Only One Leaf..

How cute is this? Jaz did a drawing of a flower and caterpillar today. The flower only has one leaf because the caterpillar apparently ate the other one. She said she was also colouring the catapillar was coloured in a pattern because Mary (her teacher) does patterns at pre-prep. She started out doing a pattern on the flower as well but I think she forgot about that part way through. LOL I am just amazed at how much her drawing is progressing, she is really getting creative now. I just love it!

I’m going to be an Auntie again! - and about Kyan’s weaning

Ok, finally I can tell all! I have been dying to write about it in my blog. I spoke to my brother tonight as it is his birthday, and it is no longer hush hush so I can share now! YAY!

My brother and his wife are having a baby. They are now 15wks along and I am a tad excited! It will be so cool to be an auntie again and it will be lovely to be that much closer to them not long after the baby is born. The baby is due in November so we may be up there while the baby has that beautiful newborn look. I can’t wait to have cuddles!

I do still get clucky when I see newborns, but thankfully it dissappears as soon as they are out of sight. LOL As much as I adore children, I definately don’t want anymore. Two is plenty for us and there is no way I could handle going through all of that again. I am way to petrified of loosing another baby. Sooo an being an auntie again is a wonderful way to do it! He he!

And on the subject of babies, my baby is growing up! He has slowly been getting better and better at drinking soy milk, and we have discovered he prefers fresh soy to UHT. Anyway, I felt he was now drinking enough that he would drink more of it if I started dropping breastfeeds, so on Saturday since Dean didn’t have to go to work, I slept in and let Dean give him his soy milk and breakfast, and by the time I got up he wasn’t remotely concerned. We did the same again on Sunday and it worked well.

This morning Dean did the normal routine where he let Kyan in the room to come wake me up and of course the usual routine is to go and feed him once I get up so that didn’t work so well and the poor little man was rather upset that I wasn’t taking him to the chair I feed him in. I ended up leaving the room and got Dean to give him some soy milk in the chair and then put him in his highchair to give him some toast. When I then came back in he was fine. So tomorrow, Dean is going to come and get me himself when Kyan is already eating his toast in his highchair. Then I can give him his cereal and his tummy will be full and he won’t be worried about a breastfeed.

Then tonight, I went to give him his evening feed as I was going to continue them for a little while longer before dropping them as well and Kyan had about 3 mouthfulls and he didn’t want anymore! I will try again tomorrow night but I suspect even if he does want some there won’t be much there to have. I have a suspicious feeling that tonights was his last feed. Not sure whether to be happy or sad about that! I am sooo looking forward to having dairy again but at the same time, he is the last baby and I kinda wanted to prolong it as long as I could. Oh well, if he doesn’t feed tomorrow night I am going to have me a milo or some icecream! MMMM Baskin Robins here I come!

Photos of the house…

Ok, so the nap didn’t happen, Kyan woke sooner than I expected so that idea went down the gurgler as it so often does! LOL

So I guess I had better to what I promised and post those photos, then I need to get started on the June Newsletter for clikchic designs! I am dying to do a kit at the moment, I am missing designing after weeks of being snowed under with other things like, broken computers and boring bookwork etc.

Ok, to start with I thought I would post a photo of our current house, it is an old photo (pre-renovations) but you get the idea - the front hasn’t really changed much from this photo. It is old, tiny and in dire need of paint. We will have to finish of some minor bits and pieces of the renovations and have it painted before we sell. I am going to miss my wonderful kitchen when we move! I am so loving having a gas cooktop. I guess eventually we can put one in the new house.

Ok, looking at the photo, it has changed a little! LOL The front door has moved from behind that window to the left end of the verandah. The other changes are behind the trees, so you can’t really see them, but the roofline has changed a bit as we raised the roof a bit during the renovations to bring it to council standards. (the ceiling was pretty awful anyway so it has made a HUGE improvement - it had tons of cover strips over it because of lots of boards on the ceiling all at different angles and with wierd joins)

This is the front of the new house…

One of the garages will be converted to an spare bedroom for the granny flat. Underneath is a workshop and of course the granny flat, and the main house is upstairs..

