Love, bubs and life on our little farm

The fringe necklaces that are coming on trend.

What a fantastic way to brighten up a boring top - something I am increasingly facing with moving into the plan maternity tops for comfort on regular days. Just not sure how well it will go with the clutching fingers of toddler but am willing to give it a go!







pics from www.polyvore.com

We all hate them don't we! I have actually sat on more interview panels then I have done interviews. But that has been invaluable as I know the ins and outs of government science job interviewing now.

My work is currently hiring me a new scientist - yay a pair of helper hands for the endless work I am drowning under. So I had a lot of interest in this interview panel as I am their direct supervisor. We interviewed ALL afternoon and into the evening.

But oh my gosh, all I can say is please please prepare for an interview! Seriously if the job description uses particular "buzz" words - might help to umm maybe research those words lol! I think I have a hangover from the stress - I was willing and pushing for people to say the right things. Isn't it terrible seeing peoples hands shake and their minds freeze up. I just can't help but feel a lot of empathy.

All ended well and I am excited about getting some help in the next few months especially as I am already slowing down thanks to the waddling and sciatic back pain. I am still behind in my grant progress reports, am organising a Communicable Diseases Seminar Series and am desperately trying to get my students ready for their zoo presentations.

And I have to turn around and do it all again as I have another job that I am on the interview panel for in the next few weeks.

Gee I will have earned that anniversary holiday we are taking at the end of February!!

Oh I am hating this heat. I am normally a summer kind of girl but being 21 weeks pregnant and with a much bigger bump then last time, I am uncomfortable and cranky. I don't know what happened to my tummy but it has just popped out there - I am about as big as I was at 30 weeks last time and oh so waddling!

Would you believe I am actually a bit put out that I don't get to go to work today to be in the over the top air conditioning that our labs are subject to! I mean we have 5 air cons in our house including a big one but even still I just feel terrible! I also hate running air conditioners - makes me feel like the worst criminal against the environment - its just so decedant and not a sustainable attitude in my opinion.

But.. the way I am feeling at the moment, I might be able to look past my personal beliefs for the sake of not passing out in a cranky sweaty heap.

Dreading tomorrow - we have the equine dentist coming for a long session with Spech and his hooks and ramps in his mouth. Its hot physical work and will take hours in the sun. last time it was done whilst I was pregnant, I passed out. Needless to say I have lined up Jase to hlelp out this time.

Bring on a cool change or a storm!!

oh and Happy Australia Day! Its a typical Aussie summer day here with the crickets sounding and endless blue sky. We would be going to the beach but there are blue bottles blown in from the NE breezes so that is out. So far the plan is to visit the hardware store and maybe a BBQ lunch looking out at our beautiful white gum trees - pretty Aussie really.

I was too busy on Thursday to do my usual cooking session with Elka so we managed to squeeze it on Friday after a work lunch and a shop. The shopping went well as the jewellers replaced my diamond necklace that had lost a diamond, so now I have a brand new extra sparkly one :) Although Elka did trash a maternity shop (including breaking a bra hanger in half) - there was nothing much there to buy and nothing fitted as all the sizes are so large - I think they like to make pregnant women feel better by making everything oversized?? But out of guilt for how patient the shop owner had been with a rampaging 19 month old (I mean Elka turned the water cooler taps on!!) I bought a size small skirt that I could just keep up.. I figure there is weight gain to come so it should get there! But why oh why are the majority of maternity clothes so boring and not really fashionable - all the skirts I looked at were past the knee etc. I mean I still have legs!! Just because I look like an egg on legs currently doesn't mean I don't want to show some leg in a skirt!

Elka was an angel for the rest of shopping though and totally charmed my work mates with her best behaviour at lunch. I am lucky that her monster moments are pretty few and far between.. so far! She just has a couple of stores where she becomes a demon - Video Ezy is another one and she did it again today - she knocks as many DVDs onto the floor as she can as quickly as possble and then races away down the aisles. Oh the joys!

But all in all I had a lovely day with my beautiful girl and we finished the afternoon with a fun cooking session making slice. Elka loves sultanas so I dusted off my mums fruit slice recipe and cooked it up with sultanas rather than mixed fruit. It was a huge hit.

