SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT CHOOKS

Apologies if this post comes out of left field, but I was writing a few notes up for my sister and thought it might be of use to someone else too. 

I love chooks. I think it's almost pure madness, if you have the space (and if necessary your landlord's permission) NOT to have have chooks. Don't get me wrong, I have the same Hitchcock-based aversion to birds as the next person, you don't want to stare into their eyes for too long, they'll give you the creeps, they pretty much always look angry. Just think of them like hardworking businesswomen, who don't have time for any crap, and you'll get along fine! 

If you even need to be talked into the idea, here's why I love them: Minimum input, maximum result. Chooks require next-to-nothing in the way of maintenance beyond feeding, watering, maybe wing-clipping. You don't have to train them, you don't have to walk them, and they give you FREE eggs, and of course free entertainment! 

When choosing your chooks, consider what you really want out of the experience. If it's eggs then Isa Browns are easy to come by (check with your nearest ag supplies place, they'll usually know where to get them, if not order them in for you) and once they start they pretty much lay an egg a day til they're soup. If you want a better looking bunch to complement your garden aesthetic, that's fine, you'll probably want twice as many birds to get the same amount of eggs. (If you want to raise them specifically for meat you'll have to do your own research.) Isa Browns probably have less personality than other breeds and might not always engage in normal chook behaviours because of being intensively bred for laying, they're not great eating, and they have NO maternal instincts... But they pop out eggs like one of those automatic tennis ball serving machines so we can forgive them all the rest!

When buying your chooks you're looking for "pullets" or "point of lay" hens. Pullets are cheaper, but they're a couple of months off laying. Point of lay hens are more expensive but they're ready to start pumping out the eggs straight away. You're pretty much just paying for a couple of months of chook food in that difference in price.

Once you know what sort of chooks you want and how many, it's time to consider where they'll live. I like those mobile homes for chooks that roll around your garden. No need to wear out one patch, fertiliser/aeration for the lawn, no need to decide on a definite spot for them, no need to diy it yourself... These typically have a mesh floor (or at least an option for one) to keep the foxes and things away. Take this option, even if you live in the very centre of town, you've never heard of urban foxes?? However a mesh floor means it would be kind to let your chooks out for a forage now and then as chooks love to scratch, and bathe in dust, which is hard to do with mesh under your feet. (Bathing in dust also helps keeps mites and other nasties at bay.)

If you do decide to build a little chook mansion of your own, you want to peg down the fences (some say to dig trenches and sink the mesh in so anything that tries to dig under is thwarted) and keep them at least waist height, if not higher. Also you want your fences to be a little shaky and dodgy looking. A fox will confidently scale a nice firm fence, but won't risk his neck on an unreliable one. 

For the chook house itself a few perches, nice big branches or sticks, set at different heights are needed. Chooks are hierarchical so they maintain a pecking order, literally. The boss chook gets the highest perch, and so on. The chook house should also be pretty dark, the nesting boxes especially need to be dark. Asking a chook to lay in a nice airy light henhouse, though seemingly a pleasant idea, is like asking you or I to take a dump in the middle of the MCG just before the Boxing Day Test. Some clean straw every few weeks will keep them cosy and happy, and when cleared out will be effective fertiliser for your garden. Chooks I tell ya, they just keep on giving!

Then it's just plenty of clean water, table scraps and some sort of layer pellets, and they're happy as can be! I used to feed mine the "Red Hen" mix, but I found they would only eat the pellets and leave all the seeds and grains behind. Which is fine if you don't mind feeding mice and sparrows and every other scavenger bird in the neighbourhood. On which point, don't leave a heap of food lying around. Try to give them just a bit at a time and replenish it regularly, rather than providing a smorgasbord for all the local wildlife. Also on the subject of table scraps, they can eat just about anything. Dont give them citrus or onion, but anything else feel free to try them on it. The more variety they get, the better your eggs. 

A final note: wing-clipping. If your chooks are constantly flying out of their pen, or into the neighbours yard, you can clip their wings. This is not cruel, no crueller than a haircut, and far less cruel then letting next door's dog savage them. You just clip the wing feathers short on one wing, which makes them fly wonky. Chooks are terrible flyers anyway, but clip their wings and they're pretty much only good to flap up onto their perch at night. Take a sharp pair of secateurs, have someone hold the chook by the feet while you stretch out the wing. Now feel the wing for where the warm part ends, you don't want to clip too close and injure them, or clip through their flesh, you're just trimming the feathers back as short as you can without doing that. NB. Do the same wing on every chook, so you don't have to worry about missing one, or doing one twice.