The sunroom will likely be used as a rumpus room. Neither of us a big fans of sunrooms so we both like the idea of changing it a little down the track to make it look more like a rumpus and less like a sunroom. We also like the idea of changing the lounge sliding door to the front door instead of the one in the sunroom as it will likely always be filled with toys everywhere! LOL

This is obviously the pool! We are going to fence of the concrete area so that the kids cannot access the pool from the house. The idea of the kids falling into the pool or what have you scares me to bits so it will give me piece of mind, even if it doesn’t look pretty. Fencing around the pool and yard will be done straight away as the kids also need a safe place to play outside where they cannot get to the road. Ideally I would LOVE glass fencing but Dean says it costs a fortune, so I guess that is not an option.

This photo is from the rear of the property, as you can see it is a LARGE block 2/3rds of an acre. Dean will have ‘FUN’ mowing!

What’s holding me back?

Dean and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in a very long time, which was lovely. It was a good chance to talk about our move to the coast etc, we have so many things we need to work out and organise between now and when it happens. I am finding it all a bit overwhelming to tell the truth… not so much the moving but how we are going to go about selling the business and all that is involved with it. Neither of us have ever done anything like this before and don’t really know where to start. Thank goodness one of Dean’s close friends is a solicitor, and between him and our parents who have backgrounds in business we will get there somehow.

Another good thing that came out of it is I think I have worked out what has been holding me back and what has made it so hard to make a decision about it. I have had a nagging feeling about the move that has been really bothering me and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Dean brought it up at dinner as he drove past the cemetary yesterday and he thought of it.

Jacob’s ashes are buried here, and moving away will mean we will not be able to visit him very easily. While we do not visit that often it is nice to know we are close by. As soon as Dean mentioned it my eyes started welling up as I realised what we would be leaving behind. It really feels like we are leaving him behind to fend for himself. Of course logically that makes no sense, but that is what it feels like, and it also feels like a part of me will be left behind here.

I couldn’t work out why I have been feeling so tied to this city and like it wasn’t right to move away. I have never been overly attached to the city and all the things like my favourite gp, hairdresser and dentist are important, they have never been something that I would normally be THAT worried about that I would want to avoid moving for. I have never been overly attached to places (well except maybe Holland) and love the adventure of starting somewhere new. I have been wanting to move out of this city for a long time and never actually wanted to move back here. We only did because Dean wanted to finish his degree, and at the time, the plan was to move back to Brisbane once he was done. Well obviously that never eventuated and I kind of felt stuck here. I WANTED to move away.. so now I know why I feel so tethered to this place. I don’t want to leave my darling baby boy behind. Even now as I write this my eyes are welling up at the thought. It is going to be so incredibally hard to leave him behind.

Dean made some suggestions to make it easier, such as getting an identical plaque made to what we have at the cemetary and bring it with us. He suggested getting some of the soil from where he was buried at the cemetary to make it feel like he was still with us, but I wouldn’t feel right about doing that. What if there were ashes of other babies buried there as well. (he doesn’t have his own grave) We do however have a very small amount of ashes still in the box we were given them in. We can take them with us and perhaps bury them somewhere special.

I feel a lot better knowing what that nagging feeling is but it is still going to be hard leaving Jacob behind. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before now. I have been sitting on the fence about the move for weeks and I just couldn’t work out what that nagging feeling was, so at least I know now. Now I just need to work through it and see it is a moving on in our lives.

Dad emailed me some photos of the house so I will post them a little later, right now the couch and a nap are beckonning!

The View

I was going through some old photos to see if I could find a photo of the house we are buying. I couldn’t find one but I did find this one. I took it Christmas Morning 2004. I was pregnant with Kyan and couldn’t sleep so got up and went outside with my camera to watch the sunrise.

This is the view from the front yard/verandah. It is a semi rural area but still very close to a major shopping centre and schools etc. A dear friend from school also lives at the coast so it will be wonderful to live closer to her. (Hey Al! ::waving::)

I am sure I have a photo of the house on the computer here somewhere… just gotta find it!

Moving!

Well it looks like we might be moving to the Sunshine Coast!

My parents (::waving:: -> Hi mum and dad!) have made us an offer that is too good to refuse. Dean was all for it as soon as he heard about it, but it has been a lot harder for me to make my mind up on the idea for various reasons. We were thinking of doing this in the next two years but thanks to our apprentice resigning this may now be happening a lot sooner.. preferably before Jaz starts prep.. but hopefully at least within the year.
We both love the idea of being closer to family and having better quality of life which the move should potentially bring. We would be purchasing my parents house which is a HUGE step up from what we have now. (tiny 3 bedroom weatherboard home) Finally we would have the space to spread out, and one of the great things is that Dean would be able to work from home….no more staff to worry about!

