The Joy of Teleconferencing

Technology is fabulous.

Technology means a small girl can talk to her Daddy even when he is far away.

And the best thing about teleconferencing?

 Pants are entirely optional. No one will ever know...

Why I shouldn't window shop online

I have a crush.

A hat crush.

Isn't it beautiful?

I would wear this to go to the markets. I would wear it to the pool and while strolling along the shoreline. I am a hat person. It grew on me slowly. It's an occupational hazard. 

Here is a picture of a woman (who's not me) wearing it in a colour (that I don't want). And it's still gorgeous (especially since it's not me).

Unfortunately, it's not available from an Australian retailer, and shipping from overseas somehow costs more than the hat itself. So my hat crush will go unrequited. Johnny Depp and this hat have a lot in common.

LOLZ for Kate

Kate over at 'Killing a fly' asked for lolz.

Here are a couple from the Accidental Household:

 

Providence

My friend had a baby a month and a half after I did. She took a little while off work but had to go back, part time, due to her family's financial situation. Things are pretty tight for her family and I try to support her where I can. I helped her develop a budget, I give encouragement when she asks for it, and we only hang out together at places where we can be frugal - think fewer shoppping trips, far more park, swimming and walking dates.

She mentioned the other day that she and her husband are trying for another baby. This is great, exciting news! To be rich in family is clearly so much better than to be rich financially. However, it will be tough for them.

A few nights ago, very late, I had a sudden feeling - it was a drive, a brain wave. It came to me from nowhere. I climbed out of bed, went right to the back of the pantry and pulled out the dusty bottle of pregnancy vitamins that I had consistantly forgotten to take during my pregnancy. I had almost a full jumbo bottle of pills left.

I was meeting my friend the next afternoon, and I took the vitamins to her. I handed them over it like it was no big deal, just threw them into her nappy bag with an "I thought you might be able to use these". I certainly didn't expect her to be as overwhelmed and thankful as she was. It took me totally by surprise. 

It turns out she had run out of her pregnancy vitamins the night before, so the next morning she headed straight to the chemist. But she didn't buy any - they were all too expensive for her strict budget. She had stood there in the chemist, struggling with the dilemma of buying sufficient groceries for her family, or baby vitamins for a child not yet conceived. She sensibly picked the food. However, greater forces were at work. Somehow the amazing universe pulled together and made sure she got what she needed. I bet that a healthy baby comes along soon too!

Teddy bear, teddy bear....

Oh hello there!  

My name is Balthasar. (You can call me Balty for short, I'm sure we'll be great friends.)

 

I will be tucked into a stocking on Christmas eve, to make a little baby girl very happy.

I'm looking foward to it! I dressed up especially. Just look at my snuggly jumper, it has snowflakes, just like my home at the North Pole.

And look at my snuggly hood. It's perfect for keeping my ears warm during sleigh rides with Santa.

I hope it is suitable for my new home in Australia. Tropical Australia. I guess we'll find out....

See you soon Baby!

I should be sleeping

"I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, 'cause I'm Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. 'What about getting 5 hours sleep?' 'Oh, that's Morning Guy's problem. That's not my problem, I'm Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want.' So when you get up in the morning, you're exhausted, groggy: 'Ooooh I hate that Night Guy!' See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. There's nothing Morning Guy can do. The only thing Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy loses his job and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore."

-Jerry Seinfeld.

This is me, without the going out.

I'm going to bed now.... or I might clean the bathrooms, sew my friends' Christmas presents, wash the dogs, do some laundry, write to my grandpa or surf the net. But I really should go to bed.

A very early Christmas "tree"

I haven't been feeling very festive.

It's hard being festive when some days you feel like you are the only one hanging out on your branch.

I'm probably missing Mr Accident a little. Probably.

Normally I wouldn't be concerned about Christmas this early but I need to get motivated, and bring a little festive spirit into the Accidental Home. I am planning to make my friends Christmas presents and give them out at the family centre Christmas party in just one week. One week! Oh dear.

