A new beginning

Life is changing and its all for the good, I am interviewing at the moment for a full time position close to home.  The Princess is more than ready for childcare (she waved goodbye to me when I went for an interview and didn't get upset once when left with a friend for 5 hours!) and I am more than ready to hit the workforce!

I've been diagnosed with Graves disease and have to avoid getting preggers for a while so we decided that I'd go back to work.  The plan was for part-time but the jobs available are all in the afternoon in the city and it just wouldn't work for us.  There is no part-time work close to home so I started looking at full-time and found the perfect job.  An organisation that is an employer of choice for women, RDO's and a 10 min bus ride from my house!

I had my 2nd interview today so have fingers and toes crossed!

Who knows with a new job I may rediscover my blogging mojo and post more often!!!

xx

Google Analytics always good for a giggle

And I have to ad that I went through and looked at what traffic sources came here to this wee blog and someone searching for "perky melons" spent a whole 4.5 minutes on this here site!  I hope he / she wasn't too disappointed in the fact that the only mention is how much I miss mine!

x

I've been busy

Hi

I have been really busy with the Princesses birthday, wow she is two now!!!  And I have been setting up here and here!

I shall be starting another blog on the latter and hope to get to it more often, so I shall keep you posted.

xx

Argh

I have all these posts in my head but I either run out of time to write them or just plain forget, so ...

I shall return once I manage to capture the words and get them into a coherent format!

x

Twins?

No thank you very much!

Why?

Well I am currently looking after another toddler, Master A, same age as the Princess.  They get on very well and have even been known to get into bed together (my bed, whilst simultaneously emptying the soil out of my pot plant), they hold hands and are very cute together.

Its Master A's first time away from his Mum other than family and we only had two episodes of tears, the first 1/2 an hour after his Mum left and the second when I went to the loo!  Both only lasted a few minutes and he has generally been awesome.

Then came the Princesses sleep time, unfortunately Master A didn't like her crying so kept coming into her room to check on her, make sure I wasn't doing anything bad I think!  Take 3 and got the Princess asleep on my lap and successfully in her cot before turning my attention to Master A.

I have to say he was far easier than I thought, 5 laps of the hallway in the pram, passed out, transferred onto the fold out kiddie couch on the floor and he is still out.

You'd think I'd go twins, bah easy, after this success.  But no they tested my patience awake (see previous post re irritability!), throwing their food on the floor, jumping and climbing where they weren't supposed to, and being cheeky!

Deep breaths.  And now they both look like angels.  My hat is off to Mum's with multiples, hell even Mums with 2 kids or more!

And the Slack Blogger Award goes to...

Me?  Really?  Of course I thought it may have been me, but oh ... (insert worst speech award, or No 1 'Gwyneth' moment here).

Yeah I'm slack, and I decided you could have a taste of what would be my theatrics as an intro what with it being Awards season and all, as well as the fact that there are a lot of blogging awards flying round the interwebs these days!

So how are you?  Me, why I'm tired, cranky, irritable, sick, buckets of sunshine, thank you for asking :)

No I'm not really.  I had a meltdown at the Doctors last week and would you believe it, it wasn't over the Princess's refusal to sleep in her own bed like any normal small person should sleep deprivation.  He mentioned the C word.  As in 'it could be', well he actually said 'there is a small as in less than 2% chance, that it might be', but my voices brain started screaming at me, OMFG, OMFG, OMFG!  Which led to a small sob, then flood of tears when the Doctor noticed and told me I'd be ok.  ( My Doctor is nice, lovely, but I really missed the Dr I had for 25 years at the point, familiarity and all that - oh yeah and he'd tell me to stop being over dramatic!).

Its ok, let your breath out.  I'm fine. Still a wee bit emotional but there is no cancer, hooray!  (I typed that with a Capital C, and went back and changed it - take that cancer).  So what is wrong with me?  I'm still waiting to find out, my thyroid is going gangbusters though, apparently, well maybe the Dr and the Radiologist used other words that involved things like 'hyper' and 'toxicosis'.  So I may have a auto-immune disease that will have me taking a pill everyday for the rest of the world and slowly morphing into one of those people who have to put away money each week to fill their prescriptions once every 3  months.