Questions? Fire away! 🐔🐔🐔

4 TRICKS I HAVE LEARNED WHICH HAVE DRAMATICALLY IMPROVED MY LIFE

I know, that title looks a little bit dramatic. These are things you probably already do and if that is so more power to you, you're way smarter than me! These are things that I have watched other people do for years and thought "Oh gosh, how can you be bothered??" But now that I do them, I totally see the point.


1. Clean up the kitchen at the end of each day

I wish I could change this to "after every meal"! Yes I work on getting the kitchen back to some kind of workable state after each meal so there's room to prep the next one, but I'm talking about the BIG clean up. At the very least this means leftovers put away, dishwasher packed and started, handwashing washed, all benches wiped, table and highchairs wiped. If you're feeling extra adventurous it might also mean dishwasher emptied, clean dishes all put away, stovetop/splashback/sink wiped down, quick wipe up under dinner table... 

I used to get so frustrated with my own mum, we've just enjoyed a delicious meal, can't we all just relax now? There's no REASON why the dishes HAVE to be done NOW, let's just RELAX for ONCE!!! But now I get it. And if someone else is around, it's actually really nice to just stand around and have a chat with them, it's done in half the time, and then we CAN relax! There's just no REAL relaxation while there's still the spectre of a hideous mess looming over us from the next room. Deal with it now.

I think it really hit me once I became a mum and I realised how depressing it was, both looking around at night at a big mess and feeling like my whole day was just a process of making one big mess, and waking up to the mess that the me-of-the-past had very ungenerously left for the me-of-the-future, in an obnoxious "someone else can clean this up" sort of way. Now I walk into a clean kitchen (most mornings) and feel, in more ways than one, that I am starting with a clean slate.

2. If it takes less than a minute, do it NOW

And the previous point leads neatly into this one:

Think of the amount of times you walk in the door, take your shoes off and think "I'll put them away after I sit down and have a cup of coffee..." You open a piece of mail and instead of dealing with it immediately, you leave it on the bench top, where it will later move to the fridge, then to a filing box. You flag an email cos you don't have time to reply now, then you forget about it, then three weeks later you wonder why that company hasn't contacted you about your enquiry about that lost parcel... You leave something on the bench top, to remind you to put it in the car, so you can give it back to that friend when you see them tomorrow (and then over the course of the day you become so used to seeing it there, that you totally forget about it, and never put it in the car, so a special errand has to be arranged to return said item to said friend, GAH!)

The great thing is, once you make it a practice to do little jobs straightway, you no longer think of them as jobs, and your threshold increases. Now you're in the habit of putting things away straight away, you rarely have to waste time "tidying up", cos that's your baseline best-practice. It leaves you able to consider how much time the things you ACTUALLY WANT to do will take. 

I've been trying to "plant a little herb garden" since we moved into this house over two years ago. Every time I have to shell out for herbs at the supermarket I curse my own lack of initiative. Two weeks ago I bought some potted mint and when I used the bit I needed for a recipe I planted it in the garden. Over the course of the two weeks I got into the habit of checking on it every day/couple of days, and it took off. And then just yesterday I realised that it would only take me about five minutes to sprinkle a few more seeds out and then I would just water them whenever I had to come out and check on the mint anyway. 

It actually probably took me seven minutes, and we're not going to have "House and Garden" battering down our doors to get a picture of it any time soon, but it's done. After two years of procrastinating, IT'S DONE!

3. If you're in the kitchen anyway...

Every time you cook you're using up time, energy and resources, and most of that time you're only making ONE meal. You make breakfast and then you have to start all over again to make lunch. You make lunch and you have to start all over again to make dinner. 

Most of us end up with leftovers at some point, but how many of us PLAN those leftovers? I'm not even talking about doubling a recipe so you can freeze a dinner for another night (though of course, that is an excellent idea) I'm thinking waaay smaller than that. Say you're slicing up a cucumber and you look at it and think "Well actually we only need half a cucumber for this recipe," What's going to happen to the other half? Seriously, have you thought about it? Do you KNOW you're making salad again tomorrow night? Or do you have NO PLANS WHATSOEVER for it? If you know you're making salad again tomorrow night, why not slice the whole thing up and pop it in a container? Tomorrow night you can just tip it in. If you have no plans whatsoever for it, the act of slicing it will probably help you at least remember that it's there. 

It sounds like such a tiny tiny thing, but honestly you've got the knife and the board out now and it's not going to take you that much longer to dice the whole thing up. Tomorrow night, you may not even need to get the chopping board out! Tomorrow night when everyone is melting down, you'll be glad of having both hands free to deal with it instead of trying to cuddle a toddler with your knees while furiously chopping vegetables, leaving room for all sorts of injuries! And hopefully this way you won't find it growing mysterious new life forms at the bottom of your crisper when you try to pack in next week's groceries.