Now its a busy weekend with my horse clubs sign up day, a BBQ to go to and working Sunday afternoon... I also dusted off the lunge line and whip and much to Spech's disgust gave him a lunge this morning in the arena. It felt good to be feeling well enough to be back out with the horses. Made me look forward to getting back on the horse - hopefully by early July this year, all going well!



For those interested

Fruit Slice
1 cup of SR Four
3/4 cup of Raw Sugar
1 cup of Coconut
1.5 cups of Sultanas
1 tsp of Mixed Spice
2 Eggs
30g of melted Margarine
2 tsps of Golden Syrup

Combine dry ingredients, mix in eggs, golden syrup and margarine and push down into a slice tin. Cook at 180 degrees for 20 mins or until brown and firm in the centre. Cool then cut into fingers.

Hot
Spending the day at the beach with my lovely parents and brother, watching Elka have so much fun.

Feeling my little baby girl kicking away and watching my tummy bounce.

Getting my sixth scientific paper published. Hoping that seven and eight are pretty close too as they are in the works..

The news that my Dad's melanoma is hopefully completely removed from his back.

Feeling lovely and round and pregnant and not too uncomfortable yet!

Realising how blessed we are with wonderful jobs and how comfortable we are with lots of wonderful things in our life and fun plans.





Not
Saying goodbye to a lovely friend and her beautiful kids that are moving away - going to miss our catch ups Sar!

Losing a diamond out of my brand new necklace! I am off to complain tomorrow! boo!

Having to go into work on Sunday as there is just so much research that needs doing before my students lab presentations. I have been trying to avoid working weekends since burning myself out in my PhD.

Discovering we need a Town Planner to work on our development submission before we can get council approval - its taking forever and costing a fortune! I just want to see that slab go down damnit!

Standing in the spare bedroom and stressing about turning it into the new nursery whilst still waiting for extensions to be finished (hormonal stress I know!)

The mouse in our bedroom wall that wakes me up at 4am every morning and then I cant get back to sleep thanks to pregnancy insominia. Wondering where our python that has been in the roof (as indicated by snake skins) has gone as I prefer him to mice.

Its time for a new Elka update - my little princess has turned 19 months and is such great fun! She is such a nice little girl, I am very proud to say. She is sweet and happy all the time. Of course she does whinge and loves to throw a good tantie too but thats all part of the territory of toddlerhood so I just ignore those moments ;)

Her talking is probably the most notable thing currently - she is constantly shocking strangers with how young she is when they hear her talking. She mostly speaks in 2-3+ word sentences now and her vocabulary is enormous. For example she can list over 20 parts of her body, a massive amount of animals, colours, 1, 2, 3 numbers, all of her friends and families names and doesn't even stumble over larger words like strawberry, dinosaur and octopus. I can have full conversations with her and she can discuss abstract concepts that she can't see at the time. I can ask her what she wants for breakfast and she will say "ummmm..." and have a good think (which cracks me up! And then lists off porridge or toast etc depending on what she actually feels like, very handy! She can say "I love you Mummy" which just makes me melt. She likes to talk about the baby in Mummies tummy, although she did ask if she could have a puppy rather than a sister or brother the other day!

She is a big girl - she is wearing mostly size 2 and some small size 3. She is 84cm tall and weighs nearly 14kg. She still has a 2 hr sleep at midday and then sleeps 7pm-7am without a peep. We have introduced a pillow for her and are planning on buying her a single bed very soon.

She is very strong - she can carry shopping for me and can carry 2L of milk around. She is quite the farm girl. She can spot kangaroos from across paddocks, even when I struggle to see them. She looks for koalas in the trees and she gets nervous about where she steps if we mention snakes could be around. She can pick out and name frogs, magpies, cockatoos and kookaburras by both sight and sound. She feeds and pats the horses, can run down a chicken and pat it and check for eggs in the chicken shed and tells me if a chicken is out of their yard. She has a little wheelbarrow that she puts hay in for the horses and pushes it to their paddocks. She likes to help Jase turn on the pump down at the dam and even pointed out a pump by sight at a home renovation centre the other day. She fills up her watering can and waters our pot plants properly for me.

