narrating kayoz

Kiss it better

Kaely has definitely figured out that kisses make things better.

She is pretty resilient generally, falls over often but jumps straight up to continue her play. She'd have to be a bit tough really, or she couldn't maintain her lifestyle as a gymnast/rock climber in training. But sometimes things hurt.

If it's really bad she'll cry and/or want to nurse. But if it's just a little bad, like if she trod on a bit of lego in her bare feet say, she's likely to come running over to have it kissed better. She's fussy too. If the first kiss doesn't help, or isn't in quite the right spot, she'll ask for another before she runs off to scale another tall building dining room table.

The other day she hurt herself and I wasn't quite sure what she'd done."Do you want mummy to kiss it better?" I asked. I thought maybe she'd banged her chin. She probably had, but it wasn't her chin that was hurt. She nodded, came over to me, and stuck out her tongue.

Well, I guess if it works...

Happy Birthday Mikaela!

Kaely is two today.

We didn't do much by way of celebration, but we did have a cake with her cousins at our weekly visit to their house and pretend like it was a party. Not that they noticed the difference.

And now I am going to bed.

Awesome exhaustion

I am completely exhausted. This is mostly because I have been up since 4:45 this morning, thanks to my darling daughter Mikaela. But it's also because I spent the entire day (from 8:40am to 5:40pm) at the Canberra Writers Festival, which I have to tell you was awesome. It inspired, motivated and excited me. But yes, the sum of all that is exhaustion. And an ear-ache (possibly unrelated).

The best part is, I get to go back tomorrow, and again the next day! Yay ACT Writers Centre.

More details to come later in the week when it's all over.

Mikaela sleeps

Last night Mikaela went to sleep by herself in the cot.

I mentioned she did this for a nap a couple of weeks ago, but that time there was quite a bit of grizzling involved and several return visits from me. Tonight there was none.

Not that I've been trying to achieve this or anything. But tonight she nursed on one side, then the other, then back to the first. And wasn't asleep. So I said, "Do you want to go into the cot?" When she agreed, I double and triple checked - that she wanted to get in the cot, that one over there, that Mummy would go and pack the dishwasher (not hang about chatting). Yes, yes and yes.

So then I stood up, asked for and received a good night kiss and cuddle, and put her in the cot. Usually at this point she would sit up and start playing (with anything available - blanket, cot sides, whatever) or chatting. But no, she just lay there, and let me cover her with a light blanket (she's in a sleeping bag anyway). And I left. Now I expected that she would chat to herself for a bit and then call me back. But she didn't. I did hear her murmuring occasionally in the first few minutes, but that was it. That was now over two hours ago and she's barely stirred since, so she clearly did go to sleep. Amazing.

Sometimes, when we are in the part of our bed time routine where we all sit on Liam's bed and 'read' books, Kaely decides she wants to get into bed with Liam instead of going into her own room (our room) to nurse in the rocking chair and go to bed in her cot. So we let her do that and usually about 30 seconds later she comes out to us. Liam is in on the joke, but he's quite keen for her to eventually share his room. Anyway, she did that tonight. And then went to sleep in the cot by herself. which makes me think, maybe her moving into Liam's room is not as far away as we might think. After all, Liam moved into there when he was only about three or maybe four months older than she is now, and that was also by his own choice. Mind you, he wasn't falling asleep on his own yet at that point. But he wasn't being nursed to sleep either, Chris usually lay down with him.

And as for the night weaning, after that hell night it went back to being pretty good. In fact, the very next night she slept right through from about 7:30pm till just after 6am. She hasn't done that again I don't think, but she has been pretty good, and okay with Chris being the one to go into her. I won't claim she's night weaned until I go into her and she doesn't ask for milk, but it's looking pretty good, I must say.

Kaely talks

Mikaela's favourite phrase at the moment is "My do! My do!"

I remember when Liam was going through the same phase, but I don't remember how he expressed it exactly.

Hell night

Hell night is a bit of an exaggeration really, because she only woke up once. It was just that the once was two hours long and involved quite a bit of hysteria. Chris spent the first 1/2 hour with her, then I took over. So I guess I was a little premature in my comments yesterday. Oh well, we'll just keep trying and see how it goes tonight.

