Love, bubs and life on our little farm

I hit the Bright Bots Warehouse sale this morning as I do every couple of months. Its just perfect for getting lovely soft cotton clothes for Elka and I needed to get her a new swim suit too. My little diva also spotted the sunglasses and insisted on getting a hot pink pair - that she wore from the cash register onwards, so cute!

So I got in early, missed all the crowds, enjoyed Elka being able to walk since you aren't allowed to take in prams and left feeling smug with a batch of great clothes for cheap...

In fact I finished so quickly I thought I would stop by my other favourite outlet shop in the same suburb. And that is how I came home with a plum stretch Calvin Klein dress! Hmm not what I set out to buy today but I couldn't go past the fit and cut and it is perfect for flattering a baby bump. And it was a bargain - the usual argument, I was SAVING money by buying it ;)

So I have been dragging my sorry sick butt around recently - enjoying the delights of early pregnancy such as gagging at all smells and thoughts of smells and experiencing tiredness so intense even your bones are tired. But one of my best friends is getting married soon.. in Hawaii.. and we are waiting to hear whether we are coming into some money. If this money eventuates, well then Jase and I are on the plane, sarongs packed, as fast as you can say "Nanny and Poppy, could you please mind Elka?" I really really want to be at this wedding but current finances are very tied up with our house extension and me needing another batch of maternity leave. So at the moment I am just hoping and wishing and tearing my guts out with guilt that I possibly won't be there on one of my friends most important days.

In the meanwhile, I have just found out that her Australian hens night is scheduled for 4 weeks time. Arrgh! I want to make it as special as possible for her as she organised my amazing hens night that was touching, beautiful and wild and fun all at the same time. So hence me needing to snap out of the pregnancy funk of eating reluctantly, working, grumping about being fat and falling into bed.

Did I mention that the hens night is in another state and that the hen is a party girl from way back and was even an events planner in glamorous old Sydney.. so she has some high expectations. Urrghh please please if you are reading this - leave some hens night games/experiences that you have loved in the comments :)

I have started trying to tidy myself up... got to book a hair appointment to fix my 2.5 inch long roots and to shape my eyebrows again. I have pulled together a hopefully passable going out in Sydney glamourous outfit, that suitably shows enough skin to blend in but also hides my chubby belly bump that unfortunately currently just makes me look thick through the middle. But how to survive the looooong night of teetering around in heels to noisy clubs when I can't have a drop of sparkling and I am normally tucked up in bed by 9pm? Hmm haven't quite worked that one out but am hoping adrenaline, guilt and a sense of duty will get me through!

Oh how I am hoping the worst of the illness will have passed by then!

I started this blog to be a record of my pregnancy with Elka. And it will now serve to be a pregnancy blog again...... I am happy to announce that I am 9 weeks pregnant and due on the 4th of June. Another winter bub :)

If you know me in real life, I apologise for not telling you - I have been pretty slack with announcements, mainly because its not yet that magic 12 weeks and also because the morning sickness has nearly killed me and talking about babies and pregnancy only makes it worse! But I don't like not being able to blog my experiences with this pregnancy so I am ready to come out on here :)

I am using the same obs as last time - very strange to find myself sitting back in his office again! A scan revealed a healthy looking little blob with a heartbeat so all is going well so far.

I have the same 24 hour nausea that I experienced with Elka's pregnancy but this time it is even more severe - alot more gagging and vomiting and stronger dizziness and queasiness. Its not been fun. Just in the last week I have also had extreme tiredness - not useful with a toddler!
I am already showing this time round - making dressing for work a little tricky (have told my bosses but not all my workmates). I was shocked this mroning to weigh myself and find that I have lost a kilogram (57kg) as I was sure with all the poor eating that I have been getting by on, that I was piling on the weight. So far, the best solution is peppermint choc chip ice cream with ice magic - mm healthy! But is soothes the stomach and calms the heartburn too. I have had heaps of cravings - mango chillers, ice, thai samosas, pickled onions and the list goes on!

I have been despairing at not being able to buy the summer clothes that I would like as they more than likely won't fit. But I have comforted myself with some cute maxi dresses instead ;)

Now just to (im)patiently wait for the 12 week scan and for the sickness to pass!

