EducatingMummy: Time time and less time, sleep sleep and less sleep

Okay so the purpose of this blog, for me, was to document this time of my life and the life of my family. So that I would be able to enjoy the memories and more easily remember the memories.

Because, lord knows, I would not remember a THING without it. Sammy was sleeping well but is now waking a lot at night. He is ready for real food but I am not ready to go there yet! It is too much extra work - preparation, delivery and clean up. Also I am a baby led weaning kind of mother so I prefer him to be able to sit up unaided so that he can grab the food himself. Anyway it is still milk milk milk for my little darling and that is what he gets .... every 2 hours at night .....aaaaghh.

However every bleary eyed stumble to his bedroom (yes we moved him into his own bedroom - that was when he was only waking once a night) I think .... more breastfeeding, more weight loss for me, more weight gain for him .... It is a double benefit.

Here is my little Sammy out for a stroll in the new old stroller (we left our stroller at Noosa, so I ebayed a 2nd hand one for $15 and it is a corker complete with recline function and wool underlay thrown in) - the weather has started to get cooler in the morning and evening hence the little cap.

So as I was saying, not much sleep going down here - so days are survival. I feel like I have my fingers on the edge of the cliff and I am using all my energy to keep us from falling. So unfortunately blogging has dropped off.

Unfortunately I say, as I find when I actually do blog, some of the fog clears and I can see the joy more. Like tonight, I just sat down and opened the screen to write. I have NO IDEA what I am going to say but I know that when I start it will come out. Also I have oodles of photos to choose from. How DID we survive without our iPhones? They are so awesome, especially me new fast one, for capturing the moments.

Our last dinner at Noosa - Bistro C - it all ended very badly but it was a nice idea. Paying $135 for a meal where I had to eat standing up rocking the baby in the sling, and Damo had to haul Eddie off to the kitchen to watch the chef as otherwise he would scream at waitresses walking past, "Dinner!" whilst we waited for our meals. And the kids finishing their kids meal, and then needing to eat most of ours to not be hungry. Anyway, we tried.

Eating orange sorbet from the Thermomix - cute photo of the boys. Especially my poser, T! I often catch him checking himself out in the mirror - dancing, posing, doing whatever. He is a real fan of Gangnam Style. He has an OTT flair - which I LOVE. He is really quite introverted sometimes, so I love to see him be himself - outlandishly.

Cupcakes from the Thermomix - they were perfect. But I used normal not gluten free flour and I used the prescribed amount of sugar (lots). Subsequently I used GF flour and dextrose - they were still edible but not nearly as attractive. I pulled out a rather unused icing decorator set and the kids had fun piping the icing on. I do love baking. I need to find out how to do it successfully with less sugar and gluten free.

William is my little darling at the moment. He is at such a lovely age - all discovery and sensitivity. Also all my boys have not had a haircut for ages so they are sporting very 'rockstar' long locks. William has a dense head of hair - and huge sideburns and duck's tail at the back. It is just edible.

This is actually a running joke we have at bedtime. "William, I love you so much I could eat you for breakfast!" and in response, "No Mummy I'm not your breakfast, I'm your son" "William I love you so much I could eat you for lunch!", "No Mummy I'm not your lunch, I'm your son", "William I love you so much I could eat you for afternoon tea!" .... and so on. Source of much mirth and cuddles and kisses at bedtime.

William also loves back tickles (hey, don't we all?). We do "Dot Dash Question Mark" (anyone else do this?) Our version goes:

With Tom we make up different words, like "Dot, dash, watermelon, Dot, dash, strawberry, Big Banana, Little lychee marks the spot with a mango in your back ...." with a different set of theme words each night. I haven't done that with Tom for ages - I must!

Very proud, once again of our Tom. He won 7 year old champion for Swim Club this season even though he didn't swim for half of the season due to his broken arm. I love the adrenaline rush he must have got when his name was called as we had discussed he was unlikely to win. Personally I believe it is these little wins in life that build self esteem so much.

Tom cooked his first meal from scratch on Sunday morning - Pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans). He loved doing it (choosing the recipe, reading it, getting out the ingredients, weighing them, chopping, cooking and then cleaning up) - he wants to make 2 meals a week! I hope I can make that happen and not be so frazzled that I justify not doing it with him because I am time poor.

That seems to be the key - my life is just so lurch from time commitment to time commitment that nothing I really WANT to get done gets done. Or is it just that I have too many priorities? I want T to do tennis and I want to go see our friends and I want to go to pilates and I want to do that favour for so and so etc etc. But in the end, I lose out because I feel too thinly stretched.

So bring it on I say - just, I hope it doesn't kill me. Or make my husband want to kill me. Sometimes we look at each other for a split second and I think we both wonder how we got here. We look at each other as two individuals again, just briefly. It is fleeting but you know, one day, it is just going to be the two of us again. It seems a MILLION years away now - but my cousin is there already. I think I will miss my boys so much.

This sounds crazy that I am already thinking with sadness about not having family holidays together, not sharing things together. I really do need to see a shrink I think. I mean, HELL, at the start of this post I was complaining about our disastrous dinner at Bistro C when my DREAM would have been to be there alone with Damien.

Well, speaking of Damien - he is lying beside me with the pillow wrapped around his head so that he can't hear me typing. Guess I better sign off.