While you wait....

We're home again! We had a lovely time away and I have the photos to prove it! :) I haven't had time to upload all the photos from our time away onto Photobucket yet (how come Facebook can upload so much faster than anywhere else??) so the holiday post will come later. To tide you over in the meantime here's a video of Sophie from this morning:

Outta here!

Thank you for your comments and emails of support - I promise I'm fine, just striving for things to be better. I'd like to have a better resonse but I've been preoccupied - the car is packed except for the last minute things, the older girls are burning excess energy before the hours of enforced sitting, I'm mentally checking packing and to do lists while giving Sophie a last feed......and then we are off! :) Have a great week!

Juggling

Before I launch into this post I need to say how much our family loves Sophia - she has brought us all immense joy and she is just delightful. I'm so glad that God gave her to us. Having said all that though, the transition from two children to three is HARD. Honestly I don't know how moms with more children or single parents cope. I was expecting things to be difficult, to find it hard to get things done, to be stressed and sleep deprived but that hasn't really been the hard bit. I've had lots of help and continued offers of help and although our house is nowhere near as tidy as I'd like its really not that big a deal and we're managing to do all the normal stuff. What I wasn't expecting was the difficulty in meeting the need of all my children to have time with me...or to get good time with Paul too for that matter. I wasn't expecting the perpetual guilt. I seem to be playing catch up all the time lately, juggling the responsibilities that are uniquely mine as the mummy of Sophie, Emily and Rebecca and Paul's wife. I'm not doing a great job of keeping all those balls in the air. The reality of life at the moment is that Sophie occupies a huge amount of time with needing to eat, be burped and coaxed to sleep. I can do some things at the same time (I cannot tell you how many books I've read to Emily recently!) but its just not the same as having "real time" with my older girls. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Honestly, at the moment Sophie is just delightful...she is gurgling and cooing. Smiling and doing a "full body wiggle" with excitement whenever she is changed because she knows that there's a ticklefest coming. She lifts up her little chin so I'll kiss under it and squeals or gurgles when I do. I could literally spend her every waking moment trying to get her to laugh and smile and I feel bad that as the third child she just has to go with the flow and gets dragged along to wherever her sisters are going. Her daytime sleeps are all over the shop because she has some in the cot at home, some in the pram, some in her car seat, in my arms....so much for a routine! Or her sleeps are interrupted because she inevitably drops off about 10 minutes before we need to head out to pick up Bec from school, or attend an appt etc.
Then there are Bec and Emily. I like being an involved Mom, I love my kids and I want to know whats going on for them. They are good company and I like being with them. I love talking with them....the proper talking that only comes because you've spent the last however long cooking, gardening or "whatevering" together. I just don't have the luxury of that time right now, or when I do its generally with a small baby attached to me or screaming with wind....not really conducive to quality time. I miss my girls. And what is worse is that they miss me. There have been behaviour changes that I'm not thrilled about which I think stem from from all the upheaval recently (none of it is aimed at Sophie at all thankfully... she's little miss popular as far as she is concerned). In case I was in any doubt they've told me that they miss the old me, the one who had more time and could do more with them.
Getting decent time with Paul is hard too. Evenings have a chaotic feel until at least the older kids are in bed and then Sophie has a lengthy routine (bath, long cuddle/feed time, bed). It does mean that she is sleeping reasonably well BUT theres not much left over for my husband when she is finally settled and again its hard to have a decent conversation when there is a baby needing feeding/burping. I miss him. He's great company and he's been really good about helping me and not complained the fact that he's been lumped with whatever is left over after the kids are done with me but this is not how I want things to stay. So what do I do? I'm open to any advice because I don't know how to be make more time. I'm running as efficiently as I think I can and while I could get up earlier I guess I don't know that anybody will benefit from me being even more tired/grumpy. I know that there will be some improvement as Sophie becomes less dependent on me but I'm not confident of there being a big difference and I don't want to just accept a lower standard. Ugh, this all sounds really whiney doesn't it? Hmmm, maybe I should just let this be my vent and delete before hitting publish? Although, maybe one of you amazing people out there knows something that I don't.....in which case, please share??