I heard Summer today. The sound of the sun beating down on the crunchy grass, the crickets sawing and the baby magpie demanding a feed. I love Australian Summers expecially on the land. The heat, the endless blue skies, the birds - it all reminds me that its nearly Christmas - time for family, relaxing, holidays, beach trips and lots of cold fruit and BBQ's.

I am looking forward to Christmas time. I am planning some holidays to relax at my parents gorgeous farm. Mum goes all out at Christmas - the house and gardens always look amazing and she cooks for weeks in advance. I adore Christmas shopping - wandering around finding lovely gifts to spoil my loved ones. I love picking our real Christmas tree out and the fresh pine smell it brings into the house. Elka is going to love Christmas and all the trappings.

We went to the first pool party/BBQ of the season last night and it was great fun. I have started buying lots of fun Summer dresses. I am ready for it now :)

I have neglected my blog :( I have been so busy I am afraid - work has just been crazy and life is too with interstate trips and lots of farm work to do...

I feel bad as some lovely people have even given me blog awards! Thank you! That means a lot to me as I write my blog to please myself not any one else so its nice to know that even still some people enjoy it!

I now have a killer head cold and a toddler teething her molars so I wish I had something lovely or fun to post but alas unless you want to hear a whinge about how much work I need to get done on my scientific grants or how we are slowly and very dully moving forward with our house extension plans... not much to say!

The horse front has also been quiet as Spech is having some corrective shoeing done at the moment in order to get his bad foot to grow some new sole (which is working well!) but means he is on rest from competitions.. I have been giving Sam a little bit of work in the meanwhile but am not feeling too motivated at the moment.

In bright news, despite more dust storms, bushfires and high winds, we have had over 30mm of rain in the last week and our paddocks are green and shooting lovely fresh spring grass :)

I did buy a lovely dip dye/tie dye skirt the other day... that is about as exciting as my summer shopping has been recently...

And that is me for now :) xoxo

Little Miss Elka has started talking a lot lately - she has a great range of words now for a 15 month old and tries out new ones daily. My current favourites are "Tate-toh" - potato :) and "Nnnnnnnneigh" - for the answer to the question what noise does has a horse make?

But she is also stringing together words into sentences now. "Dadda.. where?" when she is looking for Dad (the answer is always work of course!), she can also say "here you go" and "where'd it go?"

But last night was her first really independent sentence to communicate exactly what she wanted and it melted my heart. Jase gives her the evening bath but she likes me to come in too.. however I was in the kitchen cooking and she came hooting out from the bathroom crying for me. So I picked her up - she looked me intensely in the face and said and pointed to the bathroom "Bubbles.. want Mum!". She calls her baths bubbles as she gets bubble bath in them. I was so impressed that she had made herself understood so clearly! So yep - she got Mum ;)

So as I have blogged, it was time for a new hand bag after my last trusty bag met a sticky end with some super glue repairs gone awry.

Oroton came through for me - their styles just really appeal to my current taste. This little red number jumped out at me - its a great shape and size and the cherry red is bright and fun for Summer. And it fits on my shoulder like it was made for me. How could I not!

As you would know from my blog, I love living on a property. And yes I can even say that after a long tiring week of expensive horse specialists, 4WD breakdowns and my husband being stranded in Sydney by the dust storm!

And why I love it - because its dirty, hard work and rewarding. It keeps you fit, busy and obsessed with rain ;)

And our life is always a little different to most other peoples we know - today we cleaned paddocks and worked outside all morning, then "spoiled" ourselves by spending nearly $800 on a new dam pump for our irrigation. Oh yes nothing is cheap when it comes to farm equipment... but we are so excited - our gardens are going to love being watered by a reliable pump that doesn't need to be rebuilt after every use (and so will Hubby!).

But in the wonderful contrast that is our life - we are heading off this afternoon to go shopping, most importantly to head to Oroton to search for a new handbag for me.

Funnily enough - I need to change clothes before we go - pump buying clothes at our local industrial state don't stretch to handbag shopping... but I love how many different things I can end up doing in a day :)

So every year we head to the Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin. Its just gorgeous wandering along the sculptures scattered along, through and in the beach and the dunes.

This was my favourite sculpture this year.



