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The world of a WAHM

13 Aug 2010 | By Tracey

My poor poor blog has been sadly neglected. Sheesh, I can’t even remember what I last wrote about. I actually really miss blogging. The bottom line is I simply do not have enough hours in the day to sit down and put together a blog post. There must be about half a dozen blog posts saved in my drafts that have only been half written.

So what’s been happening out here in whoop whoop? Well, the pub is still for sale and not really any nibbles at it. *sigh*. The hubby and I had decided we would move back to Perth at the beginning of October regardless. We are losing way too much money and really cannot stay afloat any longer. So it’s done. We are moving out on the 26th of September. I feel sad, because this has been hubby’s dream and he feels like he’s failed. I really love having all of us together all day every day. But at the same time, I feel relieved because I have been struggling with a new baby plus all the housework and pub. There are a few special people that I will really miss out here and that is going to be the hardest part – leaving them behind. Even so, I have no doubts that no matter the distance, we’ll still be friends.

In saying that, I believe I have given myself MORE work. You see, just a week ago I posted up a photo of a bag that I had made on my Facebook. Then people started telling me they wanted one, so I said I’d make them one. Soon orders started flooding in! I had actually planned to start doing hair bows and selling them on Facebook after we had moved, but instead I’ve started making things now! It’s going really well and I am only taking orders at the moment, with the ‘shop’ opening in October as planned. I never intended on selling bags, but now I am I suppose! My idea to start the bows was to make some sort of extra money – at that stage hubby hadn’t had a job lined up to go to in Perth and I was terrified of not having any income. I certainly am not ready to go back into the workforce yet either!

Everything will work out ok, that’s what I believe anyway. It’s proved true so far. Hubby got offered a job at a previous workplace in a supervisors role. He was pretty much handed this job, they hadn’t even advertised it so I think that is saying something. We also have a house to rent lined up already. Right next door to the in laws. I know, I know, I can practically see most of you cringing but i have the most wonderful in laws you can imagine, so living next door is going to be great!

And little Tahnee, well she is 13 weeks old already(!!). A great little sleeper. Will only feed from one breast(I give her the other when we have a dream feed at 4am and she is none the wiser – she will scream blue murder if I try feed her from that side during the day!). She is smiling and cooing. Her fist is her favourite toy and I think she just LOVES the panicked looks we give her when she sticks her tiny fingers down her throat until she gags. We’re just waiting for the vomit to follow! Her hair is crazy, I’ve been able to tie it up since she was 9 weeks old. It’s all over the place!

Before I go, I have to mention the little chuckle the kids gave us today. We have been teaching our 3 year old, Owen, how to write his name. His writing is pretty impressive actually and he’ll even write his name out on the dirt with a stick most days. Anyhow, I went to have a shower this morning and i asked hubby to get Jye(20 months) undressed and he could have a shower with me. hubby came in ranting and raving because ye had been drawing on his clothes with pen, but upon further inspection there were the letters; O.W.E.N.

Hubby to Owen: ‘Did you draw on your brother?’

Owen to Hubby: ‘No I not. It was Jye.’

To my darling boy, if you want to draw on your brother and get away with it, DON’T write your name!!

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It’s that time again.

03 Jul 2010 | By Tracey

School horrordays holidays. Argh. We’re only one day in and the kids are already driving me batty. I guess it’s the one thing that I really dislike about the place and the fact that hubby and I are tied to the place every single day of the week. We can’t really go out anywhere or do anything, there is nothing to do right where we are. It’s almost an hour of driving to get to where there is something for them to do. *sigh* So we’re stuck here as usually, all on top of each other because we really do live in such a small space. I will not miss this when we move back to the city.
The school reports came home yesterday and I am quite happy with Jayden’s, all satisfactory or above. Bailey on the other hand, he got a few below satisfactory and what has baffled me is where it says ‘parent/teacher interview recommended’, it’s tick ‘no’. No? Wouldn’t having a chat to the parent when a child is achieving below satisfactory be beneficial for the child so that the parent can work at home with the areas that the child is having difficulty with? Hmm. I’m not very happy, especially as other schools sent reports home earlier and we get ours on the last day of school where it’s too late to even ask about said report.

