Wrigglebot started kinder and as excited as I am for him I’m also really scared, not for him but for me. I’m beginning to realise that this time with my kids at home is drawing to a close. Wrigglebot will be at school next year, Squirm at kinder and I’ll only have ‘The Little One’ at home and then two years later he’ll be at kinder too. I haven’t been thinking too much about my career for a while now, the kids have been my life, but now I can see a future where they are not so dependent on me and I feel like I need to plan and get myself ready for whatever it is that I’m going to do.

To that end I have moved all three of the kids into the one room. They love it (my laughing, cheeky monkeys) chatting away to each other hours after they have gone to bed and it gives me an office/sewing room. I love having a room of my own with my computer on a desk and not the kitchen table with and my sewing machine all set up with unfinished projects around for me to continue ignoring. It makes it easier to do work and anything that makes it easier is good. And so I begin my journey towards being a working from home mum, bringing in a professional income without leaving my house except to drop the kids off at school. That’s my dream anyway.

Oh and Wrigglebot did fine at kinder apart from crying for a few minutes as I left. When I picked him up he ran to me, kissed me and whispered, ‘Mummy, I had fun Mummy,’ and so I felt okay.

I have been so proud of my ability to stay on top of almost everything lately. The business, the housework, keeping my children alive, healthy and educated…I put it down to my incredible ability to multi-task, a skill every woman is born with. Okay, some do it better than others, but we all do it better than any man. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a man multi-task come to think of it. My husband even stops cooking the BBQ just to have a swig of his beer.

Anyway, lately I have found myself:
- breast feeding my infant whilst assisting a two year old with a poo emergency (my nipple wasn’t so happy about it but the kids thought I was amazing as did I),
- making sausages out of playdough whilst cooking sausages for dinner,
- drinking a hot cup of tea (yes, hot!) while watering the weeds and talking on the phone to someone in India,
- changing a nappy while ordering new vinyl colours for the business,
- grocery shopping, dealing with a tantrum and eating morning tea…

When I bragged to my husband about my skill and efficiency, and competitively commented on his lack there of, he insisted he too could multi-task and how dare I even suggest he was inept. I asked for an example and I shouldn’t have because apparently sitting on the toilet and eating your cereal counts. I didn’t know how to tackle this one but I managed to multi-task this situation too, though not with any wit – I gave him my best repulsed look and horrified groan while folding the washing and researching recipes fit for a nine month old.

So when my kids are learning something new I like for them to have some success to encourage them to keep going. It’s a basic teaching technique. My kids fish now because the first time they fished they caught a fish. That we couldn’t rig but there have been plenty of things that we have rigged or helped a lot with. That’s fine for kids but with adults it comes across as just a little condescending. Now I’m not complaining but with my veggie garden I feel like the weather is being condescending, giving me success and lulling me into the false sense that I am a natural gardener before cutting me off at the knees.

My veggie garden is going gangbusters. Most of our salads this summer have come from whatever is ripe in our garden and I just made over three litres of tomato relish using my own tomatoes. I feel quite domestic I must admit and yet I am scared as well because I like this new talent of mine and I do not want Weather to feel like it must show me how inept I really am.

When Milla was ten months old we fell pregnant with Finn. It was in the plan, all organised, and we were lucky enough for it to happen just as we wanted.
Now, as Finn is almost nine months old, we find ourselves discussing the possibility of a third child.
Actually, it’s one of those discussions that comes with equally weighted pros and cons, the ones where the head and heart conflict, and if it was over buying a car or whether to take a job or not – it would be easy!
But this is a life altering decision.

Going from one child to two was a given if we were blessed enough for it to happen, and thankfully we were.
But going from two to three is an entirely different matter. If we had two girls people assume you have a third to try for the missing gender. We have one of each and people are surprised that we would consider a third just for this reason.

Friends have advised us to just wait a while, see if time will tell. But we believe time will only mean things in the household will be easier – a better sleeping baby, a toddler who discovers other favourite words instead of ‘no.’ A greater chance of just going for it if the house is a little more harmonious than before.