Night weaning progress

Well, we started night weaning Mikaela on Saturday night, that is, two night ago. So far it's going well. Last night I *think* she woke up once before Chris came to bed (but after I was in bed), and then she didn't wake up again until 5:10am. That's not particularly unusual, she has phases where she'll do that for a few days or a week, and then she'll go back to waking at twelve or one or two or three or some combination there of. And 5. And it sounds good (sleeping from 12-5am being the very definition of sleeping through the night, oddly enough), but actually it's a bit annoying, since usually I am then up with her until six, when she may go back to sleep, but I know the alarm will be waking me up in perhaps half an hour. So basically, when she wakes up at five, my night usually ends at five.

Not so last night. Night weaning means that when she wakes up, Chris gets up to her. That's only temporary, once we've got it into a routine we'll take turns. Probably have three nights on (with both kids), three nights off and then alternate Saturday nights, or something like that. But back to the point, last night she didn't wake up until 5:10, when Chris went down to her. But was he up with her for the better part of an hour (or more)? No, he had her back down within ten minutes. And then she slept until 6:45. So like I said, so far it's going pretty well.

I forgot to prepare her the way I did with Liam (I'm sure I've talked about that here, but can't find the post to link to). I think I mentioned it, almost in passing, on Friday night when we were having our last nurse before bed. Then all day Saturday I meant to remind her with each feed, but all day I forgot. So I told her before bed on Saturday night. I said that we wouldn't be having mummy-milk in the night any more after bedtime. If she woke up in the night she could go back to sleep by herself (I always tell her that!), or Daddy would come down and rock her to sleep. And in the morning, at breakfast time, we would have mummy-milk again.

She woke up twice on Saturday night, once quite early, when Chris would usually be the one to go to her anyway, but she cried each time. Chris was able to settle her though, and in the morning she slept in till almost 7:30, which was lovely.

Then on Sunday I reminded her a few times during the day, while she was nursing. And Sunday night I reminded her again, and finished by saying "And if you wake up in the night, who will rock you back to sleep?" "Daddy!" she replied, quite happily. Tonight we went through the same routine. So hopefully, tonight will be as easy as last night. And after a couple more days of this, I will try going down and soothing her to back to sleep, without breastfeeding, and we'll see how that goes.

Right now though, I am going to bed.

Firecracker night

Kaely and I are sitting in the study hiding, while the rest of the family (including Pa and Nanna) is outside setting off fireworks and sparklers. Mikaela does not like fireworks.

Last day of the month (another post in dot points)

Today is the last day of my post-a-day month. It's been interesting but I don't think I will keep it going, quite. I have liked that it's forced me to post some things I wouldn't have gotten around to otherwise, but I wouldn't have gotten around to them otherwise because - well, time is in short supply. Right now I am posting instead of having time with my husband (though granted, right now he's cleaning the kitchen, but he'll be done soon), which I can only justify for so many nights in a row! On the other hand, I think I'll keep the calendar there in the sidebar for another month, just to see how it compares.

However, here is my last post-a-day post, in dot points, because I couldn't narrow it down to one topic.

