First Day as a WAHM

I had my first day looking after Alyssa yesterday and it was great. I tell you what if she's going to be like that all of the time i'll have ten of her!! She was so easy going and stuck to exactly the same routine she has at home even thought she was in a strange environment. She slept fine and ate fine and played with Harrison. She was a dream really. Harrison on the other hand had a few jealousy issues but that's to be expected and I'm hoping that once he gets used to it that will change.
All in all, a good day.
Oh and guess what................my new furniture is being delivered today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *jumps for joy*
I'll definitely post some pics once it's all set up!

The Injustice of It All

I'm having a bit of a down day today. My brother is going to court for something I know he didn't do. Don't really feel like elaborating at the moment. I hope it all goes his way.

Babies, Babies and More Babies

There seem to be babies and pregnancy announcements everywhere at the moment. My life and the life of alot of people I know is just consumed by babies, either ones they already have,ones they are pregnant with or ones they want to have and I've been thinking about it too much lately.

You see I never planned on having more than one. Dan and I both agreed and until now I have been more than satisfied with just having Harrison and deep down I probably still am, it's just that the baby fever is trying to catch me and she's right at my heels. I just need to make myself see sense.

While we were away on holidays, we went to visit some old friends of Dan's and as usual they asked if we were planning on having any more. So I gave them the usual response which is ' No, we're not planning on it, four is enough,' etc etc.... so then Karen proceeds to drag out the old needle and cotton to 'predict' if I would be having any more telling me with great certainty that it's always been correct for her and everyone she knows. Now I know it's only an old wives tale and I've never paid much attention to them before (except for fun) but of course it said there is still a little girl to come for me and it freaked me clean out. Don't ask me why but ever since then I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

I keep thinking about all the what if's. I have the implanon implant so falling pregant is fairly unlikely but never say never right? I could go and get my tubes tied but i'm just not ready to do anything that drastic. Dan had had a vastecomy when we met and he got that reversed so we could have Harrison so he's not too keen to go under the knife again and i'm happy just using birth control because even though I don't forsee Dan and I ever breaking up, you just never know and I can't say with absolute certaintly that if that did happen I wouldn't want to have more kids with someone else. We have talked about it and we both agree that if the birth control failed and I fell pregnant that both of us would want to continue with the pregnancy and have the baby. I just couldn't have a termination and i'm glad he feels the same way. I respect anyone else's right to choose what's best for themselves and their body but I just couldn't do it.

So anyway, to try and talk some sense to myself i've decided to make a list of pro's and con's about having another baby......lets start with the cons:

• we have four children and really that is enough. Especially when Dan works such long hours and I feel like a single parent alot of the time.
• I'm scared shitless i'd bleed to death during a natural birth after what happened last time ( i lost over 2 litres of blood and had to be rushed to theatre and stitched up on the inside, not fun)
• babies are really hard work, especially when you've got other kids to looks after
• I'm scared of getting another really demanding baby. I'm really only enjoying Harrison now as he gets older. Before that I loved him of course but it was all work no fun.
• Having a baby sucks about two years of your life right out from under you! There's 9months of pregnancy (during which I had morning sickness the whole time), then the whole time they're a baby and your breastfeeding you have no life! And I know that sounds really selfish, but it's the way I feel.
• We don't have the room. We have a four bedroom house, Dan and I in one, Vivienne in another, Ethan and Jesse in one and Harrison in the last one. Where would a new baby go after the first few months in with us? I can't imagine putting a boy and girl together if it was a girl. I know plenty of people do though.

Pro's

• It would be nice for Harrison to have a sibling close to his age. At the moment he's almost going to be like an only child growing up because by the time he's ready for school his older siblings will be almost finished.
• Lets' face it, there's nothing so amazing as the feeling of creating a perfect little person.
• My stupid body keeps telling me I might want another one sometime soon.

And that's all I can think of right now. See, it seems so clear. so why do I have this nagging feeling???

Baby news of another kind.......My sister and her husband are trying to fall pregnant. It's really hard for Michelle because she always said growing up that she didn't want kids and now that she's older and changed her mind she's having trouble concieving. She came over yesterday all emotional because her boobs have been really sore so she took a test and it was a BFN (big fat negative). She was so upset and convinced her body doesn't 'work properly'. I hated seeing her that way and I know just how she feels because I went through the same thing when we were TTC Harrison. I really hope it happens for them soon.

Baby News Of Yet Another Kind........As of next week i'm going to be looking after a friends baby while she goes back to work so I will officially be a WAHM (work at home mum). Danielle is a teacher and is just doing to do supply teaching so it won't be full time but it will be a little something extra to occupy my day. Alyssa is almost 11months old and I think it will do Harrison the world of good to have another baby around to play with more regularly. Hopefully it will teach him to be kind and share. At the moment he just takes what he wants from everyone and I really want him to start teaching him at an early age.

I was fairly daunted by the prospect of having the two little ones at the same time and almost regretted offering as soon as the words were out of my mouth, but now i'm quite excited about it. We've all been spending a fair bit of time together over the last week so Alyssa gets used to us being around and it's so nice to watch them play together. I was so excited yesterday at playgroup. Harrison and Alyssa were actually playing together!! And I don't mean just playing beside each other, they were actually interacting with each other. They were chasing each other around and laughing and playing peek-a-boo through the windows of the cubby house. It was the first time i've ever seen him truely interacting with another child his own age and it made my heart sing. It was so gorgeous.

