25 January 2010

2009...

Thought I'd follow B Sharp's lead here, in the spirit of sharing

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Have a Caesarian section; toilet train a toddler; made an old fashioned christmas pudding in a pudding basin.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
I resolved to get a cleaner (snap, BSharp!), and no - we didn't do it. Something to do with tight-assed-ness or not being able to justify it due to the uncertainty of incomes. My poor, chapped, dish-pan hands are red with anger - I could never be a domestic godess! One day we will do it!!

My New Year's resolutions, would be:
- to be less of a glutton and exercise more (but I always find that I do when I do or when I can, respectively).
- to find more things to keep my son entertained, and get him eating a wider range of healthy foods.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Population explosion!
My sister-in-law had her third (but my first niece), the day before Angel had her little boy.
Two of my Mummy friends - Katie and Anita - had second babies;
Friends Fiona, Sally and Hannah had little boys;
Colleague Yogi had her first;
and many many others seem to have been concieved, due this year!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. A friend is thankfully in remission from breast cancer.

5. What countries did you visit?
None. Sigh! Good for my carbon footprint, though.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
An insulated roof; a career (or the inkling of one).

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
24 July - my daughter's birthday. Because she was born then!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
A year of lots of little things - nothing stands out.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Going on maternity leave without a certain job to return to in 2010. You can only do a few jobs for 2 years or less before you start to wonder if it's "me, not them". But I'm not sure I care that particular job much either, so does that make it a failure?

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Only colds, the odd sore back, eczema and athsma.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Hmmm. A few things:
- some nice new shrubs (to go in the mega plant pots we inherited from a former neighbour) and a bench, for our courtyard. It's actually nice to sit out there now!
- ceiling fans for the bedrooms, and a bath for our bathroom.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage/house, grocery shopping, child care fees.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Meeting our daughter Astrid after carrying her for 9 months.
My son sleeping through the night without a nappy.
Getting my plant-growing mojo back.

14. What song will always remind you of 2009?
"Starman" by Bowie and "Rocket Man" by Elton John. Happy memories of the whole family singing along in the car.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Both.

Happier - because I don't have morning sickness, and puddles to clean up on the floor, and because I seem to have learned something as I am finding motherhood easier this time around.

Sadder about a few things - a friend left for Canada permanently and she left a bigger hole in my life than I'd anticipated. Sad also that my nephew has been diagnosed with Autism, and it means a lot of life-long challenges for my brother's family.

b) thinner or fatter?
Fatter, due to not having morning sickness, and not managing to swim/gym very often.

c) richer or poorer?
About the same. We own slightly more of our house.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
- going on holidays
- reading
- sleeping
- swimming

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
- yelling: "NO!" "Stop (insert mischievous deed)!" "Right! In the naughty corner, and STAY there until I say!!"
- vomiting (see morning sickness comments, above).

18. How will you spend Christmas?
Waves of family visits to us this time.

19. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes - this time with my beautiful daughter.

20. What was your favorite TV program?
The Wire (snap again, BSharp!) - we joined the digital age when we got a hand-me-down set top box from Angel and DrJ, and strated watching it from the beginning on ABC2. However, we have just started renting it out on video, because you pick up more of the dialogue when you can put on subtitles!! That Baltimore accent can be challenging!!

21. What was the best book you read?
Probably "Maus" by Art Speigelman. Also enjoyed "The time traveller's wife" and "the lovely bones". None of these were very challenging to read, which reflects my brief windows of opportunity for reading in the past year.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
No idea. Must have been a DVD I rented, but I can't remember. It certainly wasn't the lastest Harry Potter movie...

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
34. We celebrated my birthday on the Sunday before, due to hubby having a yucky breakfast meeting on the actual day. I remember getting to lie in bed reading unpestered for a few luxurious hours, and possibly even a bath....

24. What kept you sane?
Um... I think I may be less sane...

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I need a drop down list for this kind of stuff - no one comes to mind.

26. Who did you miss?
My brother (even though he's been on another island for a long time); I still miss being able to just drop by my parent's place and hang out; Annik who left with her little boy for Canada to be closer to her parents; BSharp (but she's back now!); and it's getting generally harder to meet up with many friends due to our vastly different lifestyles (e.g. us having kids and them not. But that will get easier as the kids get older).

