Category: Trying new things

4 words

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“Mama go for run”

The first time Chanbe said that made my heart burst with pride and excitement.

“Yes!” I replied. “Mama is going for a run!”

I never really thought I’d ever say that, but here I am. After a bit of a false start to the couch 2 5k, with both my knee and foot hurting too much to continue, I decided to ease off a bit on the “running” and keep up with the walking. So I walked 5-6 days a week for 4 or 5 weeks, and restarted with week 1, last week. And I’m already feeling better. I have a running ap for my phone that tells me when to start running, when to stop, the distance I cover in each interval, and the pace I am setting. I’m really feeling the benefits of the walking I did before I restarted; I feel stronger, fitter, and more confident that at the end of the 9 (or 10) weeks, I’ll be able to run 5km.

That’s so exciting for me. And one of the best parts of my morning routine, is coming home to Chanbe yelling “Mama’s home!!” Then we do some stretches together and he makes the cutest grunting noises (that I must make, as he copies everything I do these days!!).

It feels better this time. I’m more physically and mentally ready for the challenge.

Easy does it

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As I previously mentioned, I have committed myself to do the Townville fun run in August, and began the Couch 2 5k program a few weeks ago. The first week went really well, and I was feeling good and confident and had more energy. On the Tuesday of the second week, I was jogging along and my foot started to hurt. And suddenly, the words from the orthopaedic surgeon I saw after I broke my foot last year, came back to me. “You’ll probably never be able to run after an injury like this.” At the time I thought to myself, “well, I’ve never really run before, so it’s no great loss!”

I think, because I was compensating for my sore foot for the next few days, my knee started to hurt. A lot. So the last 3 weeks, I have just been walking a 2.5km route 5-6 times a week, and things are feeling better. I’m going to give the running another go, starting next week, and hope that I’ve built up enough muscles in my feet/legs to support the injury a bit better.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy! It will make the success even more sweet though!

It aint pretty, but it’s pretty good

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So far so good people! I started my training for the fun run on Tuesday morning after buying new running shoes (with terrible service at the shop!!!) on Monday. On Monday night, I already had the excuses going through my head:

“I’ll see how I sleep tonight.”
“I’ll see how the weather is in the morning. It’s supposed to be raining.”
“I’ll see what time Chanbe wakes up and go from there.”
“I can always start the next day.”

And then I stopped. Chanbe has consistently been waking up around 6am, and since I get up with him, I’m usually up early anyway. Hubs had already agreed to look after the morning routine to support my endeavour, which gives me one less thing to use as an excuse, so it was time to bite the bullet and just do it. Today is always going to be yesterday’s tomorrow, so I started “tomorrow” and it felt good.

Chanbe slept pretty well (with just 1 visit to our bed for a bit) and Quinn slept through all night for the first time, and has done so every night since (touch wood!!); the weather was great – overcast and cool; Chanbe woke up at 6am and I set him up with breakfast, fed Quinn and was out the door by 6:40am. The next 3 days I was out the door before 6:30.

I’m sure it didn’t look pretty, but I wasn’t out there to win any beauty prizes. One of the best things, is that from about 6:15am til 7:15am, it’s now Wifey’s time. I’m alone with my thoughts, with no responsibility towards anyone but myself, and I’m doing something for me. Just me. ALL ME!!! I can’t tell you how good that feels.

I have tried early morning running and exercising more times than I care to remember, but this time it’s different. I can’t press the snooze alarm, roll over and go back to sleep. If I don’t take advantage of that time in the morning, I can’t get it for the rest of the day. I still set my alarm each morning for 6:10am, just in case Chanbe sleeps in, which happened yesterday morning. I could have kept sleeping, but I found myself getting out of bed and getting out the door as per usual. I was quite proud of myself.

This is quite a long post, but I’m really feeling good about my ability to achieve this goal. And I might not even look too bad at the end of it all!!

I may regret telling you this…

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I’m committing myself to run a 5km fun run in August. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve always wanted to do a 10km fun run, so this is a build up to doing that some time in the future. I was aiming for 10km straight up, but seeing as how I’ve never done much running, and my body is still “recovering” from my pregnancy with Quinn, I was advised that 5km would probably be a better start. And I concur.