• Mikaela went to sleep by herself today for perhaps the second time in her life. The first time being when I popped her in the hammock when she was sleepy on about the third day of her life. I was so thrilled she went to sleep on her own that day, but then she never did it again. Until today that is. Today she just did not want to nurse to sleep - she didn't want to go to sleep at all. She wanted to play in her cot. She kept saying she wanted to be in the cot, so I'd put her in and go do something else for a little while, then dutifully try our nursing down routine again when she started to protest. Finally I got sick of that and left her there for longer. I figured she would either go to sleep, or she wouldn't. Usually when this happens (which isn't very often actually) I'm not prepared to let it go on for so long because it gets too late for her to have a nap, but today I decided to just see what happened. She yelled out for me from time to time, then got distracted by a book or maybe by her own sleepiness. And eventually she went to sleep! It was about an hour and a half after we initially started the nap routine, but hey, she slept.
• I am not all that impressed with TypePad's new 'compose post' screen. It is too slow and can't keep up with my typing. This may be a problem listed in their 'known problems', I haven't checked, but if it is, you'd think it would be something they'd fix before releasing it. I rarely have a bad thing to say about TypePad, but this is irritating (so much so that I am typing directly into the html- lets hope I don't stuff it up).
• I have not yet become a dog person, but I am much more of a dog person than I was, say, a year ago. Still, some days I do wonder insanity gripped me when I said we could get a dog. But, today Chris got a little more work done on our permanent chook run fence. When it's finished the chooks and Lochie will be separated, and we won't need to tie him up and listen to him bark while they eat (in order to prevent him from eating their food) and he won't get all their eggs. That will improve things around here quite a bit. Plus the little bit of lawn we have will be able to recover from the sad state the chooks have it in, which will also be nice.
• Now I know I was planning to write a post tonight that was something about Kaely and Liam, but I can't remember what it was. So even when I do post every day, things still slip annoyingly through the cracks of my mind, to dribble unseen onto my dirty floor, never to be recorded. Damn.
• Have I mentioned that my masters project is meant to be completed by Monday? Yeah.

Now I'm going to take my tired brain and drink the cup of tea Chris is just making me (I think) and watch some West Wing on DVD. The good thing about not getting a lot of time to watch television is that these series take a long time to run out. I think we are still watching season two.

That's all folks.

To night wean, or not?

I've been thinking about night weaning Mikaela for - oh, a few months now I suppose. I decide to definitely do it this weekend and then she gets sick/I get sick/we forget, or something. And we don't do it. And the thing is, I am conflicted about it, and yet I so long to do it as well.

We night weaned Liam at eighteen months. At that point he was still waking every hour or two to nurse, but he had stopped going back to sleep afterwards. It felt like an open and shut case. Also, it was very easy. I told him we were going to do it. On the 'last day' I reminded him each time we nursed, and again with the last feed before bed (which we did in the living room, as was our habit - Chris then taking him to bed and lying with him till he fell asleep).  Then the night in question Chris slept in the bedroom (our bedroom) with him, and I slept in the study. The first and maybe second time he woke up he cried for me, and Chris took him into the ensuite to distract him (he loved looking at all the stuff on the window sill in there). After that he was fine, and it really only took that one night, though I spent another four blissful nights sleeping in the study. The only times we went back to night nursing was when he had a vomitting bug, and it wasn't ever hard to reinstate the rule afterwards.

I think I first started considering night weaning with Mikaela at about the same age, and for the same reason - she didn't seem to be going back to sleep easily any more with the nursing. But with one thing and another it didn't happen then, and then things improved. But they have unimproved again several times in between. She's now twenty-three months old (moreorless - I've lost track of what date it is). Part of the issue is, I don't think it will be as easy with Mikaela as it was with Liam. For one thing she sleeps in a cot, so no-one can lie down with her. We have a rocking chair in her (our) room, which is where I nurse her, and where Chris rocks her. But when she wakes after midnight (and she almost always does, at least once) she tends to chuck a wobbly if Chris shows up instead of me. And by that I mean she gets totally hysterical. Ditto if I show up but refuse to nurse - as I have done on occasion when she has chewed me raw or just worn me down with too many wakings, though admittedly I haven't tried that in a while.

There are two good reasons for doing it though. No three.

1. Often it seems as though the nursing is keeping her from re-settling properly.
2. I suspect that like Liam, she might start sleeping through the night more often if there wasn't the promise of mummy-milk in the middle of the night.
3. I would like to be able to just snuggle with her like Chris does.
4. I would like Chris to be able to take responsibility for her for whole nights (or series' of nights) (though admittedly she may still resist that even without the nursing), especially if I am going to be trying to get pregnant again in the not-to-distant future.
5. I forget what five was.
6. She was up from 2:30 to 5:30 last night, and again at 5:45
7. (Okay six is not really relevant, as I don't think it was a nursing issue - it;s just to show that I do have more good reasons but I am too sleep deprived to remember what they are. Which is also the reason I have given up on trying to re-write my essay half an hour before my work time is up.)