You're in the kitchen anyway supervising something cooking, why not boil a couple of eggs while you're there? Then tomorrow's lunch is sorted. You're really going to cut up and par boil five potatoes and leave the sixth one languishing in the back of the pantry? Chuck it in and leave it to cool after dinner. You can dice it up for tomorrow night's salad, you can mash it up and make salmon patties for tomorrow's lunch, you can toss it in the freezer for next week and it's one ingredient that's prepped and ready to go.

4. Make your bed

I probably spent most of my childhood thinking "What's the point? I can't wait till I leave home and then I won't have to do any of these pointless jobs!!" And now that I'm all grown up, and I'm home all day, it's so nice to walk past a nice tidy magazine-home bed! And it's sooooo nice not to fall in a crumpled heap, into a crumpled bed, and get smacked in the eye by the fitted sheet which has been working it's way off over the course of the last three nights... (note to self: buying sheets is not the time to get frugal) Getting into a crisp, neatly made bed at the end of the day? Sigh. Simple pleasures. Once again, it's a nice gesture from me-of-the-morning, to me-at-night!


Are you starting to notice a theme here? Stop leaving things undone so that future-you has all this extra work to do!! Spend a little time each day doing things to make future-you's life easier and more pleasant. She will look on you far more favourably if you make the effort!

MY THIRD BABY - The Sponge Baby

A baby is best thought of as emotional sponge, in the sense that if you're stressed out; "Why won't he sleep? Why won't he eat? Why is he STILL CRYING???" Your baby KNOWS because he ABSORBS that tension. And what your baby thinks (if we can just sort of suspend reality for a moment) is; "Why is my chief protector and bottle washer so upset??? Is my life in danger?? That's the only reason I can think of to be upset! Oh no! I'm in trouble!! Oh I don't feel good now!!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"

It is also why, when he's crying, and you're stressed out about why he's crying, he doesn't stop crying. Even if you can find nothing significantly wrong with him, apart from the crying.

The baby absorbs whatever energy the person holding them is experiencing. This is why he cries when handed to his uncle, who hasn't held a baby in years and didn't want to hold him anyway and forgets exactly how to do it... But he drops peacefully off to sleep in seconds in the arms of sweet old Granny, who knows without a doubt that every baby she's ever held has calmed down seconds after her picking them up. 

It doesn't really matter that baby doesn't speak English yet (and it doesn't matter how long it takes them to learn to speak) they have a failsafe method of telling you who they like and who they don't, which is to fuss a little, or scream bloody murder, depending on the person and situation. I'm of the belief that if your child is telling you that they're not happy being held by someone who is essentially a stranger to them, then you will build their trust by respecting their wishes and taking them back. No offence to the other person, but there's a biological reason why a new baby wants to be held by Mum, and until you can convince them otherwise, have a bit of respect for their tiny world and do as they ask.

I've noticed too that sometimes the higher the stakes, the more stressed the person holding him is going to be. Sometimes Grandma or Poppy are so keen to make a good impression, that a totally relaxed baby senses all that anxiety and demands to be returned to his rightful owner. Similarly, when Mum hands him to the lady next door in desperation, baby immediately relaxes cos the lady next door knows her only job is to hold the baby so Mum doesn't do anything regrettable. She has no stake in whether baby calms down or not cos all her energy is focused on protecting Mum.

The solution to all of this bad energy (especially when you're on your own and you can't simply hand the baby off to someone else for a turn) is to let him wring all those bad feelings out of his sponge, onto your sponge, and you can then gently release them using whatever relaxation technique works best for you. Every time you feel yourself getting tense, just take a moment to imagine that transfer; he's getting rid of his bad energy, you're absorbing it and releasing it, so he can absorb your nice calm energy. 

My favourite relaxation techniques in these situations include taking a deep breath and blowing it out as slowly as humanly possible, or addressing all my muscles (in my mind) to see where I'm holding tension then clenching that muscle as tightly as possible, then releasing. Some people use visualisation, imagining a waterfall (or a calm baby??) This is also where singing, humming, rocking or bouncing are also good strategies because these rhythmic, outward focussed activities help to calm YOU down, so baby can absorb your calm. I swear sometimes these techniques work from across the room. Practice them while you're pregnant so you can use them in labour, then keep using them all the time to prepare you for the toddler and teenage years!

A quick addendum, if it even needs mentioning, that the above reference to "strangers" does not include Dads. Baby has heard Daddy's voice all throughout the pregnancy, and Dad has to learn to hold and settle the baby. Within reason, obviously Dad shouldn't be left to try and settle a ravenous breastfed baby. He can and should be learning all the settling techniques that Mum is up at night Googling, and respecting that Mum might have milk, but she doesn't have superpowers. Most of her settling prowess has been hard-won through trial and error. Sometimes Dad will need to hold or deal with the screaming baby so mum can have a shower, or take a breath of fresh air, and I think that is totally fine. Baby can scream all he likes in the loving arms of someone he knows*.

