Ok, I admit it.....I need my hubby!

This time last week my husband was on his way to Melbourne for a intensive study week and I was watching T.V. congratulating myself that I had the kids bathed, fed and in bed by 6:59:35pm (before their normal bedtime of 7pm). I had my week planned out and thought it would be a lovely time of having the nights to work on my own little projects and to relax.

The first night was great. The kids slept well, and so did I despite an early start with Claire. The day was really good and I decided that the routine for the week would be an outing in the day, home for lunch and a sleep for Claire, craft when Claire woke up (while I made dinner), bath time, then off to the gym (for Mummy's sanity thanks to the creche), home for dinner and bed time. 

It was great, I was having fun with the kids, getting some me time at the gym and then when the kids were alseep I was getting heaps done. The house was perfect, additional meals were cooked....I was on fire. I actually was thinking that this single parenting thing was a breeze. 

All was going so well, until Thursday when I started feeling really sick. As I was driving home from our picnic feeling like I wasn't going to make it home I was also thinking "what am I going to do with the kids?" Claire I knew would sleep but Emily doesn't normally sleep anymore in the afternoons so I was stressed. 

As I drive into my garage I looked around and saw a beautiful sight....two girls fast asleep in the car. I have an internal access garage so I was able to leave both girls in the car and went straight to bed. God was looking after me that afternoon and both girls slept for around three hours and so did I. 

I felt ok enough to heat up the left overs and give the girls a bath but of course the little monkeys after having such a lovely sleep in the day did not want to go to sleep at 7pm so at nearly 11pm they finally went to sleep (one in my bed, then two in my bed from 1.30am).

I spent Friday lying in the couch with the kids watching ABC Kids and coming up to me and hitting me, jumping on my and asking for food and drink over and over again. I tried to sleep but was conscious of what the kids might get up to if I slept. My husband lovingly arranged for a friend to take Emily out for a play and get me some supplies. 

When my husband arrived home that night all ideas that single parenting was easy had gone out the window. While I did really well for the first couple of days I realised how hard it can be looking after my kids alone full-time. 

I want to take this opportunity to thank my husband for the many little thing he does to make my life easier. For letting me sleep in most mornings, for taking the kids out when they are driving me crazy, for doing everything when I am sick or just unable to cope and for just being such a loving and supportive person.

I also want to say to single mums (my mum did it for a long time) you are amazing! I barely cope for a week and you guys do it day in day out. I know I will be looking to help out any single mums (or even those who partners go away for weeks/months).

So there you have it...I am no super mum....I admit I need my hubby!

My wonderful hubby

The Birds

I have been a pretty slack mum today. I spent lots of the morning on the internet setting up twitter (you can find me at http://twitter.com/#!/undeservedbless ) and doing other non urgent things. My kids were good but I could tell they were getting bored so I decided we would have a McPicnic (a picnic with McDonald's). We don't eat it often but it is a quick and easy food which I knew would travel well to the park for a picnic.

I picked up the food and headed out to park where we set up our lovely picnic rug in a sunny spot and I began to place to food out for the kids. Out of the corner of my eye I saw black flapping wings come and land nearby. I looked an saw a Magpie and said to Emily "Look there's a birdie". Soon another arrived, then another, then another, until we were surrounded by around 20 Magpies. 

Ok not as bad as this but it was starting to feel like it

We live in Canberra so I figured no one has been picnicking since at least March and these birds were hungry. We continued eating but I started to notice the look in the eyes of these birds. They wanted our food and it seemed like they would get it whether we liked it or not. I guess if I had not eaten hot chip since March I might get that look in my eyes too. I asked Emily to chase them away but they stood their ground, only moving to avoid her touching them. 

If you have ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" you will understand the feeling I had. Although the feeling may have been caused by seeing that movie combined with my slight fear of birds and their flapping wings (likely also caused by that movie).  It felt they were preparing to strike at any moment.

This may have been in my imagination

Like any mother in the animal kingdom wanting to protect their young I tried showing them I was bigger and tougher than them, but later resorted to running for our lives. I shoved the Happy Meals in my bag, grabbed the baby and told the toddler to RUN!

The birds actually followed us to our car but we made it to safety and went back to McDonald's were were ate our fries in peace and safety.

I realised as I was writing this that I had asked for fruit bags instead of fries for the kids and they had given us fries. Maybe this could have all been avoided if the Macca's staff had given me the fruit.

Home made Ricotta cheese!!!

In my last post I spoke about my purchase of a cheese making kit. It makes Ricotta and Mozzarella in 30 mins. I tried it last night and thought I would share it with you. You can see from the pictures I made it all the time it took to cook dinner (a tomato risotto).

