possible.

I’ve really be trying to let the kids be silly without me getting cranky at them; to just let them be kids. But being a boring old grown-up really gets in the way of this! I let the boys do their thing for as long as I could handle it, and then the nagging to get ready for school kicked up a notch.

My Mum tells me that when my brother and I were young, it seemed the only time we got along was when we were ganging up on her. Sorry about that Mum. I’m getting my own back now though!

What a great night!

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So as I mentioned, the main reason Mum was up this week was so that Hubs and I could go to our neighbour’s 30th party in town on Saturday night. It was fun getting all dressed up, but very weird leaving the house without Jules. I decided not to feel guilty though, as he was being well looked after by mum, and if I needed to, I could always pop home to give him a feed.

Oh my goodness we had the BEST NIGHT! Jules settled okay for Mum (it took a bit of rocking and cuddling but he didn’t want the expressed milk) and we stayed out dancing until the last song at 1:30am!

So much dancing to cheesy music with Hubs and these gorgeous girls!

The thing about a big night out is the morning after/next day. But Mum had that covered as well. It was time for their visit to Mount Morgan! So off they trotted around 9am and they didn’t get home until after 2pm. We had some recovery coffee and Hungry Jacks with the birthday boy, and after that we decided to take full advantage of child-free time and watched a movie during the day! Wild, I know. It was such a nice recovery from a fun night out. Thanks Mum!!!! And happy birthday Hobbsy!

Mount Morgan

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I’m not sure when it started, but every time Mum comes to visit, she takes the kids up to Mount Morgan. Over the school holidays, the kids were keen to go up again. so I took them up for my first solo adventure with four kids. They have their little routine they do when they are up there. First stop, the railway museum. They watch a 10 minute film about how the railway was built to cart gold from the mines down the mountain.

Then they hop on the old trains for a bit of a play.

Then I was directed to the Mount Morgan bakery to grab pies to take out to the playground at the dam.

Quinn showed off her mad pie-eating skills. She eats the top off then proceeds to eat the rest. It’s a sight to behold!
I was a little nervous about the solo-parenting, but it went well. Apart from Darby running away from me from the toilet block, with no pants on, back to the playground, past a couple of dozen people. Yeah, that was fun.

We then headed back to the Railway Museum for an ice cream before heading home. And when Mum was here this past week, they did it all again. They must have been up there 6 times in the last year and it never gets old!

School holidays

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Gosh it seems like ages ago that we had a house full of visitors. I love having people around keeping me company during the long days at home, especially during school holidays. And having extra hands to help out with the kids and cuddle the baby are always appreciated.

There was gingerbread cookie baking! (And eating!!)

Lots of jumping on the trampoline and running around playing cops and robbers (Thanks Uncle Jacques!!!!)

My gorgeous nieces, inside and out.

So many baby cuddles.

Family who Lego together…

It honestly filled my heart having family here, just spending time building Lego, baking, playing silly games, watching movies, eating Tim Tams (I only ever buy them when the girls come to visit!!) and eating dinners together. Thanks for all your help guys! Looking forward to having you back sometime soon!!!

2 months old

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So yeah it’s been a bit quiet around here on the old blog, and now two posts in one day! I even missed a 10 things on the 10th post which made me rather sad! You could say I’ve been a little busy around here staring into these eyes.

Can you blame me? I just get lost in that face of his. Especially because I’m trying my very hardest to make booby-time strictly phone-free. Most days I’m pretty good at it.

Mum is coming up for a week on Thursday and we are all excited about this. I’m planning on heading out to a party with Hubs on Saturday night after I’ve put all four kids to bed, and leaving Mum with a bottle of expressed milk for Jules if he wakes up. I’ve started trying it on him so hopefully all will be fine by then!

And if not I’ll only be 10 minutes away. Good old Rocky.

So I’ll leave it there. 2 months old. Just like that.

Toothless grin

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It has been wobbly for weeks.

It was so close to coming out before photo day last Thursday.

It was literally hanging by a thread last night, grossing me out.

And this morning, out it came!

And it’s too adorable ?

It just occurred to me

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Darby was around the age Julius is now, when we moved to Rocky.

This post was written around that time.

It’s so crazy to think we moved towns with a 6 week old but if you know us, you know it’s just what we do.

I was just having a read through some of my posts from back when we moved here. The cyclone, the house, the renovations we planned to do and how it didn’t faze me at the time.

I wish I could say the same for now. It’s kind of fazing me. A lot.  We have until the end of the year to get as much done as we can. The list is long and the money is tight. And I’m tired.

But things will get done – they always do. I just have to have a little faith ?