Of course there's also a biological reason why a baby's cry is so stressful to listen to. In the rare event that there is something seriously wrong with baby, I reckon he will let you know. In my experience, if his temperature is fine and his breathing is fine, then chances are he's probably just stressed. Or "teething", whatever that means. And yes he might be stressed because he's hot or cold or windy or whatever, but none of these situations will be helped by your worrying about it. However all of these situations will be GREATLY improved by you maintaining a calm demeanour so that you can make good decisions about the action you take.



*Reserving the right that no matter how much anyone loves their baby, they must always be free to put them down if they feel that either of them is in danger. Baby will be perfectly safe in his cot or playpen while Mum or Dad boils the kettle for a cup of tea and recollects their composure. If you are getting angry, DO NOT just soldier on. I'm very firmly opposed to the idea that a baby will suffer more from screaming than he will from being held by someone who wants to scream.

IT'S NOT A PRIORITY

There's an article that's been doing the rounds of social media which talks about the "busy" phenomenon. We say it all the time and we think nothing of it "I'm so busy." "Sorry I haven't caught up with you yet, I'm just so busy at the moment..."

The article suggests that we replace these statements with the phrase "it's not a priority". Eg. "I'm sorry I haven't caught up with you yet, it's just not a priority..."

Ouch.

Obviously the article isn't actually suggesting that we should say that to our friends and loved ones, but rather consider that that's what we MEAN when we say "I'm busy."

I'm big on being intentional, so this little mind shift has really struck a chord with me. I keep promising myself that no matter how many children we have, I will never describe my life as "chaotic". And if I find that word on the tip of my tongue then it's time to reassess our priorities!

Because of the choices I make, the hobbies I enjoy, I have had it said to me numerous times over the course of my adult life, "Oh I wish I had time to do that..." Implying that I must be sitting around twiddling my thumbs LOOKING for things to do, rather than deliberately carving out the time to be creative. Or subtly nudging that something else must be suffering for me to do things that take up SO MUCH time. "You baked?? You're amazing! I just don't have time..." 

You mean YOU don't have the five minutes it took for me to get out the ingredients, throw them in the thermomix, scoop them into a pan and stick them in the oven? You don't have the hour I spent sitting around waiting for it to come out of the oven? Oh wait, no I unpacked the dishwasher, hung the washing, folded yesterday's washing, planned next week's menu, all while I was "baking a cake". Hmmm. Or did you simply know that everyone will cut you plenty of slack cos you have young kids? Or you didn't even consider that you could bake a cake at the same time as doing all that? Or you don't LIKE to bake, or you're no good at it...? All valid responses by the way!!! All things I have DEFINITELY DONE (and SHOULD DO, particularly that first one) What's not valid is suggesting that I get MORE TIME than you! Explain that to me???

I now see very clearly, whatever you choose to do with your life, it will EXPAND to fill the time allotted to you. And yes, I do now find it more difficult to do some of things I want to, because now I also have three children to manage. But I do still believe that everyone has the same amount of time, and whether you have one kid or six, whether you are a SAHM or you send your kids to daycare, you will find yourself collapsing into a chair at the end of the day feeling exhausted and unfulfilled, if you haven't consciously chosen the things that are taking up your time. 

So I deliberately choose not to be "busy", or not to be so busy that I have no time to be flexible, to achieve a few creative goals, to drop everything to help a friend. I am naturally a homebody so it's not hard for me to turn down social engagements, or to make do with what's in my pantry rather than having to run to the supermarket a THIRD time today! But some days I just look at my children and say, you know what no, we can't come to the park, we NEED a really boring day at home to regroup and settle down again.

Having taken some time for myself recently, I found that even during that time I was at risk of becoming "busy". I had to make a conscious decision not to overwhelm myself with social engagements and errands (just because it was suddenly more convenient to go out and do things, didn't mean those things actually NEEDED to be done, or done by me.) and not to stretch myself so thin that I would simply return to my family as worn out as when I left! Taking this time, and making those conscious decisions, I came to the realisation that people offer to help me all the time and I rarely accept. I rarely ask for help either, but in moments where people, even strangers offer to do something for me, my default response is to decline. WHY?? Why do I turn down offers of help??? Aaaaand that's a post for another day! Haha!

We all have "triage" moments in life, moments when we have to "stop the bleeding" before we can find out what's going on underneath and fix the problem. Perhaps this is yours? Why are YOU so busy? Are you overcommitted? Are you worn out cos you're not feeding yourself properly? 

