Thankyou for taking the time to read my blog! My incredibly busy super-Hubby is currently updating the theme of the blog in his spare time to make it more readable and give me more control over the formatting of my posts, but its gone a bit haywire! (Titles missing and formatting a bit odd – not as beautiful as it looks when I write my posts!)
Thanks for your patience… hopefully it will be all fixed soon! 🙂
Meanwhile, here is a gorgeous pic of B1 doing some construction work in our yard (with a drill that wasn’t working!)
About a year ago, the small element in my stove died. We decided it was too expensive to fix, so have been just using it with 3 of the 4 elements. I got used to the fact that I had to use a bigger element for my small saucepan, and often just used the bigger saucepan instead.
Recently though, other household applicances & large items seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of breaking. In November our washing machine broke (was fixed after a few days) and then in the last 3 weeks our oven has broken (replaced it yesterday after 3 weeks without it), our aircon has broken (temporarily fixed after 5 days without it), hubby’s car got a bolt in tyre (couldn’t drive for 4 days until fixed) and now my laptop is broken (unfixed)… it has been once thing after another.
Each of these things were out of my control. Each of these things, whilst VERY VERY frustrating, could still be worked around. I could easily write a dandy little post about how I shrugged and accepted all this, but I will admit to this- when my oven was finally replaced and I used my new one for the first time, I cried because I just wanted my old oven back. Yes, you heard me, I cried.
I was extremely disappointed because one after another I discovered:
1) it was SO noisy;
2) it took SO long (30min!) for the cooling fan (noisy!) to turn off after using it;
3) it didn’t have a timer (only an “auto-off” feature – bah!); and
4) my awesome Lasagne dish didn’t fit in it (pffh!).
So, yes, as every well-adjusted housewife would, I rang my mummy and I cried.
The phone conversation went like this, “Hi Mum, I’m just ringing cause I need to have a cry, and then have you tell me how silly it is, and then I can get on with my day… I’m just so disappointed.”
Then once my tears were over, I sat there and thought to myself. I really have two choices, I can dwell on this and become bitter, or I can be thankful and move on. Oh how easy it would have been to sit there and feel sorry for myself, though even with hindsight 24hours later it seems so silly that I was even upset over these small things. So what if, in the grand scheme of things, my oven is noisy and costs a little more to run because it takes longer to cool down?
I cleared my head and I decided:
1) I’d use my mobile as a timer (& set a “quack quack” sound as default! hehe);
2) I’d buy a new Lasagne dish; and lastly (most importantly!)
3) I would bake biscuits that night and be thankful that I had an oven!!
Anazac Biscuits baking in my Oven
With each of these things, there has been inconvenience, disappointment, time spent on organising repairs or replacement as well as a financial cost. At the end of the day though, I’m really glad that these are just physical ‘items’ that are broken. It’s just an oven, just aircon, and just a car. I am so blessed to have had these things in the first place. They are practical, useful and important…, but replaceable. Things on earth were not made to last, they were made to be temporary, it’s not where I choose to put my focus.
Doh, we’ve just run out of gas for the hot water! I guess it’s cold showers at home for the next few days… 😀
My almost-3-year-old, B1, decided to take one of his cardboard playmats to bed with him. Hubby and I had a giggle when we found him covered in it, literally, all torn up! (There were a few other pieces I found as well after I took this photo.) He woke and had no idea what had happened. Poor little thing, he was quite sad.
As I patted my 8month old baby (B2) to sleep tonight, I thought about the desperate lengths I’ve gone to on occasions to get my children to sleep. Let me paint the picture for you a little more.
To get this gorgeous little baby to sleep through the night, we’ve tried:
removing foods/caffiene from my diet (I’m breastfeeding),
drinking Rooibos tea,
changing B2’s breastfeeds (number of feeds, times, expressed bottles),
changing B2’s solids (amounts of solids, types of solids, times of solids),
and lastly, since we’ve tried everything else we can think of to get him to sleep through the night, why not also try taking him out of our room and putting him in a different cot in a different room?!
So tonight I was bent at the waist, hair dangling in my face, flopped over the side of a low porta-cot, situated in my husband’s study, patting my child to sleep and getting a really good hamstring stretch in the process and thinking of the desperate measures I’ve been through to get my children to sleep over the past three years.
I remember a very wise midwife telling me as a new parent, when B1 was only a few days old, that sometimes you just have to do whatever will work. If that means giving your baby a bath in the middle of the night to settle them, then give your baby a bath in the middle of the night. And so one night I did.
I remember lying/sleeping on the floor by B1’s cot, patting him each time he stirred, as he had sleepless nights continually for a few months (we later found out he had an intolerance to cow’s milk common in kids 12-24months, but he hadn’t started having symptoms until after he’d been on it for over a month).
Then there was the time when B1 had an ear infection (maybe even both ears?). Hubby and I spend a few nights in a row taking turns of driving B1 around in last-ditch effort to get him to sleep. There was one night in particular I remember we were so tired we both went as we weren’t sure it was safe for either of us to be driving on our own. Completely overtired, we thought it would be hilarious to turn it into a “Maccers Crawl”, ordering just one small thing to share from each McDonalds drive-thru we could find (eg. sml orange juice, hash brown, mini snack wrap). We learned valuable information that night/morning about our local McDonalds, and it’s so useful that I’m going to share it all with you. I wonder if it’s the same at all McDonalds? Feel free to test this out when you are next having a sleepless night up with your baby, and comment on what you find!