Counting down!

* Only three days until we're on holidays!!! We're off to Coffs Harbour as soon as Paul finishes work on Friday - I can't wait! There is so much that I need to get done between now and then however that this is going to be a point form post.
* Rebecca got THREE awards at assembly yesterday :)
* We had a lovely family walk on Sunday. Slightly longer (and windier) than I had originally anticipated but we had a lot of fun.

The magic of an unknown trail

A quiet moment

Sisters

Becca in the bush

Sophie showing off her cutesie-pie hat

Trying SO hard to communicate with Emily

Smiles!

* On a sober note our minister's daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumour last Thursday. My girls adore Amelia and we're all concerned for her. Any prayer for her and her family would be greatly appreciated as she sees the specialist tomorrow.
* Did I mention that we're going on holidays??! Paul has a week off from work and Bec has 3 weeks off from school. This will be our first proper holiday that we've had since I was pregnant with Emily - how sad is that?
* Sophia and I are both sporting head colds at the moment. My poor baby - its very hard to eat when you can't breathe through your nose properly. She's handling it reasonably well though. Its unfortunate timing for her to get sick: she had slept through the night 3 out of the last 5 nights but now that she's unwell I think her sleeping is going to be more difficult (if she feels like I do anyway!). She is sooo close to laughing! Its adorable to hear her gurgle when she is tickled. I love it!
* The weather has been somewhat gloomy but we had a lateblooming sunflower - "I got sunshine on a cloudy day...." :)

Why I blog

I know my blogging has been hopelessly sporadic of late, and I confess that at times I think Facebook is a better way for family/friends to keep up to date with us but its just not the same. I need to standardize the size of photos so they all fit with this template and finally started going back through old entries this morning while feeding Sophie. I was only skimming through but it was great to remember what we did, what the girls were like a few years ago. Life is so busy at the moment that I seem to be forgetting A LOT - I'm so glad I started documenting things. I do have multiple posts that I'm intending to write but they'll keep for the moment. In the meantime, Becca and Emily had asked me to take a photo of Sophia in amongst their baby dolls in the hope of tricking everyone ...can you pick her out?! :)

Poor bubba girl

I feel a little like a kid who has broken a new toy. Long story short is that Sophia has her first ear infection (and first head cold but that's less of an issue) and possibly/probably a perforated ear drum. Poor baby, I feel so bad for her. She's too little to be sick already! I noticed last week that there was a funky smell from her right ear. I took her to the Dr but he couldn't see anything wrong. She had no symptoms at all: no fever or distress, feeding well, sleeping normally. He suggested that I just keep it clean and monitor things. The smell disappeared and thing seemed normal. Then on Tuesday night I noticed her ear was a little gunky on the outside but nothing dramatic. At lunchtime yesterday though there was a lot of nastiness that had oozed out - ugh. There were still no other symptoms. We went back to the Dr and she is now on antibiotic ear drops. He checked her ear but said its hard to see because its so tiny and she wasn't incredibly cooperative so he isn't sure if its a mucky external ear infection or a perforated eardrum from a middle ear infection. Either way the drops should help; if not we go back next week. Thankfully Sophie seems unperturbed by the ear, although she isn't liking the congestion from the headcold. She is her usual self and was very cute smiling and cooing to Emily this afternoon. Hopefully her ear will clear up soon.

Soft

There is something very wholesome and right about a new(ish) baby in a handknitted jacket. Sophia has been fortunate enough to receive several from doting neighbours, church friends and family. This lovely jacket was given to her by her great aunt Janet - isn't it gorgeous?
By the way, Sophie is two months old today - can you believe that??!

A better video

This is from early this morning so the lighting isn't great and I'm very sorry that my annoying laugh is in the background but the sheer adorableness had to be shared. Isn't she perfect?!