12 days and counting....

This will be my second year that I am dumping the family and disappearing into the wide blue yonder.....to go scrapbooking! And I can tell ya, it's GREAT! No kids, no husband, no cooking, no organising, no calves to feed, no chastising, no bedtime rituals....and most importantly, NO NAPPIES! For approximately 60 hours, I am free. Liberated. Able to be creative. Think of no-one else except for myself.

And I'll probably miss the kids to bits! (Oh ok, and Mark too :) )

I fly out for Sydney on Friday 8th and return late, late, late on Sunday 10th. Hopefully this year, I will avoid the migraine that plagued me at last year's Little Scrapbook Shop (LSBS) retreat. But then, I was 20 weeks pregnant and leaving Tom for the first time over such a long period. But nothing disintegrated whilst I was away, no-one sustained any permanent injuries, everyone was fed and clothed and looked after. No doubt, they will all have a ball without me again this year. So I feel much more relaxed about going. My only niggling concern is for Bridie who is still breastfed and will need to make the transition to formula for the weekend. She's had a couple of cracks at the bottle already and I'm confident that she won't starve.

Calving has officially finished for this year - well the rearable heifers at least. We ended up with 128 heifers, 8 bulls and 2 Belted Galloway calves that will grace our freezer in a couple of years time. I sent all our registration stuff off to Holstein Australia, so we should get a mammoth amount of certificates come through in the next few weeks.

AI (artificial insemination) has commenced with about 40 cows already done. This year, for the first time ever on our farm, we are flushing one of our cows. Our show cow (Craiglands Luckystirke 2843) failed to get into calf last year, so we decided that we would flush her. For those that don't know, this is where you give the cow drugs to superovulate her (produce lots of eggs), then AI her, then a week later, flush the embryos out and then put them into other cows (known as recips or recipents). The benefit of doing this, is to get as many calves as possible from a cow with desirable genetics and type, in the shortest amount of time possible. So instead of getting one calf per year (and hoping that you get a heifer), you can potentially get 8 calves in one year with all the same genetic merit and increase the chances of getting heifers amongst them all. I have to admit to being unnaturally excited about all of this. I just love this cow and I am so keen to have some offspring from her that we may be able to take into the show ring.

at the Colac show 2007

She has already commenced her fertility treatment, and will be AI'd on Sunday. The flush is scheduled for Monday 4th August. Maybe I can take a heap of photos of the flush and scrap those the following weekend.............

Getting creative

Over the past week or so, a couple of friends have done their bit to increase Australia's population by giving birth to healthy babies. One had a boy and the other a girl (nicely evened out!). So I got cracking and whipped up a couple of cards.

Recently, I have discovered Snapfish. For those that are unaware, this is an online photo processing group. Cheap (but not cheap in the nasty way), quick and good quality. I tend to print photos off at home on our own printer as I need them, but I have recently had cause to print a lot of photos at once. This gets mighty expensive when doing it at the local photo shop or the electrical stores. So Snapfish has saved me a lot of money in getting snaps printed off. One of the prints I had done, is the only one of the 4 of us, taken just after Bridie was bought home (it is also the photo I use in our profile on this blog). It's not a bad one, so I thought I would scrap it. It came up really well.

Our house has also been hit by some lurgy lately. Both Tom and Bridie have been suffering with croup - in Bridie's case, badly enough to see a doctor. Mark complained of feeling unwell and I too wasn't feeling 100%. Just that time of year I guess.

AI (artificial insemination) of the cows begins next week, which means that basically we move from one busy period straight into another. We've almost got 130 rearable heifers for this year's calving (whoo hoo) and with the birth of some cross bred calves, calving season is almost finished. For me at least. Which means, more importantly, that I won't have to get up at 4.30am every morning for much longer (even bigger whoo hoo!!)

Happy Birthday Thomas!

Yes, 3 years ago today, I was in hospital having just gone through a scheduled c-section (for a breech presentation), feeling the worst for wear as the drugs were wearing off, looking at this small wrinkled little bundle and thinking "Oh my God, what have I done!?"

I had never held so small a baby (not without any direct supervision anyway) and here I was, being allowed - nay being EXPECTED - to be the indirect life support for this tiny human being. I felt overwhelmed, nervous, unsure, frightened, full of doubt.........but I would honestly lay down my life for this creature without a second thought. And that was in the first hour of meeting him.

I could not in good faith say that the past 3 years have been a fairytale cohabitation of our family, particuarly in the recent 8 months or so, when the "terrible twos" really started. I'm not sure that they have officially ended now that he is 3, moreso just evolved into something else that is going to test us and make us doubt our abilities as parents. The person that coined the phrase "life wasn't meant to be easy" was obviously a parent with a toddler. But even on the worst days, he will say something funny, or give you a look, or a kiss, or a smile and everything is once again right with the world. For 5 minutes at least.