She is drinking out of a normal cup now and insists on mostly using adult metal cutlery to feed herself. She hasn't allowed us to spoon feed her since she was 11 months old so fortunately she is pretty nifty with cutlery (or she would have starved by now lol). She loves the mini cupcakes I cook her and loves cheesy gnocchi, spag bol and hot chips most of all - followed closely by broccolli (yes really) and my homemade custard.

She loves her piano keyboard she was given for Christmas - its a very impressive keyboard with DJ mixing buttons and lots of other features and she cracks us up making music. It also has a microphone which is very loud and she loves to sing "Baa Baa" and "Row, Row" into it - this has us rolling around in laughter. She looks so old and tween-like singing Karoke. She is really into the Wiggles at the moment and adores books currently. We read her about 30 books a day and she can't get enough. She has some newborn baby dolls, that she loves to feed and rock and take for walks in her doll stroller. She is obssessed with babies currently and is very interested in the fact that we will be having one soon, I think she will be a great big sister!

I am struggling with discipline - she loves time out and will offer to put herself in time out if it is threatened. that tends to take the wind out of my sails lol. She doesn't like being ignored so that tends to be her punishment. She is generally very well behaved though, besides insisting on pushing the stroller or trolley when we are out. I can negotiate with her most of the time and she can often be pacified with reason which is pleasing.

She likes to pick out her own clothes and shoes now, which does make for some interesting outfits but I tend to go with it!

She gives big kisses and cuddles and loves to demand to be "carried" which is hard on my back alot of the time but nice that she still likes to be close to us. Its a wonderful, demanding age and I just love seeing her cheeky grin and wonky running. Its so wonderful seeing the very big personality come out more and more every day.

I am happy to annouce that Elka will be getting a little sister for her 2nd birthday! I am really pleased - I love the image of raising two girls and having never had a sister, I have always wanted one! I hope they will have a close bond.

The scan was beautiful - bubs is so sweet, little hiccups and gorgeous little feet and hands. The sonographer put it on live 4D for awhile - WOW its like putting a camera in there! We have some beautiful shots of her pretty little face in 4D. Cant wait to meet her!

But believe it or not but we have already been asked numerous times if we are now going to try for a third to try and get a boy!!! *** OK please excuse the rant*** I can't believe people - we wanted two CHILDREN, not matching bookends. I am so happy and feel so blessed to have healthy babies. And I have babies to make a family not to please myself fulfilling sex sterotypes of pink/blue or trucks and dolls. We live on a farm - Elka already wears leather riding boots and pushes a little wheelbarrow - we don't raise girly girls, so hopefully Jase won't feel too outnumbered lol! So yeah in case you were wondering - we are only having two kids - so this is our little family :)

Now to stress about a name for this little girl!! I want something as special as Elka but that is not too "you-neke" or that she will have to spell out for the rest of her life. Arrggh! At the moment French names are jumping out at me... but who knows really!

Tomorrow is our 20 week scan and we are hoping to find out the sex! I am so excited - I am happy either way but I just love finding out. Lots of critical people comment that its "ruining the surprise" but it IS a surprise - you just get the surprise on a different day to the amazing huge day that you get a baby popping out of your hoo-ha!

I loved finding out Elka's gender at 20 weeks- I really bonded with her knowing she was my baby girl. And it made shopping and doing her nursery so much more fun (I was already sick of white and lemon clothes!).

This time round I hope bub obliges in letting us find out as I am super stressed that we have NO clue for a girls name. If its a boy... well then there goes my stress, as our boys name is all picked and we love it. If its a girl... well then I can start trawling name websites and books and go back to driving my husband mad throwing names at him every waking minute!

I will be sharing the scan results on here so stay tuned!

Well my hubby has impeccable timing! Feeling a little down from my Dad's news, I come home from a looong day at work to find a package sitting at my front door addressed to me. And.... my lovely hubby has splurged on some Hot Milk lingerie for me! I love their range - its the sexiest most feminine maternity lingerie around.

This is the gorgeous bra set I got (but of course it looks SO much better on me hehe lol)


And this photo doesn't do the gorgeous nightie justice - it is just so beautiful (and so comfy!).
Funnily enough that dark maroon colour is exactly the colour of our bedroom and striped doona cover, so when wearing it I feel very glamorous matching our bedroom hehe

Its always nice to be spoilt and my lovely hubby does it so well.