What they said....
Hyperthroidism or Thyrotosicosis (real words used by the way): (Nah don't panic, Dr Google isn't involved.  Tests done by my GP & Radiologist with referral to Mr Endocrinologist happening), so...

Symptoms (Don't worry I'll just give you the fun ones, no icky bodily functions like diarrhoea to be mentioned. Crap. Sorry)

1. Tiredness (So I can't blame the Princess for all of it)
2. Insomnia (Great, so when you want to sleep, are allowed to sleep, you cant)
3. Irritability (See points one and two, you'd be pissed too)
4. Inability to gain weight but increased appetite (Woohoo, the bonus feature!  At least there is a plus with this)

Potential Causes:
Graves disease, bacterial infection (ruled out through blood test), cancer (ruled out through ultrasound), Hashimoto's disease.

Now out of the two possible real causes I'd rather have Hashimoto's, I don't know anything about either disease and frankly can't be arsed reading about either until they tell me as I'd rather wait to get the medical diagnosis first, but doesn't Hashimoto's sound cool?  Like the reason you've got it is due to riding a SuperBike too fast round a sushi train and got 'kapowed' by a samurai...

Kapow image from unkown, Karate man image from freesamuraisudoku.com

When not all is as it seems

It seems as I get sleep deprived again (not sure if it ever stopped) that my mind dwells on certain instances in my life.  Things that never used to bother me now captivate my thoughts and things that used to bother me cease to exist.


Friends are a funny subject, there are friends I have had forever and friends that are new, friends I lost touch with only to be reacquainted with and wondering why we lost touch in the first place.  Then there are the friends who are lost by distance or choice.


One of the things on my mind is those friends I've lost, not by choice, sure some are on Facebook but its not the same.  


Moving countries was a huge eye-opener for me, as it really showed who my friends were, the ones who made an effort to keep in touch.  Yes it works both ways and some of those lost friends I reconnected with on my last trip to NZ.  But I do occasionally lament the end of some friendships.  


In my zombie like state I ponder the good times we had together and then with a clarity that only comes after a good sleep realise that no matter if that friendship had lasted it would had to have evolved ,  I have matured *ahem* with age (the same as a good wine) and my circumstances have definitely changed.  


So not sure I'm not sure what the point of this post is, maybe I've just realised that I am a grown up now, have different responsibilities and there are some things I can't change nor do I want to.


So a 'hurrah' to friends old, new, virtual, past and yet to be made, thanks for the impact you have made on my life, you've helped shape me to be the person I am and regardless of whether we are in contact or not, thank you.

Abbey and friend at the park

Chubby and the Cheeks...

Ok I'm still mad, not as mad as I was more of a simmering state than the seething mess I was last week.  Why?  Well hold on tight...

Friends of mine recently had a gorgeous wee bub whom we went to visit in hospital, whilst there we noticed the new Dad had a nasty rash.  Nothing to strange in that as he suffers a great deal from eczema and as you know I can relate, well Abbey can.  Turns out he had shingles.  That didn't make me mad, that broke my heart.  Can you imagine not being able to hold your newborn?  I can't and he couldn't.  He could gaze at her lovingly from across the room, I cried when they told me, well when I was off the phone as the new Mummy was teary and I didn't need to add to her hormones.  But I digress...

A week later the Princess had two spots on her face, she has had the chicken pox vaccine but we thought we'd get her checked out anyway as she had been off her food.  Cue visit to the local Doctors.

Our local Doctors are lovely, you can see anyone and it is a wonderful multi-cultural mix with some rather gorgeous young English doctors that make you want to become a hypochondriac so you can flash them your boobs.  Digressing again, sorry.

We saw a new South African Doctor and discussed rugby (as you do) well he talked to Mr P about it, Mr P handballed to me as usual!  Why do men assume that the man is the one into sport?  

Anyhow the spots were insect bites nothing to worry about,   he told us how he gets quite exciting about shingles as it is a fascinating disease (sigh - well he is a Doctor).  Then we moved onto the food issue...

He gave us a talk about childhood obesity and how children eat too many snacks etc and that the Princess had probably developed a sweet tooth (no denying that) but then...  he had the absolute gall to look at the Princess and without so much as weighing her, seeing how tall she is, even looking at her belly, he pronounced...

