Time passing

I remember thinking, when my first baby Amelie, was born that I would be sad when she left one stage (snugly newborn, giggly 3 month old, sitting, toddling etc) but in reality I haven’t felt sad, mostly excited about the new things she learns everyday. Then Juliet came along and it was the same, joy at her new discoveries. When Euan was born, I really didn’t have that much time to ponder these things with 3 children to care for.

Euan is now 19 months old and we have arrived at a point where we have decided that there will be no more babies. Now I am in awe of the individuality of each of my three children, and their unique talents but as Euan grows and passes his milestones I feel sad to be leaving the baby days behind.

My salve, for now, is breastfeeding. I can clear out the boxes of baby clothes and paraphernalia, saving a few precious keepsakes for each child, with mild sadness. Breastfeeding gives me a few quiet moments with my otherwise rowdy toddler, when he will cuddle and look into my eyes. Then he is off again, continuing his exploration of the world.

We will keep going as long as we are both happy to continue. I’m hoping we still have a while to go. I’m not ready to let go of the breastfeeding stage yet. It seems that for us, it will be one of the last vestiges of babyhood before boyhood.

Tomorrow

Another post in the "My life is a song title" series

#2 Tomorrow

Tomorrow I go to the neurologist for the results of the MRI from a few weeks back. Until last week I was pretty cool with the waiting, but then the countdown started. Every day has seen me becoming more anxious. And finally... it's only a day away!!

Some of my nearest and dearest will be surprised that I picked this song. They know of my phobia of the musical "Annie", stemming from an unfortunate vocal performance at the Kempsey Eisteddfod circa 1987ish. Maybe it wasn't that bad, but it felt bad, and embarassing. Thankfully there is no video evidence that I know of.

When I started My life is a song title I secretly hoped that it would be a version of High Fidelity. I think this post crushed that dead.

My life is a song title

#1
I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

Early this year I visited a neurologist who told me I have "probable MS (multiple sclerosis)". He meant that I had experienced one episode of sclerosis on my optic nerve. That's what this was. He said that it might be 10-15 years before I have another episode, or I might be one of lucky ones who never experience another episode. It's not official MS until there is more than one bout. He recommended 6 monthly MRIs to keep a check on things.

Until a month ago I was sailing along, trying not to dwell on the what if's, although there were moments of worry about what the future would hold. Mostly I feel grateful that MS won't kill me, and that we have time to make decisions and plans.

Then I developed a numb patch of skin on my leg, near my hip, and then lessened sensation down the front of my thigh. I went to the GP who thought we should contact the neurologist. Referred for brain and spine MRIs, which happened on Friday. Now I'm waiting until my appt with the neuro on 1st July for results. Back to waiting again.

I'm in a swirl of emotion. Fear, anxiety, frustration, with occasional joyful moments. I'm also exhausted. Not in a sleepy way, in a heavy can't-do-anything sort of way. It doesn't matter if I sleep 10 hours overnight and have an afternoon nap, I'm still tired. It's depressing.

I have incredibly supportive family and friends. I have been in contact with a friend who has MS - she has been really helpful. I have been a frequent visitor to the MS Society website, which is a great source of reliable information. I have been lurking at MS forums and checking out blogs about living with MS, but those people are at a different place in their journey, and all the reading in the world is not helping me with mine.

So the song title is my life right now. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Things I know

I love reading Yay for Home, especially the "Things I Know" posts. Here is my attempt.

Things I Know...

Reading is one of life's pleasures.
Watching my children develop their language and reading is amazing.
We have many, many books. Almost too many.
There is no such thing as too many books, we just need inventive storage ideas.
Cold grey Sundays are perfect for veg soup lunches and afternoon naps (for me!).
Shouting "BE QUIET OR YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE" does not work.
The Strawberry Shortcake movie is terrible, but it keeps A & J quiet for a while.

Lentil and Spinach Soup

We've been under the weather here this week. The weather today is cold and windy. I really wanted some yummy soup. I turned to my trusty taste.com.au and searched for spinach soup. I came up with a Lemon, lentil and spinach soup and a Middle Eastern-style lentil & spinach soup. I had some ingredients but not quite all in the fridge and pantry so I mixed the recipes together and the result was delish! So yummy it has inspired me back to the blog after a very long break to record the success. If I don't write it down it will be lost forever.

Megan's Spinach and Lentil Soup

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 large brown onion, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, finely chopped
• 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
• 2 potatoes, peeled and cubed
  
• 2L (8 cups) water
• 2 large Massel vegetable stock cubes
• 325g (1 1/2 cups) red split lentils
• 4 cubes frozen chopped spinach
• 1 tbs garam masala

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until soft. Add carrot and celery and cook for about a minute. Throw in the potato and add the water and stock cubes. Increase the heat to high. Bring to the boil.

