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!

Cousins

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Growing up, we were always surrounded by cousins. My brother’s and my first cousins are all withing about 13 years of our age and many times through the year we would catch up with them. This still happens, although a little less often now that a few of us aren’t in Brizzie anymore. I have such a special relationship with them, that it absolutely warms my heart to see Chance’s cousins adoring him so much.

On our last few visits to Brisbane, Chance’s cousin Josie was such a great help and was always ready to volunteer to look after Chance. She also became quite good at feeding him!

I’m really looking forward to seeing their relationship develop, as I’m sure they’ll be great friends as they get older. And I’m also pretty sure Josie will be volunteering for babysitting duties in the not-so-distant future!

Back again

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I’ve been a bit absent from my online life this week, as we have been back in Wang for Hubs’ studies. We had a great time catching up with friends and I had a great visit with my mothers group, and we got back to MB last night. I think the traveling is going to get a bit old (we need to go back to Wang next week from Tuesday night to Friday) but I really do enjoy catching up with my Wang buddies. The down side is, we’re still not settled in our new home! We just haven’t had the time to finish unpacking and shopping for furniture we need (bookshelves and set of drawers mainly) and then there’s the desire to not buy more stuff, which leaves us in a state of almost but not quite moved in to our new place.

Plus, it’s still ski season so I push Hubs out the door to go snowboarding as much as possible. (As if he protests…) He’s up at Hotham today with a couple of friends.

It’s only driving me a little crazy. For the most part it doesn’t matter too much, but this place is not completely child-proofed which means most of my day is spent keeping a very close eye on the little guy. He’s getting pretty quick now so I can’t just leave him and put the washing on without my heart racing a million miles an hour, and hoping he doesn’t find anything that he shouldn’t. He’s currently having a great time in the Jolly Jumper which gives me a few minutes to chill, but I can only leave him bouncing for so long.

On another note, we’re very much looking forward to spoiling Hubs tomorrow on his first Fathers Day! I was going to clean and tidy the place while he was away today and make it all shmicko for him, but that’s just not going to happen. I think I’ll have a little play now with Chanbe instead 🙂

Sometimes…

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…Hubs knows just what I need. This morning I got a sleep in, and at almost 10 o’clock I was treated to breakfast in bed – poached eggs and bacon on toast with a hint of blue cheese. It’s been a pretty tough week which just turned into a great week.

I do so love this man.

Trying

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I know I’ve been a bit of a grumpy bum lately around home. I’m just so tired. Chance wakes up every 2 hours (every 3 on a good night and every hour on a bad night) on average and most of the time it’s not a huge hassle to get up, but lately I’ve been wondering what else to try. The problem is, we change his routine so often that he never quite knows what’s going on – in Brisbane one week, back home the next, back in Brizzie the week after, back home after that, and next week we’ll be in Wang all week. I’ve tried the tips in the no-cry sleep solution, but one of the things they say is that you really need a block of time (weeks/months) to develop the good sleep habits we’re after, and our lifestyle isn’t really allowing for that at the moment.

When I tell other mothers that I get up every 2 hours they look at me, horrified and say how sorry they are for me. I reply with some line about how it’s not so bad as Chance is happy during the day so I know nothing is wrong, he’s just not a great sleeper. And then I go into the “maybe this is my fault” thinking which is every so helpful. “Maybe if I didn’t breastfeed him so much he wouldn’t be looking for it all the time; Maybe I need to be more diligent with my self-settling techniques.” It’s just so hard at 12, 2, 4am etc to stick to those techniques when all I want is sleeeeeep.

And the problem is, Hubs doesn’t get the best of me. In fact, he probably gets the worst of me. When other people are around, I put on the brave face and suck it in, but when it’s just the 2 (3) of us, it’s hard not to complain about how tired I am and that I want to go to bed early instead of spending quality time together.

I know I know. This too shall pass. Blah blah blah. I know that Chance will work it out eventually. I just need some way of coping a bit better in the mean time. Chance has his first morning at child care tomorrow, and I plan to take him for 2 mornings a week. Maybe that will help things a bit. I just feel like life is on top of me and I’m never going to get out. I used to be able to do all the housework, pay the bills and make lovely dinners every night, but in the last month since Chance has started moving around a lot more, I’m finding it nearly impossible to keep up. I’ve had to pay overdue fees for 3 bills because I forgot about them which has almost never happened before.

Hubs told me last night that I can’t do everything and that I needed to be a bit kinder to myself. That was hard to hear. I really want to be able to do everything. It especially freaks me out that if it’s this hard with 1 baby, what am I going to be like with 7? Okay maybe 5… 3??

