Waaaaaay too early

Mr 5 seems to be making it a habit to arise at 5:45am. He clumps to the toilet. Then he clumps back to his room and wakes up Mr 3. We are of course all awake then.

It is WAAAAAAAAAY too early to be arising everyday. We have dark curtains in their room - it's not particularly bright. We DO NOT rise when they do so there's no encouragement there.

How can I delay him. I only want 30mins. 6.15am would be quite respectable. But anything before 6am is just not on. Help!

I'll swap you??

I LOVE being pregnant. I really do. (no hint of sarcasm, that is the absolute truth.) I love the way the body grows and develops when a woman is pregnant - and I think the bulging belly is just beautiful.

I am lucky. I get told it often. And I feel that I am. I carry well, I look 'small' and generally don't put on a lot of weight. I am all baby and have been lucky enough with the 2 boys to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight winthin weeks. (We'll see if I'm as lucky this time.) These are all good genetics and none of my doing. It is pure luck and I can do nothing about it. So sorry everyone!

Apparently these are hereditary too.

An 80yr-old lady's leg? Nope. Mine.

See the bulge on the left hand side above my knee cap? Varicose vein. There's another smaller bulge towards the bottom of the photo on the left side. The rest is my spider web!

My legs used to my favourite part of my body. Now I can only say that about one leg! Yes, these lovely veins only occur in my left leg. (These photos don't do them real justice.) I wear a pressure stocking to help with the pain. It brings wonderful relief. But sadly, the veins still look hideous.

The worst of it is that they continue to the 'nether regions'. Did you know that varicosities in the crotch area were symptomatic of pregnancy? I didn't. But I sure as heck do now! Don't ask me to stand in a queue for more than a minute. I dread the checkouts at Woolworths. It literally feels as though my bottom will fall out!

Pregnancy puts a lot of pressure on any woman's body. We all have different burdens to bear. I don't suggest for a moment that mine are in any way worse than anyone else's. They are not. In fact I don't think the pain is even equal with people who get extremely bad morning sickness. I would not cope with vomiting.

But I have thought at times, when well-meaning people comment on how 'tiny' I am that I would happily trade the varicosities for a huge belly. In a heart beat. But that would have it's own downsides. So until I can walk in another's shoes, I'll keep my mouth shut and keep lying around the house! It's always fun to have an excuse to rest while everyone else does the work!!

I feel blessed to be pregnant. I am privileged to be able to bring children into this world - of that I am well aware and feel very lucky. Despite the hideousness of my leg at the current time I wouldn't trade being pregnant for anything else in the world. I'll take the bad with the good.

Pyjama-rama

In celebration of the end of term, Lachlan's preschool had a pyjama day yesterday. (It was a bit chilly so we started the day off with a jumper.) The kids thought it was most hilarious to wear their pyjamas to school all day. And Lachlan got a real kick out of seeing everyone else's pj's - especially the teachers!

They also made crazy hats and had a special treat of ice-cream in a cone. The day before they'd had their faces painted. It was a really nice finish to the term for them.

Now to occupy ourselves for 2 weeks!

Boys love rockets

A friend is having a boy about a month or so before me and I found this pattern on my recent applique hunt and couldn't resist this gorgeous rocket. Teem this with a pair of denim shorts or jeans and he'll be the coolest and most original baby around!

I was guest blogger over here this week. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE her blog. Thanks Bobbie for having me. Here's my post about "family- adding another one".

When I was a little girl, I had big dreams.
My dream looked a lot like the Anne of Green Gables books.
I dreamt of being married to a wonderful man (he was tall and had dark hair in my dream), and living in a cute little blue cottage in the country or near the seaside. My garden would be full of beautiful flowers and lusch green grass. And playing in that lovely garden would be 2 sweet girls, dressed in summer dresses, their curly hair floating in the laughter-filled breeze. In another dream I wanted lots of children – like 8!-, but still I pictured myself in the garden playing with all my delightfully well-behaved, sweet children.

I really did dream that. I wrote it in my beehive journal when I was 13.

The long and short of it is: I always dreamt of being a mother.
Nothing excited me more than imagining myself with children surrounding me in my own home.

Fast forward 11 years and my wonderful (slightly-shorter-than-me-red-haired) man and I were expecting our first child. Unfortunately, we weren’t living in a picturesque cottage beside the seaside, rather renting a 70’s-style unit in the innercity; but we were deliriously happy nonetheless.
“And what would you like it be?” people would ask. Somewhere in those 11 years part of my desires had changed. Not sure where or how. “A boy!!” I replied excitedly. I genuinely wanted a boy first. I got my wish and 15 months after Lachlan’s birth we were pregnant again. Again, my wish was for a boy. I imagined 2 little boys tottering around together, exploring, building and being best buddies. My wish came true again. Another little boy (who is totally different in every way except his appearance from the first) joined our family. They are indeed best buddies and I love watching their friendship blossom.