So, more than three then. Actually I think only 1. (one) above was one of the three I had in mind when I started writing that list, but as I said, my brain is mush.

So what are the reasons against?

1. I think it will be really hard.
2. I think she may cry a lot and indeed get quite hysterical
3. I think it will be really hard.

I think there are some other reasons, but again, I cite my mushed brain.
I may come back to this if I can, but now I have to go pick up Liam from school.

Sleep deprivation. Will it never end?

Mikaela goes potty

Personally, I think she's already potty in another sense of the word - surely you have to be to walk around with a blueberry stained bowl for a hat? Which is what she is doing right now...

Anyway, a few months ago I foolishly let Mikaela sit on the toilet, with Liam's old toddler toilet seat. She'd seen other kids do it and she wanted to have a go. Now, bear in mind that I am of the 'leave toilet training till the last possible minute' school - I just don't see the point in having to search for toilets at a moment's notice, not be able to go on long car trips without planning copious toilet stops etc, a moment before you have to. Nappies are just too convenient. Liam wasn't out of nappies until three and a half, but then he 'toilet trained' in a single day, with only a few accidents over the next few months. Despite this I let Kaely play at using the toilet even though she was way to young to really do it. And so every now and then she says "Boo, boo!" And wants to sit on the toilet again, though with no effect, as I would expect.

Well, today she was busily minding her own business, eating afternoon tea in the dining room, battering my dictaphone in the dining room while Liam had afternoon tea, when she suddenly came into the kitchen yelling
"Boo, boo."
"Have you done a poo?" I said, because she occasionally does tell me after the fact (though more often she denies it altogether), but she shook her head and continued down the hallway.
"Do you want to sit on the toilet?"
"Yesh."

And lo and behold, she sat on the toilet and did what in polite circles is known as 'passing a bowel movement'. She did a poo. In the toilet. And when she was finished she hopped off (happily with a mostly clean butt).

Maybe it was a coincidence, I don't know. I'm not going to rush into putting her in undies, I can tell you that much. But I guess next summer - when she's two-and-a-half, maybe she will be ready. And I'd guess she ain't going to be prepared to wait like her brother did!

The non-post, which quickly became Me Rabbiting On

From the claytons post direct to the non-post, and I haven't made it two weeks of posting every day yet. I wonder if this spells doom of my plans to make it through the entire month?

Two people I know IRL and one online (but not through blogging) are currently pregnant and happy about it - two via IVF one via an accident (though they were planning to start trying within a couple of months, just hadn't quite got there yet).

I am tired tired tired. Yet the idea of having a newborn in the house does not fill me with dread. Maybe that's just because I'm too tired to feel dread. Actually, I wouldn't want to have one right now. Kaely is not quite two and still seems waaay to young to me to introduce another baby into the house. All those people who have the second when their first is under two (or even under three, truth be told) are amazing to me. How they manage, but more than that, how they can even contemplate having another one early enough to have produced another one that quickly is totally beyond me.

Kaely is seeming quite a bit better, by the way, but still very grumpy.

I went to pilates tonight. I've been doing it since about three months before we started trying to get pregnant with Mikaela. I told my cousin (after her second baby in as many years) that doing pilates is just a price of having children and really must be done. A very middle class perspective.

I start back at work in only about 6 or 7 weeks. Seven I guess. Not sure how I feel about that yet, but it will be for a different government department than the one I left, because of the shuffling of portfolios with the new government, so that's sort of exciting. Or perhaps exciting is too strong a word, but you know what I mean I'm sure.

Liam's school has it's annual Autumn picnic this Sunday, but I can't go because I'll be writing. The deadline approacheth fast. I'm also missing one of his best friend's birthday parties the following week for the second or third year in the row for the same reason.

And now that I have rabbited on and on I am going to bed.

A claytons post (Mikaela, sleep deprivation, and the writing life - sort of)

The post you have when you're not...