Just had a call from my mum - its been a while since I have been on the receiving end of some bad family news but here it was.

My dad has been diagnosed with a melanoma on his back - he didn't hear what stage it was thanks to the phone crackling (he thinks it was 1 or 2) We are all hoping for 1 of course. He has to go in to have a big hunk of his back cut out next week and then they will know more.

Its not terrible news yet but its enough to scare us all of course. So I am desperately thinking positive thoughts and crossing my fingers that its been picked up nice and early. Losing Jase's uncle to melanoma a few years ago and an old school friend about 10 years ago does not leave me with the greatest feeling of course.

Its going to be a painful wait for next week for all of us :(

So I caved on the weekend and bought some maternity clothes - the bump is getting harder and harder to accomodate. Last time I wasn't this big, this early so I managed to squeeze through the Summer in my own clothes. But its just not happening this time...

So I may have been going to the beach but managed to hit one of my favorite shopping factory outlets on the way home and discovered that Pumpkin Patch was having a maternity clothes sale (yes I still find their clothes mumsy lol) but I did manage to pick through and find two tops that were reasonable and were marked at the bargain prices of $8 and $12....



I also indulged in a lovely soft new maxidress in a vain attempt to still buy "normal clothes"


I am pretty good for dressy casual clothes and work clothes and I just slob around the farm anyway (who cares if my shorts aren't done up). But I am stumped for what to wear in a few weeks to a work trip to Australia Zoo - my current students are presenting their research so I need to be well dressed but we are also getting a behind the scenes tour of the hospital, zoo and animal facilities so I don't want to be too dressy. Throw in the fact that most of my suitable clothes are not fitting and its a puzzle I am yet to solve. Gosh if that is my hardest decision this week then I think I am doing OK really!

So my Thursdays are funny things - I have come from three full days of work; not only is there the hecticness of my job but Elka and I leave the house at 7am and don't get home again until 5.30pm, then there are animals to be feed, dinner to cooked and daycare food to be packed for the next day. So needless to say I have very little time to do anything.

So then on Thursdays I am still on a bit of an adrenalin high but then I get up and realise that I don;t have to rush Elka through breakfast. Although I normally have a horse appointment or something booked in for the early morning, so no sleep in for me! But generally I can slow down and focus on being a mummy rather than a busy scientist. It takes me a few hours, so I fill the morning with my busy things and then unwind as I go...

We do the groceries (chaos now that Elka insists that she gets to walk and help push the trolley), run errands to the post office etc and finish with a fun shop in our green grocer where Elka delights the shop ladies and has a great time collecting all the fresh fruit and veg in her mini-trolley. We unpack and sort everything out, much to the delight of our magpies and chickens as they get all the old stuff out of the fridge (I often have two keen horses hanging over the back fence too hoping to score old bread etc). And I start the endless loads of clothes washing..

I make phone calls etc that need to be done. Then when Elka has her midday sleep, I run around like a mad woman straightening the house from 3 days of neglect, hang out loads of washing, I set up some tv shows on my laptop and chip away at the overflowing ironing basket and invariably spend too long working and miss my chance to have a peaceful lunch whilst Elka is still asleep!

Then the pace slows, Elka and I play, do some art and play dough and we generally cook something for her to munch on over the weekend. She loves to cook with me, she calls it "mummy cook-cook" and she will drag one of our foot stools into the kitchen so she can stand next to me at the bench. Its a lovely part of the day and it helps me catch my breath and start to relax into my non-career days (I won't call them non-work days, every mum knows having little ones at home deserves the title of work!).

Today we cooked Rock Cakes. Simple and fun and quite healthy, so little butter in them, Elka loves sultanas and I use raw sugar as I like the less-refined nature of the sugar for toddlers.

Time is flying - almost halfway! I am feeling pretty good really - just nausea in the mornings now. Very tired by the end of the day and my feet just ACHE.. other than that just my sciatic nerves playing up - I am trying to make a chiro appointment to get that seen to. But otherwise, am soaking up the second trimester "easiness" as much as I can. Trying to get as much done as I can at work as its so much time on your feet in the lab, which gets harder later on...