My saving grace at the moment is that Chance is having daytime sleeps and if I can get him past the 40min half wake-up he can sleep up to 1.5 to 2 hours. He’s been asleep for an hour now, and I know I should be sleeping too, but we have 4 people coming over for dinner, in keeping with my desire to have people over for a meal every week, so I’m cooking beef stew and my favourite orange polenta cake. Plus the washing needs to be done as I didn’t get any done yesterday.

If Chance goes down for an afternoon nap, I’ll join him too. I promise 🙂

And guess who just woke up… 🙂

More visitors!

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We arrived home on Friday evening and got straight back into hosting friends in our new home! Sian and Warwick came down from Friday night and left Tuesday morning and we had such a great time with them. We hit the snow on Saturday, and I must admit that I was a little hesitant after last time, but this time was truly amazing – I didn’t realise taking your (almost) 9 month old to the snow could be such a delight! We rode a couple of the lifts and made our way to the top for lunch. What a view we had! Amazing what you can see when the weather is crystal clear.

We then headed back down and sat outside and had coffee. Yes, we sat outside it was so beautiful!

After our cappacinos we hung out at the bottom of one of the runs to wait for the boys to come down so we could take some action shots.

The boys were in fine form!

I think Chanbe is going to enjoy snowboarding one day!

So much fun!

On Sunday the boys went back up for more skiing/snowboarding, while Sian and Chance and I went to Bright for lunch. We had a lovely wintery slow-cooked meal for dinner that night and the next day was Sian’s birthday so Warwick took her to some local wineries. And since Sian is 5 months pregnant, Warwick got to do the tasting while Sian did the driving 🙂 We took them out to the local tavern for dinner that night (it was really good!) and they headed home the next morning.

Another awesome visit with friends from Queensland.

A fitting farewell

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Hubs and Chanbe and I have been back in MB since last Friday after being in Brizzie for the week. Nanny’s funeral was on Thursday and it was just lovely. We celebrated a life well lived and told stories and shared some tears as well as some laughs. I said a few words and mentioned that I was waiting to be overwhelmed by sadness and emotion but it hadn’t happened yet, because I know she had an amazing life and she lived long enough to see her sons grow up into men and have children of their own. She was also around to see her 2 grand-grandchildren, and I reckon that just completed her. Life won’t be the same without her, but we have the most amazing memories to cherish for a long time.

Grandpa moved to a nursing home yesterday, so we’re hoping he settles in well there.

This is the last video of Nanny and Chance that I filmed, on the 19th of June.

Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers. They have been very much appreciated.

Friday fun

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Chance and Grumpy in their Friday shirts 
(we’re still trying to teach Chance not to pull hair! Hee hee!)
Chance loved being on Grumpy’s shoulders!
The thing I love about this photo, is that it’s taken in our backyard – you wouldn’t think the house is less than 4km from the CBD!!

In search of a village

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. I feel like I was just getting my “village people” together in Wang, and then we moved. I had my wonderful neighbour June, who doted on Chance as if he were her own grandson. She was always happy to take him for an hour or 2 while I did some housework/had a long shower/popped to the shops etc. This was so helpful and it helped me feel like I wasn’t alone, and that I was part of the community. Then there was my mum’s group who were always available for a de-brief or a sympathetic ear. Plus Hubs used to come home for lunch sometimes which broke the day up. Plus the weather was actually pretty nice a lot of the time, so going for walks was a pleasure.

I know that it will take time to establish ourselves in our new community, but I want it to happen NOW NOW NOW!! Because we had family and friends staying with us for the first couple of weeks, and then Hubs was still on holidays, and then I spent 2 weeks in Brisbane, this has been our first real week of our new life. And so far it’s a little lonely. We’ve met a couple of the doctors and their families, and I know that it will take (more) effort on my part, and it’s just a matter of time before I’ll have more to do during the day. Oh, and hopefully the weather will warm up soon! It rained all day yesterday which meant we were at home all day. I kept waiting for it to stop so I could go for a walk, but all of a sudden it was 5pm and time to start dinner.

The other thing that’s weighing heavily on my mind is childcare. Why do I feel guilty for wanting/needing to put Chance into care for a couple of half days a week so I can have some time to myself? So I can use that time to get on top of the housework (does that ever happen??) I just need to get over it. I have an appointment at the local childcare centre this afternoon to check it out. I was hoping to find a local family day care but the closest one is in Bright and that’s too far to make it worthwhile.

Wish me luck in my village-building!