Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Uh-oh





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Monday, February 27, 2012

Public Service Announcement: Captcha

Cartoon from here




I never really had much of an opinion on captcha, it was just there. Some blogs had it, other's didn't. It never stopped me from commenting on someone's blog until about a week ago where after three tries I still couldn't get the letter sequence right. I gave up.


Google captcha used to be ok, it was one word with clear lettering. Then they changed it, and now it makes my 20/20 vision useless. I gave up using it about a year ago (I think, correct me if it is still turned on), preferring to use manual approving of comments. Not only is it easier for everyone, it means I am more likely to see comments and reply.


So, how do you turn it off in the new blogger? You need to go back to the old interface to turn off word verification. From the new Blogger dashboard page (the white and blue one), click the gear cog symbol under your profile picture and select "Old Blogger interface." 


On the old dashboard page, click on "Settings" then click on the "Comments" link below the tabs. That will get you to where you can unselect word verification. Click "Save Settings" at the bottom of that page when you are done.


So there you go, how to turn off the Captcha in Blogger. Something I don't think Google want you to do.

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Friday, February 24, 2012

Owls

I recently saw this owl mobile, made by Birdienumnum, and thought it was rather cute. I could imagine a whole family of owls, one for each member of the family hanging up there.

Hmmm, that gives me an idea...
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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

To Buy or Not To Buy: Highchair

The highchair was one aspect where I let the husband exercise his right to pick something for our child. To be honest it is quite possibly the only thing he picked. The highchair.

Highchairs vary a lot in price, from the $30 Ikea Antilop to the super dooper expensive ($599) Bloom Fresco. I was a fan of the Tripp Trapp due to its good looks and not screaming "we have a baby", but I let the husband make a choice, and he chose the Chicco Polly.

I hate that our highchair looks like a highchair. It's not pretty. It is better than some, but it still screams baby. I also hate the stupid locking tray thing, I can never get it to slide in properly. I do however like that the tray is removable, and the top lifts off for easy cleaning. Surprisingly, I haven't had any issues with food getting stuck in the creases, after every meal I give it a flick on the lawn and we're good to go. Once a week I wash it in the bath. Easy. The highchair my mother in law has is a lot worse though, and her seat cover isn't easy to remove.

I have to say, even though we brought ours on sale, I wish we had our time again, as I would definitely go for the Tripp Trapp. I know the Ikea version is highly recommended by everyone, but it just doesn't do it for me. I used one recently, and I can't say I am rushing to Melbourne to get one. It's easy to clean, yes, but pretty it is not. Then again, given Eliza didn't really eat her first meals in a proper highchair, rather the Bumbo, I don't know if I would bother with a full on high chair, and would consider a portable type one or just stick with the Bumbo.

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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

How I won the war. Sort of.




Eliza used to be a good sleeper. From around 10 weeks old she slept 12 hours a night with no wakings.

I was rapt, and couldn't belive how lucky I got. Sure, her day sleeps were crappy, relying on wrapping, white noise, music and a dummy just to get 40 minutes of silence, but I could hack that when I was getting 12 hours of peace of an evening.

Then she woke up one night at four months, and has woken at least once a night ever since. I am over it. So I went from having good sleeps at night and shit day sleeps, to just shit sleeps. She was cranky. I was cranky. Something had to change.

It started with the dummy. I read that sucking to sleep can mean it takes longer to go to sleep, as they are concentrating so hard on keeping the dummy in their mouth. The husband wanted to slowly take it away from her. I tried that for a day and decided it was too hard, so we went cold turkey. We had tried the reduction method previously and it seemed to confuse her, and she would turn into demon baby, so she would get it back. This time I hid them so that it was harder to give them back and give in again. The first sleep of the day was hell. The second slightly better. By the evening we had moved on.

Oddly, once we took away the dummy, we didn't need the white noise nearly as much. It now only is used in the car when driving and she won't settle. Whilst driving in peak hour Christmas traffic recently my mum said how it makes no difference. Eliza was screaming her little lungs out in the back seat with nothing we did helping. I turned on the music and within 30 seconds she was asleep. Doesn't work my toosh!

