Today we left the hospital.
With our baby boy. 🥰
I got super emotional as we walked out the main entrance gates. Then I heard an older woman say to a security guard “I love seeiing newborns.”
I just started crying. I was so happy and grateful. Passersby smiled at us. One woman said congratulations.
What a beautiful day. 🙏🥰
It is a Friday night.
The wind outside is rife.
The days have been cold.
It is an opportune time to be on maternity leave.
I can stay home as long and as often as I want, and I don’t feel bad for it… not that I should. But the weather does not permit me to go outside, nor does my heavy belly. 😂
They are aligned. It is perfect. 😁💖🤰🙏
Ahhh. It’s good to be back.
Like every time we go away, we’ve made some more realisations post-holiday.
As much as it’s exciting and fun to go away, as you’re seeing new things and going to new places…
We are people of routine, Hubbie especially so.
He is SOOO happy to be back. Back to routine. Back to his food. Back to his bed. And as much as his homebody comments have annoyed me ever-so-slightly today, I also feel like, I don’t know… I kinda agree.
I also, like routine. I also, LOVE my bed. I also like eating well, and I love the set-up of our house, where baby girl sleeps, where we sleep…
I love our town. I love our beach. I love our main strip, in fact it quite frankly smashes other coastal town strips…
And that’s when I realised. We find it hard to enjoy being away fully, because where we live is SO DAMN GOOD.
We live in an area where people travel and holiday to, and we’ve become so used to it, we don’t realise how good it is until we leave!
Also, we are setting up our lifestyle, our house, to be an everyday holiday house. Sure, we still work, we still do the groceries, we still do chores, and all the other day-to-day monotony that drives us insane at times.
But we love our spot. We love where we live. 🥰🌅
We don’t really need a holiday from here. We just need to mix it up at times.
We get to see beautiful water views in the morning when we wake, and watch the sunset glowing over the water at night. I drive baby girl home from school the scenic way, past the water. We visit the beach on Wednesdays when she is at school (when the wind is absent!) after we’ve been to one of the many incredible cafes on our main strip.
We’re trying to live a holiday life already, and we are comfortable in our home doing it.
We WILL still go away. There’s no doubt about that. But the fact that we’re going to be a lot more home-bound in the period after baby arrives, it doesn’t upset me in the slightest.
Home is good. This town, is good. We like it a lot.
In fact, we love it. Which is why we moved here in the first place. 🙏💖
Nothing says ‘home’ more than a bowl of this.
🥰💖
I usually keep the radio on as I work, just some nice background vibes going on…
But this afternoon I turned it off, when baby girl put something else on.
Mary Poppins. ☂️
She’s watched it before, but I was still curious to see how much of it she would watch today. It’s nice having something familiar in the background, you don’t need to be watching it avidly to follow, but hearing bits here and there you know what’s happening, and then of course, my foot started tapping. 😆
It’s one of those really beautiful childhood memories I have, and it’s even more special to enjoy it not only in my adulthood, but to be watching baby girl enjoy it and watch it all on her own, so many years later.
She didn’t do it in one sitting… I stopped work, then she had swimming, then there was a shower… but she actually watched, the whole thing. No fast forwards. No leaving the room to come back to a different part of the movie 8 scenes later.
Nope, I saw, and she watched it all, so patiently. It occurred to me that she is more grown up, also that she probably remembers parts and wants to get to them! But she watched, relaxed, happy, relishing her school holiday time, as I prepared dinner at the end of the evening and peeked over to the other room where the Poppins lady herself was talking to her parrot umbrella and setting herself up to float away into another adventure, through the sky.
Just having these comforting familiar things in the home, to see, to listen to, gives me happiness, and I hope as the years go by, baby girl will understand the true message of the film, and that it’s not just jumping into pictures and floating on the ceiling.
With that now done, baby girl IS going to spend the next few days going –
“Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
“Chim-chiminey, chim-chiminey, chim chim, cheroo.”
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” (I only corrected one letter there after I looked it up ⬅️ the second ‘i’)
She is getting so grown up, while still maintaining that beautiful, childhood naivety.
Baby girl poses with hand on hip when she puts on a skirt and cute top, like she did today… and then she will go and make a fort. 😆
I helped her today. I was working from home, and she was also home because it was an extra day off school being parent-interview day. So once again, she had to keep herself busy while I worked.
But I got up to help her find a long blanket. We needed something that would fit over the coffee table. I eventually found the right size, and she watched TV from under the fort, peeking out from an open flap in the blanket. 🥰
She sat patiently next to me as I did the zoom report with her teacher. Last year there was some contention over getting her to sit next to me, being lockdown season then. Also she was younger. A year on, and today she was so mature, listening to the feedback, responding to the teacher, not running off and getting all embarrassed as she has in earlier years.
She has her own showers that last half an hour. 🤦♀️We have to beg her to take a shower, but then we can’t get her out. We hear her singing the latest song she is obsessed with, and today it’s Pink’s So What?
The day before it was Ed Sheeran’s Shiver. A few days ago it was Livin’ on a Prayer. Last week she was singing Talking Heads Psycho Killer.
