6 months ago…

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… I wrote this post. This post was about changing a few things in my life that I felt were holding me back and getting me down. I had a good attitude and was motivated to make those changes.

2 weeks later, I broke my foot, and everything kind of turned to crap. I couldn’t exercise, and I continued chewing my nails out of frustration and anxiety. The good news is, my hair is getting nice and long (which means I want to cut it off again!!!) and one of the “other things” that I was hoping would happen was that I’d be pregnant, which I am. The faith thing is still somewhere in the middle, but I’m getting there.

The only thing that I feel is still really keeping me in limbo, is not knowing where we’ll be next year, but as I mentioned, we’ll know that very soon.

I know I’m definitely in a better place with how I feel about my body, especially now that I’m in my second trimester. I feel stronger and (ever so slightly) fitter, and know that the more exercise I can fit in, in the next 6 months, the better my pregnancy and recovery will. I know it will also help me to prepare for our new life next year – the move, the baby, the settling in – our life certainly is never dull!

So. That was my last 6 months. Let’s see what the next 6 months has to offer!

London 2012

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Something awoke me at 4:17am this morning. Was it Chanbe? I don’t think so. Was it the possum that lives in the roof? Perhaps? Or was it my subconscious telling me that the Olympics were on TV and that I should take my doona out to the couch and watch some coverage? Yeah, I think that was it.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I LOVE the Olympics. When I heard that Sydney was getting the 2000 Olympics, I knew I had to be there. I volunteered at the hockey and had the most amazing time, both at the hockey (we got to see a lot of games) as well as other events. In 2008, we had just moved to Melbourne, and I scored a temp job in the Channel 7 call centre, and got to see a lot of the coverage. I actually have a friend competing over in London in the swimming (go Brenton Rickard!!!) who did really well in Beijing (2 silver medals) and made it into the final of his first event in London, (100m breaststroke) which I watched at 5:10am this morning. (He came 6th, with team mate Christian Sprenger doing a great job getting the silver medal. Brenton’s world record that he’d held for 3 years also fell this morning.)

I just get so nervous and excited for all the athletes competing and wish we had foxtel so I could watch whatever I wanted. I’d love to see more hockey in particular, but that is up to the powers that be at Channel 9. So I watched over 4 hours of coverage this morning, (mostly swimming) and had my morning sleep after that. Hee hee! This whole staying-with-my-parents-so-I-can-watch-the-olympics-while-they-babysit thing is sweeeeeeeet!

Oh, and Hubs is coming up for a visit in a few days which will be really lovely. It’s going to be a great couple of weeks!

Woah Mama!

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Hubs and Chanbe and I are on our way to becoming a family of 4 🙂 I’m not quite 14 weeks pregnant, and check out this belly!!

Here I am wearing the same top in my first pregnancy. Except that in this photo, I was 20 weeks pregnant…

I heard that in subsequent pregnancies, you show a lot earlier, but this is ridiculous! Ha ha. Anyway, everything is going very well. The first trimester coincided with some of the hardest weeks/months of my life, but I’m feeling much better now. Chanbe and I have all but recovered from our nasty colds, and we are enjoying the gorgeous sunshine that Brisbane has to offer. My diary is filling up nicely with catch-ups, and the grandparents are loving having us (Chanbe) around.

So there you have it! The next lot of big news I’ll be sharing will be the location of Hubs’ internship next year, which we will find out in the next 2 weeks. Let the fun begin!

Feeling the warmth

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Chanbe and I arrived in Brisbane yesterday afternoon, and the weather hasn’t let me down. It’s cool, but not cold. It’s a bit cloudy, but not raining. We’ve had a lazy day of sleep and washing so far today, and the rest of the week isn’t going to be too full-on either.

When I last posted, I mentioned that “we were on the mend.” I was a bit wrong with that statement. Hubs took his Wifey and Chanbe to the doctor the following day, and we were both put on antibiotics. Chanbe bounced back by Friday but it wasn’t until Sunday that I was feeling like myself again. Sunday? Yeah, the last day of our “holiday”. So we didn’t end up at McLaren Vale, nor did we get to Penfolds like we planned on the Thursday. But that’s okay. In spite of the terrible weather and feeling like crap, we had such a lovely time with our friends. Our last dinner together on Thursday night consisted of some fresh fish we’d picked up from the Central Markets, and some truly decadent desserts our friend picked up from her favourite dessert place in Adelaide.