It didn't feel right putting up the whole Christmas tree, and with a sucky, energetic, mobile baby it seemed like a doubly bad idea. Instead I dragged half a dead tree home from the scrub near the house, pruned it back and stuck it up with little clear hooks and string. It's well clear of Baby, fills up some serious wall space, and is very low effort. And when Christmas is over? Just rescue the few scant ornaments and drag the rest outside for the gardener to deal with. That is about the maxium effort I am willing to expend on decorating for Christmas, especially this early.

The good news is I am now well on the way with the presents. Here is the prerequisite 'Baby's First Christmas' ornament. It looks a little out of place, but I love it anyway.

There, doesn't that look better?

Mr Bibbity Bobbity Bunny has a bath

We had an unpleasant incident here today.

This is Mr Bibbity Bobbity Bunny. He is a particular friend of Baby. His little ears are just the right size for grabbing, to drag him along while crawling towards adventure.

His belly is just the right size for two little hands to circle and squeeze. His face is very understanding when there are babbling baby secrets to be told.

Unfortunately, Mr Bibbity Bobbity was a little too adventurous today. He was shown what Baby had for lunch yesterday. A light sponge bath wasn't going to cut it, so he was well and truly washed, and now he is hanging in the laundry looking particularly sorry for himself.

But tomorrow he will be dry and smell like Mrs Gardener's Jasmine and Chamomile, which is a vast improvement on his pungent scent an hour ago. Poor Mr Bibbity Bobbity Bunny.

I won!

Against *enormous* odds, I won a giveaway over at "Killing a Fly with a Ukulele... is probably the wrong thing to do"! A whole $50 to spend as I like at Buyster Lighting. I didn't even know this online store existed, but they have some nice stuff.

Now the challenge is picking out something that I like, that doesn't have me blowing the budget. Because I do have a very soft spot for Tiffany lamps, like this one.

But I already have a Tiffany table lamp (thanks Mum!) so another would just be greedy. Perhaps a Tiffany floor lap? It would look fabulous beside my favourite reading chair.

But wait, look at this! So cute! So green! Perfect for the jungle themed nursery...

But in the end, I looked in my wallet, counted my pennies, and went with this one:

Sensible. Practical. Flexible. Perfect for the dark dark sewing room. It is actually cute in it's own way - it looks like it has a cheeky personality tucked under it's bonnet.

And since I've given a shameless plug for the Buyster Lighting (my affections are for sale, and at a low low price!) I will now plug Kate's blog, too. Go and pay her a visit, her kids are cute, her dog is naughty, and her adventures make excellent reading.

Go on... I'll be here when you get back.

Hill walking

There is a massive hill near my house.

(this is not my house)

I try and hill walk every day.

Not necessarily this hill. Sometimes it's just the hill between the bedroom and the kitchen. That can be a big hill some mornings.

Sometimes it's the emotional hill of dropping my beautiful baby at childcare. That's a pretty big hill.

But when I wake up early and fresh enough, and I have time to get up and back down and still beat the tropical heat, I walk this hill.

Baby loves it, I leave her in her pyjamas and she nods off again.

That's me looking all sweaty and red there.  That's baby, sleeping like.. a baby. When I'm old and grey I'm going to make her push me up this hill in my wheelchair.

My favourite bit of the whole hill is not the view, although it's spectacular.

It's not the interesting flora or fauna.

It's this bit.

This is where I have a rest on the way up.

Taking the occasional rest is very important, on every hill. Even the bedroom to kitchen ones.

Especially when you didn't realise that the wheels on the stroller were completely flat, and it feels like you've been pushing wet sand uphill. Not that I'd know anything about that. My stroller wheels are always fully pumped. Aren't yours?

Diary of a Mum

Make baby a tiny fruit salad. Baby eats some fruit salad. Baby gets bored. Baby tries to take spoon. Give baby own spoon. Baby digs into bowl and flicks pawpaw onto my clean shorts. Make mental note to change shorts.

Feed baby more fruit. Baby uses her spoon as a sword and parries every mouthful. Take baby’s spoon. Baby refuses to eat any more fruit. Soft lumps are Too Much Like Hard Work. Baby still hungry. Five minutes until we have to leave.