We also started her on a set routine. Previously we had tried Tissie Hall's routines and they hadn't really worked for us, so we called it quits. This time it did work. We started with the closest routine to her age group that hadn't introduced solids as she hadn't started yet. It basically meant that she had set nap times, a set bedtime, and it gave me some guidelines on when to complete tasks like feeds, walks and baths. Some days I was quite strict with it, other days I used the day time routine quite losely, especially if we had to go out. It worked well, she seemed to appreciate the routine and I liked knowing what was coming up.

But things weren't improving on the night front. At best she would wake up 3 times a night, around 10pm, 1am and 4am. At worst she would wake up at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, midnight, 1am and 4am and then start the day at 6am. There were more bad nights than good. Each time we would have to go and pat her back to sleep, except for the 1am waking where she was given a bottle.

I can't remember what spurred my googling, but one random Tuesday I found myself googling private sleep schools. Our MCHN had suggested a few weeks earlier we go to Tweddle for a long stay program, however the wait is astronomically long, meaning we could be waiting 6+ months to be seen. So I went looking for private sleep schools.

I found one that sounded up our alley and rang to enquire about the cost. I was at the point where I was willing to sell my left kidney if need be, and it turned out I didn't need to. As Eliza is covered by our Private Health Insurance her stay was free of charge to us, and all that was payable was a small daily boarding fee to cover my meals. I spoke to a lovely nurse who assured me that I was doing the right thing by making an enquiry and that it sounded like I did need some help. She offered us a place for two days time, providing I could get a doctors referral for Eliza.

Um, what? The public system has a 6 month wait list, but these people could see me within 2 days? Why had no-one told me about this earlier???

So we packed our little car with everything needed for a weeks 'holiday' and off we tripped. Once admitted we were shown to our rooms. I knew I was going into a private hospital, but I really didn't expect to be given a single room with ensuite. Each room is set up like a hotel actually, and was very comfortable. Eliza had her own room across the hall, which only had a cot and chair in it, however what else does one need? Each room has an in fared video monitor in it so that the nurses can see into any room at any given stage, and a sound monitor which is fixed to a wall of speakers near the nurses station. There was a communal kitchen where all meals were delivered to, along with the usual tea/coffee/bottle making facilities.

We were assigned a nurse each shift who would sit with me for each settling period of Eliza's sleeps. Providing they can, they like to give the parents the first night off so that they can get a decants night sleep.The first night she cried and the nurses settled her. Their strategy was to go in when she made noise, give her a sleep message, and then leave, returning every 10 minutes or so to give her the same message. She was not a fan of this and got crankier and crankier each time they entered the room. After an hour they patted her to sleep. The second, third and fourth nights she became the perfect sleeping baby who went to sleep and stayed asleep overnight. It wasn't until the fifth night she woke up during the night, giving us the opportunity to put our plan into motion.

I was never a fan of Controlled Crying, however desperate times call for desperate measures. When she woke we went in and gave her a sleep message and left. She screamed an angry scream for over an hour before going to sleep. If she had ever changed to an emotional cry we would have gone into her, however I learnt the difference between her screams a long time ago and knew she was just angry that we weren't coming into her and doing things her way.

The nurses were lovely when I broke down several times, and assured me I was doing the right thing. As they put it, she has had 8 months of calling the shots, and this is all new to her. It is time for her to learn who is the boss. Hopefully she wouldn't take too long to work out who was boss.


As our days had ran out, we went nervously home. I won't lie and say things have been easy, they haven't always been. There have been nights where Eliza tried to revert back to her old ways, but the majority of nights she has slept through. We still give her a bottle just before we go to bed, but most nights she will sleep from 7pm through to 6-7am. Her day sleeps are a still bit of a mystery, some days she will sleep for an hour and a half each sleep, some times only one sleep will be 40 minutes, the other an hour and a half. I can hack that though.

And that is how I won the war. Most days. If I had my time again I would have gone to sleep school much earlier, as it was very beneficial. I highly recommend it if you are having problems with sleep.
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Eliza and the Lamb

Did I ever tell you we have sheep again? I can't remember. But we have 7 sheep (well we started with 9 sheep, one went to a better place, two went to the freezer, and I am going to tell you about the third).