I have been getting Braxton hicks for quite awhile now but I am really noticing how much stronger they getting now. I am also feeling bubs kicking now - its not light movements anymore, they are true thumps. Not only that but Jase can feel the kicks from the outside - I love that!

Second pregnancies are interesting - I am so much more relaxed and cruisy about my body changes (hehe besides the weight freak out in my previous post) and its fun just letting the changes develop. First time round, I was so tuned in to every little developmental milestone. This time I have my suspicions that I will all of a sudden be 36 weeks!

I am definitely getting a bigger baby bump much faster than last time - no real surprise since all the muscles have stretched before. Last time was so painful - I had horrible tight stretching pains all the time as my nearly six-pack from horseriding stretched out. Its actually a relief to not be experiencing that this time (although slightly depressing that clearly my tummy muscles aint what they used to be hehe).

But all in all - its a good couple of weeks to be pregnant :)

OK another confession!

I finally dared to step on the scales yesterday - ARRRGHH!!! I have gone from 57kgs to 63kgs in 18.5 weeks! 6kgs already! I had only put 9-10kgs on by the end of Elka's pregnancy, seems I am well on the way to beating that...

So had a little freak out - then tried to console myself that my tummy is much bigger much earlier this time (so hopefully heavier lol!) and that I am still fitting all my clothes everywhere but my waist (what waist these days!).

Admittedly, I have found the 24 hour nausea even harder this time round and the constant need to care for a toddler means I get light headed if I don't eat, so I think I have been indulging in more calories this time. But after the Christmas/Holidays indulgences and endless eating out, its time to get healthy.

The fridge is stocked with fruit and my work lunches now only include fruit and chopped vegies as snacks but just don't ask me to give up my Hot Chocolates ;)

I am not normally too hard on myself - oh I feel plenty of Mummy guilt but I tend to push it away a fair bit cause I am more realistic than that. As long as you try and keep trying and love your child and show them that, then well.. really you are an OK Mummy in my books.

So yeah - I am well aware that my toddler ate hot chips for dinner last night and for lunch today (my Mummy guilt wants to point out that she also ate steamed corn on the cob and other vegies lol). But really in the bigger scheme I am just happy she ate something.

But today I had a spectacular fail.

We were playing at the beach with some friends and their kids. I wandered into the water where Jase and Elka were splashing around. Elka always tends to cling to me so despite me saying to Jase that I had just realised I was still wearing my non-waterproof watch, I somehow ended up holding her hands and playing with her whilst Jase enjoyed bobbing in the water. Now normally he would "tag" me by saying something like "you mind her while I have a swim"... but we didn't really say anything. Elka was running around in the shallows beside us both when I noticed a man lingering far up the beach at our stuff - which included my full handbag and all of our keys, wallets and phones. Jase must have noticed him too as he commented and I said "I'll go back up there and make sure everything is OK". And I start walking out of the water - in that instant I was truly distracted and was not watching Elka or making sure that Jase had fully taken over from me. I had my back to Elka. I turned and looked back to see that Elka had fallen forwards in the water and it was too deep for her to push herself back up onto her feet as she still uses her hands. So my little bub was desperately trying to keep her head above water.

Worst. Image. Ever.

Of course Jase was over to her in an instant - it was all a matter of seconds. She didn't even get her mouth wet or cough or splutter - she did such a good job at keeping her head up. But it did scare her and she needed Mummy hugs for a few minutes.

And it sure scared me -big time. Everyone says how fast these things can happen but wow once you experience it, you really really understand.

But it was a good wake up call - we play at the beach alot and we probably are too blase with Elka's abilities. I am so proud of her being able to keep herself safe in that instant - but she should never have had to. Its certainly made Jase and I discuss our communication strategies for when we are both caring for her (and hence both think the other one is the responsible one at the time!)

Fortunately or maybe unfortunately, it hasnt put Elka off the water at all - 5 minutes later she was dragging me back in deeper than she could touch. Yet another reminder that she needs very careful watching.

Urrgh I am trying to learn from this. But right now I just feel dreadful.

Definitely a Bad Mummy moment for me.