The boys even felt festive enough to wear their Friday shirts the next day!

I haven’t made too many plans for the next 4 weeks, but I have a long list of people to see and things to do, so I’m sure we’ll be kept busy. If you’re around, I’d love to catch up!

See you soon 🙂

The story so far…

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We have been on holidays for 10 days, and today was the first full day of sunshine we have had. And now it’s raining. Again. It has rained every day since we left home, but that is not getting us down. The thing that is getting us (me) down a little is the cold I (we) have. I haven’t had a “proper” cold since before I was pregnant with Chanbe, and I had honestly forgotten how miserable a cold can make you feel, and for how long! To make matters worse, I have somehow caught a “man cold”. Seriously. It’s that bad. Thankfully I have a very patient Hubsband who can tune out my doesn’t mind me whinging. Hubs hasn’t been feeling 100% and my poor little Chanbe has been sick too which makes me very sad when I hear him cough. But I believe we’re on the mend now, finally, after a week of feeling pretty ordinary.

So, back to the trip! We’ve seen some Apostles:

We’ve had some sleepy time in the car:
Some fish, chips and very large burgers in a seaside town:
Some (lots of) very crappy weather:

And we’ve had lots of lovely times with our family and friends down here, and those we caught up with along the way. We headed to Hahndorf today and McLaren Vale is on the agenda for tomorrow, so still lots to do and not too much time to do it all! But we’ll get there. We’ve had a few low-key days, to try and recover from this damn cold, so that has actually given us a bit of a holiday. I just hope the colds are all gone by early next week when I fly to Brisbane and Hubs starts his 5 weeks at the Royal Womens in Melbourne!

Lots more photos (taken on our camera, not just my phone) to share so stay tuned.

A photo break

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I just noticed that most of my blog posts lately have been very texty (yes, that’s a word…) so here’s a bit of a break from that…

Getting ready for a walk and trying to keep warm

Eating the world’s biggest freckle.
(Not my idea of a great Playgroup activity, but you get that. 
You should have seen the tantrum when I took it off him after only 2 bites!!)

Yes I love the “sitting in the stroller wearing a cute hat” photo…
Hopefully that will keep you going for a while…

On the road again

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In just over 12 hours (if we are on time!) we will be hitting the road for Adelaide, South Australia! With a few stops on the way, of course. We will spend the first 2 nights in Ballarat visiting friends (from med) and their families, then we’ll set off Tuesday morning for The Great Ocean Road. Hubs and I have been talking about doing this for years so we’re finally making good on those plans. We’ll probably try and get to the 12 Apostles on the first day, spend the night, then drive to Mt Gambier in SA on Wednesday and stay for the night, then on to Adelaide on Thursday.

These are fairly loose plans (as loose as I’m ever prepared to be) with no accommodation booked (but researched thouroughly and phone numbers at the ready) (yeah, I like to live life ON THE EDGE) and lots of great music to listen to on our journey. The only thing I’m ever so slightly concerned about to be honest, is Chanbe in the back seat on the winding roads. He has had a few power spews in the car so I’m just hoping he doesn’t add another one to his “collection” (eew).

We’ll stay in Adelaide, visiting friends and wineries and taking in the “City of Churches”. We plan to leave the following Friday and head back east to Bendigo and stay with a friend for a couple of nights before we head to Melbourne. Why Melbourne and not Wang, you ask? Well Hubs has his 5 week placement at the Royal Women’s in Melbourne, and I’ll be spending most of that time in Brisbane.

So as you can see, the next 7 weeks will be quite busy for us, and we’ll be away from our lovely home for that whole time. Can you understand when I say I’m looking forward to September?? We’ll be bringing all sorts of technological paraphernalia on our trip, so I hope to still be blogging. See you on the road!

Waiting for my real life to begin

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Ever felt that way? Like you’re waiting for all the busy-ness and craziness to “settle down” (there’s those words again) so you can just get on with things? I don’t know if you’ve heard this song by Colin Hay, but if not, it’s worth a little listen. The song was used in an episode of Scrubs so you may recognise it from that.