Others wonder why the decision has to be made now. And our answer is that we are so exhausted already with it niggling at us that we just want to know now so we can get on with life. We also think that if we did go there again, we would want them close in age.
Sadly, after suffering (and conquering I should add) PND, many friends but mostly family think that we are complete idiots to even consider having another and risking it all happening again. I say ‘sadly’ because part of me feels as though I’ve lost my right to have a third and that if I did need their help again I would be a burden and I could think of nothing worse.

There are so many reasons why…
There are so many reasons why not…

Typical teachers that we are we decided to use a thinking tool of some kind to weigh up the positive and negatives but we couldn’t even agree on which thinking tool to use! Hmmm…maybe a little too much thinking going on.

The decision remains unmade and niggles at us and we wish we were the type to just make the decision and stick to it, confident that it’s the right thing to do. But we’re not, so it continues…and if you have the formula for, “How to Decide on Two Children or Three” please share.

I feel like we have been running around doing fun, summery things for weeks now so it’s nice to just be at home but it also explains why this post is about something that happened just after Christmas; Squirm’s third birthday. Occasionally I get a nice surprise when I realise that I get to do things as a mother that I otherwise couldn’t, so many times we focus on the negatives instead of the fun.  I was genuinely surprised to find out that I love doing birthday parties for my kids. Now so far they only get them every second year because they do take a lot of effort. Here is what we did for Squirm’s.

At the moment she is extremely girly and loves cooking and playing with her tea set so we decided on a summer tea party. I baked the cake and Husband decorated. Here it is:

We invited six girls and began the preparations. I organised a craft where they stuck felt clothes onto felt people brooches and made what felt like metres and metres of bunting and did a little cooking. Fortunately for the kids most of the cooking is basic stuff like jelly and fairy bread. So the girls came on a beautiful summer’s morning went outside, did the craft, got a feather boa to dress up with for their morning tea and sat down at the table for a morning tea. It looked beautiful we had a large round table that we put on little drums so it was the perfect height for little ladies and had kid’s chairs, a white table cloth and flowers.

Now I didn’t want them using my good china so a friend (thank you Erika) sourced me a tea set from an op shop, beautiful matching cups and saucers and I got a cheap tea pot and put cordial in it. The cup and saucer became the little gift that each girl took home filled with a little of the leftover food. The girls ate, made a mess (fortunately it was all outside), ran around and played and had a great time and two hours later they all went home and we went on more holidays. It was really fun but at the same time I’m glad they only have parties every second year. A big thank you to Nicole who baked amazing food and let herself be tied up and chased by half a dozen two and three year olds and Nanna who was very crafty.

I have discovered the joys of ‘magic cream’. You know the cream that will fix any ailment from sore legs to a sore tummy to mosquito bites to a headache. Anything. It truly is amazing. It stops whining and tantrums and makes everything better. ‘And what is this special magic cream?’ you ask. Well, its sorbolene or moisturiser or sunscreen or whatever I happen to have on hand that the kids can’t see the packaging of. One of the kids called out from bed one night with some kind of ailment so Husband came and consulted me. I said ‘Magic cream’ and he said, ‘Does it really work.’ ‘They’ll not complain anymore after the ‘magic’ cream.’ I said and they didn’t.

My only regret is that now Husband is aware of the ‘magic’ cream so it doesn’t work on him.

Henceforth in our house there will be days that will be referred to as ‘Mussel Festival Days’. And here is why.

Saturday was the day of the Portarlington Mussel Festival and our family decided to go. I don’t eat seafood but that’s okay they have other food there plus a guy dressed up as a giant mussel, it was sure to be fun. So it all started when Squirm almost got run over by a four wheel drive monstrosity backing out of a park. It happened in slow motion so we were able to bang on his car, yell, scream, grab her and it was okay but everybody, including the driver, was a little shaken up. Then… ‘The Little One.’ was crawling, supervised on the top of a park table and got his foot stuck tight in between two slats. He screamed and there was no budging the foot. I had visions of firefighters cutting the bench up but eventually we used some sunscreen to force it out. Then we were meant to meet some friends on the beach so I walked with one pram and three kids about two kilometers in 35 degree heat to the designated spot only to get a phone call saying they had gone back to their caravan and Husband couldn’t bring the car any closer because the caravan park backed onto the beach. I was not happy so the kids had a short swim and then we carried them the kilometer back to the car.