Get yoghurt. Hide hated cereal in yoghurt as extra iron. Feed baby yoghurt. Baby finds cereal, complains. Feed baby more yoghurt. Baby eats it anyway. Baby is getting tired eyes. Rubs hands from yoghurt covered mouth into eyes and through hair. Baby falls asleep coated in yoghurt. Pick up baby. Knock bowl and get yoghurt on shorts. Underline mental note to change shorts.

Wash sleeping baby. Change sleeping baby’s nappy. Rush sleeping baby out the door, 5 minutes behind time.

Drive to Rhyme Time. Misread the clock, actually one hour early.
Sit in car while baby sleeps. Forgot book, read carseat manual instead. Wish library opened an hour earlier.

Baby wakes up for Rhyme Time. Go inside. Realise I forgot to change shorts and the stains look dodgy. Hold squirming baby on my lap for the hour in an effort to hide shorts. Smile encouragingly as the librarian wrangles 30 toddlers from the Future Soccer Hooligan Development Program.

Best friend arrives. Notices stains in less than a minute. Laughs, compares stains. Mine are newer but larger. Leave Hooligans, get coffee.

Pizza

Friday night in the Accidental Household is Pizza Night. This usually goes hand in hand with Beer Night!

I have been keeping up the tradition about once a month while Mr Accident has been away, but not necessarily on a friday - I'm lucky if I know exactly what day of the week it is, most of my days seem to run happily together.

I bought a pizza today, one of the frozen, boxed types. It was "Double Beef 'n' Bacon" apparently. But when I read the ingredient list it was a nasty surprise. It started out with flour, water and cheese. Fair enough. But then... what's this? "Manufactured Bacon"? At least it actually contained pork as the main ingredient. As I read further, I passed tomato paste and onions to reach "Manufactured Beef". Oh dear. This contained no beef at all. None. Just thickener, flavour and salt. Yuck! I was rapidly losing my appetite.

Since I am loathe to skip pizza night all together, it looks like I will have to make my own from now on. Any tips are greatly appreciated!

Baby bum

It took a long while to convince me that cloth nappies would work for my family. I thought of them as smelly, unsanitary, laundry inducing nightmares. I had visions of soaker buckets and leakage. I was so so wrong.

I use peapods, and I love them. They have a waterproof liner attached to a poly lining, and then you stuff a bamboo insert inside. They close with press studs sewn onto the nappy, so they are no harder to put on than a normal disposable. They don't need soaking, I just put them in a lidded bucket and wash them each evening with the daily normal load. Too easy!

The best part is that now my bin isn't full up, and it smells much nicer.

Oh, who am I kidding. The best part is the adorable, massive, cloth baby bum. Look at this!

 

mmmmm, muffins

Now that my teeny jeans fit (just thought I'd mention that again...) it means my not-so-teeny jeans don't fit.

In fact, the jeans I bought as skin tight two years ago are now positively loose. They have progressed from "skinny" jeans to the "boyfriend" jeans look. This is fine because I like the casual look, and probably wear it more often than is strictly socially acceptable. However, I also need a decent pair of dark, skinny jeans. It's a wardrobe staple, I'm sure you understand.

So I hustled down to the shops while baby was in daycare (more on that in a later post, probably) and searched out a suitable pair. And while I was there, I met the lady who, in my opinion, is single handedly responsible for every muffin top in Townsville.

For those who don't know, a muffin top is the result of too tight jeans meeting... well, too many muffins, really. Here's an example:

photo by Malingering

Muffin tops are scary. Muffin tops are the result of delusion. Muffin tops should be outlawed - they can make perfectly slim girls look like behemoths just because their jeans are one size too small.

The shop assistant didn't just want to sell me jeans, she wanted me to walk out of that shop with a muffin top, too. She insisted on it. She tried to convince me that the comfortable, flattering pants that I had chosen were a size too large, because they had a teeny little bit of extra space under my bum. Now, I do not have masses of junk in my trunk, but I am certainly not going to aim for a shrink wrapped tush if the cost is a muffin mountain swelling out just two inches away! I know what looks worse.

I shudder to think of how many women this professional jeans-fitter has advised, and how many have fallen for the "one size too small sell down". It must be a lot, because I see them around every day. It can't be sensible for all these girls walking around with their hip joints compressed, and unable to sit down comfortably. I would understand if it made them look better, like high heels, but it seems to be pain with no gain.