All I had to do was buy 4L of milk then add the citric acid and cheese salt (I got in my kit) then heat the milk up to 90 degrees (themometer provided in kits also)

. 

Once the milk reaches the correct temperature the curds and whey separate and the cooking part of the cheese making is done.

The curds starting to separate

I then spooned the curds into the cloth (also in kit) and let it drain. Then I hung it up for 30 mins and my cheese was ready!

Draining the cheese in the cloth

Hanging and draining the cheese

The cheese will last in the fridge for a week or it can be frozen. I am pretty excited about this as I love ricotta but I do wonder sometimes what happens to it when it sit in the supermarkets/delis. This way I know exactly where it has come from. I purchased the kit from Green Living Australia  http://www.greenlivingaustralia.com.au. 

The finished product!

Sorry if I have tempted you to buy it.......I feel a little bit bad about sharing it after the last post.

I want it, and I want it NOW!

 It was about 10:30pm a few nights ago and I was feeling tired and grumpy. For some reason I decided that buying something on the internet would make me feel happier, and was better for me than eating half a tub of ice cream.  I am pretty embarrassed to admit it but the item I bought was a cheese making kit. I justified it by saying that it would save us money in the long term but the reality was I just wanted to have it. 

I really wish it wasn’t true but I frequently struggle with materialism. It is far too frequent that I see something that I want and I keep thinking about it until I get it. Even the silly cheesemaking kit has been on my to-buy list since about February. I congratulate myself on waiting so long to buy it but the reality was I have been keeping it in the back of my mind to buy it as soon as there weren’t other things I wanted to buy more. There just always seems to be something I think I need whether it be new clothes, a new cookbook, fancy storage boxes or something else I feel I cannot live without.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not the buying things that concerns me as on the whole I am pretty good with money. It is what lies underneath, my motivation for thinking I need things to make me happier and thinking that life will be easier or better organised if I just have this one thing. It is also the sometimes consuming thoughts and daydreams about what I want to buy, combined with the frustration with the kids when they make it hard to get to the shops to buy the things I think I need. 

If you have ever read the Bible you might know the section that says don’t store up your treasures on earth where moths and rust destroy.  I really see the reality of this, as when I look back on the things I really wanted to buy and see the clothes I wore a few times and decided I didn’t like, or the appliance which doesn’t work as well as I had hoped and I realise that while these things are not bad in themselves they are not able to satisfy us. 

Just because I am a Christian does not mean I can’t shop or have nice things but if I think that these things will make life better (which I often do) then I am deceiving myself. The things that matter and make life better are the lasting things, my relationship with God, relationships with family and friends and even caring for people I don’t even know. 

I still don’t have the solution to stopping the desire for worthless material things consuming my thoughts. We try to be generous in giving towards our church, missionaries and our compassion sponsor child which at least means our money is committed to these things each week/month but I do wonder how much more generous I could be if I didn’t desire so many unnecessary things. 

I am truly thankful that I have a loving and patient God who knows how much I mess up in so many areas but has still chosen to forgive me and is changing me (despite my resistance) to be less selfish and more generous.

Is she starting early? I hope not!

Baby Sign Language....or our version of it.

I must admit that before I had children I thought the idea of babies using sign language was a bit ridiculous and that only really keen mums would make the effort to teach their baby to sign. Even when I had my own child and I saw mums teaching sign language to four month olds I wondered whether it was worth the effort (but I secretly went home and tried to teach Emily some signs).

It wasn’t until I saw a friend’s one year old using some signs that I really started to see the benefits of babies signing. He would walk up to something he wanted and sign “please” and his mum would know exactly what he wanted. I thought to myself “This is brilliant, he can tell us what he wants!”

I did not start signing with Emily until she was thirteen months old and to my surprise she picked up the signs straight away. I was being tight and did not want to purchase a whole signing program (although I hear there are lots that are really great) so I just found some signs on the internet and borrowed a book from a friend. We had signs for please, eat, drink, bath, brush teeth, sleep and milk which were the main ones we thought we would need. We found it amazing that she could now tell us what she needed and did not need to whinge and have me work out what she wanted.

Now, I know there are lots of people who think it delays their speech (which I have heard has been proven untrue) but I think it actually helps with speech as one of Emily’s first words was “Eat”, a sign she used constantly. Even if it did delay her speech she is two and a half now and has been speaking lots since around eighteen months so I don’t think that would count as delayed.

We have been teaching Claire since she was eleven months (she just turned one a couple of weeks ago) and she is doing really well. She even says “drink” when signing drink which we think is exciting. Emily has even gone back to using her signs to teach Claire too.