And finally, the last baby news for me (maybe LOL).........In just three weeks Harrison will officially enter the world of toddlerhood. I've handed out the birthday party invites and am somewhat organised. It won't be a huge party because the only family we have in this town is my sister and brother-in-law, so I am inviting a few kids from our mums and bubs group and playgroup. I'm going with the Very Hungry Caterpillar theme. I had my heart set on smurfs but Smurf stuff is so hard to find and I left it too late to order everything I need from the States.

I love the Very Hungry Caterpillar theme too but felt really bad at first for 'stealing' the idea from another lady at TWW (thanks Amber!!)She said she didn't mind but I still felt bad. Then I was researching some ideas on the net for cakes and such and realised it's quite a popular party theme so now I don't feel so bad. Just not very original either. I'll post a pic of the invite if I can ever get it to upload to photobucket.

Harrison turning one really is bittersweet. It's so hard to believe that first year is almost up, and while i'm so excited to see him growing and learning new things every day it's so sad to think he'll never be a baby again. Something i'm sure all mothers go through and i'm certain that this whole baby fever thing stems from the iminant first birthday.

I seem to have come full circle so until next time.......... :)

The Best Baby News EVER!!!!!!!

And no it's not me.....
My friend Stacey is having a baby!!!! She called me tonight and told me. I was so happy for her I cried.
You see a couple few years ago she fell pregnant and had an early miscarriage, then a year later she fell pregnant again and her beautiful little boy Lleyton was still born at 41weeks. While she was in hospital she caught a staf infection that somewhat blocked her tubes and hindered her chances of falling pregnant naturally again. She and her husband Andrew have been trying desperately ever since. They have had several rounds of IVF to no avail and the best news of all is they fell pregnant with this baby naturally.
I haven't heard from her in a while and I just knew as soon as she called she had something to tell me and I wanted to ask her so badly but refrained myself.
She's 14 wks already and waited to tell me. We have a bit of an history with telling each other. I was the first person she told (besides Andrew) when she was pregnant with Lleyton and she was the first person I told when I fell pregnant the first time. Both of those pregnancies ended badly so if I was her I would have been trepidacious about telling me too.
Anyway...........just had to say................I'm sooooooo excited.

It's Good To Be Home

No matter how exciting it is to get away for a while it's always just as ice to get back home to familiar surroundings and back to sleeping in your own bed!! While we were away Dan and I were sharing a double bed that rolled down at the edges so it was more like a king single and neither of us are small people so you can imagine how uncomfortable it was.

We didn't go anywhere too exciting. We own a rainforest block in a small town about 13hrs drive away from here so we went and stayed there while the older three kids went to stay with their mum for the midyear school holidays. It's a beautiful place but it's been uncared for for a long time and we haven't been there for two years so it was incredibly overgrown. It took alot of work to clear the area around the shed (it has a livable shed on it) . The whole area that was once lawn was covered with out of control wild raspberry bushes. If you've ever had to deal with them you'll know that they are nasty spikey things so it wasn't much fun trying to brush cut them (especially since I was stupid enough to do it in short pants. ) The first thing we did was cut a track to the creek and after all the hard work was done it was a lovely place to be.

This is an old Cathedral fig tree thats on our property. It's so beautiful but it was hard to get a good picture because the forest around it was pretty thick and the sun was in the wrong place. It's still pretty majestical though. It's incredibly tall and I love the way it's branches drape over to form an archway.

We stayed there for two weeks and it was pretty hectic. My mum and stepdad came to stay for a week. Mum hadnt' seen Harrison since December and Gordon hadn't seen him since he was three days old. They brought him so many presents. The toys I took on holidays with us fit in one backpack and we brought about three times as many home. Time to cull some I think.

Dan's mum also came to stay at the farm with us for a few days which was nice. Harrison had both his Grandma's at the same time fora little while so he was showered with hugs and kisses and lots of love and attention which made my life difficult when they both left on the same day.

Towards the end of the second week the rain had really set in which made the road up to the shed nice and mushy so we decided to go and stay with Dan's mum for the last couple of days. It was so cold at her place there was even frost on the grass and ice on our windscreen one morning. Now that might not sound like much to most people but it's an huge novelty for us northern folk who don't really get a winter. I loved dressing Harrison up in winter clothes and seeing him all rugged up like an eskimo. He looked so gorgeous. He even kept his mittens on.

A few other random pics from our time away.Trying to figure out why the grass is so cold.The frost on the lawn at Merle's place.

Snuggling with Gran Walking through the rainforest with Dad.

The kids flew back from their mum's house early Saturday morning so we took them out to a museum and had a lovely lunch and I got a really nice picture of them all on a train at the museum. I'll edit out Vivienne's red eyes later.

Harrison learned a few new things while we were away. He's been walking everywhere for the past couple of weeks. He took his first step the day before he turned 10months and a couple of days into our holiday he decided to ditch this crawling business and walk full time. He's also finally started holding his own bottles and sippy cups WOOHOO!!! and he' s pointing at things and asking 'dat?' as in what's that. He's babbling a whole heap of new sounds that sound like words and he now has 6 teeth!! I guess I just have to accept the fact that my baby is no longer a baby and is heading to the world of toddlerhood full steam ahead.