HELLO WORLD!!

Hello to all my lovely blog readers out there. For those that are reading from over the pond - I have not dropped off the face of the earth.

I am still a mother to three beautiful children and Trent is now just over a week away from turning a whole year old.

I am not a bad blogger as I have a valid reason for my sudden silence. You see the thing is that this blog started off more as an online journal for myself and my own personal thoughts but as time went on I realised I was writing less and less about things that were close to my heart and more about what I thought my readers wanted to hear. I have in the not-to-distant past been dealing with a lot of shit on a very personal level and when I no longer felt it safe to come to my blog and let it all out I asked myself why I was actually keeping a blog in the first place? I need to write down my emotions in order to achieve a sense of peace so I have decided to rather go back to the old fashioned way of using a dusty old book with a handy little lock.

This is not all bad though since what I have done in the meantime is started up a picture blog which I'm loving every minute of. Please feel free to pop on over to www.irenebroome.blogspot.com
The blog above is for full public viewing but I will soon be going private to avoid any kind of abuse of pictures of my children so please please send me your email addresses so I can add you as readers if you would like to continue following me and my little family in photo's.

Lots of love always


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Video of Trent Walking

So earlier this evening we were down in the garage and my little man Trent decided to take his very first steps for all of us .... his best walk was after I put the camera away where he walked across the whole room - I am so surprised as yesterday I thought he took a step but didn't tell a soul as I was worried I had imagined it. Age right now is 9months, 2 weeks and 6 days :))) We love you soooo much my gorgeous boy.

Finally - an update!!

Yes I am alive I'm sure of it. I have left this update so long I just don't know where to start so I'll keep it short and sweet and update on Mr. T's milestones.

We had NO teeth at the end of January and by the first week in March we had 8 so yes it was fun and games for a month with very swolen gums and a miserable little boy who refused to sleep. Once again the whole of March my happy little boy came back but now over the last week he seems incredibly fussy again. Let me not talk about the tempter tantrums that started about a week ago. It seems he has learnt to scream, stiff body, shaking his arms and hands in fists when he is a. tired b. pissed off in general or c. has something off limits taken away from him..! In the Spar the other day we had our first public tantrum as I took an item away that I had put in the basket and he screamed so loud and cried so hard the tears made puddles on either side of the trolley (get it? picture animated tears here) .... the owner (who I chat to all the time) came running as she obviously thought he had fallen from the basket. Embarrassing? Just a little.

He is standing now and often gets annoyed if you try hold on to him - he just wants to do it alone and it scares me as the bumps and bruises are starting now. Oh well its bound to happen - I'll just be there and ready with the hugs and kisses after the fact. Trent turned 9 months yesterday and I'm actually a little sad that his time as a baby is fast approaching its end but then I remind myself how many giggles and joy Morgan brought us in her toddler years as she was learning and saying the funniest things.

We are now due for our Measels vaccs but I'm going to wait it out for a few days as his moods are telling me there may be another tooth lurking in the shadows... We have just started grinding our teeth as well and its the most awful sound on earth .... Hoping the tantrums and the grinding are all a passing phase as I'm starting to think I have another little tiger on my hands :)

A day in the life ....

I really haven't been in the mood to blog so instead will update with pictures I took yesterday. I am by no means professional but certainly got some sort of warped pleasure lying in ant infested grass and itching all night just to get the perfect shot ..... so here they are..

You may be wondering why the orange? It was the closest thing I could find and I was testing focus points... (that and the fact that Morgan loves modelling)


Look at this determined little monkey???





Once again I was just trying out different effects with the camera.


Speak to the hand ma ....

mY LiTtLe CiRcUs

My maid is still out of action after her hysterectomy and managed to get a post-surgical incision hematoma so there is a part of her incision site that is continually bleeding. After doing some reading on this it seems the sister did the right thing in putting her on antibiotics and sending her to bed with strict instructions to only move when going to the toilet. It seems that for the most part these things get reabsorbed by the body eventually so here's hoping - I have so much on my plate right now and can't be driving back and forward to the hospital every 5 minutes.
On top of worrying about her, helping her daughter clean the house (due to her also having to look after her baby who still cries a lot), and having my own sick little baby this week so getting very little sleep - i am honestly drained. Oli hasn't been around much at all lately as he has been on business travels so I'm pretty much doing it all.
My daughters DO NOT STOP FIGHTING - they are constantly at eachothers throats and every 5 minutes one or the other comes running to me complaining.

I wake in the morning, get everyone up, give T a bottle, snuggle, nappy change, make sure Morgan has lunch and try to remember that on certain days she has ballet, swimming or sport, remember cookie day on Thursdays and tuck money on Fridays, do the pony tail just so - no lumps and it has to be a high pony - all this while T is on the bed with me barricaded with pillows but due to his newfound mobility - my one hand is always on the ready. Put T in his cot with lots of toys so I can have a quick bath, do make-up, hair, get dressed. Kaylah helps where she can with the morning routine but spends a large part of it on her hair.
I get home from work at 2:30pm after fetching Kaylah from school, kick off my shoes, put on shorts, wash my hands and take Trent for the afternoon, play with him etc etc., do homework with Morgan, sort out fights, cook T's dinner (he's having a lot of purity these days for obvious reasons), sort out more fights, bath T and then have to ask Kaylah to give him his last bottle while I quickly try throw something together for dinner which needs to be ready by 7pm so Morgan can bath, wash her hair and be in bed by 8pm (we read a bedtime story but only 4 pages a night (only after yet another fight between the girls)). T has by this time been sleeping for about an hour - I shower, climb into bed, turn on the TV and T wakes up. We spend another hour or two up and down until he finally settles.