Did I mention already that Mikaela was up last night from 11:45pm until 3:15am? And then back up (for good) at 6am? Yes, well, sleep deprivation might seem like enough reason for me to be writing a clayton's post at nearly nine o'clock at night (when my bedtime is theoretically 9:30, old nanna that I am), but really it's because I spent the entire day today with Mikaela attached to me. Either nursing or just whimpering. Up until about an hour before bedtime, that is, when she suddenly decided life wasn't so bad after all (could be something to do with the paracetmol I gave her of course) and started running and climbing and jumping as though to make up for the rest of the day.

That was the main part of my day today.

There was a nice moment when a friend to whom I'd sent a draft of the piece of fiction* I've written for my master's project wrote back to say she loved it and it made her cry at places. But then she asked if she could send it to some friends who she thought would really like to read it and I freaked out slightly and said NO! For one thing it's still a draft, but for another I would like to try to get some parts of it published (it's got a few discrete short stories within the story).. but then I thought, but what about the rest? All that work, it does deserve some readers. And yet it's not a format that I can see getting published as it is - too short for a novella (let alone a novel), but structured like one, complete with prologue and epilogue, too long for a short story. And it's literary/academic in style (as you might expect, given the context of its creation), so that's a small market anyway.

Anyway, I'll have to think on it I suppose.

But right now I have to go have my cup of tea with my husband before it's bedtime. Or before Mikaela wakes up next, whichever comes first...

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*I never know quite how to refer to this as it's too long to be called a short story - over 17,000 words, though I'm supposed to be getting it down to 16,000 - but too short to be a novella.

Sick day for Mikaela

Mikaela is sick today. She had a high fever during the night and didn't sleep well at all. The fever continued unabated this morning and she ended up going back to sleep at about 10:30am in the car. Not before throwing up at the shops, however, poor thing. I suspect that might have been largely caused by the fever, because she hasn't shown any sign of doing it again, despite the fact that she has eaten since then (banana, rice crackers and baby jelly - the only things she would accept), and hadn't eaten anything at the time.

She also had a really bad night on Thursday night, and while she had no fever that time, she was pretty miserable on Friday. But she's seemed okay in between times, aside from having revolting poos. So I don't know if the two events are related or not. I keep meaning to check in her mouth to see if her two year old molars are coming in, but I don't think they would justify todays misery anyway.

Sleep, sleep, glorious sleep

I have written a post for today, but I wrote it in my head while I was nursing Mikaela to sleep for her nap. It was all about how she says 'nooo' in a thoughtful sort of voice, in response to virtually any question she is asked, unless it is 'do you want mummy milk', or (be prepared to be horrified, all good Steiner parents) 'do you want to watch PlaySchool'. If you say, for instance, 'Are there some balls at Nanna's?', when she has just been at Nanna's playing with balls, she will think about it briefly and then say (try to imagine this in a good Ocker accent) "Nooo..."

So I had a post all written (in my head) but instead of actually committing it to virtual paper I am going to bed. As my Facebook status says today, I am operating on less than two hours of (broken) sleep since midnight, and my brain is mush.

Will we, won't we?

It's clear that I am better rested than I was when Liam was Mikaela's age (despite the fact that at the moment she is tending to wake up twice between 12 and 6 most nights!), because when Liam was this age I couldn't imagine wanting to be pregnant again any time soon. Whereas now, I am starting to romanticise pregnancy and think how nice it might be (at least between 20 and 30 weeks - I'm not completely delusional).

Of course, that could also be to do with the fact that we always planned to wait until Liam was three to have a second child, so I wasn't that close to trying when he was 22 months. Whereas with Mikaela, because of our ages, we only planned to wait till she was 24 months to start trying. We've put that back now by a month or two, so that I can have at least one full month back at work before getting pregnant (a little optimistic I know, but you can't start trying if you're not ready, regardless of the statistics). But at this stage, we are pretty sure we will try. Not sure how long we'll keep trying for if it doesn't happen, but we will try. I think.

The natural approach to change

Sometimes when I can see a change coming up in one of the kids' routines, I wonder: will it just happen naturally if we leave it long enough, or do we need to be more proactive, in order to head off a resistance to change that can come with a long held habit?

