There's Not Enough Coffee To Make It Ok

This morning we had a ridiculously early start to the day.  Now some of you may be aware that I am not what you would call a morning person.  I’m not really a night person either.  I like to think of myself as a lunch time person.  I was, after all, born at lunch time ish.  There are conflicting reports of my birth actually but somewhere between 11.45 am and 1.45 pm I made my appearance.  I call that lunch time.

Some of you people will be of the opinion that there is nothing better than getting up at the crack of dawn or even starting the day before the sun has risen.  You argue that there is nothing more glorious than a sunrise viewed with coffee in hand to awaken the senses.  I can agree that there is nothing more glorious than a sunrise (I have been forced to watch a few in my time) but I would be much happier if they happened at lunch time thank you very much.

You'll Laugh About That In Three Weeks

At this point we are closing in on Thanksgiving over here and as I was sitting here thinking about what I could be thankful for I realised that having kids who know how to have a good laugh is pretty good.  Or at the very least having kids that are constantly doing things worthy of being laughed at.  They say that laughter is the best medicine and we sure get a lot of it round here so I thought I would share some of the laugh inducing gems we’ve encountered.  Of course not all of them induced laughter right away but with time and perspective it is true that “you’ll laugh about this in three weeks” is a statement to live by.

There's A Pill For That

It has been just over a month since we started giving Emily medication for ADHD.  Now before you all get upset about our decision let me just say that it was a very very long and involved process that we went through to get her diagnosed and prescribed and an even longer one for us to even decide to go down that track in the first place.  It has been obvious to us for quite some time that she has ADHD (its not that big of a stretch given that James has it and they share a lot of the same symptoms) and although it didn’t necessary bother us that much we realised that it is really affecting her school work.

Birthday Gifts, Running Shoes and Zimmer Frames

The last few weeks have been pretty busy.  I’ve been out and about quite a bit and its been ever so slightly hectic.  I have realised something about myself which I guess I always knew deep inside but it has now come to the surface.  James thinks its a bit funny and slightly annoying and I just find it kind of enlightening.  You see I have realised that for every minute or hour of activity and busyness that I engage in which involves interacting with other human beings I need an equal amount of minutes or hours to unwind, by myself, doing pretty much nothing.

I actually found myself, the other day, sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing but my head was spinning and I felt like my brain was desperately trying to catch up with what my body had just done.   The problem with this is that there just are not enough hours in the day to sit doing nothing in response to having just had interactions with other people.  And I enjoy the interactions with others but sometimes I wonder if I would be better off being a hermit.

The Wheels On The Car ...

Today was rather a dramatic day.  James has been away on a business trip since Monday and today (Wednesday) it happened to be a half day at school for the girls.  I was not overly enthusiastic about this since it meant more hours in which I would be trying to entertain the kidlets in my sleep deprived state.

I got Emily on the bus after giving all the kids a hearty breakfast of porridge.  Quite an exceptional feat I thought considering how tired I was.  I had gotten an email the night before from Emily’s teacher reminding me of a field trip she was supposed to take that day which I had failed to acknowledge with her fee.  I found the note about it in a stack of the kids art work which explained that a science museum was bringing the museum to the school and it would cost $8 for my child to participate in the experiments.  

Abigail's Birthday

My pregnancy with Abigail was the hardest one of all.  It was fraught with drama both physically and emotionally.  I was sure that the poor baby was going to come out somehow damaged by all the stress I was under during the 9 months of her residence.  Fortunately she emerged unscathed (so far as we can tell) and has been my most chilled out baby so far.

For the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy I had no medical care except for the initial visit to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy about a week before the hideous sickness fell.  For the third time I managed to weigh less right before delivery than I had at the beginning of the pregnancy.  But unlike the other two pregnancies I was packing up a house in the first few weeks.  Now the damage that Emily had done to my back and hip during her time in utero had not really gone away but to make it worse I wrenched my back badly trying to lift a heavy box.  

Kaitlyn's Birthday

Kaitlyn’s entrance into this world was a little less dramatic than Emily’s one.  I was even sicker than with Emily and for a longer time which was less than exciting given that I had a toddler to look after.  Fortunately we had moved to New Zealand by then and I had my mother just around the corner.  Emily spent a lot of time with my parents while I was in the stay horizontal phase of the pregnancy.

My doctor’s office was within walking distance from my house (and waddling distance later on) which was nice and the hospital was about 2 minutes drive away (or less if you needed to get there in a hurry!!).  The hospital was a tiny little maternity wing staffed by a lone midwife at night and two or three midwives during the day if you were lucky.  It was very old fashioned and had none of the fancy machines that the hospital in America had.  The biggest thing that struck me was that it didn’t offer any pain relief drugs except for one which I react very badly to.  That meant no epidurals, no spinal blocks, no nothing.