'She's chubby, you need to watch her food intake'. EXCUSE ME?!  I was stunned so any comment, comeback, slap to the forehead, I usually would have given passed me by.  For one of the very few times in my life I was speechless.  Tears welled in my eyes as I thought what a nerve this man had.  How dare he foster body image issues onto my daughter (well me)  now when she is only 21 months old.  We smiled and did the pleasantries and left.  We got in the car and I was 'WTF'!

We got home and I raced to the bible blue book (Maternal and Child Health provided diary of your child's well being and guidelines).  I then measured the princesses height and stuck her on the scales.  Went back to the book and graphed her... She is between the 50 and 60th percentiles.  That means she is a perfect weight and height for her age.

Granted she has full cheeks but if that Doctor had actually done some doctoring and measured and weighed her rather than making an assessment based on looking at her he may have changed his mind.

I asked another Doctor this week when I went in for an unrelated matter, his opinion 'No, she's perfect.  You have a beautiful and healthy wee girl'.  So there.

The wee miss catching raindrops during a storm, photo was taken the same week we went to the Doctor!

Still sleep deprived but I think I'm well past losing it...

So the Princess still doesn't like sleep.  Unfortunately whilst on holiday being by myself I co-slept, well from about midnight onwards anyway.  Co-slept is a silly word for it as really who sleeps when you have a small persons feet in your face who decides the best way to wake you is to sit on your chest with her hand at your throat?  Or to attempt to put your glasses on as that's what Mama does when she wakes (and that's why I now have a broken pair).

Anyway, the pattern has continued since we have been home,  I do attempt the resettling but when she wakes every 15 minutes there really is only so much standing over a cot shushing one can do!

The Princess loves 'ni ni's', so much she wants to go to her cot constantly for ni ni's with her baby.  'How fantastic', I hear you exclaim, 'so clever knowing she wants to go to bed'.  Yes she is but no not really.  As its all pretend, when its is actually time for a sleep or evening bedtime, I'm pretty sure that the residents two suburbs over can hear the wailing and screaming that accompanies this.

Ugh.

So I continue on, slurring my words as if I've had a bottle of wine at 9am.  Not getting anything done. But I tell you this when she wakes and licks you (her kiss), smiles with a twinkle in her eyes and says 'Mama'  it makes you go a bit gooey and think 'well it won't last forever'.  Will it?

I should be doing housework...

But I thought I should come back to my poor neglected blog and its followers and update you!

I can't believe we are half way through February already, time has flown past.  So here is my updates, bullet point style so I don't swamp you with too many details!

• Holidays, hurrah!  The princess (my new name for the wee one!) and I took off to NZ back in early December and spent a wonderful two week getting to know her cousins (my side) and family before Mr P joined us.  He was a bit hurt when she didn't run to him with open arms at the airport but she was rather stunned to see him!  Needless to say within an hour Mama wasn't getting a look in!  Then we had another week with my family (and of course Christmas) where the Princess got spoilt and had fun before heading up to the East Coast of NZ for 3 weeks  with her other cousins and family.  It was fantastic and made us pine for home (our native country and not our adopted one!).   
• The Princess!  She is changing rapidly, everyday a new word, new imaginative play and just great fun to be around.  She was more excited with everyone else opening presents at Christmas and did a lot of 'oohhh,' and 'wow' watching.  She found the adjustment back to just her and her Mama hard as she had her cousins, Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles around almost 24/7.  Lots of play dates has fixed that!
•  Online. You may notice I have been absent from Twitter.  I decided to delete my account as I spent more time on there than playing with the Princess. Easy choice really!  I had to delete a lot of blogs from my Reader and so I could skip to the ones I love, no offence but after 6 weeks away I had a lot of catching up to do!  A bit gutted that Whoa Mamma has stopped blogging as she is one of my favs. 
• Working.  I have picked up some part-time, well 1/2 an hour a day, work for some friends company.  Its mind-numbing stuff but extra money always helps.  I've also taken up Avon and am on my 2nd campaign.  It takes time and I'm not expecting to become a millionaire as there are (like any business) ongoing running costs, so a little pocket money every 3 weeks will certainly help.
• My big ideas!  Oh so many of them!  Baby steps and hopefully I'll be able to gloat and link to my glorious achievements soon!

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and 'hi'!

Note the pasta in the Princess's hair!  Taken in December 09