A diary of our family's house building project in the Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia. Also my ponderings on family life, living with Asperger's Syndrome, running an ebay business & a place to share my photography.

Wednesday 5 March 2008

Overwhelmed

We are officially overwhelmed & overloaded. I feel like standing on the roof & screaming it at the world. How hard can things get? Our days are mad, there's no other word for it. From 6.30am to 11pm at the earliest (it's 1am as I write this) we simply don't stop, apart from dinner. Every other minute of our very long days are busy & intense.
Ivy turned 2 ten days ago & decided she should be assertive & defiant now. Just like that, overnight. I couldn't believe it, still can't. So instead of her being bossed & bullied by Finn all day they now take it in turns. Oh, the joy! Not one but TWO screaming toddlers filling our ears all day.
Ivy's speech is also expanding at an almost alarming rate. This evening before dinner when she was getting tired she came up to me at my computer & said "I want some titty" (our term of endearment for a breast feed that she'd determined to not give up for a while yet). My reply: "not now ivy, Mummy's working & dinner will be ready soon". She gave me the cutest smile she could muster (which is about as cute as cute gets), held up one finger & waving it around says, "Just a little bit, just a tiny bit of titty!". Way too cute for anyone's good ( :
When she wakes in the morning she is VERY chatty so whoever is getting up with her needs to do it fast, otherwise Finn will wake up before he's ready & be grumpy all day. Neither Kim or I are great morning people so that getting up fast business is painful. Kim usually puts a pillow over his head when she wakes for her morning feed, so when she finishes & loudly says "I want to get up now!" I need to decide, in my sleepy stupor, if I can justify shaking him & asking him to get up or if I have had more sleep. it usually depends on night wakings. 2 nights ago Finn woke at 2am & screamed his high pitch scream for at least 30 minutes. We still don't know why. Of course then ivy woke & needed cuddling back to sleep for at least half an hour too. Last night Ivy had a tummy bug & wanted to go to the toilet at about 3am so I sat with her in the bathroom for ages while we chatted about the bath toys. Such fun!
They sleep either side of our bed, in their own beds. There are 2 reasons for this. We rent a 2.5 bedroom house & there are 6 of us. Brody sleeps in a Kombi van in the driveway. One room is my work room. Chelsea gets the .5 of a room. & the rest of us get the other room. BUT even if we had more rooms, we don't believe in sending babies to a room alone until they are ready. We receive a lot of eye rolls, direct criticism, shaking head, etc, for this. But what other species on earth sends their young to sleep apart from them from birth. I find it the most barbaric of practices imaginable! Chelsea & Brody slept with me until they started school & even after that they would sleep with me on weekends until they were 10ish. i loved it. it most definitely increases the bond & also the child's confidence, I've been noticing this for 17 years now in my & other's kids. 3 of my 4 kids have been incredible confident from a very early age, Finn is different but I hate to think how he'd be if he were born into a family who expected him to "be a big boy" before he was ready.
He's all over the place at the moment. So much aggression & screaming lately. We've seen our wonderful kineisiologist Antonia again today & she's put him on more supplements, the selenium did wonders but then we started iron which seems to have not agreed with him. it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few days.

House: we had some wonderful help from Kim's mum & step dad George & Barb & his brother & sister in law Pete & Renie over the weekend of Ivy's birthday (23rd Feb). So our joists are finished, the tie rods that attach the bearers into the footings are nearly done & the 1st layer of flooring (chipboard bought on eBay for $200) is almost finished being painted (to protect it from rain while Kim does the framing & gets a roof up). Coming along nicely.
We are totally broke at the moment. I had the embarrassment today of not being able to pay for my groceries. I had to go home, transfer funds from Brody's bank account into mine & rush back to the checkout chick who was holding my shopping for me to pay. My own silly fault for not checking before I went out, I was sure there was money there! I should be listing now instead of writing this but it's the 1st thing I've done for my own pleasure for days. Having people visit is lovely & makes for a nice break but when I'm not working it really costs. if I don't turn over about $150 a day I have to make up for it by doing bigger days to catch up. I've been a bit of a mess lately & not very efficient so our finances are really showing it. Telstra suspension notices, etc. I'm getting back on top of it now though, no Easter break for us!
Brody's been having another meltdown. Kim's been stepping in there to try & keep him afloat so I can keep working. He was taking with him til 11.30 pm last night. He's better today. It's complicated....
My Grandmother died yesterday. She was a good nan, although I didn't know her very well. I think she had a good life. She seemed to be always happy, I'll remember her for being a happy person, even if we weren't close. The saddest thing for me about her death was that I don't feel a sense of loss. I really wish I did. I just didn't have a relationship with her. I hope that my children will be sad when they lose their grandparents, it will mean that they had a close & loving relationship.
I'd better get some sleep, 1.30am now, will have to be up in 5 hours & do it all over again (unless I give Kim a shake!).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your little Ivy sounds like my Olivia! Charming indeed!

Thanks for the comment. It was a treat to get a note all the way from Australia! My husband lived in Sydney for a few years and I am hoping to visit Australia, someday.

Great hearing from you!

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