Add the lentils and stir until well combined. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Add the spinach and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes or until the spinach defrosts and just wilts. Add the garam masala and cumin, and stir until well combined. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

We served ours with organic sourdough bread.

Wannabe Soule Mama

For Christmas I gave myself The Creative Family by SouleMama. I love it! I want our family to be allowed to exercise our creativity, and I want us to show gratitude. I have a jumble of ideas going around in my head, things we can do in our family.

The first project was to reorganise the crafty, colouring things so they stay organised and are easy for small people to tidy up, with guidance and nagging of course. I reclaimed a quarter of a cupboard in our dining area and using some cheap plastic food containers sorted the pencils from the textas. I went to work with my trusty labeller so we know where to put things back. We've given the system a couple of workouts and it is easy! Things go back where they should! I wish I had batteries in the camera to document it.

In the process of organising I culled our crayon collection, leaving only some chubbies. I am working on Soule Mama's principle that children only need a few good quality art supplies, the same supplies that the grown-ups use. The assortment of broken mismatched crayons were put aside for our next project.

Yesterday we recycled the old crayons into these. I enlisted my big girls and we set about removing the paper wrappers from the broken crayons, then we sorted them into colours. I put them in a tupperware silicon mould that is mini "booby cakes". I'm not sure of the proper name of the shape but they do indeed look like boobies.

Our first batch was a mixture of colours: yellow and black, like bumblebees and purple and brown, like um... purple and brown? They weren't so great looking so in the next batch we kept to like colours, shades of red, shades of green. They are spectacular.

Anyway, normal service will no doubt be resumed shortly when I'm back at paid work and the craziness of schedules returns.

Love and light

The beginning of my new year is tinged with sadness and worry. Sending love and light to those who need it. We will get through this.

Photo by Kimberlyfaye

I'm not sending Christmas cards again this year....

But I am going to join in Miscmum's Christmas Card Challenge.

I will donate unused postage to Oxfam for each of you leaves a comment on my blog. I would promise to send you an ecard like miscmum is doing, but anyone who knows me well will understand that, despite good intentions, it will probably not happen! So comment away, and know that I will be sending love and light your way this Christmas and some money to those less fortunate.

Gee, where did that last month go?

I've been meaning to make a few posts, but more urgent things seem to have overtaken me. Now I finally sit down and realise it has been a whole month since I last made the time.

Thanks for your concern about the headache. It's gone now although my eyesight is still a bit dodgy at times. Crams, I have contemplated it being food issues for a while. I'm still working up to an elimination diet. I'm scared..... it seems so hard:(

In the last week, Amelie has received a prize at her first school presentation night, Juliet has sung and danced with all her might at her daycare Christmas concert, and Euan has started crawling and grown 2 teeth. In the next week we have a preschool concert for Juliet, a couple of Christmas parties, followed closely by my birthday and a visit from my sister and her new baby. Lots to look forward to, gotta love this time of year!

Ouchy-wah-wah

Have you ever had a headache that lasts a week? It really hurts. I went to the Dr this morning. He thinks it is a migraine. I thought migraines were more acute, and shorter. He gave me some ibuprofen and told me to get lots of rest this weekend. And to keep my fluids up... I guess he doesn't mean wine;-)

Hoping for a respite soon, and a renewal of the blogging enthusiasm!

Liberating

My lovely cousin came to help me last week. She generously gave me a day of her time and energy to help me purge my kitchen of clutter. I learned the following lessons about myself:

1. Owning many, many plastic containers does not make me organised. It just makes the tupperware drawer hard to close.
2. I do not need every single dinnerset I've owned since I left home 15 years ago. And if I am having 56 guests for dinner we will be using disposable plates and cups!
3. If I own it, it should be useful and used.

The giveaways were loaded up and taken away for me, to be found new homes for the needy and op-shop bargain hunters.

By the end of the day (yes, it took that long!) I was exhausted, and suffering a bit emotionally for parting with my stuff. Since then I have started to appreciate the space I now have. Less definitely is more....

I can't get started

My small boy is asleep, not in my arms. He is unwell, so when he is awake he just wants me. I really need to do some stuff while he is sleeping, but I feel exhausted. I'll do 5 minutes of filing papers away and see how I feel then.... Maybe doing something constructive will energise me, since pikelets and fruitcake have done nothing so far:-)

Junk-a-vitis

We've all been really sick here for weeks, with the exception of Neil who has kept the medicine cabinet stocked with pain relief and done more than his fair share of everything!