Today was his day though, and he thoroughly loved it. I know this, because as I was putting him to bed tonight, he said "I has a good time at my party mummy and all the dinosaurs and kids". Awwwwwww. Makes all the running around, shopping, food preparation, loot bag organising, cleaning, decorating, spending, [sharp intake of breath], worthwhile.

He is good for about 1 weeks worth of brand new dino wear at a time. The DVD can play new dino shows non stop whilst he plays with new dinosaur PlayDoh. He can introduce new dino figurines to a re-creation of Jurassic Park (although he could probably tell me that not all the dinosaurs he has lived in the Jurassic period). At bedtime, he can be lulled to sleep under a handmade dinosaur quilt, by my dulcit tones reading from one of the many new dinosaur story books . You get the drift of what our house looks like don't you????

The other cool present he received - from mummy and daddy! - was one of those Fisher Price kids digital cameras. I've had it in the cupboard for the past 8 months or so intending to maybe give it to him for Christmas as I wasn't sure if he would "get" it or not. But for the past few weeks, he has been carting around my tripod saying "click" and giving us the imaginary photo. He has wanted to use my digi SLR, but this is never going to happen, so we figured he would be ready for a real thing of his own. And it has proved to be a real winner. He is more than capable of working it and I have to admit that there are a few photos that he's taken that are quite good. However, after downloading the images off the camera and onto the computer, I was scrolling through them when I came upon one of my boob!! He'd obviously snapped me when I was feeding Bridget. Needless to say, we will have to be careful when we are in the shower from now on.

All the commercialism of birthdays aside, I am just so happy that he is healthy, bright, happy, developing normally, smart (sometimes too smart!) and for the most part a great kid to be around.

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY THOMAS!


the start of many dinosaur presents


Say cheese......


Quilt made by Nanny


cake made by mummy


Hip hip hooray!

PHOTOS TAKEN BY THOMAS ON HIS NEW DIGI CAMERA


Daddy


Mummy


Biddy - a captive model (she can't run away from the lens!)

Tick, tick, tick...

My life has seemed to be ruled by the clock this past week. Or should I say more accurately, the calendar. End of financial year is a little bit like "hurry up and slow down". You know that you need to clear a lot of debts to manage tax, but on the other hand, you need to make sure that you have enough cash on hand to pay for ongoing things too. Add to this, the fact that on July 1st we changed over to a new record keeping software package which will include payroll (something we have done manually since the inception of staff in our business), trying to get the finishing touches done to our new office (including new computers, lines, phones, office equipment etc), implementing a new herd recording software package, updating all the calvings for this year to be registered in the coming weeks, getting things organised for Tom's upcoming 3rd birthday, making a flying dash to Melbourne to attend a 1st birthday party....it's no wonder that I came down with a migraine last week.

On Thurday morning I felt a bit 'off', by Friday I was really starting to suffer. Come Saturday afternoon and I really had the makings of a migraine and on Sunday I spent the day either hunched over the toilet or trying to convince myself that my head was really not going to explode. I should have gone to the hospital for a jab, but with 2 littlies I just couldn't face it. So I ate panadeine forte and tramal like lollies.

To top things off, last week one of Mark's wisdom teeth gave way and he had to get a temporary filling. Turns out he needs to get all three remaining ones removed, but he needs to see a specialist as they are fairly well embedding in the jaw bone. After getting the temporary filling, he ended up with an infection in the gum line and had to go back to the dentist for antibiotics and some emergency work which involved some excruitiatingly painful treatment (so I'm told). He walks into the house yesterday morning and says "Panadeine forte....NOW". Ahhhhhhh, bit of a problem there. I took the last one for my migraine. Fortuantely, I did have a script so I filled that and have been dosing him up on antibiotics and painkillers for the past 24 hours. Poor bugger. He doesn't usually even take panadol, so for him to take such strong pain killers.....it must be damn painful. I'm so glad it's not me.

The dinosaur party is rapidly looming. It is this Sunday and I haven't done a thing. Shopping and house cleaning tomorrow, cake baking/decorating and other food preparation on Saturday. Isn't funny how the time spent in getting organised for such a small event is disproportionate? I mean, I'll probably spend 10 hours all up getting prepared for a party that is going to last 3. But at least the kids will be happy and after all, that is the MAIN thing.

ETA: I just remembered that due to my migraine, I have neglected to record a significant milestone for Bridie. She is now on solids. On Thursday last week we started her on farex and breastmilk. She loved it (as you can see in the picture!). She is now just over 6 months and I think she is really ready for solids. Unlike Tom who started solids a little earlier and it was sometimes a battle to get him to eat. Bridie was weighed on Thrusday as well at the MCHN and she weighs 6.220kg.


Yum yum....