So I’ve started walking with the kids in our new pram:

And am currently looking into a running program like Couch 2 5k or something similar. I’m a little nervous and somewhat intimidated by the task I have set myself, but I really need something to focus on at the moment; something just for me; and I feel like this ticks a number of boxes for me at the moment. I need to dedicate some time to myself to complete the 3 sessions a week needed to reach my goal. These programs state you can complete the program in 9 weeks, and I have 16 weeks til the fun run, so I’m feeling confident that it will happen.

The best part is, my good friend Bethie, who is a personal trainer and does lots of running and other exciting things, is flying up to do the run with me! So I will have a cheer squad on the road which will be very helpful. (Thanks Beth!!) And it will also mean that I have to do it, as Beth has already booked her flights! Eeeek!

So there you have it. Here I am being all accountable to you guys. I shall keep you posted on my progress!

Come fly with me

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There is so much I want to tell you about Chanbe’s “big boy bed”, but first of all, let me show you:

Oooooooh yeeeaaaahhhhhhh. When Hubs and Uncle Ben told me they wanted to make Chanbe a “big boy bed” 3 days after we arrived in Towsnville, I was skeptically supportive, wondering when it might be finished, and how much of a “big boy” he would be once he actually got in to it. Well, I was proven wonderfully wrong. Just over a week ago, the bed was flown in from the work area, and it has been an absolute hit. Chanbe has slept in it almost every night and day, with a few exceptions, but we are very proud of this milestone.

There are dozens of “in progress” photos that I hope to one day share with you, or better yet, let Hubs (finally) do a guest post about!!

And hopefully we’ll have some baby news for you soon. I’m officially 40 weeks now (well, depending on who you ask) so, literally, any day now!

First Day

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Remember this post? Remember this photo?

Here’s what 4 and half years of studying medicine will do to a man:

Hubba hubba! The Doctor is IN! Today is Hubs’ first day on the job. Well, actually he has a week of orientation first, but this time next week, he will be elbow deep in some kind of surgical rotation. This also means it is my first day of solo parenting in a very long time. I would have taken a photo of myself as well, but it’s just too scary! Okay okay, Here’s one from the other day: (Excuse the bathroom scene; up until a couple of days ago, it was the only mirror in the house!)

Woah nelly! Ha ha. Anyway, we have had a great day – we headed down to The Strand (fenced-off playground! WOO!!) and met up with one of my friends who lives up here. We haven’t seen each other in about 6 years, so it was so lovely to catch up. Then Chanbe went down for a sleep at 1, as did I, and while I only woke up 20 minutes ago, he’s still asleep! I can really get behind this sleeping til 4pm thing. It makes the afternoon very enjoyable indeed!

So here we are, back on line, still with boxes to empty, but getting there. It’s my birthday on Friday, and Hubs is taking me to some fancy-shmancy Interns dinner. Ah, such a romantic! We also have our dear friends popping in on their way home from Brisbane to Cairns, so I’ll have enough to keep me occupied. And Baloo seems like he/she is staying put for now. But what do I know! I hope to resume some type of regular blogging soon, but let’s just see how we go 🙂

My highland goat (e-oat e-oat)

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Anyone remember that song from their childhood? No? Just me? Oh well. I had it playing in my head one sunny afternoon last week when we were invited to our friend’s farm to visit some baby goats. When I say baby goats, I mean baby goats. 4 of them were less than 24 hours old! I cannot tell you how much I love living in the country. I mean, where else would you get a phone call on a Wednesday afternoon, inviting you to give baby goats a cuddle and a pat?

They were way too cute for words, and Chanbe just adored them! 
 
 
 
He was so gentle with them and kept wanting to give them cuddles. 
He’s going to be such a good big brother 🙂
 
 

Broken baken

/ Renae / 4 Comments

Thank you for your suggestions for my baker’s block last week! There are a few recipes that I will be trying, maybe even today! I ended up going with this chocolate sponge cake recipe. I had never made a sponge cake before, and apparently duck eggs are the bees knees for sponges. Something simple that I could jazz up. The idea was to make a “slab” and cut squares and put cream and strawberries on top. Which I did.  So I went to work, starting off with these beauties.

I had to beat until soft peaks formed. I don’t know if it’s baby brain, or the fact that it’s been quite a long time since I’ve baked, but I used the mixing attachment instead of the whisking attachment on my Kenwood. It took almost 20 minutes for those soft peaks to form. Oops.

