Monthly Archives: July 2011

What's your best tip:Getting ready

Early or late? I’m hardly ever on time…

I find getting out of the house for a specific thing within a timeframe challening. It seems there’s always an extra nappy to change as we’re walking out the door, can’t find B1’s socks or sunglasses, forgot to replace the spare clothes in the nappy bag, don’t have a clean dummy for B2… The list goes on.

It frustrates my hubby no end. I either overcompensate and everything goes as planned and we’re ridiculously early, or I plan it “just right” and all the abovementioned things go wrong and I’m ridiculously late.

What’s your best tip for getting ready to go out with kids, and not be late??

Home Day

This post is for mum’s who think all the other mums “have it together”; or for mum’s who get asked “What did you do today?” and think “hmm… nothing”.

Let me just say upfront. I love being a stay at home mum, and I’m so thankful for all the things that I have – like a wonderful hubby & 2 gorgeous kids, we are all healthy, great friends, close to extended family, we have shelter, food, utilities. etc. Some days, the practical stuff just doesn’t quite come together 🙂

As much as I love getting out of the house, I also love my home days. When I’m home a lot, I desperately try to break out of this place. When I have lots of days out, I crave a home day. I will often then overcompensate and plan a whole week at home, then by the end again be trying to break out. There’s my cycle- You’d think I would have learnt by now.

So yesterday was one of those home days. After nearly 2 weeks of days when I had to go out, I was soooo relieved to have a home day to get some things done. Didn’t quite turn out as I expected 🙂

4:45am Feed B2, back to bed @ 6am
7am B1 wakes me “Mummy,.. all wet… Poo..”
change nappy & soak clothes, Get B1 milk, back to bed
7:45am Get up in prep for mother-in-law to pickup stuff for sister-in-law
8:30am Feed B2, Get B1 breakfast, put eggs onto boil for lunch
After that
– Attempt to get dressed. Pants need fixing.
– Take B1 to play outside whilst attempting to settle B2
– Give up trying to settle B2, take outside in rocker, grab 2 slices of bread for breakfast, attempt to fix pants
– Give up attempting to fix pants, feed B2
– Get B1 lunch
– Attempt to settle B2
– Get B1 ready for nap
– B2 falls asleep whilst I’m ignoring him
– B1 asleep
1:45pm – Have fixed pants ‘enough’ to get by. Get dressed out of PJ’s.
– B2 wakes up again (10min after B1 asleep), try to resettle – fail.
– Feed B2
– B1 wakes up
2:45pm – throw egg on bread for lunch.
– cuddle B1 whilst watching playschool (he’s demanding lots of attention, jealous of B2 feed times)
– B2 unsettled again
– Take boys for walk (listen to audio book on ipod)
– Let B1 have dig in front yard with relative doing gardening
5:15pm – oops! forgot about dinner. Throw some tomato sauce, frozen ham & grated cheese on burrito wraps – tada – pizzas.
5:30pm Feed B2
B1 eat pizza, change nappies, burp
6:30pm B2 really unsettled
7:30 Feed B2 again
Hubby finally home (walks in and collapses straight onto bed)
8pm, Hubby puts B1 to bed
Finish B2 feed, give B2 to hubby, B2 fills his pants, hubby hands B2 back, change nappy, try to settle B2 – fail.
9:30 ok, maybe feed B2 again?
B2 falls asleep in feed. put down
yay- showertime
oh wait, b2 up again
*sigh*
shower anyway
11:30pm ok, last feed, kid, then sleeptime

[end day @ around midnight]

So in the end- very little time with B1, no dishes, no washing, no nap, no healthy cooked dinner…

BUT – both kids fed, I got my pants fixed and I got to go for a walk (and spend loads of time on blog/facebook whilst feeding).

And to think, today is another home day…. here we go again 🙂

b2b: Learn manual settings for Camera

Goal 2), “Learn to use manual settings on my camera to take portrait shots”, has just become a lot easier. I noticed a special “daily deal” on one of those websites which offers a full-day (or 2 half day) hands-on photography workshop. It says you will:

Learn all about the functions of your camera

Cover ISO, Shutter speed, Aperture and much more

Take home a ‘cheat sheet’ hand-out with tips specific to your camera

Ongoing support via email and their website

Learn which settings to use in what situations

So I’ve used some of my saved up birthday/Christmas money (what I haven’t already spent on shoes :P) and bought one for just $45 (normally $185!). I’m a bit excited. I’ve got until March next year to use it, so am hoping to enrol later in the year or early next year when I’m not having to feed B2 as regularly. And then I’ll have a weeee bit of time to practice 🙂

Wooohoooo!

b2b: Trivia Night Preparation

A wonderful friend of mine has read my list and invited hubby and I to a trivia night. Its a fundraising night for a great cause – school chaplaincy – so that’s even better!