MY THIRD BABY - Lower Your Expectations

Lower, lower, lower...

In order for you to maintain your sanity, you are going to have to start viewing everyday tasks as achievements. This shift in perspective basically goes from "Hey, I cooked a lovely dinner from scratch!" to "Hey, we ate dinner!" If you don't see things like showering and getting out of your pyjamas as achievements, at least for the first month or so, then everything is going to be pretty miserable.

Of course by the time you realise that a lot of new babies just sleep a lot of the time, and actually you have heaps of time to do stuff while they sleep, you'll be having your second baby and using all that spare time to look after your first child!

My tip would be in order to get any BIG task done (and I'm not saying you SHOULD clean your bathroom, but if that sort of thing makes you feel happy and normal...) you are going to have to break it down into smaller tasks. So instead of setting yourself up for disappointment with "Clean the bathroom", you set yourself the tasks as separate jobs "Clean the sink/bath/shower/toilet". Then you don't have to set aside the one big chunk of time to get it done, and by the end of the day you can pat yourself on the back for having achieved three of the four things you set out to do.

The thing is, you sort of can still do all the things you want to do, you just can't do them whenever your feel like. That's the sacrifice; time. Doing things when you'd rather be sitting around, and sitting around when you'd rather be doing things. Anywhere you want to go, you CAN still go, you just have to plan it more carefully, start getting ready earlier, and give yourself more (or less) TIME to enjoy it. If you want to go out for a coffee, go while baby is sleeping, or TAKE baby while he's sleeping. If you want to go out for dinner, go on a weekday when you won't be stared down by the Saturday night crowd who have been looking forward to a quiet dinner all week long at work...

That's the other thing though, I'm sure in ancient times we were all very used to just lumping our babies along with us wherever we went so they didn't get eaten by tigers, but somewhere along the way (as the risk of being food for wild animals diminished) we started to feel a lot more comfortable leaving them behind in quiet rooms and whispering all day long so they could sleep undisturbed and just getting on with things without them. We've removed babies so much from the public sphere that one can't help but feel that their presence will always be an intrusion on the comfort of others. However there is now a lot more evidence, scientific and anecdotal, that they will feel most comfortable and learn best by being close to us and seeing what we do all day, and that sometimes (not always but, I would hesitantly propose, more often than not) they will be happy and settled and quiet and not bother anyone just being with their loving parents in a lot of places.

This is not to say you should be taking them along with you to clean the bathroom (if you work with toxic chemicals, obviously not) or that you shouldn't rest whenever you can (you definitely should, we'll talk about this more when it comes to breastfeeding info) or that you shouldn't leave them behind and go off and do things on your own (which is sometimes more fun or just more convenient) ... I'm just saying don't be AFRAID to take them with you. 

By all means, expect the worst, but do it anyway, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that other people dining out on a Wednesday night aren't bothered by your baby being a little unsettled, or that baby who screamed all evening being rocked to sleep in his nursery is transformed into a sweet little lad when you step outside the front door in the morning, or baby who hasn't done a poo for two days is suddenly a cheerful and happy companion after making a biohazard of their carseat on the way to the restaurant. 

Sometimes it's almost like the thing you're dreading is actually the thing they need. Whether it's that they need the stimulation of a little excursion, or they need a mum who is calm and happy after putting on actual clothes and drinking actual coffee in public. And chances are that somewhere along the way someone says "Oh isn't he CUUUUUTE?!?!?!" 

And you will be able to take and deep breath and see that yes, yes he is cute.

ACCOUNTABILITY #1

So, in light of working towards each of these goals I feel like I need to take stock now and then and make sure I am actually doing what I said I would!

Firstly the list of projects... The less said about that the better! I am working toward carving out a space, and time, to do this.

Secondly the list of buzzwords, I'm going to have to devote a separate post to making some "Goal within a Goal" goals there.

The list of specific resolutions... This is what I really want to address here. So here goes:


1. A working cleaning schedule

I have had an idea for this which includes some sort of list/spreadsheet where jobs that I have done move to the bottom of the list, so that jobs that haven't been one in a while naturally rise to the top. Also, must research and see if there's an app that already does this. If not I call dibs on this idea. Plus cute graphics, with little bubbles that rise to the top which you can pop each time you do a job... Now we're talking! I could definitely mop the floors if there's a cute little animated bubble that giggles when you pop it!!

2. Digitise addresses and birthdays

Done!!! Tick and a big pat on the back for self!! I've EVEN immediately digitised new addresses as people give them to me, and created a shared digital birthday calendar with my husband.

