Other peoples kids

Yesterday I was in the library and was reading little Miss Z a book. Another child came up to us and said hello and then wanted to read our book. She tried to take it out of my hands and I ended up having a book tussle with a four year old. Not my finest hour. I have been thinking about it and wondering if I should have given her the book, or should have held onto it or even if her Mum (who was right next to us) should have done a bit more. I ended up feeling like a big Mum type bully.

In other news my first craft project has gone quite well. I have made three gift bags and am really happy with them. I didn't have a pattern or anything but just started sewing. My first one I sewed the top together, which makes it very difficult to get any gifts inside, but the next two are beautiful. I am now going to make some big ones for xmas for the family and my next project is some cushions to brighten up the lounge room.

Budgeting blah

After a week of discussing our finances and attempting to get our one salary budget under control today I went to Bunnings. For a table. I came out with 10 plants, batteries, a bottle of baby paint, a table and some citronella candles. Way to stick to the budget huh.

I then went to the post office and thought I would stop in at KMart to see if they had an air mattress for this weekends camping trip and ended up spending $190.

My name is Killerrabbit and I am a shopping addict

Crafty me

I can't believe that after so many years of being staunchly anti-craft I have become slightly obssessed with the idea of sewing.

Just the idea of sewing at the moment as I don't have a sewing machine but enough that I am obssessively looking at patterns, going into my local material shops and bidding like crazy on ebay to get a sewing machine. I have also booked into a basic sewing class, which takes me through exciting things like threading a bobbin etc. The first and only sewing project I have ever made was an apron in Year 8. It was a very nice apron and I didn't make a terrible job of it but I was never a Home Economics type kid at school.

Do you think it is a symptom of me being a SAHM at the moment? My first inspiration was making little Miss Z some outfits - like how hard can it be. Baby clothes are ridiculously expensive. I was in a local top end clothes store and they were selling baby skirts for $75. There was barely any material in it. People are just having a laugh.

Seriously, how hard can this be?













$90! For a one year old.

Funky presents

Here is little miss punk rocker. She has the most gorgeous tutu made by a dear friend, and her skull shirt and shoes. Also present is her new camera smile, slightly wierd. I don't know where it came from.

Here is the camera smile in greater detail....

Now while she is still super cute in my eyes, her new fake camera smile is a bit wierd. I wonder where she gets it from.

Over a year ago

I was a fully working woman. Gainfully employed and trying to make a difference for young people in Australia. Now I am a SAHM (stay at home mum for those who don't follow mommy blogs) and trying to make a difference in the life of one young person in particular. I suppose that if I do a good enough job she won't end up needing the services of my old oganisation so there is some synergy. I do miss the mental stimulation, especially when we are having a bit of a difficult day.

Yesterday was a difficult day, for example, with little Miss Z being upset if I walked into the next room, and generally being very grumpy and whingy all day. And she woke up at 4.30am. At least at work if things were going badly I knew how to fix them. I couldn't do anything for Miss Z aside from carry her around and take her for lots of walks. Really with all this baby related exercise I should be a lot more yummy mummy, rather than tummy mummy. Today is going well though and to celebrate I am going for a picnic and maybe going to buy myself a new bra. I have been breastfeeding for over a year now and I brought myself two nursing bras when she was a month or so and they have seen a bit of use in the past year. Maybe with my new bras I will be much more yummy mummy.










I call it the power of hot lingerie.

Getting my work on

Well it has been getting pretty good around here. Miss Z is still sleeping through, I can't believe it. All those people who said that you have to teach them how to self settle were right, damn them. I also can't believe that I spent a whole year being woken up every hour or two when she just needed her own room. She is a much happier baby with all the sleep that she is getting and her under eye circles are gone, so she is much prettier as well.

I am looking at starting my own business after my return from maternity leave went so poorly. I am hoping that someone out there will want to employ me for my mad skillz. Hey I haven't spent 9 very successful years fundraising for nothing. I have now a business name, a web domain and an ABN. Now I just need a client or two.