The hard part is that we have to somehow sell our business which will not be easy..upholstery is not exactly an industry where there are tons of people out there in the trade who might want such an opportunity. (well established business with very good name)

Another thing that breaks my heart is that we will have to move Jasmine away from her friends. We broke the idea to her today and she was in tears at the thought of leaving her kindy friends. I know she is young and she will bounce back but heartbreaking nonetheless. I was really liking the idea that she would have an easier time settling into prep because she would have her kindy friends right there with her.. I did manage to cheer her up with the idea of decorating her new room (pink of course!), having a nice big rumpus room and pool etc.

Then there is all the little things.. I am just so settled here… we have a great gp, Jaz and Kyan go to great swimming lessons, we have a great dentist and hairdresser, Jaz was going to go to ballet with her kindy friends next year. Ugh, I hate the idea of finding a new gp, hairdresser and dentist! It has taken me 15 years to find the ones we have now! I LOVE them and want them to come with us to the coast! LOL
It will also mean I will have to go back to full time work, at least for a few months, perhaps permanently depending on how things go. I am hoping I will at least be able to drop back to part time once we have settled in a bit, but I guess we will see how things go. Dean worked out we will actually be paying $300 less a month in loans so it may even be feasable for me to still stay home. (best case scenario!) It has also been suggested to me that I might do bookwork and or webdesign on a contractor basis, and that is something I have considered here before, but it just isn’t practical in this house, but in the new house, there would be much more storage space and office space (concentration!) to do something like that.

Big positives, family close by, wow we could actually go on a DATE now and again, imagine that! Pool! How great will that be.. although, also scares me to bits with kids.. oh to have a decent size house and a SPARE bedroom! WOW how extravagant! Oh and an Ensuite! now that IS luxury! LOL Dean will be home when the kids get home from school… BIG bonus.. he will see the kids more often even if he has to work weekends for whatever reason.

I am not looking forward to the idea of looking for work again. Ugh, will have to update my resume…on the bright side at least pay will be better at the coast than here. Pay really sucks in Toowoomba! He he, at least I can also make my resume look REALLY spiffy thanks to digiscrapping, and Dean’s too! He he

Oh well it is late again and I am off to bed… we have a lot of planning ahead of us. Yucko..

To Be A Mother

Jaz and I were mucking around with the camera the other day and I took some closeup shots of the pair of us. I tried the same with Kyan but he didn’t oblige quite as well! All I got was a shot of the back of his head and part of mine with a grimace on my face! LOL

Anyway.. trying to scrap out my missing inspiration but it isn’t quite happening.. all things considered I am quite happy with the layout allthough I might add a bit to it later in the week.

Kyan has been teething molars and consequently has been waking lots at night.. he got his two top molars and then all of a sudden three nights in a row he slept till 7.30am! It was pure bliss! Of course now he has started night waking again, and he has huge lumps on his bottom gum so I am pretty sure the next two are on the way.

At my gp’s suggestion we tried him with lactose free milk. We tried Saturday and Sunday and both days he was very unsettled afterwards. I might try one more time and if he does it again then I think we can be pretty sure it isn’t lactose intolerance. He seems to like fresh soy better than UHT stuff tho so we will try and get that as much as possible from now on. He is VERY slowly increasing his intake of soy milk, and Dean is starting to give him some when he gets up with him in the mornings in the hopes of reducing his morning breastfeed. If he keeps increasing his soy milk intake I will drop his morning feed and work towards dropping his evening feed as well.

I am really feeling the lack of calcium at the moment from not having dairy and with the change of weather to dry weather my restless legs is playing up big time, along with aching joints. Out of sheer desperation I took a calcium suppliment, thankfully with the one off no ill effects and the restless legs stopped! YEAH!

Jaz has yet another bladder infection with blood in the urine and elevated lucosites (sp?)… same as last time. She complains of it hurting for half an hour or so and then it seems to dissappear.. very strange! Might have to chat to my gp further about it when I get a chance.

She has moved her practice out of town which I am not happy about! It is now a 20min drive to get to her surgery. I will keep going to her tho because it is just too hard to find a good doctor… tho I can always go to my old one for basic stuff.

Kyan, Jasmine and I are all coming down with a cold. Yuck!