3. Say the rosary

Maybe said seven decades since the new year. This is going to be the most difficult. I am going to have to be satisfied with saying lots of "broken" rosaries, rather than proper "me as a saint on my knees, with my shiny halo, like the picture on my holy card" rosaries.

4. Start traditions/honour saints' feast days

Nope. Nada. More effort required.

5. Finish the baby books

Have put it on my budget list to have more photos printed, no other efforts made.

6. Cover the kids' books

Two rolls of contact bought, several damaged books covered (And library books repaired, grr. My child seems to seek them out like stray puppies) and I will, as a matter of principle, use up what I have bought. So some of the books will get covered. Also, note to self; contact is a pain in the arse. It is in love with itself. Conceited contact.

7. Multivitamin

Just talking about this today actually, must do my research and get onto this.

8. Save for Christmas

I have opened a purpose-built bank account for this! But it has no money in it yet!


So that's the update for now. All going well, the next update should include definitive action on #1 and #5 at the very least, hopefully #7 and #8 too.

MY THIRD BABY

Welcome to a new series, called MY THIRD BABY 😊 I sat down to write on the subject of babies today, but found I had way too much to say for just one post! So in light of that, you're all going to be subjected to a weekly battering with my completely unfounded ideas about babies for as long as I can keep it up!

As you know I have three delightful children; the eldest is three, the second is nearly two, and my baby girl is just four months old. I feel like I know less (about parenting. No, scratch that, about ANYTHING!) now than I did BEFORE I had children! BEFORE I had children I was one of those annoying know-it-alls who knew exactly what YOU were doing wrong, and why being a parent was so difficult for YOU, but it would not be so for me...

Five years later I can now stare the truth in the face; it is not ALWAYS the choices people make that make being a parent difficult. And though I am still occasionally faced with case of the bleeding obvious, for the most part I can understand that children have their own agenda, and their own free will, with which they can gleefully choose to make your life a misery! Of course they don't really want you to be miserable, but if that is a side effect of their actions then they don't really give a rodent's posterior. 

Anyway with three babies successfully nurtured onto the next stage, I feel I can, I could, if pressed, offer just a teeny tiny portion of wisdom on the subject of babies! (Don't ask me about preschoolers, I am still very much a beginner) So here, for your entertainment (and direct disapproval) I offer my own naive ideas about babies.

What follows in these posts is JUST a reflection of my own experience, and MOST DEFINITELY NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. These reflections should also come with the disclaimer that I have had only "normal" births and "normal"* babies. ALL BABIES ARE DIFFERENT. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another, no matter how much the first person insists that it will, particularly if the second person is not sold on the idea and has no faith in it...  But any of this stuff could be worth a shot if you're currently having difficulty with your baby.

*Also, in saying that they were all "normal", I have had one baby who was born three weeks prior to his due date, and two babies born nearly two weeks later than their due dates, and if anyone wants to have the argument that it doesn't make a difference as both babies are technically "full term"... Bring it.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR TEMPER WHEN EVERYONE AROUND YOU IS MELTING DOWN

Or "The Post I Will Never Write"!

I don't have the answer.

Motherhood by its very nature forces you to learn SOME patience. At the very least you surrender your own will to whatever is needed at the time, because usually having some sort of order is more valuable than anthing else that you desire in the moment!

My kind of patience is: I want to eat chocolate NOW, but I don't because doing so would invite too many questions. Best to have chocolate in six hours time when no one will ask you where you got it from and then argue with you that this chocolate was from Aldi, not Woolies. Actually I'm just quietly grateful that they don't understand weight, or volume yet, and they don't understand that the piece of chocolate that was theirs and they only got two bites of has mostly been eaten by Mummy.

I am no martyr. When I want a cup of coffee I make the coffee, sit down, put my feet up and then repeat about seven hundred times "No, Mummy is not getting up to get your puzzle/stethoscope/ukulele from the cupboard (where she's hidden it) Mummy is sitting here until this cup is empty. GO and play with the blocks that are ALL OVER MY BLOODY FLOOR. Oh? You don't want to play with them? Well then pack them up... Yes, I thought you probably might like to play with them instead..."

I'm a firm believer in boring your children senseless for at least part of every day. How else are they (and you) ever going to get through all the appointments, and waiting for appointments, and waiting in general that is part of life? The majority of times they find some way to entertain themselves, though sometimes life-endangering, at least we'll all have some good stories!