I wanted to blog about this because I think signing is awesome and life changing (ok maybe that is a bit dramatic). It changes your baby from whinging when they want something, to communicating clearly and makes life easier for the parents.  I think anything that makes parenting easier is worth a try and you don’t have to follow a set program. You can just start with a few common signs and make up your own if you want to. My kids ended up making up a few signs of their own or modified the ones we taught them anyway. If you have little ones give it a go and let me know what you think.

Claire signing "please"

Signing "eat"

Signing "drink"

I thought I should give her a drink since I made her sign drink about 50 times

Emily wanted to get in on the signing action

Trying to keep up to date with baby books

Tonight I decided to spend some time updating my girl’s baby books, and realised how far behind I am. The books sit in an obvious spot in my house as a constant reminder that I need to work on them, but despite this system I am so slack at updating them. It is not that I don’t enjoy doing it, I just don’t seem to make the time to do it regularly. The good thing is I think Emily’s is finished although it was a major effort to complete.

I was given her baby book at my baby shower by a friend (she may recognise it when she sees it). It is a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed book and is lovely, but this book is unbelievably detailed. Over the past two and a half years I have added what seems like every detail of her life. There are exact dates on when each tooth emerged, and dates for each milestone. Birthplaces of each of her parents and grandparents are recorded as well as space for family holidays, her likes/dislikes and so much more. I am sure in the future we will appreciate all this detail but for a mum not really very good at updating baby books it was hard work.

I  chose Claire’s book myself (with my laziness in mind) and while it still has enough space to record all the important things it is a bit less structured allowing me to decide what I include. I did, however, still find myself filling in the nine month section tonight, looking blankly at my husband asking “What was Claire doing at nine months?” 

I know there are lots of mums out there who are great at keeping track of these things but I will freely admit that I am not one of them. It comforts me that I don’t even know if I have a baby book, and I don’t feel let down that I don’t know when I got my first tooth, so hopefully my kids will forgive me if I leave out some details of their lives.

Top: Claire's Baby Book, Bottom: Emily's Baby Book

Packing baby clothes for travel

Recently my sister in law told me that she had shared an idea of mine with her mother’s group. It was my system for packing baby clothes for travel.  I love it, she loves it and my husband especially loves it so hopefully it will help you too.

When we travel I make sure that I plan my kid’s outfits for the trip and each outfit is placed into a large (A4 Sized) Glad snap lock bag. I make sure I have the whole outfit top, pants/skirt, singlet, tights/socks etc and I also place a nappy in the bag. So each day you are on holiday instead of stirring up the whole bag trying to create an outfit, you just take out a bag and dress your baby!

I make sure I pack additional bags in case I need two outfits in one day and I pack outfits for warm weather and for cooler weather.

My husband absolutely loves this system as he finds dressing the girls stressful (mainly because I complain his outfits don’t match). He would love it if the drawers at home were full of little Glad bags. 

Best Recipe Ever....Mars Bar Slice

A friend just asked me for this recipe so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Mars Bar Slice

Serves 10 or more

Ingredients:

240g of Mars Bars (even Aldi Titan Bars work well)

100g unsalted butter, chopped

3 cups of Rice Bubbles (the cheap versions work as well)

200g of Cadbury chocolate (no other chocolate tastes the same)

2 tsp veg oil

Method:

1. Lightly grease an 18 x28cm pan. Line with baking paper.

2. In a medium saucepan melt mars bars and butter together over low heat for 4-5 mins until melted

3.Place rice bubbles in a bowl. Blend in Mars mixture until combined and chill until firm

4. Melt chocolate with oil in a heat proof bowl simmering over a saucepan of water. Spread over slice and chill until set.

5. To serve cut with a knife dipped in boiling water (helps it not to crack.

6. Enjoy!

Learning to love playtime with kids

Something I have been struggling with lately as a mother is playing with my kids. Seems strange as play should be the easiest thing I can do with them, but I am just finding it hard to enjoy play time.

My eldest Emily has been difficult to play with since she became a toddler. As a baby I could tickle her and look into her eyes and she was happy but toddlers are a different story.  As she grew older I began to try different activities with her such as water play, painting, play dough and even using rice in a container like a sandpit. Each activity I would try would end badly. Water would be tipped all over the floor, rice spread from one end of the house to the other, paint everywhere but on the paper! Now a year later I am still struggling to find things she is interested in doing for more than a minute and things that she cannot turn into a giant mess. 

Painting = Disaster

Even eating a bowl of yoghurt can turn ugly

Recently, she has been asking me to play with her which is lovely but I am finding that I am either busy doing housework, busy with Claire or just not all that interested in playing with her. I know I am not alone and I have heard others say that they don’t enjoy playing with their kids. But I really want to enjoy playing with them and I want it to be a way I show my kids how much I love them. 