Anyway, it is late so here endeth my update! LOL

Sniff Sniff…

Well it seems I didn’t make it to round three of the Ultimate Digiscrapper competition. I am a tad dissappointed although not overly surprised since the competition was pretty stiff.. there were a lot of awesome entries in that gallery!

It is a shame, the next challenge sounded like fun, and I had just the photos for it, but never mind! Better luck next time!

Here are my two layouts, since I am no longer in the competition I guess I can post them to my blog!

This is the layout which made it through the first round. I LOVE this photo of Kyan.. one of these days i will have the layout framed, as well as another of Jasmine.

This is the one that didn’t make it through to the third round.

The writing is a bit hard to see in the preview, you can see the full size version in my gallery if you click on it, with the journalling also written underneath.

Anyway, at least I will have more time for CD again.. I was neglecting it a little bit, as the comp was chewing up my time. Anyway, maybe I will have better luck another time.

Who is Me?

Well my layout for round two of the Ultimate Digiscrapper challenge is up! Worked on it for a few hours last night and did some fine tuning today. I had to decide enough was enough and upload it already before I went nuts!

The diversity of the entries going up is very interesting to see.

Anyway, here is mine!

Made it through the first round! YEAH!

I am just so excited, I made it through the first round of the Ultimate Digiscrapper contest…four more to go! (with any luck!) Ok, so maybe that is a bit optimistic as there is some AMAZING talent in that competition. Of 290 entries, 200 made it through the first round, and next round it will be down to 100 entries.

Two other designers in the store also made it, contgrats to Kylie Clark (scallywag) and Shelleyrae! WAY TO GO! You can see Kylie’s layout here, and Shelleyrae’s here. And if you didn’t see it here is mine.

The next challenge is …

This week’s challenge should give us a glimpse of who you really are – how you see yourself through your own eyes! It’s really tough for most scrappers to scrap about themselves, but we’re in the business of preserving our family’s memories and that means us too!! Layout should include a photo (or photos) of yourself and meaningful thoughts of how you see yourself – “through your eyes”.

Should be interesting! It is never easy to write about yourself. Truth be told I have most of the layout done, as I did it mostly last night. Just doing a bit of tweeking at the moment to finish it off. If you want to see some of the entries already in the gallery, you can see them here.. I can see it is going to be a tough round again this week!

It was so exciting waiting for the results of who went on to the next round… good thing I am not a nail biter as I would not have many nails left by the end of this week!

Anyway, swimming day today so I had better get Kyan off for his nap and go have a shower before we go swimming. I will send another post when my latest layout is up so you can have a squiz if you want to.

Innocence

Well I did my first layout for the Ultimate Digiscrapper contest! YAY! Glad to have it done as I have been tweeking it most of the day! LOL

Unfortunately I cannot post it here as it must not be published anywhere else (including blogs) as part of the competition rules so if you want a look you will have to go look here.

It is a redo of an old layout I did of Kyan. I was never happy with it so thought this was a good opportunity to redo it. The challenge was to do a layout with a single good photo as the main focus. (well that is the gist of it anyway) I love this photo of Kyan so thought it a fitting choice for the challenge…  Hopefully I will make it to the next round! It is all a bit exciting! and FUN!

Had to laugh…

I get developmental milestone updates via email from babycentre.com, I always find them an interesting read.

Anyway, had to laugh at the one I got this morning, particularly in my sleep deprived state after only having had 3hrs sleep last night — partly my own fault, I was up late paying bills and doing the pays for the store designers. (I hate going to bed when stuff like that isn’t done!) Of course also Kyan’s fault who decided it would be a good idea to wake at 2.30am.

Anyway, I digress!

This is the update I got this morning… couldn’t be more appropriate for Kyan…

Just when you think you have your toddler all figured out, he can turn the tables on you. Even the most mild-mannered 13-month-olds will experiment with … how shall we say it? … undesirable behavior. If your normally happy-go-lucky toddler suddenly starts screaming, yelling, biting, and hitting, you can take some solace in knowing that his development is right on track. But that doesn’t make it much easier to deal with. Unfortunately, traditional discipline tactics don’t work very well for this age group, so between keeping your toddler out of the cat food and coping with tantrums, try to take a parent break. You may have to schedule it in advance, but building in some free time for yourself each week is the best way to refuel your patience tank 