For instance, at some point in the next few months (I think) we will be wanting to move Mikaela into a bed, from the cot. This never happened with Liam, since he slept with us. We moved him to a mattress next to our bed when he was about 13 months old, after going on a trip for my cousin's wedding and having that system work well in the motel. Then he moved to his own room by his request at a bit past two. So if we leave Kaely in the cot for a while longer, will she be asking to move to her own bed in another few months?* We already talk to her about how one day she will sleep in Liam's room - it will be her room too.

So maybe that's what will happen, maybe she'll decide she wants to move in with Liam. But I think she probably needs to move to her own bed - and get used to going to sleep on her own instead of being nursed or rocked to sleep, which is what happens now - before she can share a room with her brother. But maybe that will happen naturally once she has the motivation of wanting to move in with Liam. It's not something I want to rush, because I know once we stop spending that extra nurturing time with her in the evening, we'll never go back.

Our bedtime routine has already begun to change though. Only a couple of months back, when we first got Lochie, we thought giving him at least a short daily walk would be no trouble, because Chris and Mikaela went for a walk after dinner every night while I read to Liam. This was a lovely quiet time for me and Liam to read stories, or sometimes I would tell him a 'made up story', and have a little chat about our respective days. And it was a nice time for Chris and Mikaela too, and later for Lochie. But, I started to feel a little bad that Kaely didn't have any regular book time in her day. Back when Liam was her age we usually looked at books before naps and before bed, but Kaely had never been very interested in books until recently, so we hadn't incorporated them into her routine.

I needn't have worried. Not long after Lochie arrived - maybe a month - Kaely started to refuse the walk routine. First it seemed to be because she was tired, after a long day and a short nap, or a late night the night before. So my reading with Liam would be curtailed and I'd take her to bed early. But recently she's made it clear that she doesn't want to walk, whether she's tired or not. Because she doesn't want to miss out on book time. Liam gets his book and climbs into bed to await my attention, and Kaely runs off to the living room to choose a book (or two or three) off her shelf, and then brings them down, climbs onto Liam's bed, and demands book time of her own. Or, I take her into her room (our room, supposedly), but she insists on looking at a book together in the rocking chair, before she begins to nurse.

Mostly, this seems to be how change works with the kids. I might worry at it in my mind for a few weeks or months, but eventually change just happens. I haven't learned to count on it yet, I guess I am too much of a planner. But I am getting there. And as far as the move to different beds and bedrooms goes, I won't stop thinking about it, but for the moment I won't do anything either. I'll just wait and see what happens naturally.

_______
*This is assuming it's safe to leave her in there for that long - already she can only be in the cot unsupervised if she is snug in her sleeping bag, otherwise she attempts to climb out. And once the weather warms up again, later in the year, she won't welcome a sleeping bag for nap times.

A whinge

In addition to having a nasty virus that had me unable to sleep for three days (slightly better last night), for the mucus blocking up my windpipe each time I relaxed, with a ferociously sore throat, now moving into the ears, and which I have now passed on to poor Mikaela; in addition, I say, to all that, we now have my father-in-law staying with us, fresh out of hospital.*

Let me be quick to say that I do not begrudge him our help at such a time. He has no one else here to look after him, and when he yesterday told Chris he would be discharged today but did not want to stay with us, I was momentarily horrified by the idea of him going home alone. Then when Chris went to pick him up today and he said he wanted to come here after all, I was equally horrified by that. Quite aside from not wanting him anywhere near our germs, there's the logistics of sleeping arrangements.

Picture this. We have a three bedroom house, one of which is really a study (no closet). Chris and I sleep in the study (where we have moved our queen bed, which just fits, leaving the low and less comfortable futon in our room), because it is more convenient to do that, and put K in our room, than have her sleeping just off the family room, and because she and we both sleep a lot better when we don't share a room. Right now Kaely is coughing a spluttering half the night, and the other half I am clearing my throat and blowing my nose. Chris is slightly better, but the nose blowing! Seriously, you should hear it.

Enter the father-in-law. Where is he going to sleep? Well, there is really only one possibility, which is the study. You see where this is going. No sleep tonight.