Amelie has tonsillitis, but keeps forgetting what it is called. She tells people she has "junk-a-vitis" (I think she is getting confused with conjunctivitis). Her malapropism got me thinking.... I have junk-a-vitis! I keep catching junk, it is hard to get rid of and seems to keep coming back.

The first step in de-junking the place has been to get some housecleaning help. These wonderful people have only visited once so far but I feel much freer to concentrate on sorting the stuff in the place when I know they will be responsible for the cleaning/dusting/vacuuming/mopping. If these tasks were still part of what I *should* be doing I would do nothing at all since I wouldn't know where to start.

The second step is to get some decluttering help. I have a wonderful cousin who is good at eliminating clutter offer to help me, so we have set a date and will get stuck in.

The final thing on my mind is that I have been putting things aside for a garage sale. These things seem too good or valuable to donate to an op-shop, but I'm starting to wonder if the stress is worth it? How can I organise a garage sale? Life is already bursting at the seams and I really just want the space back to organise the things we are keeping (and so our baby boy has his own room before he starts school). But then some extra cash would be handy too..... I'll think about it some more.

Butterscotch Biscuits

The meal plan has gone out the window since Tuesday. The kids and I have been sick, with only Neil keeping the show on the road. I did manage to bake the rest of the Butterscotch Biscuit dough.

This is a recipe that my mum gave me, and something that would rate as one of my childhood favourites. It make lots (like dozens) of biscuits and the dough seems to keep well in the fridge for a couple of days. The other reason I like it is because it is a melt and mix recipe. None of the "creaming butter and sugar" business that I detest. The end result was denser than I remember Mum's being, but I'm not sure if that is due to the extended time in the fridge or the dairy free margarine I used. This could possibly be a failsafe recipe if you use failsafe margarine and omit the vanilla.

Butterscotch Biscuits

250g margarine
1 and a quarter cups brown sugar (where is the quarter fraction sign?!!?)
2 small eggs
3 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt margarine in a saucepan, remove from heat, add sugar*. Stir well until blended.
When quite cool, add beaten eggs. Mix well, add vanilla and sifted flour.
Roll into small balls. Place on greased tray, press with back of fork.
Bake in moderate oven 10-15 minutes.

*I used a ceramic mixing bowl and melted the butter in the microwave, then added the sugar. It worked well, and saved washing an extra pot!

Where's the matches?

Last night we had a blackout, right in the middle of me organising some stuff for today. One minute I was surrounded by stuff strewn about, next minute I was in pitch black darkness surrounded by stuff strewn about.

Luckily I had my mobile phone and a couple of glow in the dark wrist bands that Amelie got from school in Book Week to light my way. I fumbled through the house and found a candle - great work! I kept fumbling through the house looking for some matches to light the candle. No matches to be found, no way to light the candle. I did think about going out to the car to get the car cigarette lighter out of it's socket, however the car was locked behind the electrically powered automatic roller door. By this stage I really wanted a cuppa.... and baby Euan needed a drink too. I didn't get my cuppa before bed but Euan got his breastfeed(s). At times like this I am so grateful for my breasts, that provide nutritious, delicious, just-the-right-temperature milk for my babies, on tap anywhere, anytime, blackout or not!

'Spose I'll do some blogging then...

I love reading blogs, wishing my life was as interesting and stylish as some. So I figure I need to make it happen, and writing about it seems like a good place to start. So with encouragement from Kate at picklebums I'm setting off into the realm of blogging.

I want this blog to reflect the great and wondrous things in my life. I want my blog to inspire me, motivate me and give me space to start to be creative again. It seems my creativity has been sucked into a blackhole since the arrival of my beautiful, yet somewhat time consuming children:-) I want my blog to kick me into gear to declutter my life, my home and my head. How's that for a mission statement!

So what better way to exercise my creativity than to do a menu plan for the week, lol. I thought I would join in Menu Plan Monday at I'm an organizing junkie. Let's get cracking....

Monday - Sweet and Sour Pork Meatballs, in the slow cooker as I write.
Tuesday - Chickpea and Vegie Curry
Wednesday - Sausage and Lentil Hotpot
Thursday - Risotto with beef, spinach and semi-dried tomatoes
Friday - Tuna Pasta
Saturday - Lamb roast in the slow cooker

I've got some Butterscotch Biscuit dough in the fridge to bake for snacks.

The blog layout is still a work in progress, but it feels great to be posting and beating the procrastination that seems to dominate my life.