And either I have forgotten what it’s like or I have one particularly mischievous little 18 month old. We’ve nicknamed him ‘S&D’ aka Seek & Destroy. Anything he can get into, he does and I could swear to you that none of the other kids were this bad. He’s managed to crash our computer to the point of where nothing showed up on the screen, he’s pulled the card out of the cable TV box and hidden it. Last night for instance, he threw a pair of his brothers pyjama pants into the open fireplace. On a side note, the speed in which those pants burned scares the living daylights out of me!

But, he is just sooo cute.

And when he is in S&D mode, I remind myself that This too shall pass.

Baby girl, Tahnee, is doing so well. She is 7 weeks old now and giving us those big gummy smiles that just melt your heart. Breastfeeding has been a breeze after we got through the struggle with had with attachment in the first week. We pushed through and now we’re happy and content with breastfeeding. I have a real fast letdown and a lot of the time she ends up spluttering from the milk squirting everywhere, but it also means that she is fed and happy within 10 minutes.

The best part – snuggling up in bed, half asleep and feeding her. No having to get out of bed when it’s -3 degrees. Yes, it’s been that cold out here! She’s been sleeping longer at night now too, which really is a blessing. 8pm to 1.30am then back to sleep til 6.30am. Not so great for my poor breast though, they were painfully engorged this morning!

I looove having all this pink around. her hair is almost long enough to tie up too!

So anyway, off to find some things for these kids to do over school holidays and cook dinner and apply for a bunch of jobs.

It never ends.

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Why I haven’t blogged.

28 Jun 2010 | By Tracey

Um yeah, it’s almost July and I haven’t blogged since the beginning of the month. The biggest excuse reason is because I spend most of the time cuddling or nursing Tahnee and I don’t have the patience to try and write one handed. Just the last two sentences would probably take me 10 minutes to type. Besides that my days are filled with cleaning, playing with the boys, serving customers, etc. I’ve also been knitting. Working on a cute purple dress for Tahnee on circular needles(this is the first thing I’ve knitted using them).

I guess that I’ve been down lately as well, not PND, just how slow business has been. Apparently this is not good enough for our landlord(we own the business and we lease the property) and she has pretty much forced us to put the business up for sale. Yeah. I didn’t think you could do that, but apparently she can. Every single cent we have has been invested into this business. We spoke to a business broker and he said we were sold a lemon and it wasn’t even worth what we paid for and we’d be lucky to get our money back. The rent should only be 6% of turnover and we’re paying 4 times that. The landlord won’t even budge on that even though she knows we are struggling. She is putting the property on the market too. Hubby had the property evaluated a month ago and she is asking for DOUBLE that. Hmm. Seeing a trend here?

So lord knows where we will be, or where we will go. We’re kinda stuck in limbo because we can’t apply for jobs until we know when we are leaving here, but then we can’t rent anywhere until we have work. ARGH!

Hubby is crushed because his dreams have been taken away in one foul swoop.

Anyway, Tahnee is already 6 weeks old and is 5kg now. So big! I just can’t believe how fast time flies and how she is changing and growing. I love having a girl, she is so fun to dress!

Hard to believe but my eldest is 8 next week. I’ve come a long way from being 18 and pregnant and not knowing what I was in for. I love my kids and I love being a mama.b

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A princess was born…

22 May 2010 | By Tracey

On May 14th 2010.

Tahnee Liliana was born at home in water at 2.32pm, she weighed 8lb 13oz(4kg) and was 48cm long.

She’s a gorgeous wee girl and so very very placid, very lucky because we live in a very noisy, crazy household!!

Birth story to come soon, we came back to the country 2 days ago and I’ve only just had a chance to get to the computer. Still have 1500 odd e-mails to get through! Eek!

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Nesting!

29 Mar 2010 | By Tracey

I don’t believe it, I’m actually nesting. I’ve never had the nesting bug before, must be because I am pregnant with a little girly this time.

I had every intention of finishing the bookwork for the business today. Unfortunately a little almost 3 year old got to our computer and goodness knows what he did to it, it’s no longer working :( We are taking it to the city with us on Thursday and there is a guy that works on computers from home that will fix it over Easter for us. Phew.