Hubby is a bit excited too – he turned on ABC radio straight away and said we need to “start preparing”. So cute 😀

We do have a lot of prep to do. We’ve been to one other trivia night together (a few years ago at our church) and we didn’t do so well. They had a category to guess who the baby pictures were as adults, and we got the one wrong that was a baby picture of MY HUSBAND! Oops…

In 25 words or less… Exercise

I love freebies. I love entering competitions. I dislike seeing those 5 words “In 25 words or less…”

Why? Because I’m really no good at them! 🙂

So, I thought it woul be fun to pick some random topics to write some “in 25 words or less” answers as a practice! And I’d love to see some of your answers, as I’m sure many of you can come up with far more creative answers than me.

I recently entered a comp where they asked something along the lines of “What is your best weightloss/exercise tip?”. Can’t remember what I wrote, but here’s another few tries:

To get in the groove to get on the move
Grab a friend who’ll kick your butt til you improve.

If you want to lose weight
Set a start date
Eat healthy food
On a much smaller plate

I’d love to be inspired by your creativity 🙂

b2b: First things first. Where do I start???

With very few sleeps until I start my B2B challenge, I’m now wondering – Where do I start?

Most importantly, I’ve ruled out starting with goal 16 “Go for a month without any chocolate”, because I know there’s no way I can possibly do that when going on a weekend women’s camp :). So that leaves 39 others…

I’m thinking I need to start on a few of the longer term ones; lock in some datenights with hubby, pick out a book of the Bible to journal through etc., whilst also knocking off a few of the “once-offs” to give myself a sense of achievement (sad, I know, but doesn’t it feel good to cross something off a list!?!).

Any suggestions where I should start?

What's your best tip: Clothes Washing

I’m not really sure what’s considered to be the average size washing machine these days, but ours is a 5.5kg. With a family of 4, including 2 kids under 3, this means a LOT of loads of washing. By the time we have leaked nappies, food spills, baby vomit, hubby’s work & sports uniforms… (plus I wear clothes too!)… and then there’s at least 2 loads to do all our towels, a few loads to do all our sheets, mattress protectors etc. It all adds up. I find myself doing a load of washing nearly everyday, and if I miss a day then I have to do a few the next day to catch up. And then once it’s washed, there’s hanging it out, bringing it in, the folding, ironing, putting away…

To help with getting it all done, I tend to put on a load of washing at night (sometimes 2) and pull it out of the machine before I go to sleep, so that when I wake up in the morning I can hang it out at the “first opportunity” (which is generally after changing nappies, feeding B2, getting B1 breakfast, settling B2 for sleep, getting B1 to play quietly without me… etc.). I find this extremely helpful on days when we have to go out, as it saves waiting the extra hour for the machine to go in the morning.

If at night I don’t get around to putting the load in until the last minute before going to bed, so that it doesn’t sit wet in the machine overnight I’ll often just fill the machine ready to go (powder and all) so that when I do get up in the morning I can just walk in and turn it on, and not need to spend the time sorting through the washing etc.

So last night when I was filling my machine it got me thinking about what things other people might do: what are your best washing tips???

If Child.Location=Out then Child.Nappy=Leak

I debated about whether or not I should post this so early in my blog… but in the end I decided to…. because this was my week.

If you’re a computer nerd, you’ll understand the post title. If you’re a mum, then you will no doubt have experienced the post title.

This week it seems that everytime I step out of the house with the kids, one of their nappies leaks. And then even sometimes at home (and all over hubby and the carpet). Sometimes the nappy has overflowed, but other times the nappy is virtually empty yet the boys’ clothes are soaked. Or it’s followed by a spew on me. It’s times like these I have to remind myself that:
1. I love my children
2. It’s not a big deal
3. It’s going to be funny later

Our scoreboard for “outing accidents” this week is:
B1 @ playgroup (with no spare pants)
B1 & B2 @ Coffee Club
B2 @ Shops (in harness!)
B1 & B2 @ Park

What has been your funniest/most awkward/most inconvenient nappy leak?

My first post!

I’ve started this blog to record my journey through the B2B challenge and to help keep me accountable! I’ll be starting the challenge soon (on hubby’s birthday), so if you’d like to join me you’ve got a little while to write a list of goals that suit you! In the meantime, the menu above links to a few pages which explain what the B2B challenge is and why I’m doing it!

I’ll also be posting on general life, family, day to day happenings and other random things.

Thanks to my wonderful hubby who set this up for me! xx