Photo A Day August 2013

While I enjoy looking at photos, I'm not a fan of having mine taken. I also think that photos I take tend to suck. Despite this, I thought I would participate in Chantelle's Photo A Day for August. I won't be posting my photos every day (as you can tell I'm already behind) but I will be trying to post my photos once or twice a week.

Here's the list of prompts for August 2013:

I think some of the styles that other people have used to show their photos look great so I'll also be playing around formatting etc. Anyway here are my first three photos for the month my something starting with N is a notice, incomplete is a blog post and the skyline comes from a bush walk Mr E. and I went on.

Are you playing along?

 

My girl is growing up

Girl Child is almost 10. Some days it's hard to believe that my baby is almost double figures. In some respects she is growing up so fast and thankfully not so much in others. Because she is an avid collector of stuff she grabs any catalogues and circles the things she would like as soon as she sees them. It's in this that the conflict in her maturity is showing.

On one hand she wants Monster High, makeup and real jewellery but she also wants a Baby Alive, LaLa Loopsy and Barbie dolls, and play dough. She is a tween and thankfully not too invested in some the older stuff but I'm finding the disconnect a little jarring. I think it's because I'm watching her try to find her place in the world.

This year at school she is with the big kids (there are about 8 year 4 students in the senior building Year 5 and 6 building) and I think this has helped her mature. She is definitely less clingy and quite a bit calmer this year. So much so that the extended family have said how much better more grown up she has become.

With this maturity showing she may be getting her ears pierced as a birthday present. That is something she has wanted for a very long time. We had said when we believe she is mature to look after them herself. Right now, she will still need some help but she is certainly a lot more sensible than before. It really is surprising how much of a difference 6 months can make.

 

She probably isn't getting a Baby Alive doll as the ones they have now creep me out. I wanted one when i was a child too and never got one. I think I turned out mostly okay. If Girl Child doesnt get one, hopefully it wont be held against me for the rest of my life. But you never know, apparently I ruined her life when she was 4 by giving her the wrong library bag for preschool.

 

My not so hidden talent

It’s great that I can do something really well but sometimes I wish that my talent lay elsewhere. Unfortunately for me, my talent is the ability to get lost. Let me give you today’s example which highlights just how talented I am.

The kids and I were travelling home after visiting family interstate.  I figured that buying petrol would be a great thing to do before I got on a motorway or an expressway or any kind of road that you can’t get off for a long way.  So we stopped, I bought petrol and some snacks for the trip home and we proceeded on our merry way. Now at some point not too long after that I saw a sign for the road I needed to be get on to head home. I was over a lane too far and so I missed the turn.

No problem I thought, just get Boy Child to start the map app on my phone and it will show us how to get back to the road we needed to be on. He started the app and I was following along the directions and thinking umm this doesn’t look familiar anymore. Now bear in mind I do this same trip at least 3 times a year so I should have recognised something. But I didn’t and that concerned me.  Plus the little voice on the machine hadn’t spoken for a while so I wondered if it had turned it off somehow and I’d missed another turn. Nope, it was just in Sydney traffic half of 12kms it wanted us to go had taken about 20 minutes. The time it was going to take to get home had increased significantly as well. Weird, I thought. We should have been on the tollway ages ago. Something was very, very wrong.

Sydney map from http://www.living-in-sydney.com/sydney-suburb-map.html

It turned out when Boy Child turned the app on he selected the route without tolls.  So we heading home via the non toll route which (according to the GPS) was apparently still 3 hours 22 minutes away. Given we had already been driving for an hour and a quarter by then I was a little upset.  I stopped at the next service station we came to and I left the car for a little while to pace a little and generally calm down.

About 5 minutes of deep breathing helped and so I returned to the car and we set off again. Our trip home ended up being about five hours instead of the typical three and a half. On the plus side we had an adventure and we arrived safe and sound just significantly later than planned. This is not the only instance we I have gotten us geographically misplaced. I have often managed to take several different ways to get to my grandmothers (which has added an extra five to ten minutes) but have done okay with that the last few times.  Of course there was also the time I got very lost while visiting my sister near the gold coast a few years ago. which my family hasn’t let me forget. However, I think today’s trip  has outdone all the other times put together.  I’m glad I’m not planning anymore trips away for a while.

So it's been a while

I'm not really sure what has kept me from blogging over the last month and a bit. Probably just life. i haven't even read any blogs and while I've been gone google killed off google reader so I have had to import all the blogs I read into a new feed reader. I hope that I have managed to track down and add my favourite blogs into my new reader.  If not, I will hopefully rediscover you all and get back into the habit of reading blogs again on a regular basis.

It seems that while I was busy having a life a surprising number of bloggers have left the blogosphere. There are different reasons for all of them but I will really miss them. i was very sad to see just how many people are moving on from here.  Anyway, I better go and catch up on all the things I've missed in your lives. I can see that i'll be doing a lot of commenting in the near future. 

Grateful 26 May 2013

 

I'm linking up with Maxabella over at Village Voices for this weeks grateful.

Since my last grateful post there have been some ups and downs. But there have been more ups and so I'm going to share those things.

My extended family member's surviving baby was born at 29 weeks. He is a beautiful little boy and doing remarkably well. His feeds are all breast milk and he is breathing on his own. I know that premmies tend to have a two steps forward, one step back trip through NICU so I suspect there will be a few slip ups along the way but at the moment all the news I've heard has been positive.

My friend (who will be known as C) who was diagnosed with Breast Cancer is going okay. She has a date for her surgery booked and has a plan of action. She and her family are kind of in a holding pattern for now but they are thinking positively. I'm sending positive vibes out to them as well.

A few weeks ago Boy Child was elected to the Student Representative Council (SRC) at his school. Because of this, he has been away on a school leadership camp. I'm proud that he has stepped up to a leadership type role at school. I'm grateful that he was happy to go on a camp with a students from other schools and that he made friends. While food can still be an issue for him, while he was away he ate pasta. That makes twice in the last two months after not eating it (and sometimes not even being able to cope with the sight or smell of it) for the last 11 or so years. The day he came home he even ate lasagna. Not only that, he is prepared to have it again as a semi regular thing.

Mr E.'s work dried up about for almost 8 weeks ago. He is a contractor so we do expect these things to happen. We are very lucky that we've had a contingency plan so these weeks havent been a major issue for us. In fact, I probably was good timing as Mr E. has taken up tertiary study and he needed the down time to get into the swing of studying. However, I'm very grateful that he now has work 2 days a week for the next few months.

When the term went back my hours at work had been reduced. Part of it was on my request but it suited the school as well because they are still awaiting (yes still!) points to be allocated for some students I work with. The early finishes have stopped me falling asleep by 7:30 and I'm rarely needing pain relief for my head. It has been wonderful and I'm very grateful to be able to be making a difference without sacrificing quality time with my family.

So that's my list today. What are you grateful for?