So with that plan out of action, I managed to fold almost the entire mountain o’ washing. Seriously. I don’t think the mountain has been this small since we moved here in June last year. There are now piles of washing all over the place that need to be homed, but we’re in the middle of moving the kids around and we’ll be able to organise their clothes into the right spots when we’re done.

I completely cleaned out the babies room. We were originally going to put the boy boys in the room down the end, the baby boys in the middle room and the baby girl and stepdaughter in the room next to ours. Instead, we are putting Owen in with the big boys. He is in a toddler bed and they will be going into a bunk bed. The middle room will be the ‘play room’ and the baby girl and Jye can share the room next to ours. We’ll bring in a bed when my stepdaughter comes, she is with us on school holidays only.It’s just getting too messy with the kids having toys in their room.

As I was saying, I cleaned up the babies room. We rearranged the furniture and put up some wall stickers to make it look a bit more lived in. Baby girl’s side of the room looks like this.

The walls are so blah. It’s the same colour throughout the entire place. Also we have no windows in the bedrooms(there is a door in the middle of the back wall that use to access the exterior of the building, but now goes into a store room).

We scored the change table from Freecycle for absolutely nothing. What a find! There are two doorknobs missing thanks to a mischievous 15 month old of mine.

The pink drawers are from Ikea, as soon as I found out we were having a girl I had to get those drawers. Believe it or not they are full to the brim of baby clothes already!

The cot also has green sheets, I know. Jye is still using the cot at this stage.

The wall stickers are  Disney Fairies. I love Tinkerbell, so it seemed fitting. Jye will just have to deal with them for the time being! Haha.

The cot is also from Ikea. It is meant to turn into a toddler bed, but we haven’t gotten that far with it yet. We bought the cot of Owen, so it’s going to have it’s 3rd child using it soon. And we’ll hopefully be able to turn it into a toddler bed for the baby girl when she gets older!

Owen wanted to get into his bed when I went to take pictures! The toddler bed we have for Jye is the same, only his is plain timber. We haven’t got a mattress for it yet. The wall stickers are these cute little jungle animals.

You can see that door on the left there too with the ugly curtain that I’ll replace.

Cute little pink drawer/shelve, I got those on Deals Direct – they are stackable and you can get all sorts of cubes and drawers. They come in a few different colours too.

Then behind the door is the chest of drawers that house the boys clothes. A few boxes on top that have clothes that Jye has outgrown and needs a new home.

Owen was not impressed about me taking his photo. Little grump.

Oh and his awesome Diego blanket was made for him by a friend of mine. He was sooo wrapped with it and has to have it in his bed with him every night.

Then we got about halfway through putting the bunk beds together before it got too late and customers started coming in. We’re hoping to get that done tomorrow.

Anyway, I feel better now because I can finally see things progressing, I just may be organised before I have to leave town!

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Shattered

27 Mar 2010 | By Tracey

Yes, I am absolutely shattered. While I did a lot of prep work yesterday for the dinner tonight, I still spent a solid 8 hours in the kitchen today!

I still panicked that there wasn’t enough food. I am always paranoid when I have buffet dinners to do. But they have eaten and they all said the food was great…phew.

Mind you, I did have everything done by 6.30. It’s also a Saturday night, which means that I still had the regular patrons to cook meals for and also the miner guys that are staying in our accommodation.

My back aches, I can barely walk(more like shuffle), my feet are throbbing…there better be some cheesecake or pavlova leftover for me to pig out on!!

And bless my little darling boys who have been very patient and non demanding today! I missed them though :( My big boys were lovely though and kept the little ones entertained. I love them all so much.

Speaking of kids, Jayden smacked Bailey in the gob(ok, so they were a bit naughty at times lol) today and it knocked his really, really wobbly tooth out. So I’d better go play the tooth fairy before I forget!!!

That’s all that my poor brain can rattle out tonight, sorry for the blah blog post but I thought I’d better update and let you know that I’ve survived.