It’s 3 years later and here I sit pregnant again. It’s been 6 weeks since I was lying on the ultrasound bed waiting impatiently for the announcement of baby #3’s sex. There were 3 boys in the room all vying for it to be a girl, while I was hoping for a boy. The boys got their wish!


I love my boys to bits. They are delicious! They are affectionate to their mother, a mixture of rough-and-tumble and sensitivity, without many uncontrollable tantrums. Another boy, while I understand that his personality and nature would have been quite different again from the other 2, I envisioned would fit very nicely into our family. We have a million boys’ toys. We have space-bags full of blue clothes. They could have been the 3 stoogers going to stake dances together and we would have spent our Saturdays watching them all play various sports.

I’ve had quite some time to get used to the idea that I will be having a girl and quite honestly the shopping and making of pretty pink things has got me quite excited. At first I thought a lot about how strange it will be to have a girl in the house and wondered how she will fit in. ‘I don’t want a girl’. ‘Think of all those teenage hormones.’ ‘The poor girl will never be allowed out on her date thanks to her protective father’. ‘Little girls throw the worst tantrums.’ Ok, so I generalize and most of it probably isn’t true and let’s face it: boys have their own problems too.
But at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter whether our unborn babe is a boy or girl. She may not have been in my ‘ideal dream’ 6 weeks ago, but she still completes my dream perfectly. I will still be a mother surrounded by my children, raising them in a home filled with love.

And that is what family means to me. Family is being surrounded by those you love and whom love you back. Family is my dream come true. Small children who delight in the simple things.

Sure, family life is not 100% rosy all the time. There are difficult times. There are disagreements, arguments, people pulling you in all different directions wanting a piece of you, whinging and whining, too many things to do in too little hours etc. etc. Every day is different. The family dynamics can be rather varying depending on who got out of bed on what side that morning. But family makes the heart sing. My children, despite all their faults (and whinging) complete my dream and baby girl will just make that dream sweeter.

So our family is going to change in 3 months’ time. We’ll go back to: dozens of nappies lying around the house everywhere, sleep deprivation, the ensuing bad-tempered parents, the huge bag that one has to cart around everywhere the newborn goes, the displaced siblings and endless washing of tiny clothes covered in puke.
But there’s also the peace of holding a beautiful newborn, the gummy smiles, the giggles, the tiny clothes, watching a baby discover something for the first time, the gorgeous gurgling, the JOY a baby brings.

Ahh, family life with young children is full-on rollercoaster ride. But we’re excited to see what’s around the next bend as our family grows and develops.


Here’s to the pink!

A bit more pink!

I made this last Wednesday night. A long while back (way before I was pregnant) I bought a pack of muslin wraps from Target 4 of the big 1m square ones for $10. I had intentions of using them to make a breastfeeding wrap but ended up buying one recently for a reasonable price so decided that I would try copying this idea I'd seen on the net, and add some pink to one of them. It wasn't rocket science and not particularly fancy, but met my skill levels and was quick. I like quick - because when I get something into my mind, I want it done now. This met the criteria. I bought the fabric and ric rac at spotlight on the way from kindy dropoff and then sewed it up that night.

I've just sewn the pink fabric with some ric rac to 2 sides so when the baby is wrapped up you'll see some around the top and folded across the middle. I've already instructed Elliot that if he wraps her wrongly and we can't see the pink, he'll have to redo it - sleeping baby or not! LOL

I must say, I'm rather in a craft mood at the moment. Hopefully we will have something else exciting to show you soon!

5 is fun!

when you're not sick......

It looked like Lachlan was perking up and over his illness on Friday but he really wasn't 100% on Saturday. He was a little lacking in energy and enthusiasm and I was a little sad to see him not totally enjoying his party. But it was still overall a success! We later discovered that a middle ear infection was the culprit. Poor boy - terrible luck to be sick on your birthday :(

Credit must go to Elliot for the fabulous Fire Engine cake which Lachlan has been planning for the last year. I made the cakes and the icing but Elliot put it all together and decorated it. I really like the effect the royal icing (think that's what it's called) decorations had. They looked clean and accurate which is hard to achieve with just butter icing (and a wobbly piping hand!)

I have declared myself retired from cake making - Elliot is much better and it's much less stressful to hand it over to him while I scurry around doing the other 'last-minute' bits.

Made with Love

I don't think there's anything much cuter than a fresh white jumpsuit hand-appliqued with love. I love to do applique - it is so easy and yet so beautiful. XXX