My kind of patience is: "Hmm, you're right, putting on shoes is quite difficult, especially when you first have to find the shoes, and then remember how to get them on your feet, even though they're thongs and you did it ten times on your own before breakfast while I was very sweetly asking you to take them off again and put them back in the cupboard where they go so you'd be able to find them when it came time to PUT YOUR BLOODY SHOES ON NOW SO I CAN DEMONSTRATE WHAT A GOOD MOTHER I AM BY TAKING YOU TO THE LIBRARY TO INCREASE YOUR LOVE OF LITERATURE!!!!! SO HELP ME GOD IF YOU START DAMAGING THE BOOKS AGAIN I WILL WRING YOUR BLOODY NECK!!!!!!!'

I haven't got the patience part down. I'm not sure it's in me to look at my own flesh and blood and give them the benefit of the doubt when I'm almost certain they're messing with my head on purpose... But I like to think I'm pretty good at organising things to try and avoid a situation where I would lose my patience. When things begin to feel chaotic I have developed the skillset to simplify things to restore order. Toys everywhere and kids who suddenly come down with chiropractic conditions when asked to pack up? Tomorrow there will be half as many toys. A meltdown over peanut butter or vegemite toast? Tomorrow it will be cheese on toast, no options. (The next day it will be no toast because GOOD GRIEF, THE MESS!!!) I don't have the necessary compassion to cuddle a child who is sad because I cut the sandwich into squares instead of triangles, I cannot possibly fathom that grief. But I can serve you something else for lunch for three days until you FORGET ABOUT THE FREAKING TRIANGLES!!*

And this might be just as important, if not more so, than compassion for our children. Yes, it is infinitely important that your child learns to make good choices (INFINITELY) but entering into a discussion with a three year old about which shirt he wants to wear is only ever going to be a power struggle. If I think I am being kind by giving my child choices, and every choice results in a blank stare or a meltdown, I need to reassess and meet him on his level. Give him no choices, or show no interest in the outcome. My child is largely unaware of many choices because letting him choose what to wear every morning would mean we would never leave the house. He doesn't know, and he doesn't actually care. Once the shirt is on his back he's over it, he's busy trying to build a tower or assert dominance over his brother...

Simplify. That's usually where my sanity lies.



*Preschoolers do not forget. EVER. They might neglect to mention it occasionally, but they remember.

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT...

And never brought to mind! 

Ah isn't this how many of us feel regarding New Years Resolutions? We make them on the 31st of December, and by the 1st of January we'd rather forget them! And I am even more reticent to make a public confession of these goals, but as there's no guarantee anyone will read them I feel fairly safe 😉

Here's the thing about resolutions, if you don't already know, it's all well and good to say I'd like to be more spiritual/grateful/fit, but unless you back those things up with a proper plan of concrete actions... It ain't gonna happen.

So, in light of that, I have made THREE (I love making lists, don't you?) lists of resolutions.

The first is very straightforward and I won't go into any detail here, it's just a list of projects for the year, things I have promised to make, or would like to make.

The second is a list of buzzwords for the year:

Intentional
Grateful
Encouraging
Gentle
Natural
Minimalist

What I'm hoping to do is reflect on this list monthly and make a couple of goals each month related to these words, with a view to creating habits which make me a more (insert word here) person. 

And the third is a very specific list of things I actually want to do. This year I've decided to take the "eat a frog for breakfast approach" and try to get a few of them out of the way early. If you're like me you'll put a couple of things on the list SOLELY because you KNOW you can cross them off early and feel like a winner! Take kids on the Elmore Miniature Railway? TICK! Day one of the new year and we're already one resolution down!

1. A working cleaning schedule

If you know me you know I am not a cleaner. I am a tidier (don't get me started on my enthusiasm for tidying! Well, not yet, we don't have time here...) but cleaning is just something that eludes me. My particular pet peeves are vacuuming and mopping. In light of this I need to come up with some kind of rule for myself that says (as I am always saying to the children) "just do it now, and then it's done." The thing is I do APPRECIATE a clean(ish, I have small children, let's be real here people) home, I'm just in the habit of avoiding the actual cleaning.

2. Digitise addresses and birthdays

I love the IDEA of address books and birthday books, it's all so sweet and Victorian, a lady sits down at her little fold down desk and pulls out all the wherewithal to write a few cards, or a thank you note, or a real honest-to-goodness letter; "My Darling Sister, I hope this letter finds you well..." But the truth is more me texting a friend for the hundredth time to ask for her "new" address, at the place she's been living for three years 😳 Let's just face it, I'm always on my phone (I know, I know) the phone is the place I go to for information, if I was saving the info on my phone when it arrived this never would have happened in the first place... Let's just put it in the cloud so we never have to worry about it again.