There were some excellent social commentary designs too but they don't tend to photograph as well!

Special shout out must go to my cute new kaftan dress - so comfy and very pretty and floaty



And finally you can't go to the beach without letting the little one do what toddlers do best :)

I have made a record I think - I have had my most recent handbag for 10 months. Its a lovely mix of pretty and useful - an Oroton deep chocolate hobo bag with lovely metal ends (I am a sucker for metal details!)

In fact it just tried to die on me by half the strap falling off (totally my fault for stuffing it full of way too much stuff always). However, I superglued it back together (yep too lazy to get the leather restitched) and was very smug about my repair job. Until the next morning where in the light of day, I discovered I had dropped a huge smear of super glue on the beautiful soft leather. So yeah - ruined now!

So.. its time for a new bag. I fret when shopping for a bag - I am fussy. I like brands - I see my handbag as a splurge. i don't like brands that are too popular (For example Guess! I was using Guess bags long before the bogans discovered them but rapidly dropped the brand once everyone and their dog started hoiking them around). But I don't like spending an absolute fortune as my bag carries half wrapped Butter Menthols, half eaten cheese sticks from Elka, a camera, a diary (my external brain and memory) and 15 lip glosses, so it can't be too precious....

urrgh so I have wandered through many a Myer and David Jones selection already and seen nothing even worthy of trying on my shoulder. Witchery had a slouchy bag that made me pause but seriously their prices are really inflated for what you get as far as workmanship... Oroton has a gorgeous studded black bag in magazines at the moment but I am seriously contemplating whether the studs would be too sharp for having around Elka (!)

So the search continues...

If you have a fave bag or designer, please feel free to leave a comment and inspire me!

Elka is really into crawling through and under things at the moment.

She crawls through the dining table and chairs chasing the cats. But she only just realised that the coffee table has a magazine shelf underneath it, that she can use as a tunnel. I managed to capture her first attempt - it makes a cute photo sequence!

This weeks Blog This Challenge is Can you do without...? What is something that you have had to give up that was difficult?



My answer is coffee. I grew up in a family of coffee lovers. My mum brewed real coffee long before Australia had anything but Nescafe as a mainstream drink. In my parents house, the kettle is always warm, we have instant coffee, plunger coffee, perculator coffee, turkish coffee on the cooktop and a cappuccino machine. I cared for my horses before school, trained for athletics, went to school 40 mins away, exercised my horse after school, did my home work and fell asleep exhausted and then repeated except for weekends when I got up at 4am and camped at showgrounds all weekend competing my horse. Exhausted doesn't even cover it. Coffee was my life blood. Of course coffee is also a uni student staple and I was wedded to it as much as the next student as an undergrad. However when I became a postgrad, in particular an uber stressed over worked PhD microbiology research student, coffee was the biggest crutch, reward and consolation ever. So what happened?

Well in my second year of my PhD, stressed and sick and at the doctors trying to figure out my pain and issues, the doctor decides it was IBS and that the first thing that had to go was caffeine. I laughed. Then realised she was serious. Then with tears in my eyes I explained that I had been in the lab since 4am trying to fit a 20 hour straight experiment into the day. She was unrelenting. And so no more coffee it was - cold turkey from that minute. If I am one thing, it is determined - coffee has never passed my lips since.

I still love the smell. I miss the creamy froth of a flat white. I miss the warm welcoming buzz. But hey life goes on - I adore milo and herbal tea now. And for what its worth, I don't have problems with IBS anymore ;)

Its a late post but I still wanted to record it :)

We had a lovely time. Elka painted a gorgeous canvas for Jase's office.



Although it seems the paints were more fun to eat


We then spent a lovely day at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary with my family. It was relaxed and lots of fun. Elka loved the crocodiles. She cracked everyone up by pointing at the emu and saying "ooh chicken!" She eventually warmed up to the kangaroos and gave them pats. They thought she was edible due to the high percentage of food smeared and dropped on her clothes lol.



We finished the weekend with lunch and shopping on the Sunday. Life can be so sweet.
xoxo

I haven't done an update on Miss Elka for a long time. She is almost 15 months now and well and truly a toddler!