 

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*I'm not going into details about the hospital stay, just like I haven't for other significant people in my family in the past year or so, because his story is not mine to tell. Not here and now anyway :)

protecting privacy

Last night I cooked dinner from a recipe I found on another blog. Later I heard Liam telling Chris this on the phone (Chris being in Melbourne for work), and I starting thinking about Liam and blogging.

I remembered that Dawn mentioned a while ago that Noah wanted his own blog, and I thought - that will be Liam one day in the not so distant future. I've already started talking about blogging to him, a very little bit, so the idea that I am talking all about our lives on the world wide internet won't come as a shock down the track!

But then I started thinking: if Liam will want his own blog, probably some of his friends will as well. Which means they'll be reading blogs. Which means they could, conceivably, come across this blog. With funny (and not so funny) stories about Liam from the moment of his birth (leaving aside for a moment the unlikelihood of a prepubescent boy reading the blog of a boring middle aged women, with no sexy photos or nothin'). And while I haven't put many photos of Liam up since he was about three, it wouldn't take long to figure out that it was him I was writing about. So maybe, I thought, I should have used pseudonyms for the kids.

So I'm wondering, if you blog about your kids - do you use pseudonyms? And why do you, or why don't you? And are you happy with that decision?

what I have been thinking lately (roosters, dogs, kids and writing, for instance)

I don't seem to be doing much with this blog lately. Even the baby book entries mostly just get written in my head, and end up being simple lists of words when I finally get something out.

It's frustrating because I have things to write about.

The kids, of course. How Liam seems to have turned a corner from the (slightly difficult) five and a half year old he was, to the six year old he is now, even though the books say six is supposed to be harder. How I think school plays a part, since he's now one of the older kids in his class (which has two years together, 4-6 year olds) and he seems to be feeling the responsibility (in a good way). How Mikaela is so delightful just now, but I'm still a bit afeared about what is around the corner, because she is such a determined little thing.

About future plans too. How I had a little freak out the other week that if we had another child we might end up with a "special needs" child of some sort and be stuck in this part of our lives (the part with seriously dependent beings) forever. But how I'm moreorless over that now and feeling a bit excited about starting to try to get pregnant again in a few months time, despite the very real possibility that it will take even longer than last time (me being 36 and Chris almost 40 now) or that it won't happen at all.

And that would naturally lead into the post where I suddenly remembered the fertility specialist saying to me that I might, possibly, have an early menopause, because of only having one ovary and who knows, the other one might not be all that great either (though I secretly think it is), and me suddenly realising the other day that I don't want to go through an early menopause for more reasons than just fertility - which is what I had focussed on up to now.

And then I have these posts I want to write about sustainable living, and how Lochie squashed most of our summer vegetable garden, has broken into both chicken runs and let the chooks out, let the chooks into the winter vegetable garden (which is toast now) and eats the eggs. But we're still glad to have him (mostly), though that was all a little depressing for a while. And Chris is starting obedience training with him next Tuesday night. And how one of our two Silkies turned out to be a rooster and started terrorising his sister, so we got rid of him and now she is much happier but I still think we need another little Silkie friend for her (or two, or maybe three).

And of course about The Compact and how that's going and how I feel about it, with a little more detail than that last post.

And then about writing, and how I am back to working on my fiction now (not the essay which I still haven't even got a draft of, or a conclusion for, despite it all being due in less than 2 months!) and am really enjoying the revision/re-writing process. I fact I *love* it. Who'd have thunk? (I always dread revision, and always love it once I get going. Weird.)

And no doubt a bunch of other things that don't come to mind right now because I can hear Kaely in the kitchen and I am wondering what she is doing, and because Liam is off sick today (just a cold with a mild fever I *think*, but there is chicken pox going around the school), but I've just remembered that I have to get everyone dressed and go into the school anyway, because I am the 'class co-ordinator' and I have to put out some pledge forms for the community hours scheme before term ends, and term ends tomorrow...

And now Liam is calling me, and I think Kaely is harrassing him, so I will go be a parent, and save thinking more about this blog for another day.