#2904 Surviving the last day of school solos

I have survived.

Though tomorrow is the last day of the school year for baby girl, today was my last day dropping her off in the morning ‘solo.’ I have help on Tuesday afternoons when Hubbie picks her up, and then on Wednesdays he can do both drop-off and pick-up.

By ‘solo,’ I mean myself and baby boy.

I have survived crying. Intense, annoyed, incessant, sobbing, frustrated, out-of-control crying.

I have survived crying myself in efforts to soothe him.

I have survived all those rushed morning drop-offs, trying to get baby girl to school on time after the morning with her and baby boy went awry, but I’ve also survived the afternoons, where I couldn’t bare to wake him early for his midday nap, but then I had to, and then I had to rush to pick-up and look for a parking spot so baby girl could find me.

I’ve survived bad days, long days, hard days.

I’ve survived days I never thought I’d survive.

I’ve survived balancing all the things, in all of life, in all of our routines.

I’VE SURVIVED!!!!

I am here to say, I am so, so proud of myself.

I am also here to say, woo hoo! I now have home help for approximately 6 weeks in the form of baby girl.

(Which is probably why she is sad about school ending 🤣)

💪💪💪💪🙏🙏🙏🙏💖💖💖💖💙💙💙💙

#2898 Wednesdays

Wednesdays. Full stop. I am grateful for them.

Why? Hubbie is home. I therefore have help for baby boy, for house stuff, for work… for LIFE.

It is a much needed hand at a time of year, at a time of life, that is extremely go-go-go and BUSY.

🙏💖

#2744 Flow Wednesday

Today was one of those happy flow days.

We had jobs and were running around a fair bit…

We had to drop off our coffee machine 50 minutes away for a service and repair! But the sun was shining bright, so being out and about was easy.

We were nervous about baby boy being upset in the car… but he slept on the way! We got a drive through coffee and all! ☕🌞

We were close to Chadstone shopping centre after dropping off the machine, so popped in there for a wander… haven’t been there since baby boy was born, about 6 months! We changed him and fed him, walked around, grabbed some food (and a new outfit for him 😁)

Then he slept in the car again, all the way home! 🙏🙏

#2625 Back to the local

I’ve been sharing a lot of coffee posts lately… and you gotta understand, it’s this simple thing that has me looking forward to something, no matter how small it may be to others, lately.

But today’s morning coffee was something else.

You see, when I was pregnant (and for years before that) with baby boy and Hubbie and I would frequent our usual Wednesday brunch spot…

We’d see prams, EVERYWHERE.

Mums and prams, mums and prams. Hubbie would joke they needed more prams there because it wasn’t the most spacious cafe to begin with, and so we said once our baby arrived, we would add ours to the mix too. 🤣❤

So happily, today was the day we returned there, to have our usual Wednesday brunch, and add to the pram club. 🙏

And add to it we did. I squashed the pram between our table and another’s and I even had people get up and move when we got up to leave, so tight the front of house is!

But we were there. We came back.

We did it. We came back with our precious baby boy in tow, and if you’d been privy to all our conversations before I fell pregnant, you’d know how much today meant to us. 🥰❤

#2583 Back for a bit

It was so good to be back here today!

I have been missing our regular Wednesday brunch spot during the holidays, so it felt really good to be back with Hubbie today, doing what we do best… drinking coffee, eating good food, and talking life. 😁💖

And to think… today may have been the last Wednesday we are there as a duo… next time, there might be an extra one under our wings! 🤰🙏🥰💞

#2566 Home after holidays

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. 🙏💖

#2562 Wednesday water play and washing

I got some more baby stuff today, and got myself a big juice to sustain me and keep me going in my baby decision-making.

Then after some acupuncture, at this stage now designed to help baby get into and stay in place, my other baby (girl!) wanted to run through the sprinkler. So of course…

There is nothing quite like seeing your child so happy, and gee was she happy. She totally woke up (she is a water baby!) and was running through the streams of water for the longest time. Ahh, nice and refreshed at the end of it all. 💦💖

Another standout memory has to go to what I did at the end of the day…

Some perspective… 2013 to 2023.

It brought me such happiness to do the washing today… because I was washing baby’s newborn clothes! Seeing them out there on the line, reminded me of doing it 10 years ago, and it was only 9 days before baby girl entered the world that I got it done.

Let’s hope I get more than 9 days this time around between washing and baby arriving! 😬🤞😁🙏🤰🤣🥰💖

#2527 No appt day…

All my days are filled with appointments.

Or that’s what it feels like.

Lately it’s most of my Wednesdays. Because it’s one of my only days off, I tend to overfill it so that my work days remain just for work.

After 4 things last Wednesday, read 4... I had nothing today.

Nothing at all! Still busy, but nothing to rush off to. 🙏

I did have part two of my online childbirth class… and can I say, it was mighty meaty in its content. 😲😬

It left me in a bit of a state… a case of TMI, too much information.

Even for a Mum who’s already been there, done that.

I guess that online class made up for the lack of elsewhere… 🤣🤦‍♀️

#2508 An emotional Christmas tree

The photos app on my phone does that thing where it gives me memories of what I was doing this day last year, two years ago, three, etc…

On Wednesday it gave me a memory that blew my mind a little.

The date was the 16th of November. Year, 2021.

And the photo, me, Hubbie and baby girl with Santa hats on.

WHAT? That could only mean…

Yep. We had started putting up the Christmas tree.

I mean, I always plan to do it about the last week of November. That’s my thing, and it is the best thing. You feel like you get in early by starting the tree early, it’s one less thing to do in December, AND it gets you in the Christmas spirit.

What’s not to love?

I had considered doing it this weekend or next, but after seeing that photo it was decided… it was happening sooner rather than later!

Tonight, we took all the boxes and bags out, put on our Christmas pjs, our Christmas hats, and Mariah Carey went on the stereo!

Putting up Christmas stuff is a process. Even more so, being pregnant… there’s only so much bending and picking up one can take. So the only focus of tonight was doing the bare bones… assembling the tree.

And while we were doing that, it just hit me. The togetherness. The music. The love in the air.

The baby in my belly.

And I started to cry, thinking of all the Christmases that had gone, that I also loved, but where I had a deep longing, yearning that no one knew about…

This year was so different. This year my Christmas excitement, happiness, gratitude and festive cheer were DEEP.

All happy tears, all happy tears. 🥲

And in a funny turn of events, even Mister F decided to help us out with our Christmas set up…

The only way he knows how!

🤣😻🎅🎄

#2506 Sweet break amidst the busy

Today wasn’t one of our normal Wednesdays together, because we were on the other side of town tending to a couple of those annoying but necessary jobs.

We missed our usual brunch, even our usual coffee (BOO HOO 1st world problems I know) but our bodies are in such routine we were starving and cranky!

So we managed to find a nice place, um, once we got it all done, and kinda made up for it?

🤦‍♀️😬🤣🤣

So I was only meant to have ‘one bite’ of that chocolate freckle pancake stack, but of course, it’s really, REALLY hard to hold back when you taste some very delicious melted chocolate, mmmm.

So I only had two bites. Kinda (not really). The coffee was great, I didn’t even need to add a sugar (for all the other sugar!!) 🤣