So, repeat after me ladies, you might be able to do them up, but it does NOT make them okay. Check the mirror!

Bedroom Makeover Part Two

Here it is! Finally! Part two of the bedroom makeover, the "after" shots.

Now I'm no Pioneer Dooce Nester blogger, my photos are very very inartistic and don't fully express the way I feel about this room. But stick with me, we'll give it a go anyway!

No, silly, that's the before shot. I didn't spend good time and money aiming for dorm room chic (but that sure is a cute baby).

This is the after shot:

See those big gorgeous pillows? I heart them. Lots. And they were cheeeeeeap - we could have bought the ones with the proper down filling for a kabillion dollars, but since we aren't going to actually sleep on them, just recline gracefully and read, and maybe have a pillow fight or two, we went for the polystuffing option. They still look great though.

And see the pretty lamps?



Ohhh, I LOVE lamp. It took a while to find ones at the right height and price, but Target came through for me.

Finally, here's the bit that was holding up the grand reveal:

A ragamuffin wreath, in the tradition of the Nester's famous ragamuffin garlands. I bought some old shirts from the Salvation Army in the largest sizes I could find (they make huge shirts!) and chopped them up. This was heaps cheaper than buying fabric new, and I didn't have any blue toned material in my stash.

Because I am not very good at slapdash, I tied the different fabrics on in a set pattern, but I did get casual enough to cut very roughly and leave on all the buttons. I think it makes it cuter! It only took an afternoon, including buying the shirts, chopping them all up, making the wreath frame, playing with the baby, tying on the fabric strips, working out how to hang the wreath and heading back out to buy hooks, and then actually putting it all up on the wall.

That's the initial of our surname stuck there in the middle. I think I might pull it back down and paint it white, but I want to live with it in it's natural state for a few days and see if it grows on me. I'm lazy like that.

I am so happy with the new bedroom; it's gone from a place of mild decorative annoyance to a room I really love.

Cranky

I've got my grumpy pants on today.

Mr Accident has been trying to call me all day.

It's hard for him to get time to talk. He has an important job and he's very busy.

We made a time to talk but he couldn't make it. It wasn't his fault. And so we made another one. And he couldn't make that one either. So we made another....

But he rings up to tell me he doesn't have time to call. I end up sitting here all day waiting, like a fat girl with halitosis on prom night.

And when he does ring, the baby's just nodded off and gets frightened awake. Or I'm juggling nappies at bath time. Or I'm elbow deep in... never mind.

So when he did finally have time to talk, I was so grumpy about not being able to talk to him all day I couldn't even hold up my end of the conversation. And so now I'm even more grumpy. Harrummppff.

Mr Accident, I miss you!

Skinny jeans

I think every woman probably has a pair of jeans in her cupboard that she would love to fit into again. The pair that looked fabulous and fitted like a glove in uni, before the kids and the husband and the work busyness crept those extra few kilos on behind when you weren't looking.

I have seen bloggers who exhort their minions to throw away those jeans, to free themselves from the emotional baggage tied up in that well tailored, tight, blue denim. I read those posts and liked them at the time, but was not sufficiently convinced (or too lazy) to actually go through my cupboard, dig them out, and tip my hopes and dreams into the charity bin.

Because that's what those jeans were - an aspirational marker. A yardstick to measure my girth. Something to strive for. Even while I was convinced that those buttons would never meet the holes ever again, the distance that I could drag the jeans up my thighs was a more important measure to me than the number on the scales.

Then one day, today, I dragged those jeans out and put them on. And after months of schlepping the baby up and down a hill, eating non-man sized meals, and dedicated breastfeeding, I have done it. I can put those jeans on and pull them right up. I can do up the buttons, all three of them. Sure, I can't sit down in them yet, and my jubbly post baby muffin above the jeans precludes me from ever wearing them in public, but they FIT!

And I am so so glad I kept them.

Super sweet cubby

I made Soph a super sweet cardboard cubby house.


It has doors to crawl through.

Windows for peek-a-boo.

A little skylight for peeking up at Mummy.

The only problem is, she likes it so much she won't stay still for photos.