Life but not as we know it

Well now Miss Z is sleeping through the night, and taking nice long day naps I'm not too sure what to do with myself. I am getting really bored just hanging around the house doing housework and don't really have loads of money now I am not working. It is so hard to find things to do everyday that don't involve spending heaps of filthy lucre. As I don't have loads of mum friends in Melbourne there are large parts of most days where it is just Miss Z and me. While she is the sweetest thing her conversation, which consists of Mama, what's dat and dog, isn't really very edifying. I can't really blog very much as Miss Z loves to bang on the laptop, or just hover very close. What do other Mothers do with their time?

Miss Z's new favourite thing is getting her food and rubbing it in her hair.

Also I thought breast feeding was meant to help me loose weight, I am eating normally and walking for at least half an hour everyday but my post baby weight loss has stopped at 20 kgs. I need to loose another 5 at least. What else should I do?

Guess who is sleeping through the night! For the past five nights. Clever clever girl

Somebody in the house turns one today

My little girl is now one! I can't believe how fast (and slow) the past year has gone. She has grown from a squinty blob to a walking, talking little girl. The milestones that we were so excited about at the time, rolling over, sitting up, first smile are now vauge blurs. I can't even remember the month that she did these things. I should have written them down. I can remember days of incredible love, where I thought that I would explode from the strength of my feelings, to days where I would have happily traded her in for another baby. Preferably one that sleeps.

Our sleep training is moving along. She is in her own room now and in her cot. She is now sleeping for hours at a time and last night she settled herself twice after a brief awakening. But she is also still waking up screaming sometimes and won't go back to sleep for hours. Everything I read about sleep training they certainly never said that it would take a month and the crying has not stopped yet. But I can see that she is feeling much brighter during the day with quality sleep at night. The best feeling is when I put her to bed, with lots of love and cuddles and she just settles herself down and falls asleep. Less fun is 2.30 - 4.30 am standing on the edge of her cot, screaming her head off. I think that this time of night is hard for her because she is still tired, but has just had eight hours uninterupted sleep which is the longest she has slept since birth.

I must go and take birthday girl out for a walk. I am going to get her her first baby chino as well.

I think my passion for op shopping is over. I visited the Camberwell markets today and bought nothing for myself but a book and a toy. I used to have fantastic clothes at uni through dudicious op shopping and I looked pretty stylish.
Even if the above dress was one of my favourites.

Waterloo sunset

Bagels for breakfast this morning. They always make me think about working at Waterloo Station in London in the offices looking over the very busy concourse. There was a bagel cart there which did delicious toasted bagels which you could get with vegemite! Every day when I went to work there I would either sing Abba or The Kinks depending on what mood I was in that day. Ahhh fun times.

Not so much fun times with Miss Z's sleep training, after a very successful night on Wednesday night where she slept for 6 hours Thursday night was hellish. She woke up at 3.30 and just wouldn't stop crying or go to sleep. Yesterday was slightly better but only very short naps were taken during the day and she woke up a lot, every 2 hours at night. I noticed (because my sleep is very very shallow) that whenever Mr KR would do anything in his sleep, snore, have a small nightmare Miss Z would start awake. That meant that I had to get her out of bed, feed her, resettle her and pat her until she fell asleep. Normally the process would only take 5 minutes but it now takes half and hour. And she is still waking up as much as she did when co-sleeping and feeding to sleep. Yesterday was a very sad day.

I am going to stick with this sleep training until Sunday. If it doesn't work then I don't know what I will do. I need sleep so badly.

