Thursday, May 31, 2012

Eliza Wears

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Monday to Friday

I have had a few emails the last few days asking how I am going with returning to full time work. In short, we're all coping well, so far.

Working full time is not without its challenges to a regular person, throw an almost one year old into the mix and it becomes a little more tricky.I am incredibly lucky that the staff at Eliza's daycare centre are amazing, and are more than willing to fill in the blanks when I can't do something.

Our days look like this

6am - I get up and get ready for work. I generally pack Elizas bag the night before, but still need to get her bottle from the fridge in the morning, make sure she has a bunny etc.
6.30am - I wake Eliza and get her dressed for daycare.
6.50am - Eliza and I get in the car and drive the 15 minutes to daycare. We drink our morning bottle in the car on the way (hers = milk, mine = coffee)
7.05am - Arrive at daycare, talk with her carers for the day, check on how she is going developmentally etc, if there is anything to be changed etc.
7.20am - Kiss the girl goodbye. In 6 weeks she has cried once when I left. Every other time she hasn't given two hoots that I am leaving her. Makes me feel loved.
8am to 4.30pm - I pack as much into my work day as humanly possible. I rarely take my lunch break, knowing that the time is better spent doing other things.
5.10pm - I arrive at daycare and collect her belongings, chat with the night staff, collect any memos and finally claim my nightly cuddle and kiss.
5.30 - Eliza and I get home, where we play in the ktichen, whilst I try to prepare something edible for dinner. Whilst that is cooking we play games together, practice walking and other developmental things.
6-6.30pm - Dinner.
6.45pm - Bath.
7.00 - 7.30pm - quiet play time in the lounge. Eliza isn't one to sit still and listen to a story, so we play with her trucks, make up stories and generally just hang out together.
7.30pm - Bottle, night nappy, hugs and kisses and into bed.

Then the real fun begins, I start the washing, preapre things for the next day, try to get some housework done, catch up with friends online and update the blog.

Some days our systems work. Somedays they don't. But tomorrow is always another day to try to make things right. Where our system comes unstuck is when I need to have extra things done, like buy birthday presents, organise family events etc. Thank goodness for technology!

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Friday, May 25, 2012

Laundries

1512 Dolphin Terrace traditional laundry room
1512 Dolphin Terrace (night shots) traditional laundry room
Love the under-bench lights.
fresh laundry traditional laundry room
McClelland Residence traditional laundry room
Laundry room traditional laundry room
Love the hanging rack, would be incredibly handy. Pin It

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Eliza Wears

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Monday, May 21, 2012

Photo Wall - Finished

I finally finished Eliza's wall. Just in time to move out!

I couldn't think of what I wanted to put in the frames, it originally was going to be fabric, but it didn't look right. I happened to buy wrapping paper for a few presents, and bam! It hit me, and thats what went in the frames.

I quite like it.
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Thursday, May 17, 2012

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Guilt

For a long time I have been carrying around guilt, over many things. Silly things that i know are beyond my control, yet the guilt is still there.

I feel a huge amount of guilt that I got pregnant when friends didn't. I am all to aware that it wasn't an easy ride for the husband and I, and that we got VERY lucky one month when the odds were all stacked against us. Whilst our journey wasn't easy, friends of mine have it tougher.

Because of this guilt I never enjoyed pregnancy. It freaking hurt my body. For the first 15 weeks I was that sick that I have no idea if I had morning sickness or not, as I couldn't keep anything down. It wasn't until I had surgery to remove my band that I felt somewhat human. That surgery brought a whole new type of guilt to the table, as I put my poor little baby under so much stress by forcing her to have major surgery. I owe everything I have to my amazing surgeon and anethesisist. Around 22 weeks pregnant my pelvis gave out and I wished away my pregnancy just so I could walk 100m without being in crippling pain. The guilt of being able to experience pregnancy was not lost on me.

