Breathe

Today Gremlin was at school, Chicken was at kindy, W@dsy was at work and I was home alone with Poppet. I loved it. It wasn't the first time, in fact it has happened twice a week for most of the year.

But today I stopped.

I stopped trying to catch up on laundry and baking and sleep. I stopped feeling guilty about being lazy and not doing enough housework or being a good enough mum. Poppet was screaming at me for no reason and she wouldn't stop.

So I stopped.

I took a deep breath, wheeled her screaming in her high chair to the bathroom and turned on the taps to the bath. She stopped screaming and just watched me. I stripped us both down and we got in. She was calm and happy. She usually hates baths, she spends the whole time trying to get out, normally she has one of her siblings in the bath with her (a parent supervising of course), but today it was me. Today we played in the bath, we giggled, we played with toys, we fed each other blueberries, we just had fun. I had been so busy for so long trying to get everything done I was missing out.

Its time to make myself breathe, accept that I'm not perfect and simply enjoy the amazing life God has given me.

Isn't she just beautiful.

Not-so-schoolmum

Now that Gremlin goes to school, I can now officially call myself a school mum.

I am discovering a whole new world I never knew existed. If you listen to everything you read on the internet you may go insane. There are blogs on how to dress for the school run, lunch box art, fancy name labels and how to organise a homework nook.

I'm a different sort of school mum. I throw on my usual "uniform" of a geeky T-shirt and denim shorts to drop the kids off. I make sure my kids get food in their lunchboxes, if I'm lucky they will even eat all of it. I scrawl the kids names on their things with a pen that keeps rubbing off so I have to do it all over again. I might even remember to occasionally check Gremlin's school bag for notes and homework.

I have also discovered a few things. I love the school holidays. Why? Because it means all my kiddies are home and I get unlimited cuddles of course, but also and rather importantly, I hate the school run. I hate having to get everyone dressed and fed with bags packed at a set time and then in the afternoon doing it all again. Then there is the small talk with other parents while you hang around at the school waiting for your kids to start or finish class.

It's quite funny, you seem to lose your identity when you are a school parent. You meet people and befriend them based on who their kids are. I am no longer Ziva, I am now Gremlin's mum. It took a while but I now have other parent friends at the school, ones who are just as crazy as me.

I will probably get the hang of this school parent thing... in about 18 years when Poppet graduates from high school.

Grateful

My kids are growing up so fast, I was looking at them today and trying to remember what it was like when they were babies. I'm not sure, but I think it was quieter. I have to say though, I'm loving the cute things they are saying at the moment...

Chicken: Mummy, why did you change your clothes?
Me: I didn't darling, I changed my hair colour
Chicken: Oooohh it's blue
Me: Umm, no darling, it's red
Chicken: Oooohh it's red

Gremlin: Mummy, Daddy, you hide, I'll be the Seek.

Chicken: Mummy, you got spreckles on you (freckles)

Gremlin: Watch out the Hunk (Hulk) is getting you

Chicken: No Mummy, I want to plush (flush) the toilet

Gremlin is eagerly planning his 4th birthday party, so far he wants a Spiderman, Superman, Mr Incredible, Batman and Buzz Lightyear cake. I have to say, I'm having fun planning the party too. It's actually hard trying not to give him absolutely everything a little boy could want. I'm so grateful to God for giving me my beautiful children, and my lovely husband, who puts up with me wanting to buy "just one more thing for the party" He has blessed me so much.

Getting Things Done

Okay, haven't posted in ages, been busy, nothing too special, just normal busy. Oh and I did end up shaving my head. Thanks so much to those who sponsored me for the World's Greatest Shave!

Today I went a little crazy.

• I made pancakes for breakfast
• Hubby and I took the kiddies to swimming lessons
• Voted
• Tried unsuccessfully to get the kiddies to take a nap
• Let W@dsy have the afternoon off
• Took the kiddies to the zoo (yay for yearly passes)
• Kiddies then decided to nap in the car afterwards, the cheeky munchkins
• Took the kiddies shopping for those things you always seem to need and never get like cutlery drainers and car mats, oh and I got 2 seasons of Sherlock Holmes, I think I've got a a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch.
• Chicken went to the toilet at the shops and did a wee! That's the second time this week!
• Got home and stuck the kiddies in front of a DVD with W@dsy
• Removed all rubbish, toys, dodgy old car seat covers etc from the inside of the car, vacuumed and scrubbed the interior clean, put on new car seat covers and hung "new car smell" air freshener in the car. (BTW I am stoked they have "new car smell" now I can pretend my clean car is new, at least the interior looks good, might have to try getting to the outside soon)
• Now time for a bath and another Vanilla Coke Zero

Phew, it's a good thing I only go crazy like this every now and then. 