Crying baby

Well that didn't go too badly. Miss Z seems to be getting the going to sleep thing which is amazing. I had visions of myself bouncing a teenager on a swiss ball to get her to sleep, or having to share a bed with Miss Z when she starts uni. She woke up three times 9.30pm, 12.30 and 4.00 which is a great improvement and I got her back to sleep, after a quick feed, back in her cot with no tears or meltdowns. At 4.30 she woke up again and needed to come back to sleep next to me but that is just so much better than before. I hope that she will decide that she doesn't need the feeding all by herself as I can't possibly cope with night weaning her at the same time as sleep training. At least I am getting my side of the bed all to myself and it is bliss. We have a fancy new mattress as well so it is comfy as well and luxurious.

I realise that this is a mommy blog, which for any readers who remember my old blog isn't really me, but since I stopped working recently my life is my baby. I don't like it much but I just have to get on with it until I find a suitable part-time job. I am thinking about starting up a bit of a consultancy but you need lots of time and dedication to succeed in a small business, and also lots of confidence neither of which I have. The way work got rid of me after my return from maternity leave just shattered me for a while. But I am starting to feel a bit better and have seen a good volunteering opportunity nearby that I can do with Miss Z which is a start.

Things they are a changing

After swearing blind that we would let little Miss Z just find her own way to fall asleep and stay asleep I have finally decided that enough is enough. I know that she is a clever little muffin girl and I just need to gently show her what she needs to do to fall asleep so yesterday I tried the camping out method. I have her cot up against our bed and I just lay down and pretended to be asleep at her morning nap time, while making the little sleep sounds that we have used since her birth. It took 45 mins and lots of tears but Miss Z fell asleep without being rocked or fed for the first time since she was born! I tried again last night and it was one of the most horrible experiences, she got really upset and woke up every 45 mins but this isn't too different from her normal 2 hours inbetween awakenings.

I just did it for her afternoon nap and there were no tears, a bit of cot playing but she tried to lie down and go to sleep for the first time ever! I hour later I am up but hoping that this will do what they promise and teach her to sleep without me. I am happy to be there for her but several things drove me to this

1. she is nearly a year old and I haven't had longer than five hours sleep in a row since she was born
2. I think that she is developmentally ready to learn this skill without thinking that I have abandoned her
3. it isn't just letting her cry it out in a room by herself
4. feeding her to sleep just wasn't working very well anymore. If I have to lie down with her for half hour or more I may as well pretend to be asleep.
5. I just can't have her clambering over me all night anymore.

I hope that this doesn't make me the worst parent ever. I certainly felt that way last night when she was so upset.

general delightfulness

Today has been a day of fantasticness in the Killerrabbit household - I discovered that our local bookshop will buy my second hands books for $3, my pram has a new frame (not new material unfortunately) and I caught up with lots of lovely local mothers.

On the downside little Miss Z is refusing to go to sleep tonight. I eventually had to send in the Dad. She was just not dropping off and rolling all around the bed and cot instead of going to sleep. Maybe its her teeth but it looks to me that all the ones that should be popping through are through now. Seven in one month! I can't keep blaming the teeth for the poor sleep either. She is a clever little munchkin and has started trying to take her own shirt off at only 10 months (or is that normal?) so I know that she does have some idea what is coming when we start our sleep routine. I think that she might just be fighting it because she can.

She is working really hard on walking and is starting to take lots of unsupported risks and steps. It is very exciting. I am hoping that once the walking is mastered that she will just feel like sleeping through the night. Does this happen?

First brownie

Today Miss Z found the container which had the chocolate brownies in it, 3 seconds later the brownies were all over the floor, and in her mouth.

Motto of today - never turn your back on a child with a brownie box

Back from the homeland

Well as I assume no one found me, not even my old school blogging friends, I will probably continue writing for an audience of very few.

I have just got off the plane from a visit with the little Z to the northern Australian town I used to call home and I think that I will be very sad for a little while. I loved being back there, it just feels right for this stage in my life. My friends back there all seem to have kids and may even be on their second. My friends in Melbourne on the other hand are crap. Most of them have dropped off the radar since we can't go out partying anymore. I am OK with this but I just think our life would be more fun and less challenging if we had good support networks, and some family around us.

