Does where you live dictate the colour you wear?

Nicole and I first met at mothers group and have now survived five years of motherhood together. We even started a maternity bag of clothes, adding in everything we had and passing it on to the next person to announce they had another bun in oven. We have both declined to have the bag returned to us, deciding two is definitely enough.

In the midst of organising her outfit to attend my 80s themed dinner party next week, running her own business and being a mean green bike riding machine she has written a blog post for me.

I have just spent the evening cleaning out and rearranging my wardrobe. The impetus for this was that there is a school fete coming up (and I am now a school-mum) and there was a bit of a buying spree accident a week or two ago.

I can wear black tops now, having passed the milk/snot/what –the-hell-is-that-on-my-shoulder stage of motherhood.

I decided to dedicate a whole, albeit quite small, drawer to my black tops so that I am not rummaging around through general tops to get to the one I need. You know the ones, the basics that you wear all the time. I discovered I have 8 black tops, not counting camisoles. There is the long sleeved fine merino that I bought in an outdoor gear store when I was 3 months pregnant because my husband was buying a new backpack and I wanted something too. I bought it thinking I wouldn’t get to wear it much. It’s nearly threadbare now (as I said, I’m a school-mum now). Then there’s another long sleeved merino one that’s not as good but has a scoop neck. There’s a synthetic one that has puffy sleeves that I bought from a new local shop because I always like to support the new local shops. There’s one from Mesop that is so barely-there you can wear it under anything. And a polo neck one from Skin and Threads that I wore every day last Winter because it was so cold. Then there are two short sleeved ones and one with no sleeves. As I said, I didn’t include camisoles.

I don’t think this is an excessive number of black tops.

After all, I live in Melbourne.

This image comes from here.

Breast Milk Ice Cream!

Couldnt resist, had to post this one.

It is freaking out the inhabitants of the work stations around me and providing great conversation.

They are freaking out.

Disgusted at the thought.

A specialist ice cream parlour plans to serve up breast milk ice cream and says people should think of it as an organic, free-range treat. The breast milk concoction, called the "Baby Gaga," will be available from tonight at the Icecreamists restaurant in London's Covent Garden. Icecreamists founder Matt O'Connor was confident his take on the "miracle of motherhood" and priced at a hefty 14 pounds (NZ$30) a serving will go down a treat with the paying public... Read the rest of the article


But me, not really so disgusted. If you're an adventurous traveller who tries local cuisine around the world (not so much me as my travel days are limited) than surely this would be one of the easy things to try. It wont make you gag like cows eyes, or sheeps balls. There is no crazy ingredients to make you regret it the next day. It is sweet, good for you and has kiwi strawberries mixed in.

What more could you want in a new food?

Who would be game enough to try it?



Image is from the article

WAHM: Kind of.



A girl needs her gadgets


Lots of Mums find the solution for paid work, when you have young kids, is to find a job that allows you to work from home.

It can be perfect, no creche fees for a start means you really do earn some money to help with the bills. You don't need to get dressed for work, you are still the main caregiver for your children, never having to call in when winter ear infection season arrives and you're getting frequent flyer points at the local doctor.

Working from home allows you to work, look after the kids, organise tea, clean the house, get to swimming lessons and clean the car all in the same day.

Kind of.

Working from home can make you more stressed than in the office. If you need to make calls or return an email you can be sure your little cherub will need you for a nappy change, a face wipe, or rescuing from the latest peice of furniture they have learnt to climb.

Working from home for a few hours, you can find yourself working all hours of the night to catch up.

Do I have the answer? Kind of.

My latest job requires me to work a day from home, over the week. Pretty much two hours a day, three days a week and a check in on weekends. I am finding the first important aspect is the gadgets. I have myself armed with any gadget I can get my hands on, and while I am still searching for the perfect bag to tramp around with them all, each and everyone is essential. Allowing you to whip out an email reply while watching a swimming lesson. Send a tweet on the treadmill?  No sweat. Watch Gruffalo and review blog comments, done.

What else helps?

A workplace that understands that you may not be around during the same hours they are. My two hours might really be a few sessions of 15 -20 minutes.

Finding a routine that means you are totally with your children and away from those gadgets when you're not working. Exhausting the girls until lunch time means that they have a good rest time for an hour after lunch.

Then it's screen time. For me, for them.

And then back to this, which is why working IN the office can be such a good thing too.

Do you manage work in and out of the office? Share your tips.

Juliet, Juliet...someone has won tickets.

See, if one techno gadget won't work, just use another.

I couldn't get the widget to work in my blog so here is a photo of the draw.

The winner of the tickets to see Gnomeo and Juliet is number 13, Sarah, please email me as your profile is blocked and I have no idea how to contact you.



UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE - 4 March 2011

I have posted, twittered and texted all my friends called Sarah but no one has come through as the sarah who won.

As this is time critical (you do want the tickets before it stops playing) I am redrawing the winner:

This time it is Number 9 - Catrina Murray. I will now stalk you to get these tickets to you!