A Valentine To Me

This love letter is inspired by Honest Mom.

Dear Ziva,

You are amazing, strong, kind and giving. You are loved.

God loves you, your husband loves you, your children love you and your friends and family love you. 

Yes, life has been hard lately, with two trying toddlers and a hubby who's suffering from anxiety but you still manage.You do so many many things at home, work and church, you are a survivor.

You even spend your spare time making and designing clothes for your children, as well as making gifts for your friends and their children. You cook and clean and do so much for so many.

You may not be Supermum, but you're not doing too bad.

Now it's your turn, it's time to send a little more love your way. Take a little time for yourself, you deserve it you lovely lady.

Love
Yourself

Now What?

In an attempt to save money we have started buying in bulk. Once a month we do a big shop of staples, meat and frankly anything else that will fit in our chest freezer or pantry that we use regularly. I have even started planning meals and generally sticking to the plan.

One problem, I have young kids. Or more specifically, I have Gremlin.

Gremlin has now decided that chicken nuggets, fish fingers, peas and corn are all "Yucky." All previously his favourite foods. Chicken is happy eating just about anything... as long as it is the same thing that Gremlin is eating. Now what am I supposed to do with 80 fish fingers? Now what am I supposed to feed them? I have no idea what the next "favourite" food is going to be.

Gremlin, ever the helpful child, has offered a solution for me. Cookies, cookies would be really yummy for dinner Mummy. I'm sure they would sweetie.

BTW I've been making really yummy cookies lately with this basic recipe then I split up the batch and add different flavours. My favourite flavour so far is peanut butter with extra nuts and chocolate chips.

Christmas Eve, first day of holidays

As much as I enjoy being able to go to work and escape the kids occasionally, I've really been looking forward to this Christmas break. I want to spend time with my kids and just enjoy being with them. So, Day 1 of holidays and this is what we did.

• Cut kids' hair, Chicken's fringe is a little too short, but it'll grow
• Gremlin bumped the dresser and one of the wise men from the nativity set lost his head.
• Did some housework
• Had my friend Niki over 
• W@dsy bumped the dresser, and now we are down to only 1 wise man
• Niki, Gremlin and I assembled a gingerbread train
• Finished knitting a headband for Chicken
• Painted the kids faces ('cos you know, why not?)
• Ducked to the shops to buy ice for tomorrow
• Read books, sung songs, was tackled by children
• Children fed and put to bed

 Daddy Wrestling, a favourite pasttime

 The Little Engine that could.... be put together that is. (Please ignore my very bad attempt at an icing design on the front)

 Little Miss Chicken modelling her new short fringe and the headband I just made

 Gremlin as Spiderman (what did people used to facepaint before super heros?)

Chicken and her butterfly (I practically had to tie her down to get her to sit still long enough for this)

Phew, I'm exhausted. Are the holidays over yet?

A Day in the Life.

Today was busy and strange.

Firstly Gremlin and Chicken decided to sleep in. It was scary, I can't remember when they slept past 6am. They didn't wake up until 7:15am. I was concerned that maybe my husband finally snapped and drugged them in the night, (apparently he didn't).

I then spent the morning at a friends birthday morning tea, there were heaps of kids there and they all played to their hearts content. Apparently this wasn't enough, my children refused to take their afternoon naps. Grrrr. After over an hour of trying to get them to sleep I gave up. I had to babysit anyway.

Because I'm insane, I thought I'd help my friend out and baby-sit so she could go to the beautician. She has 3 girls. So this afternoon I spent with 5 children, 1x 6 year old, 1x 3 year old, 1x 20 month old, 1x 17 month old and 1x 10 month old. Oh and my husband ran away and hid in a coffee shop, because well, because he's not insane like I am. We all survived, without any injuries!

Gremlin was trying very hard  not to fall asleep during his dinner. This was rather unsucessful. So I decided to put Gremlin and Chicken to bed early, I can still hear them squealing in their room, objecting to sleep.

But Mum, I'm not tired

Blonde

After getting bored with having mum hair again, I decided to go blonde.

I have tried the blonde thing before, and I must say that this is the most successful it's been. As I am not a millionare I almost always do my own hair dyeing. However this time I got one of my girlfriends to help.

We started here.

First step was bleaching my hair within an inch of its life. This resulted in what Gremlin called, "Yellow Mummy"

Then I went to the shops and bought some blonde dye you even out the colour and make it less yellow. And this was the result.

Ta Da!

So what do you guys think? Hot or Not?

Now for the real question, do blondes have more fun? Well, Gremlin has now gone 2 days without wetting his pants! I call that fun, but I'm not really sure that my new hair had anything to do with it.

Patience

I used to think I was a patient person. Then I had kids. I learned that my patience was really an illusion. But for some reason my almost-patience seems to be paying off.