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Toilet Adventures

21 Mar 2010 | By Tracey

I did touch on Owen using the toilet(well lack of using the toilet I should say) briefly on the old blog before I cleverly deleted it. I didn’t have much to say really, we had tried him in jocks during the day but it was pretty hit and miss. More miss than hit. We’ve slowly been plodding along with it – some days he’ll go through 8 pairs of jocks in a matter of hours. Some days we give up and he wears pull up(it’s the hubby that leans towards this too!). He flat out refused to sit on a potty. ARGH! So we stopped asking.

Yesterday, whilst in training pants, he took himself out to the backyard. Hubby poked his head out the door and there is Owen – leaning against the veranda pole with one hand and ‘aiming’ with the other.

“Are you weeing on the grass Owen?”

“I’m NOT weeing on the grass. I’m weeing on the rocks!”

Ooook, but at least he isn’t wetting himself. He took himself off to the loo later in the day though and did a wee – he also used half a roll of toilet paper.

Then today. Today he did a wee AND poo on the toilet. He will tell anyone who will listen(and so have I by putting it up as my facebook status).

Slowly, slowly we are getting there. I hope that he’ll be using the toilet before the baby comes(the idea of 3 in nappies is somewhat scary).

Doesn’t it just go to show that you really can’t force a child to use the toilet. When you take a step back and just leave them be, they will get the idea on their own and just do it. Sure we talk about where the wee and poo goes. We tell him that he is doing so well wearing jocks like his big brothers. But we don’t hound him about sitting on the toilet.

Yes we still have accidents, we don’t make a fuss. We just tell him to forget about it and next time he could try and go on the toilet. Granted we do do the naughty thing and reward him with sugarfree lollies when he does go, but I did it with my older kids and at 6 and 7, they don’t still ask for their reward for using the toilet!!

The toileting thing is definitely a challenge, but it’s really not a race. It’ll be a light bulb moment at some stage and nappies will be soon forgotten!

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In for a dip

12 Mar 2010 | By Tracey

At the pools. Well the kids did – they had their very first swimming carnival today. Very strange, I thought – I don’t ever remember having swim carnivals when I was primary school age. Especially the way that they do lessons where the kids are all at different levels. My kids are only 7 and 6, so not really there yet with swimming but they did a few ‘games’ in the shallow toddler pool and that was about it. It was pretty much all over by noon for my 6 year old and my 7 year old got to do a game in the afternoon. We spent all day there, even though my kids were pretty much done at lunch time because that “had” to stay for the awards presentation.

I did notice my arm was a bit red, but we had a spot in the shade and moved when the shade moved. Not so bad. It wasn’t until after I’d been home a while that I started feeling sleeping and just plain blah. Hubby suggested a shower and when I took my top off I noticed my other arm was also kinda red and my chest was like a tomato above some lily white boobies! No wonder I was feeling so crappy, I think I have a touch of heatstroke.

Other than that, I’ve pretty much been chained to my computer fixing our paperwork(and it’s all numbers and stuff. Argh! Maths is so not my strong point). I think I’m almost done with it but I’ve been dreaming numbers and calculators for a few nights now. I could never be an accountant, my mind is not cut out for numbers.

I’ve also been thinking about what I’ll do when we eventually move on from here, while it’s all fine and dandy for the time being(and I’ll talk about the issues that I have with this place another time) we will move on from this place unless the unthinkable happens and the owner decides to sell the property within the next 2 years. Whilst we’re here though, it’s ok for me to mostly be a parent and do the kitchen/accounting/other little jobs, hubby does more of the front of house thing. If we leave here – well, we’re not going to be able to afford for one of us to stay at home. I want to be able to do a little something now so that it’s easier for me to do something that I really want to do instead of taking any job just to get by.

So, I’m going to enrol to become a breastfeeding counsellor/community educator with the ABA which in a few years means I can train to be a lactation consultant. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and there are no support groups for breastfeeding out here, which is sad. My most successful breastfeeding relationships with my babies were so great because of the breastfeeding network I had. Plus it’s something that I would be able to do where ever we go after here. I’d also like to do some doula training and antenatal teacher training too someday in the future. There is no market out here for doula’s because the nearest hospital that does births is 2-3 hours away and no-one around here has home births because the hospital is too far to transfer to in case of emergency.

It’s nice to have a direction and I’m really excited about it. Hopefully I can get the ball rolling soon(but I heard that the application for ABA is about a million pages long).

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