You Gno you want this

"I am not illiterate, my parents were married"

One of the first lines in the movie Gnomeo and Juliet had me laughing. Clearly the kids don't get it, but that is the point. Someone has remembered that parents sometimes have to watch these films over and over for years.

I enjoyed the sounds, the gnomes 'tink' like cement gnomes would. I laughed at the gardens of each house, to me, people don't just have one gnome, they have a garden of decorative things, and these gardens are exactly that. Over the top, ridiculous.

The dancing moments are a hit.

I am not going to tell you what happens, other than my favorite characters were the frog and the flamingo, see how you go guessing the names of each of the characters voices, they all do a smashing job...bless them to bits.

Is it suitable for all kids? No, preschoolers may be scared at times, the words idiot and shut up are used once each, there is a small reference to love not working out and ending in divorce...and the removal of the flamingos loving partner. But our sensitive little Popps was ok, Immy asked to go home about 78 times so it was clearly of no interest to her. Popps didn't really get the story line that much, but it that didn't seem to bother her.

All up, this is a great new film, perfect for primary school aged children and their parents.

If you want to win a double pass to see Gnomeo and Juliet in 3D leave me a comment here, and be a follower of this blog.

Entries close Wednesday Feb 24 at 8pm AEST and will be announced as soon as I get a chance.

random.org will decide the winner.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Creche: The Guilt and the Benefits

Lately the pressure at leaving the creche/Kinder door has been getting to me.

Popps and Immy are taking their time settling in to the new centre, the Educators (not to be called carers anymore) are divine and have been assisting with the settling in process for all of us. But being that Mum, the one who has to constantly walk away from her babies as they have just been peeled off you and are screaming as though they are being stabbed, arms stretching for you is hard.

Lucky I have learnt to self soothe (my parents managed to teach me this without the help of Gina Ford or Pinky or Tizzy) and I am trying to focus on the reasons why we need to go through this.

One, Popps is five, she needs to be in Kinder or School or formal education of some kind, as we are not going down the home schooling path, whether I work or not is not the question. Even if I was at home she would still be going. I should be feeling no working Mummy guilt. (Should!)

Two, Popps is very emotional and overly sensitive, it is the reason she is not at school this year already, I have searched the local establishments of fine kindergarten repute to ensure she is in the best one available to us. So there is no guilt about wishing she was somewhere else.

Three, we have been here before Popps and I, three years ago, when I first went back to work two days a week. She may not, but I have learnt the benefits of helping her adjust. From that creche room she started playing with a little girl, Miss E, they weren't in the same room but played in the yard together. Popps and Miss E built a truly beautiful friendship for children aged 2 and 3. They have a love of sharing treasures, dancing, fairies and dressing up in anything swirly. They have not been in the same centre for awhile now, but still retain a special bond that I hope will be life long. This friendship of theirs has given Babble Dad and I new friends too (who just so happened to host a great party two weeks ago, where I may have enjoyed a red wine or three).

Persevering with the orientation at creche brings life long friendships, it teaches children how to make friends, how to communicate with other children and adults, how to adapt when things are not like they are at home. It gives them a chance to do activities that you might otherwise not do at home, new books, puzzles, bikes, water play, clay, giant wooden blocks, chickens hatching, trips to the fire station.

Creche gives me two days a week to be in the paid workforce, to retain my skills, keep up to date, eat lunch with grown ups and have extra dollars to provide treats for our household.

But, I might just have to print this out and read it as I go running from the centre in a frenzy, with Guilt running behind me trying to catch up and smother me again.

Stray

This little thing arrived at the front door today.

To me, cats have beady eyes that stare at me and say "I am going to scratch your eyes out while you sleep"

They have claws that ruin furniture and doors.

Stinky kitty litter trays and they leave fur over people's clothes.









But see this, that yellow bunch of petals is Immy giving 'my precious' flowers from the garden. It was also given leftover tuna mornay from the weekend.








 I had to drag them away so I could spray it with the hose to scare it away. But they wouldn't budge. The hose remained rolled up.

Immy didn't leave the thing alone for five hours. Chased it all over our yard, grabbed it and tried to carry it everywhere, cried her eyes out when it jumped on the fence for a break from her.

Popps thinks it is a circus cat, as he tight rope walked along our fence.









 The damn thing is outside now, late at night meowing away.

As a mum who wants their children to have the things that make them truly happy, I want them to fall in love with a pet.

But those cats eyes will forever freak me out.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy days

 It's Valentines Day.  A slighly over scheduled child may have had a major melt down on the weekend. A reminder that it is more than ok to do nothing sometimes. There are roses in the garden, blocks of chocolate in the fridge and Babble Dad started his first day of a big new secondment, he is overloaded with work stuff, we will be lucky just to see him tonight. There wont be fancy dinners.  But that's ok. Because there will be red wine, I am buying it myself to make sure.