 

I also didn’t have any caster sugar – I only ever buy brown sugar – so I blitzed that in the food processor to make it nice and fine. I then had to sift the dry ingredients 3 times and then add them to the egg mixture. The problem was, the corn flour made the dry ingredients sticky and clumpy, and when you add the dry to the wet, you’re not supposed to overmix it. But it was really hard to get it all mixed through!

I chucked it in my pan and into the oven, and played the waiting game. It looked a bit lumpy, but I hoped for the best.

And I got it! So it seemed… When I took it out of the oven it looked like this:

As my Nanny would say, “ooh la la!” It had risen and was soft and bouncy and just lovely. I left it to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, and when I turned back around, someone had burst my balloon 🙁
Oh well. I turned it onto a cooling rack, and cut it into squares. This is when I had my first taste-test. Hmmmm…. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the taste. It was somewhat… feathery. It tasted like farm. The duck eggs. I’ve read they have quite a strong flavour, but I really didn’t think I’d be able to taste it in a cake! It didn’t taste bad, just different. And it may have been my pregnancy related heightened senses playing tricks on me, because everyone who had it said it was yummy. But maybe they were just being nice, as not to make the pregnant lady cry.
They sure did look good! And they were light as a feather! (And tasted light as a feather too…)

So anyway, it was kind of a success and kind of a failure at the same time. We are having people over 2 more nights this week, and one of them is gluten-free so I think I’ll try this jaffa cake that my friend suggested, and use it as part of a trifle since Hubs LOVES trifle and you know, I love Hubs.

Being left behind

/ Renae / 2 Comments

(Quick update: We’re back home in Wang! Woo!! It’s cold and rainy. Boo.)

For the better part of the last year, I have been getting around to updating/upgrading/overhauling my blog. I have considered, a number of times, outsourcing this job to someone who has a clue, but then my stubbornness (read: poverty) gets the better of me and I figure, “it can’t be that hard!” So I started playing around with a few ideas and in January, recruited my friend who is a graphic designer, to help me with my masthead, as graphic design is definitely something I have no idea about. And now that that’s done, I’ve changed my mind about the name, which means more work to be done that I can’t really do. Ooops. Plus I had to decide on who to host my domain name with (I don’t even know if I’m saying this right, let alone doing it right!!) which Hubs helped me with. We set that up today.

And now there’s lots of fiddly things to do that I’m trying to learn how to do. The thing is, I never used to be this useless. I used to know how to do things like edit photos, resize them and send them to people, and use programs like publisher, and I even did some intranet page designing in one of my jobs, but we don’t have mainstream software (we use open source software) and I’ve really lost a lot of my skills, as I just don’t practice often enough. Another problem is that we don’t have a designated computer space that’s ready to go at all times; ready for photos to be downloaded; ready for photos to be printed; ready for me to just sit down and get my sh*t sorted.

And I feel like the internet/blogging world is leaving me behind. It makes me sad. I feel like I have all this potential, but I’m treading water, waiting for all my ducks to line up before taking the next stop. The problem is, the ducks are in very real danger of getting run over as they sit in the middle of the road, waiting.

But today we set up the domain name. I’m hoping to do some tweaking on my masthead, and am hoping to be up and running in the next few weeks. If you have any tips for wordpress (where I’m moving my blog to) or having a .com, I’m all ears. I just keep thinking “surely it shouldn’t be this hard!!!!”

So here we are

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We found out this week where Hubs, and therefore we, will be spending next year. And the winner… is…

TOWNSVILLE!!!

We are really very happy with that placement. Even though we would have liked Cairns as our first choice, there were no positions left after the first round offers all went to Queensland med students, but once we considered Townsville as a possibility, we decided we would be very happy there as well. We have family and friends up there and when I told them the news, they were very excited which was a lovely feeling.

Hubs finishes up medicine (woo!!) in early November, and we’re planning on moving up not long after that. The hospital is providing some moving assistance and accommodation while we look for somewhere to live which will be very helpful indeed. I’ve already started looking at houses up there and am really enjoying making plans,which is something we haven’t been able to do for quite a long time.

I’m feeling really great about the move, and am glad we can get up there and settle in before Christmas, and set ourselves up before the baby is due at the end of January.

So here we are. We have an answer to our big question, we have plans to make, and time to dream about what adventures next year will bring for our family.