I am pretty pleased that I am making a couple of good new friends but it is hard as everyone has all the friends that they need, and it is difficult to make space for new people when you have established networks.

I am also a bit concerned as my DH was delighted to see little Z but I felt distinctly underwhelmed with my reception. No special dinner, no special treatment. I felt that he was a bit distant. It just shows me how much work I put into keeping our relationship up.

Anyhooo

Welcome sports fans

Did anyone find me? One of the problems with resurrecting my blog, kind of, is that no one is blogging anymore. I have done a big scope of my old blogging friends and there doesn't seem to be any activity.

Why is this?

Does everyone Twitter instead?

Will I have to succumb to the Twitter?

I have always put this off as the whole twitter thing just seemed wrong. It is not a coincidence that the most disgusting couple in literature were called, The Twits. It isn't the writing about the minutiae of my life that worries me, after all I blog, but the shortness of the word limit. My text messages are always two or three SMS worth (thanks to Australia's very short word limit) how on earth can I talk about my day with such brevity?

Data points on the past couple of days

• Z has taken to calling me 'dat' which I think meant that as she is pointing at other things and saying 'dat'. I have been saying Mama to her a lot but it isn't taking. Henceforth I shall be known as 'that'.
  
• I found quite a few jobs to apply to today, but I think most of them are full time. I don't want to go full time yet, too much baby love to give.
• Z has her two top teeth but it hasn't helped the feeding to sleep. She now gets sleepy and then rolls around everywhere crying, sitting up and pushing up. It's extremely hard to get her to sleep now, and so much crying. I have been trying to give her lots of love and a peaceful sleep time and with my best intentions it has now become a painful struggle. I have to just remember that this will pass...
  

Baby modelling

How exciting, Z has been seleted to be a model for baby clothes, she won't earn anything but she will get free clothes. I am proud of what a cute little bundle I am the mum of. This was the shot that got her the gig

Feeding to sleep

OH MY GOD

Since the horrible four month sleep regression I have been feeding my little daughter to sleep.

It has stopped working. Just suddenly rather than closing her eyes and drifting off Z is still lying there wide awake, she then rolls and waves her arms and doesn't go to sleep. I just got her off for her morning nap after a lot of feeding, patting, lying back down and shushing. I really hope that this is the start of a big improvement in her sleep, rather than something that will make life even more difficult. But knowing little Z she is going to have a terrible time sleeping now.

But the good news is she only woke up twice last night.

Blah

I didn't get a job that I really, kind of, wanted. Ho hum.

It was a great job that seemed to need my experience as well as my unused Honours and Masters degree, but I think it was full-time and I don't really want to leave Z in child care five days a week.

Isn't it strange how things change. I was certain before I went on maternity leave that I would be bored and ready to return to full-time work after six months. It is now ten months and I can't see myself in full-time work for a couple of years. Also we have to try for a second baby.

Wow - long time between posts

Its amazing how something like a blogging can come and go from your life. I used to love writing about things that were going on with me and trying to come up with witty anecdotes from my life.

Then I had a baby.

I thought that I would magically have all this time to waffle about what motherhood meant to me and hopefully meet other mum bloggers. God I was amazingly unprepared for what a baby meant. Especially my delightful little cherub, who went through a seven month period of not sleeping and also had serious seperation anxiety from five months. Whew that was tough. I think that we are coming out the other side now, and I have adjusted my expectations of what I can achieve when Z is awake and asleep.

A couple of things saved me:
- Ask Moxie - a blog that highlighted some of the issues that parents face and helped me feel like I wasn't totally alone. There were other babies out there who really didn't sleep and that there wasn't much I could do except whatever gets us through.
- Chatting to mothers - especially a delightful friend in Brisbane who really made the effort, just when I needed to know I wasn't all alone. Hugs to you.

I will see how I go but I think I may be back, bitches.