Somewhere in my day I have to find time to make sure the cupboards are always full of groceries, that there is always bread for school and milk for breakfast. Last week Kaylah went to the dentist and I was told she needs to go 1.5 hours away to get her wisdom teeth cut out. This week she is going back to said dentist for two fillings. Today I have to leave work early to take T to the paed and tomorrow I have an appointment with the chiro. SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE ME MORE HOURS IN A DAY!!!!

How is it that women manage to do so much and still cope (I didn't say cope well - I said cope) yet men get up, have a shit, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, have a shit, read the Autotrader, sit down for dinner, have a shit, go to bed and with a big sigh, a fart and a moan about how busy they were - then roll over and fall asleep with thunderous snores?

Yesterday I was running on less than empty ... I only managed to go to sleep the night before at around 12 midnight due to all sorts of disturbances and at 1am Trent woke up and the crying began, he was inconsolable until eventually at 2:30am I gave him medicine, teething powder and rocked him until he fell asleep. Not good for my back of course so after climbing into bed myself I had sharp pains shooting down my leg and took some miprodol. Yet although I wanted to crawl up and die at work yesterday - when i got home, I briefly stood on the front patio, took a deep breath, pushed my overwhelming need to sleep to the back of my mind and walked in, washed hands and took Trent whose temperature once again was right up. The cycle continued.... Thank goodness last night he was asleep by 7pm and didn't wake again until 5:30am so I'm back on track..... for now (I need to mention that his second tooth popped out on Saturday)

Now for those who are dying to remind me of how blessed I am to have a house full of kids I have to stress that rather than complaining I am giving my self a much-deserved pat on the back. I type this with a smile on my face and can honestly see the humour in it now that I have caught up on much needed sleep. You see there are times when I just want to be alone with no kids, husbands or demands but the minute the house is quiet I feel the most overwhelming sense of loneliness and my mind begins wondering to places it really shouldn't ... the what if's....... ? What if I didn't have all this? What if it was all taken away from me? I end up doing nothing but pacing until they return and once again my house is filled with the sounds of laughter, fighting, crying .... life. I wouldn't want it any other way and God has blessed me abundantly with a house full of chaos because he believes in me and therefore I believe in myself.

This and That

An update on Trent is that on Sunday 30th January he woke up to a brand new tooth. One that silently popped out during the night without so much as a peep out of him. The second one is right there - I can see the white through the gum so its a matter of days before that one comes out. I must mention that this coincides with Morgan's teeth starting to loosen which is kinda cute. The more he gets the less she gets lol.

As per his last clinic visit

Weight: 9.7kg
H/C: 45cm
Height: 70cm

I remember early days when his size was actually off the chart and he was above the 98th percentile - now he has come down to around the 95th. He has not grown taller in the last 3 visits even though his other measurements have increased. Sister says I'll probably see a big difference in height in the next month.

On the diet front things are still going very well - I hit a plateau for a good 2.5 weeks and the scale became my enemy but I pushed through in the hope that I would get over it and this week I was rewarded with another 1.2kg loss - a total of 6.4kg's down since beginning of January. I am feeling good about it and even though I know I still have a long way to go I'm trying to set mini-goals for myself and not look at the bigger picture.
I have been having a lot of back troubles on and off since I had T and like all mom's I put myself last so only now 7 months later decided to visit the chiropracter - won't go into detail but there is a lot of locking up going on in my spine thats cause pain in my right hip, kidney, ovary and upper leg. Saturday I'm back again and although I love how he clicks my back out I'm not really looking forward to the pain after the treatment. Kaylah was an absolute STAR last night as she could see I was in pain and not only bathed, changed, and fed Trent but rocked him to sleep as well. But that's not all - she wouldn't let me make supper (okay granted we just had a potato with cheese on as none of us were really hungry) but she made it for me and brought it to the room. I gave her a bit of money this morning to go buy a nice outfit for a dance she's going to on Friday - she really deserves it.

I'm still enjoying my camera and drinking in every possible article I can get my hands on. I have just ordered Photoshop CS4 and today ordered the How to book that goes with it so looking forward to spending a lot of time in front of the computer.
I want to post a picture or two that I took but please please seasoned photographers and others - be gentle! I know my focus points were not spot on amongst other things but I will get there eventually :o))

The minute the rain stopped I grabbed up my camera for close-ups of the still-wet flowers in the garden which I thought were absolutely beautiful - since I have not yet received my software they haven't been enhanced at all..

Just a leaf but imagine the possibilites if I had a macro lens on those raindrops. Next on my list to buy but oh so expensive.... :(


Hydrangia flowers





From our Frangipani Tree


Now if I had edited this one on the computer I would have definately removed or disguised the dying flower in the background.

Public Property?

Just wanted to mention that since I loaded that "MapLoco" onto my blog I have discovered that I get readers from all over the world. Belgium, Poland, USA, Ireland and the other day even had someone comment in Japanese or Chinese (forgive me but I don't know the difference)....

Now my point is this ..... I am somewhat freaked out. I know its a public blog for all to see and I sit now questioning my wisdom in putting my beloved children on display. So please ... to all those readers from far and wide drop a comment every now and again so I am safe in the knowledge that your intentions are pure - or I may be forced to go private for the safety of my family.