When Eliza arrived the guilt disappeared for a little while, whilst I was lost in the world of sleepless nights and constant feeding. It returned when she was around 3 months and I realised I wasn't really enjoying this gig. I hated being home all day with her, hated how much of an effort it was to go anywhere, and how alone I felt in the world. The guilt stopped me from telling anyone how I felt though, as I had everything I wanted. All I ever wanted was a baby, and here she was. I eventually broke down and got some help, but it wasn't really the help I needed. I needed my baby to start sleeping properly, not to be shipped off to daycare during the day. And as it was, the guilt still stopped me from complaining, so I was discharged from the mental health service as being "perfectly fine". It's easy to be fine for someone once a fortnight for an hour, and to pretend that everything is fine and dandy. It's harder to carry it out at 3am in the morning when nothing you do will calm your screaming child.

As time wore on, and we did our stint at sleep school things started to get better, but the guilt was still there. Right now the guilt trip inside my head is about returning to work full time. Along with having got pregnant, having not enjoyed pregnancy, wishing away the first 9 months of Eliza's life and never wanting to give her a sibling. And that doesn't even include the guilt that everyone else lays on me.

Whilst it might seem like I have everything together, don't assume that I do. I carry this huge ball of guilt in my core that stems from getting lucky one month and actually catching that damn egg. Who knows, maybe by the time I am 80 I will have moved on from the guilt?

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Swimming

Living in Australia,  swimming is a big part of our lives, even if it isn't within a pool. Living on a property with a dam, it was ver important to me that Eliza learn to be able to swim from a young age.

We enrolled her in swimming lessons when she was 8 months old, and whilst she took her time warming up to it, she started to really enjoy it. Being the youngest in the class a lot was above her level, however she started to become familiar with putting her head under the water, and having to paddle.








I think she is a bit sad that she isn't swimming this term as I am returning to work and won't be able to take her during the week. Hopefully a weekend spot will come up soon though. Pin It

Friday, May 11, 2012

Selling a house

It is official that we are now homeless. Our house settled on Friday, and whilst our bank account looks very impressive, we are without a home.

That does however mean that we sold our house...within less than a week!


In January we had a real estate agent come around to do a market appraisal and give us an indication of how we should go about things.

We were pleasantly surprised by what he indicated price wise, and he said what we were expecting him to say about things to be done around the house. Which I am now passing onto you.

* Finish all the small jobs you have been meaning to do, before you list it for sale. If a buyer sees that something is half finished they will try to negotiate the price down.

* Freshen up the front of your house. Plants are reasonably cheap, replace the dead ones with live ones. Paint the front door, and if you have the time/need, paint the front of the house. Mow your lawns. Buy a new door mat.

* Remove all the clutter. Then remove more. Clean out your cupboards, store things in the shed. Hire a storage shed if need be. Don't shove things into cupboards and hope that no-one looks, it is the first thing I do when I look through a house, I look at the storage.

* Clean like your life depends on it. Get rid of cobwebs. Clean the windows. Dust. Vacuum under the bed. Clean your bathroom like your mother in law is coming to visit.

Further to that
* Meet several agents and pick the one you find suits you best. Enquire about their commission rate, marketing strategies, policies on how they handle offers on your property.

* Don't overprice your house. Our neighbours overpriced their house by $50,000 on the off chance someone would pay that amount. It was for sale for 14 months. Our agent said the best time to sell a house is within the first 4-6 weeks of listing it. After that people start to think there is something wrong with it.

* Get quality photos. I have lost count of the times I have looked at photos online and promptly closed the browser because the photos were crap. I hate houses that only show you the outside of the house, not the internals.

* Organise your paperwork straight away. Get your solicitor to do your Section 32 so your agent can pass it on to prospective buyers right away. I have been after a Sec 32 on a house we're looking at for 5 weeks now. 5 WEEKS!!!
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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Eliza Wears

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

New House #65

Well, it will be someone else's new house soon




























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