I listen to this song (a lot), not with feelings of wanting or wishing, but of nostalgia and excitement. I know that the life I am living is great, I just know that it will also get even better. In a month’s time, Hubs and I will know where we will be spending his intern year, and perhaps his first year as a resident. And after that, even though I know it’s going to be a hard slog, the world is our oyster.

And you say “be still my love”
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in
Don’t you understand? 
I already have a plan
I’m waiting for my real life to begin

One of those days

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You know the ones. Where you’re sitting in your back yard in the sun, the smell of bbq in the air, surrounded by friends and good vibes? Yeah. Yesterday was one of those days. We had some good friends (fellow medical student and family) stay with us for a few days this week, and yesterday, another med student and family (happens to be Chanbe’s Godmum) came up to visit for the day. So there we were. 3 med students, 3 foxy wives, and 4 adorable children; sun, bbq, beers… what more could a gal ask for?

Hubs and I are still winding down after our whirlwind few weeks, but we are getting there and loving it. I said to Hubs on our walk today, how funny life can be sometimes. I mean, what are the odds of him choosing to start med in the exact same year as 3 other guys, who are all mature age students, and who, along with their families, have become such a huge part of our lives in such a short time. It sounds super cheesy, but it was meant to be. I truly believe that.

We are so fortunate to have such genuine, loving, caring, outrageously fun people in our lives, and I hope, in 10 years time, we find ourselves sitting in someone’s backyard, reminiscing of good times gone by. I have a good feeling it’s going to happen…

We have arrived

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It’s Friday night, Hubs and Chanbe are having a shower, I’m drinking a glass of milk, and all is right with the world. As I mentioned 6 days ago, things were going to be better in 6 days. Today they are better. In fact, things are the best they have been in months. Hubs and I are smiling. And not in the strained “we just need to get through the next few months/weeks/days” way we have been smiling this year. We are happy. We are relaxed. We are (almost) ourselves again. And I really can’t express how good that feels.

You see, this week has been pretty sh*t. (Sorry, but it has). Hubs has been away in Shepparton for exams since Sunday afternoon, so I have been solo-parenting this whole week, and after this experience, all I can say is that I have even more admiration for full-time single parents. Oh wow. Seriously. It was hard work. Especially since I hate staying at home on my own. But I’ve known this week was coming for a long time, so I did a lot of mental preparation. I didn’t want to spend the whole week anxious and scared, so I started focussing on the positives, and rationalising to myself that there really was nothing to fear.

And you know what? It worked. Chanbe and I actually had a really great week. I made sure I had things to do each day to keep us occupied (including taking a train down to Kilmore to pick up the car and drive it home – turned out the alternator crapped itself and it didn’t cost as much as we were thinking. Woo!) and I just really focussed on keeping positive and realistic about my expectations.

Sunday to Wednesday were quite challenging with Chance waking up every night for an hour or so for no particular reason (he probably missed his Dadda) and not having particularly long naps during the day. Wednesday was my mental “hump day” – if I could get to Wednesday without cracking, I could get to Friday. Wednesday was a really great day, with playgroup in the morning and haircuts in the afternoon – one of the mums in my mothers group is my hairdresser so I go to her house and our boys play together while we cut, colour and chat. I was there for over 2 hours and it was so lovely. By the time we got home, it was just about dinner/bath/bed time which was great.

And each night I had something to look forward to – I watched 5 or 6 episodes of Sex and the City every night. It was very decadent. I decided I was going to do 1 load of washing a day, but as far as other housework went, I was giving myself the week off. No pressure, no guilt, no worries. And it really worked for me. By the time Thursday came around, I was on the home stretch and I really enjoyed myself. I topped the week off with a night out with my mothers group where we went out to dinner, had dessert and laughed so hard we got a stitch. It was so therapeutic.

So after my week off from housework and good sleep, I made up for it today. Chanbe went to childcare at 8:30am, I came home and slept from 9:30-12:30, then did housework til Hubs came home at 3. And the hug I got from him when he walked in the door was one of our best hugs ever. We had made it. We had gotten through the toughest time of our marriage to date, and we were on the other side. Damn it’s good to be here 🙂