At our local McDonalds, when the regular menu turns over to the breakfast menu (around 4 am), the Eftpos system doesn’t work until the Manager comes on duty at 6am. How bizare is that!?!
On a serious note, I want to leave you with the other thing that the lovely, wonderful and wise midwife told me. She told me that when I’m up in the middle of the night, with the light on and a screaming baby, don’t think that you’re alone. Out there, in other houses, there are other lights on, and other babies crying. How often I’ve found this to be true, the morning after a sleepless night when I’ve spoken to other mums. We just have a giggle, about how we missed a perfect 2am opportunity to have coffee together! 🙂
What have you done in desperation to get your baby to sleep, or some sleep for yourself?
I’m a left-brained, super-organizer and super-planner. When I’m tired, I get totally overwhelmed by things and sometimes I find it hard to focus. My to-do list is one way I’ve tried to find order amongst the chaos, but sometimes even that is too much for me to handle.
At the moment, my 8month old baby has been waking between 3am and 5am just about everyday. My natural inclination is to write about how hard it is with so little sleep to focus & get things done, but I’m going to stop myself right there. Instead, I’m going to get straight to the point.
I’ve come to the realisation recently that I just can’t do everything, and need to lower my expectations. I’ve gone for months trying to push through getting barely any quality sleep, but it hasn’t been working for me or my family. I’m tired, unproductive and have to fight for joy. So it was a very easy decision for me to focus on getting more sleep in 2012.
To make it simple, I’ve decided to try to ‘shut down’ (eg. tv, computer, hobbies, blogging, social activities etc) at 8:30pm so I can be ready for the next day and ‘lights out’ by 9:30pm. It doesn’t work everyday, but have already had to make some tough decisions to make it work.
The main thing that I’ve had to do though is lower my expectations of myself. I won’t detail the ins and outs of my day, but at the moment there is not a huge amount of time to get things done when I’m up early with the kids, and I’m ‘shutting down’ sometimes less than half hour after they go to sleep.
So if I go through my day and …
… the dishes haven’t been done
… the folding hasn’t been put away
… I haven’t cooked a masterpiece for dinner
… I didn’t make it out of the house today
… I haven’t done a blog post in over a week
… the grocery list is growing… and growing…
its OKAY !!!!
They will still be there waiting tomorrow.
I’m not saying that in the long-term these habits are positive ones, but as we go through phases of our life, sometimes it’s okay to lower the expectations we have on ourselves a bit.
It is so easy for me to beat myself up about the above things, to tell myself lies that I’m not a good wife and mother because I’ve let the above things slip. When I look about the house, and there are so many things to be done, I get totally overwhelmed sometimes.
I ‘m having to make a conscious effort at the moment to remind myself (and my lovely and wonderful friends and family also remind me and encourage me) that it’s just a phase of life and it’s OKAY!
And its 8:29pm, so I’m posting this… Sorry, no picture!
{edit: by the time I added the 2 links its 8:36pm! OOps! Goodnight! xx}
Like many others, I find myself to be a creature of habit. When our oven glass spontaneously smashed, I took it in my stride and shopped for a new one. What was most inconvenient though, was that everytime I washed my hands in the kitchen (which happens very regularly), I would turn around and start walking to the other side of the kitchen to dry my hands on the hand-towl that for years has hung on our oven door, but was no longer there for safety reasons. I have lost count of the number of times I have done it – easily over 30 times in 2 days! It is so much ingrained in me as habit that I have struggled to change, even though the new handtowel is hanging at eye-level right next to where I wash my hands at the sink!
We all have habits we fall into on so many levels, from the small and insignificant things, such as the way we dry our hands and the way we stack our dishes, to the bigger things in life, such as the way we treat each other, speak to our children, respond to change, exercise, eat and spend our time.
In the second half of 2011 I set my 40 goals to complete in 40 weeks – I’m about half way and will be working on them until May. It’s been great to achieve some goals, prove to myself that I can do things, and challenge myself to try new things.
It’s time to go a step further though. In looking at 2011, I became so distracted in the different things that were happening that so many times I would neglect the basic areas of my life and thus struggled to maintain a healthy balance.
The online dictionary defines a habit as an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. I need to do some basic things regularly so that it becomes almost involuntary. I’ve heard many times in my life by different people that it takes 30 days – one month of doing something regularly to form a habit.
So in 2012, I’m going to try to develop/reinforce 12 habits in 12 months. Each month I will try to continue the previous habit, plus work on another one. I have broken each habit down into more detail so I know how I’m gong to measure my success, but here is the gist:
January: Have a regular, earlier bedtime (get more sleep!) February: Read my Bible daily March: Exercise Regularly April: Read Non-Fiction books May: Drink more water June: Eat Breakfast daily July: Set time aside to blog regularly August: Do more intentional activities with my boys September: Reduce Email/Facebook time October: Floss regularly November: Do physio exercises daily December: The one that I’ll discover during the year I need to add!
They may seem very simple, but these small things are so important to me and pretty much each get neglected from time to time as life gets busy.
What do you find you neglect when you get busy or tired?
I remember lying/sleeping on the floor by B1’s cot, patting him each time he stirred, as he had sleepless nights continually for a few months (we later found out he had an intolerance to cow’s milk common in kids 12-24months, but he hadn’t started having symptoms until after he’d been on it for over a month).