Mind you, I don’t think I have ever figured this toddler out… Jasmine yes, but Kyan is a constant mystery! Thankfully he doesn’t bite or hit, but screaming and yelling are big favourites of his and there basically is no way to stop him from doing it.. we have tried everything..(well apart from smacking him which I will not do as I don’t believe smacking is a necessary form of dicipline) He is also extremely adept at throwing a good old fashioned tantrum.. thankfully not yet the kicking and screaming on the floor type tantrums but he knows how to let out a good yelling cry when he doesn’t get his way. He is also quite partial to cat food. We have now resorted to keeping it in the laundry.. the cat in his old age needs reminding sometimes that it is there, but at least Kyan can’t reach it now.

At least his screaming and yelling is just a developmental thing and should pass once he is better able to express himself with words. The tantrums don’t phase me, they are just irritating, particularly when you have company.

Obviously he is still to young to understand the concept of the time out corner… but I am looking forward to using it when he is old enough as it works brilliantly for Jasmine. She HATES it. But at least that means we don’t have to use it very often, as often the threat of her having to go in there is enough to get her to pull into line. If it isn’t, in she goes and after a few minutes of throwing a tantrum there, she is always ready to apologise and come out and do as we ask.

On the weekend, she played up at the swimming pool after Kyan’s swimming lesson. I was trying to dress Kyan and she was trying to play with him while I did so and it made it difficult to dress him so I asked her to stop, and she smacked me! It was only a light defiant, knee jerk reaction type smack but a smack nonetheless.  I think it is a result of the rough play she and Kyan have been doing lately. Anyway, since there was no timeout corner handy and she had been asking to go to the bakery, Dean took her straight out to the car while I finished dressing Kyan and no bakery for her. That was more than enough to get the message across! She was not very happy at the prospect of missing out on a treat.

She has been getting a lot more confident and outgoing lately, and it is showing not only in her play and how she interacts with people in a positive way, but also in how she behaves at home. She is also testing the bounderies a lot, and has started talking back at times. So we are hoping to nip that in the bud pretty quick before it gets worse.  She is a little more moody than she has been previously. Probably because she is no longer having day naps, and if she has a late night or a full on day, it really shows. We will have to be a bit more vigilant getting her to bed on time etc and making sure she has a rest after lunchtime watching a movie or something.

She also gets bored when there are holidays from Kinday. She so loves kindy and being able to play with her friends and all the extra stimulation she gets there.

Well you can tell when I haven’t had much sleep, I do start rambling! Had better go, Kyan is tugging at my arm… probably time for him to have a nap anyway…

Ultimate Digiscrapper

I did it, I entered the Ultimate Digiscrapper competition, it starts tomorrow, well actually today, but since it is US time, tomorrow for us. LOL Clear as mud eh?

Can I say it is absolutely HUGE! The prizes are huge also, so it is no wonder, but there are well over 350 entrants to date and a large portion of them are designers and design team members, so it will be an interesting event to say the least! Hopefully everyone will play nice and there won’t be too many bruised egos etc. LOL

I LOVE a good challenge/competition so I am really looking forward to it. I won’t lie, it does bring out my competitive streak (Hooymaayer family trait), which mostly remains dormant thank goodness, but on occasions like these I don’t mind letting it out in the nicest possible way! LOL (I will be driving Dean nuts I suspect! LOL)

The panel of judges is fabulous with some rather big name designers on board. They have done an amazing job of putting together such a great team and so many great prizes, $600 USD, a Wacom Graphics tablet and various digital scrapping store vouchers to name a few! I would love to have piece of that pie but given the list of participants I think I would be pretty lucky! Doesn’t stop me from trying tho! Should be fun! I can’t wait for the first challenge.

I am hoping to use my latest kit Not Too Shabby (pictured in side menu) as I have a few layout ideas swimming around my head with that kit, but I will have to wait and see what the challenges are of course. It will be a fabulous excuse to get a few layouts done which is the major reason for my participating in this challenge. I don’t do near enough layouts, but running clikchic designs, and designing kits so often dominates the little spare time I do have.

Anyway, I can’t wait till this challenge starts tomorrow…they are having a chat around lunchtime our time to launch it so I hope to make it, hopefully the kids will behave for me.
Quite a few of the clikchic designs team are participating, as are a few other Aussie Designers so good luck to you all! GO TEAM! LOL

Let the fun begin! (can ya tell I am excited???)