3. Say the rosary

Every. Bloody. Year. If I'd grown up in a house where saying the rosary was part of the furniture, I wouldn't be struggling with it now, and the only way to stop it being generational is to make this habit in our home. And it seems particularly apt to try to do it in this the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima, when Our Lady said (again, mothers always have to repeat themselves) "If you want to help, say your freakin rosary!" (I'm paraphrasing of course, that's what I would have said, not what she said.) I think the thing, FOR ME, is going to be that emphasis that I'm doing it for THE FAMILY, not for MYSELF. It's so hard to carve out the time, especially when it feels so unproductive to be still for so long, but if I just tell myself that I'm doing it for someone else (the same way I do when I'm looking after my pregnant body) I think that might make it easier.

4. Start traditions/honour saints' feast days

See above. 

But also some days the house feels pretty crazy with a three year old, an almost two year old, and a four month old, and I am convinced that this is at least in part because I don't plan out our days. (This is also the problem with the cleaning schedule, I am waiting for the "desire to clean" to strike me like a bolt of lightning, hopefully before the mould takes over 😳) Oh we have a routine for meal times and sleeps, but it has only recently become a problem that no activities are PLANNED in between. It used to be enough that I would do a few jobs and the kids would play with their toys, but now, particularly since Mister Three has dropped his sleep, we really need some directed activities. We've moved from planned activities being too over-stimulating, to DESPERATELY NEEDING some structure, not just to keep the crazy at bay, but to actually keep the child's brain developing. 

5. Finish the baby books

Now, this is nowhere near as far from done as you might imagine. Child 1's book is missing one photo I think, Child 2 I just have to go back through some emails and find the necessary details, Child 3... We will get there 😁 As you can see, I love to write, I love a project, and I love the idea that my child will be able to come back to this record when they have a baby and see that they too were cute, and cuddly, and confusing... 

6. Cover the kids' books

This is ongoing, especially as I keep BUYING books (Op shops! How can people simply discard these treasures!? I feel particularly wounded when I see it's been discarded from a school library, I guess to make room for more "Hunger Games" and "Twilight" eek!) and it's going to take a substantial amount of contact to cover the ones we have (I once aspired to covering all my husband's books too, but that's just beyond me now!) but Child 2 is particularly adept at destroying books, in a way that would never occur to Child 1, so we must do our best to protect our faithful friends!

7. Multivitamin

'Nuff said really. I have a friend who's a naturopath who can get really high quality supplements, I just have to get onto this. And then not forget to take them. (I hate taking them, they make me feel queasy, anyone else?) Anyway, we can all stand to take better care of ourselves one way or another, at least one resolution should be focussed on this. Oh yeah, and exercise, pfft. Moving on.

8. Save for Christmas

Oh geez. EVERY YEAR it takes me by surprise! "Oh, Christmas you say? Hmm, better buy some presents..." And I consider myself an organised person! I usually start buying presents in November cos I do a lot of my shopping online and you need time for delivery. So with that in mind, this year I'm opening an EXTRA savings account and squirrelling the money away so I have it when Christmas comes. I'm going to do that decreasing savings thing, so the first week it's $50, then $49, $48, $47, etc. I figure by November this will give me a nice little bundle to spend on EVERYTHING we usually spend on at Christmas. AND THEN I'd like to be DONE with the shopping by the end of November so I can focus my energy (and my little munchkins' minds) on ADVENT. Something that sadly eluded me this year.


And that's it! Easy, right?

BLOG, SWEET BLOG...

Well here we are, back for another go at this blogging caper!

Hello to anyone stumbling across this page for the first time, this endeavour was started waaay back in 2010 specifically as a way of recording some of my experiences in the kitchen.

Six years later (2017) I am taking to it again and expanding the list of subjects (food, motherhood, school of life...) If you've met me (likely) and you're interested in my ramblings (unlikely) then stay tuned, this is where they'll be at for the foreseeable future!

First though a bit of housekeeping, lest anyone think I am getting too big for my boots, let me provide IMMEDIATE CLARIFICATION: I have no authority to comment on any of what follows. I am not a medical professional, a chef, an early childcare worker. Just because I offer a suggestion onwhat one might do in these areas, it does not follow that I consider myself particularly accomplished in any of these areas. I am just a girl from the country, doing her best to get on and maintain her sanity as a homemaker (my preferred term). I do TRY, but just in case you're reading this and you don't yet know me very well, rest assured, I am very aware of my shortcomings as a mother, a wife, and human being. 

All that being dealt with, let's just briefly touch on what this IS. It is mainly a way for me to stop bombarding sweet but exhausted friends with lengthy diatribes about my experiences, to spend a little bit more time on reflection, to record for posterity some of my journey...

And to remind me (six years from now?) about that time when I thought I knew anything about anything, and was bold (obnoxious) enough to put my total naivety on public display! 

So, if you're into that sort of thing... ENJOY!



PS. Oh, and welcome to 2017 🎉