She amazes me every day now - so much talking and learning. She chatters in her own language but has picked up a lot of words now - dog, woof, miaow, duck, quack, ta, more, me, bubble, bath, bye, hello daddy, shoe, sock, swing, Nana, cheese, toast, ball, gone, there, this, where.... to name a few. We can really communicate now and she loves to mimic sentences such as "press the button" and "where's the ball?" She can point out her nose, tummy, feet and eye when asked.

She is very helpful around the house. She gets out the broom and sweeps. She likes to wipe down her high chair after meals and today when i gave her the cloth to wipe, she went to the cupboard and got out the cleaning spray to use! When I say its time to feed the cats, Elka climbs into the low cupboard to fetch a can of cat food - very handy! She can also pull out their cat biscuits and pour them roughly into (and around!) their bowls, much to the cats delight! She loves to hand feed the chickens and the magpies and helps make up the horses hard feed scooping up the different feeds and "helping" to carry the bucket.

We are still waiting patiently for some more teeth! She has thankfully not been as sick in the last month or so. She is on a long term low dose of antibiotic to prevent any more burst eardrums. She still sleeps wonderfully - still 7pm-7am every single night. She has dropped down to one day sleep - generally at about 11am for 2 hours.

Her hair has grown very long but she has developed a great interest in pulling out any hair ties or clips so she is currently getting around with wild curls at the back and a messy full fringe.

Daycare has started sending her to the 2 year old room for a few hours to get used to it. She seems to love it - much more stimulation and interesting activities then the nursery. She has even slept in the little portable camp beds that they use in that room - her first non-cot sleep!

She is a good eater - loves to snack all day. Current favorites are bananas, sultanas and Tiny Teddy's. She had her first ice cream cone the other day (see pic) - wasn't too fussed but ate some before the chickens scored the rest.

She adores music - loves to bop and dance. She loves pop music and will clap away to JT or Madonna (hmmm terrible music taste of mother coming out I think!). She sings Row Row Row Your Boat and loves to be rocked back and forth.

She has shot up in height and is wearing size 2 in some clothes - mainly for her round little tummy! She is just moving out of size 5 shoes and into size 6.

She has started to be very independent and I struggle to keep her out of the gardens unsupervised - I am concerned about snakes as the weather warms up. If she doesn't get her way, then she will precede to do a bit of a cry/scream and throws her arms around. If you are in range she might try a bit of a swinging hit at your legs etc. We tend to ignore her when she is doing these tantrums - that is punishment enough as she hates being ignored.

She is great company, very tiring and a lot of fun. I am as always excited about what will come next - every stage has been so wonderful and I always think it can't get better!

So as I have blogged here - we had a weekend away for a friends wedding. By away, I mean to Brisbane city - so all of a 35 minute drive but regardless it was still a hotel, a getaway without Elka and a chance to dress up and have a few drinks. It was not my first night away from Elka - despite just about everybody asking me if it was! I have been quite happily leaving Elka with family since she was three months old.

It was a sweet relaxed wedding and we let our hair down.. and paid for it the next morning lol. I definitely made the most of the cooked breakfast buffet the next morning - I am a eating machine when hungover. I would be a much larger size if I drank regularly from all the bad eating! As fun as it was, I honestly felt that I hadn't been missing much by being out at the farm and not partying it up in the city on weekends. I can't decide if that is nice or sad to say at 28? I do know that I did more than my fair share of drinking and dancing and shenanigans when I was at uni (for 7 years so there was plenty of partying!) so maybe I am just ready to be old before my time...

Here we are all dressed up. Don't scrub up to bad considering only a few hours before I was showjumping and Jase was covered in grease repairing our dam irrigation pump! and yes I know I look pregnant in that photo but trust me I am not (or it would be a pickled bub by now!). That will teach me for slouching.

I adore this dress - it was just so lovely to wear.
Ironically I was worried about Elka staining it before I left home as she was keen for lots of hugs once I was dressed (I swear they have a sixth sense!). But I TRASHED it at the reception - starting with dropping a knife of butter on to it and ending with about seven champagne drip stains. It is still at the dry cleaners as their first attempt didn't remove all the stains... I am hopeful that it can be rescued as I am planning an encore wearing at an engagement party in Sydney in a few weeks!