• Gremlin has actually been requesting to go to the toilet and weeing!
• Chicken can now stand up by herself
• Gremlin can actually jump. (I was really concerned that my son was the only 2 1/2 year old in the world who wasn't co-ordinated enough to jump)
• The kids slept in this morning, till 6:15, it was awesome

My children survived so far, does that mean I'm becoming patient? Or does it mean that once I think I'm patient something else will test my patience again.

5 Great Achievments of an Underachiever

There are very few days that end with the feeling like I've actually accomplished something, but today I did. So I figured I'd boast about it.

1. Get woken at 5am by 2 children and not killing them

2. Brushing up on my facepainting skills (bad pun I know) by experimenting on my children. This earned me the first deliberate bite from Chicken, even though I only painted her hand.

 Gremlin striking a pose

As my attempt at painting her face failed miserably, I settled for a cute star on Chicken's hand

3. Going shopping and only coming back with the things on the list.

4. Going to McDonalds to facepaint for 2 and a half hours to raise money for school chaplains.

5. Going home and exercising. (I may be the proud owner of a gym membership, but I rarely actually go)

Ok so I didn't actually achieve much, but I survived.

Sneaky

My two and a half year old has out-smarted me and husband.

We thought we were being clever and sneaky, we told Gremlin that if he asked really politely he could have one lolly a day. The lolly was just a sweet flavoured multivitamin for kids. Gremlin however insisted that we would have our lollies at the same time he had his. Taking this opportunity we remembered our multivitamins.

However the little rat has been cheating. In order to get himself two lollies a day, he has been waiting to get each parent alone and ask for his lolly then. He even figured out that if he asks us really early in the morning we are generally too tired to ask the other parent if he's had his lolly yet.

If he can trick us now, what will we do when he's 17?

Good Mummy / Bad Mummy

You gotta take the good with the bad, right?

I'm not a huge fan of kids watching too much TV. Having said that, mine do. Quite a few kids can have the TV on and still run around the house and play, I don't mind those kids watching TV. Mine don't. Gremlin and Chicken turn into TV zombies, you know the kind, they sit and stare, mouth open, drooling slightly, slowly creeping closer and closer to the screen. That's my kids. Gremlin even throws a tantrum when the TV goes off.

But today I let them watch 3 kids dvds (admittedly one of those was put on at 5am so I could sleep a bit before the sun rose). I'm a baaaad mummy.

But I did three loads of washing, vacuumed the house and cooked and pureed some fruit for some baby food for Chicken and put it containers in the freezer. So I'm now a good mummy.

I'm one of those people who beat themselves up about not being able to do everything. I'm trying to give myself a bit of a break, so today, hopefully, I'll let myself end the day thinking I'm a good mummy.

Survival

I was one of those people, you know the ones. They swear their lives won't dramatically change when children come along. I envisioned strolling through shops in trendy clothes pushing a pram with two gorgeous smiling children.

I was wrong.

Lately I spend my days just getting by. The business of training little babies so that they grow into responsible adults is a little trickier than I initially anticipated.

Gremlin is still not toilet trained, however he does helpfully inform us that he's wet while he pees all over the floor. You know those clever mothers who inform you that they taught their child to go to toilet in only a week, well they can have Gremlin. After literally months of successfully doing his morning poo on the toilet, Gremlin has decided that this was a privilege that we only occasionally deserve. So we are back to waking up at 5am with a lovely warm stinking poo waiting for us. Actually, let's face it, it's me that's up at 5am changing nappies as my husband isn't really conscious until after two coffees.

Chicken has cut her first two teeth in the past week. YAY! Does this mean the end of acidic burning pee which results in nappy rash that looks like something out of a horror movie? No, of course not. Two more teeth are looming, I can see them straining at the gums, threatening me.

And I'm tired. In an attempt to prove I still have a life, I went to a friend's house for a girls night on Saturday and dragged myself home at 2am-ish, didn't get to sleep until 3ish and then was woken at 5. I did have a decent night's sleep last night but it wasn't enough.

When did I get old?

Friends and Kids

I'm pretty sure that God made kids cute so that they would survive to adulthood.

Gremlin still refuses to sleep any later than 5:30am and turns his nose up at any food that isn't toast.  But he's just so cute when he tries to imitate his daddy doing Wii Fit exercises. And Chicken, she is going through a stage where she wants to be held all the time but then she turns to face you and gives you a ridiculous grin and you just melt.

I wouldn't trade my kids for anything but some days you just get so exhausted you don't know what to do. It's those days I especially thank God for my friends. I have a few friends I can just call and chat to and hear a happy voice instead of a cranky one. I can always call my husband and he's a fantastic support but there is only so many times I can call him while he's trying to get some work done. My friends are such blessings and I don't know what I would do without them.