27. Who was the best new person you met?
My neighbour up the corridor - Leili. Fantastic to meet a mother of 3 older children who's been through it all! So nice to have a neighbour who is friendly, and whom you can help and be helped.

Help needed with new-fangled internet anagrams!

I need some help with the following anagrams.  What on earth do the following mean?

- LMAO - little men all overwrought?
- LMFAO - same with "fricken" in there?

I can't, for the life of me, think what they are meant to mean. I DO know that "LOL" means "laugh out loud", but reckon it is way over-used, and could be written just as briefly as "ha ha!" much of the time.

I know admitting this makes me un-hip, but I'm a mother of two so that was going to happen sooner or later anyway. (That, and I was never considered cool anyway, except to my dear best-friend/husband.)

So folks? Any more tech savvy people able to enlighten me? While you're at it, are there any other anagrams I've missed?

14 January 2010

Random thoughts...

Dried up roses in vases...
... in my friend's kitchen. I noticed that since I'd seen her last her belly hadn't grown, and all flicker of humour was absent from her face today. A mutual friend confirmed what I'd feared. She's lost a(nother) baby.

Hubby is acting more chipper as if to compensate, but he briefly ruffles my baby's hair then escapes quickly to the bathroom. I can see that with each miscarriage and year past 40, this all just gets harder.

"My figure is hardly perfect but..."
...is it just me or do a grotesque number of the fellas I went to school with now have beer guts and fat necks? I'm not in contact with these people, but I inadvertently see their photos when I nose around in other people's facebook albums when my friends are tagged there. Serves me right to go snooping.

In other news experts can now confirm that TV watching is bad for you. Not because it gives you square eyes, but because you are sedentary for a long time. Come to think of it, you are too when you sit at the compture for a long time. I'm outa here!

Band on the Rug

Happy new year, folks!

Our christmas was good this year - we had family come stay with us in waves - C-chan's family for xmas, and my parents for the new year. I'm finding these days when family come to stay, it's a good thing mostly because I get a chance to hand over the kids to someone else and get some things done! C-chan and I enjoyed designing a christmas day menu, shopping for it, & making it, after 3 years in a row of visiting Radelaide for christmas. We got the odd opportunity to go out and see a movie or go out for dinner. Our baby is a pretty good sleeper, and sleeps for at least 6 hours in her first nightly stretch, and is usually down by 7pm, which has meant going out is possible. We had a full house, yet our house guests were pretty good - we had a nice mix of hanging around at home, getting out and about, and my parents went off by themselves once or twice to give us a little bit of space.

The Grandparents of course went gaga over the baby Astro Girl, whilst our little 3 1/2 year old  E-chan ensured he had attention by talking non-stop for a few weeks. This almost drove me nuts. I couldn't think clearly, and almost every conversation I tried to have was talked over the top of constantly. At times I just had to tune out so I could follow a thought through to it's logical conclusion, but often if we didn't acknowledge what he said, he would repeat the same thing over and over - broken record style - until he got a response. Nothing would stop him from talking - even though he was getting plenty of attention. Eventually we challenged him to see how long he could stay quiet. He lasted 53 seconds! Finally on New Year's Day, the constant chatter subsided a bit, and things have returned to normal now. He's still on the talkative side, but as he gets more and more articulate, we're starting to have some really fun and funny conversations.

For christmas, E-chan got a little CD player from his grandparents. This has come just at the right time, as despite having music pushed on him all his life particularly by his Dad who is a big music fan, he seems to finally be receptive to listening to pop music and getting to know songs. Strangely (I think) his first preference was for Paul McCartney and Wings. Not the Beatles, but that followed soon after. His first favourite song that he danced to and played over and over was "C Moon" which is hilarious. At night, when we're putting him to bed, we listen to a compilation we've made and he asks us lots of questions:
- Mummy what's this song?
- What's he singing here?
- Is Paul McCartney a Beatle? Didn't he want to be a Beatle any more?

Often he doesn't hear the lyrics properly (hey, who doesn't?), and sometimes we tell him what they are and he sings them properly, but sometimes he stubbornly decides his are better such as:
- Band on the Rug (aka "Band on the Run")
- Mibby om man (? aka "Maybe I'm Amazed")

So next he was made a Robot Music compilation, made of Daft Punk and Kraftwerk. "Daddy, this isn't a robot singing, it's a MAN!"

True...

He doesn't quite get the concept of robot dancing yet, but I will persist...