I don’t have the answers yet but here are some thoughts I have had recently that you may or may not find helpful. Firstly, I am a stay at home mum not a stay at home house cleaner.  Therefore, my priority needs to be looking after my kids,s and not making sure the bench sparkles. A clean house is important but not at the expense of quality time with my kids. Secondly, not enjoying play is (for me) not a good excuse. The main reason I am not enjoying it is that I am distracted and wanting to do other things. I really want to work on being in the moment with my kids during play and forget that the washing needs hanging out.  I also know that the reason Emily ruins the activities is mainly due to her not having my attention. If I am able to give her my focused attention and demonstrate my desire to enjoy play with her it is likely that she will not paint her face or tip all the pencils on the floor.

So over the next few weeks I am going to take my own advice and try to learn to enjoy play with my kids...who knows, I may even learn to love it!

Party Time!

Last week we celebrated my youngest daughter’s 1^st Birthday.  I have had such a fun time planning and preparing for it and it all came together wonderfully over the two days the parties were held. I had a friends party with lots of Claire’s friends who were mainly younger than her so we needed baby friendly food and then a family party where there were only a few other kids. This post is really a bit of showing off (I will admit it!) but hopefully it will give others party ideas and show that if I can do it you can too! I had done lots of research prior to the party and decided on a ladybug theme. Thanks to Smitten Blog Design I got my invites and printables for FREE which was the basis of my theme. I also checked out some other people’s blogs which was very helpful and here is the result. I apologise for some of the quality of the pictures.

Party 1

Party 2 (spot the difference)

I had such fun making the table look pretty. The Banner, labels and tags were all from Smitten Blog Design. The napkins and straws came from Spotlight’s Spartys store and I “borrowed” the idea of the wrapped drinks/yoghurts from The Superorganiser mum.

The cake was based on the Women’s Weekly cookbook cover cake. I baked the cake in a glass Pyrex bowl thanks to the great idea of a friend, and it was perfect. I had to make two cakes, one for the friends party and another for the family party. I made them in advance and froze them which made icing them much easier the night before the party.

 

The Flower biscuits were mainly my own design, inspired by another party I had seen online. It is made of gingerbread and royal icing. The kids loved them! The cheese was totally my own idea and I was happy how they worked out. 

Mars Bar Slice is a "must have" at my parties

I made Lady Bug Antennae for the girls and Ant Antennae for the boys and each child was given lady bug bubbles to take home. 

Claire’s dress is from a pattern I was given at Christmas, and I finally made the time to sew it. The sewing is terrible, but it looks good if you don’t look too closely.

                The party was surprisingly quick and easy to organise. While I was planning for a couple of months, it was generally only one or two nights a week. It was a lot of fun but I think I may have set the bar too high for myself. At least I have until January to think about Emily's Birthday. 

My gorgeous little lady bug enjoyed her day!

A little bit more about me

 

I thought today I would share a little more about myself and my hobbies to give you more of an indication of what I will be writing about.  Firstly, I am basically a stay at home mum with my girls Emily 2 ½ and Claire 1, however I do work about 8 hours a week at a gym crèche where I can take my kiddies with me to work. Lots of my childless friends have asked me “Don’t you get bored staying at home with the kids?”.  As much as I liked working, I was ready to go on maternity leave 2 ½ years ago so I could have time to do the things I wanted to do.  Of course my first priority was my children, but I have found that being a SAHM allows me to work on some of the hobbies I have, and I am basically never bored. 

Some of these hobbies began emerging during my pregnancy (this was my version of nesting). While I was pregnant with Emily I was knitting like a crazy woman. I made booties, hats and even a little cardigan. Then, while I was carrying Claire, I decided (or my nesting urges decided) I needed to learn to sew. With two children it is much harder to find the time to do these hobbies but it is lot of fun. I also love to cook. I am probably best at cooking desserts and baking, but will happily cook any other recipes that look tasty. I am subscribed to Donna Hay which provides a lot of my inspiration. 

Little winter robe

Two sets of the five sets of curtains I sewed like a crazy woman during my pregnancy

My first decent sewing project...ducky pjs

I am also involved in my church (where my hubby is the Assistant Minister). It is a lovely community of people of all ages and lots of young families. We have only been there 18 months but already feel loved and cared for and have made some wonderful friends.  The church has been a major focus of my life since I became a Christian when I was eighteen. Within the Christian community I have experienced forgiveness, true friendship, love and support and so much more. 

So, that is a little more about me...