A friend rang us one afternoon in a bit of a tizz. They had 9 sheep on their block and didn't know what to do with them. They had rang the local council who had no reports of them being lost, and said to keep them there for a week. If no-one claimed them they could either have them destroyed or keep them). Rather than destroy 9 sheep they rang us and asked if we wanted them for our block. Did we ever! Our paddock was bordering on being a fire hazard and coming into summer we knew we had to do something about it. So we adopted 9 sheep, had them drenched, shawn and tagged.

After a few weeks we began to notice that one sheep was getting rather fat and suspected that she might be pregnant. Sure enough, one day close to Christmas a little lamb was born. We named him Lambie.


Poor mummy sheep and I had a lot in common, we didn't have an easy feeding journey, both ending up with mastitis. After a few days we notices that she had one teat that was massive, dragging on the ground massive, and the other a normal size. Feeling for the poor thing I made the husband go out there and milk her until her teat cleared up. What come out was not pretty, but it helped things. Luckily she wasn't allergic to the antibiotics she was given (unlike me) and continued to feed nicely.

So that is how Eliza came to meet the lamb. No doubt she will meet him again in a few years time, my guess is he won't look the same though ;)

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Monday, February 20, 2012

Willow Mae

I recently discovered Willow Mae by a friend on Facebook, and fell instantly in love with a pair of bloomers and their matching singlet.



Does Eliza look spunky in them? I know I am biased, but who doesn't love ruffles on a little girls bum?

Mon lovingly hand makes every item she sells, which is why she only sells during market nights. To find out when they are you will need to follow her on Facebook. Seriously, even though you will possibly have to wait for a sale, you won't regret it, her creations are spot on, and of supreme quality. I received so many lovely comments on Eliza's outfit that day.



(Willow Mae have no idea who I am, nor that I have written this post. It is purely my passing of information to you, as I know you all love cute things)
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Friday, February 17, 2012

Birdie Keys

You know how there is always one person in the household who is always losing their keys?

That person is me in our household. I even always put them on the kitchen bench, but still manage to lose the darn things.

So when I saw this keyring with its own docking station on The Design Life Shop, I had to buy one. I attached two magnets to the back and stuck it on the freezer. Hopefully this will solve the little problem every time I need to leave the house.
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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Monday, February 13, 2012

Teepee

Social media has a lot to answer for. Not only does it keep me up to date with friends that live 5 minutes away so that I don't go and visit them, it influences my shopping.

Hippity Hop Kids had a competition going where you could win a teepee. It looked like a cool thing to have, so I googled it and found out it was made by Banana J Creations. Whilst I enjoy shopping, I love being able to buy handmade goodies by other mums who are making a living doing what they love, so BJC had me won over from the start, then I started looking at the designs and fell in love.





Can someone remind me to buy one of these for next Christmas?


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Friday, February 10, 2012

Elephant Print

Imagineart have some seriously cute prints, my favourite is this 'Elephant and Bird' one from Down That Little Lane.

Wonder how I can incorporate it into Eliza's room...
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Thursday, February 9, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Eliza vs Lucy

I promise I am a watchful parent, however I don't intend on being a helicopter parent either. So after many times of telling Eliza to leave the cat alone, I had to film this.

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Monday, February 6, 2012

Robes

I often think about our future house, and plan various bits of it. Currently I am planning robes, as our current robe isn't cutting the mustard.

The husband has the left side and the top shelf in the centre. I have the rest. His side is over flowing and he uses two tall boys as well.  Ideally we would have the robe set out like this EACH, not as a joint robe. Ahh the things you learn!


Master walk in suite traditional closet

dressing cabinetry traditional closet

KBK Interior Design Portfolio traditional closet

Organized Ladies Closet traditional closet

I think I would like something like this, it's simple and not over the top, and highly functional.
East Edina Home traditional closet

Master Closet contemporary closet


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Friday, February 3, 2012

Cat Thongs


When we got married it was all the rage to have thongs with 'Just Married' imprinted on the bottom of them, especially if you had a beach wedding. Whilst cute, we didn't get married at a beach, so the novelty wore off.

Whilst browsing Down That Little Lane I found these kids Ashito thongs. So terrible cute, and I think a young child would love the imprints just a little bit more than this big child.
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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Eliza Wears


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