Like her parents, she has diverse music taste. 😉
She says things like “you have got to be kidding me.” She will argue with you and win the debate. She knows everything, and if you tell her she is wrong, she will tell you no, you are wrong, Google is wrong, the world is wrong, and every educator is also wrong too, before going on and clarifying that everyone thinks in their own way. 🤦♀️😆
She drives us up the wall, but she entertains us constantly, and makes us happy, ALWAYS. She is my buddy who sits next to me in the car, lately more often than not. She asks about her past, our past, how we met, and so on, and she eagerly takes in this information.
She loves her friends, she loves her teacher, and she has the best, can-do attitude.
This is the stage she is at, and I love it. 🙏💖🥰😍
A new candle to light up the darkness today.
Because as the rain, and clouds, and greyness approached from all around, already so early in the day, it encroached on and grew dark within the house from which I worked.
But I lit this candle. I got it not too long ago, and just haven’t had the opportune, perfect time to light it.
Today was that perfect day, amidst such imperfection.
It lit up the area I was working in, it’s beautiful scent wafting around the room…
It’s amazing how one simple act such as this, lighting a new candle, can improve your mood and lift your spirits to something else. It feels like self-care, and I don’t know how, but it does, because it felt so good.
🙏🕯️
I’m always really frustrated and angry when the cold weather initially sets in.
And then I get creative. I get EVEN, mwa ha ha.
Because in order to be prepared for Winter, you must come armed with equipment. You can’t just yell in the face of cold weather and will it to go away, that won’t happen, least of all in Melbourne.
And while that might sound utterly ridiculous, people not being equipped enough for the change of season, seriously, I think some are so stubborn (✋✋) that it really does happen… at first.
I have been freezing the last few times I’ve worked from home, and I have no one to blame but myself. I feel like putting on the house heater is ludicrous since it is only me at home, albeit me freezing my arse off, but still, just me.
But I remembered a heater that we’ve used very on and off over the years, and I decided to bring it down a la The Price is Right style. It was last used in baby girl’s room when she was a baby, and on those chilly Winter nights I would turn it on, and it was the perfect heater to keep the chill out of the air without making the room stuffy.
Previously it was used when I was a late teen (😲) and I would put it on in my room, close the door, and let it become all toasty. It really did do a delicious job of keeping things warm.
I am talking about, the oil column heater.
This old school bad boy. Only it’s not so old school anymore. I did a quick google search before, and these things are still being made, and all high-tech, with timers, cord compartments, they are seriously looking so snazzy.
And today, mine did the job. I turned it on, and although it took its time, it seriously did warm the area I was sitting at.
Ha. Take that Winter! Next…
People are creatures of habit.
So are animals. Creatures of habit. 😆
Once I do something that appeals to Mister F, he very quickly catches on, and the next day you will find him seeking or waiting for the same thing.
When I work from home I sit at my desk by the window and he knows now (creature of habit he is) that he will find me there if he goes to the back door. And sure enough, come around 11am, after he’s dug his hole and gone on his adventure, he will come back, look at me through the back door and –
“ME-OOWWWWW!”
He’s not that loud, it’s more of a teeny meow. But he will sit there, lick himself, send me messages via his green eyes through the door, all for me to let him in so he can have his late morning nap inside. 😆
I usually take him straight to the laundry because I’m working. If we had a door in the room I work, I would close it and let him sleep next to me, but alas no door, and I can’t let him wander around while I sit there… who knows what he would get up to. 🤔
So he naps in the laundry, a good 4 hour nap. 😏
But the last few days I’ve been letting him take his time, and wander, supervised. 😆 I let him in, and he rubs against my legs…
And I’ve decided to relax a bit too, enjoy the work-at-home perks, and I’ve been having cat-pat breaks.
I pat him. It’s like 3 minutes out of my day, but I follow him around the room, or he follows me, I’m not quite sure… it’s a bit of a chicken-egg scenario, but nonetheless there is wandering and walking, and then I pat him.
When I stop patting him, he looks up at me, pressed firmly against my leg, like “why?”
So I pat him again. 💖
He is happy. I am happy. I have a bit of a break away from the desk.
I like this working from home business, and I think he much prefers it too. 😻
I’m not that sure what I am grateful for today. There are lots of tiny things, and I have been sifting through haystacks to try and find the needles.
Baby girl threw up a total of 4 times over a 7 hour period last night… my poor girl. But she didn’t vomit today, really, other than that time she coughed up fluid this afternoon after eating watermelon…
I know I have expressed gratitude for it before, but working from home, especially with a sick child, is incredibly easi-er. I don’t have to lug her around anywhere, or cancel work itself, when I know I can set her up with basic necessities, lying on the couch, and I can even see her with my own eyes and determine how she’s going.
Speaking of work, I was able to finish 2 hours earlier today because we were so quiet at work. That hasn’t happened to me before, but fortunately today on this crappy day, it did.
And finally, Hubbie and I have realised just how bubbly and happy baby girl is, because she’s been absent from her usual self since last night, and it just breaks our heart. 😥 She is always chatting, singing, full of energy and life, and to only see very small glimpses of that today, mostly, nothing at all, is so hard.
I guess, we are grateful for her usual beautiful and vibrant personality, and hope she comes to herself soon.
Grasping at straws, I know, but it’s something. 🤷♀️
carcrashgratitude 