We were going home, this is the end of it, I thought. Then there was a big bang so we pulled over only to hear all of the air escaping from our tyre. No big deal, we have a spare, it was flat. Husband turned to me then and said quietly that his phone was also flat. I began searching for mine. I found it, I thought it had plenty of battery but I began calling around to try and find someone to help and it started beeping. Needless to say I talked very quickly and before long trusty Dad was there to rescue us.

So if you are ever having one of ‘those days’ and I ask how you are just reply that it’s a mussel festival day and I will understand completely. Did I mention that I don’t eat mussels?

We had a really magical Christmas (or Chifus according to Milla) this year and I think a lot of the joy came from having a two year old in the house and a chubby little baby celebrating his very first Christmas.
Milla was one excited little girl and as usual, she marvelled at the gifts of very little monetary worth. Her bike with streamers was a real hit but when asked what Santa brought for her she gives a wide eyed and wide smiled answer of, “Abbey Cadabi undies!”
Finn was happy with his usual breastmilk and a rattle (though I seriously think he was wishing for his two front teeth and so were we), Sonny the dog got a new ball which was destroyed within seconds, my husband was pleased with his new t-shirt (relieved that it wasn’t socks and jocks), and I was genuinely smiling and glowing inside – post natal distress free.
The first thing Milla did when she saw her bulging stocking was pull out a wrapped present, turn to her baby brother and say, “here you go Finny.” I had tears and though she may never do that again, (we can hope that she might) that for me was really what Christmas was all about: giving.

Aaah… that was me releasing my breath and finally sitting down after the craziness of Christmas. Now I love Christmas but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t exhausting. We went on holidays the week before Christmas, we go water skiing and each year it is a reality check as to how old we are all getting. So I’m adamant that next year I’m going to be fitter and more hardcore than this year and therefore maybe not as exhausted by Christmas. The decline is going to end.

We got home Friday night and Saturday was Christmas. I think kids of all ages have an inbuilt alarm that makes them wake up at absurd’o'clock on Christmas day so we were up early and out all day.

I think I told you last year about our ‘tree-pod’ Here are some of the things that we made for it this year.

And here is the final product:

Brilliant I know.

This year we also did a ‘Giving Day’ where I spent all morning cooking with the kids something special and then all afternoon we drove around delivering them to their friends. I wanted them to work and then give to make other people happy rather than just cooking for themselves. It was a really great day. Here is what we cooked.

So that’s a little snapshot of the things that we did around Christmas time. Hope you all had a great Christmas. Now I’m off to organise Squirm’s birthday party before a New Year’s party before going on another holiday.

Every morning we have our little routine to farewell Daddy who is off to work. We wave and blow kisses and shout out, “Have a good day, we love you!”
We talk during the day about where Daddy is and why he’s there and when he’ll come home from this place called ‘work’ and Milla is very accepting of it all and has never cared too much when he leaves and is always excited when he returns.
We drive past Daddy’s work on our way to the Toy Library every Tuesday morning and Milla now even picks it out as we go past before I get the chance.
Finally, Milla got to go to Daddy’s work when they held a family Christmas Carols night in the school grounds. We had such a wonderful time singing (humming) the carols, there was a sausage sizzle, a huge playground and Santa even visited to see the children and hand out candy canes.
I did say that Milla is very accepting of Daddy going to work…but that was before she knew that all Daddy did every day was sing carols (well, if that was the case he should know all the words), eat sausages and play on the equipment with Santa!
Milla now has this warped sense of understanding about what Daddy does when he goes to work and cries at the door as he leaves. Now, as we drive past Daddy’s work on Tuesdays she says, “Daddy’s work! Milla go see Santa?”
I think we may have to visit Daddy again in the new year. Perhaps during report writing time when exhausted faces and dragging feet are the only things to see. In the meantime, we’ll let her dream.