30 Days of Happiness Days Eight & Nine

Here I am again. Seeking out the little things that make me smile, that make me feel tremendously grateful for my life and for all the joy I have available to me.

Today's Big Happy is the results of my maternal serum tests. I am (despite my geriatric age in pregnancy terms) in the low risk spectrum for Downs Syndrome! As I would have seriously considered having an amnio this time if the results had been different, I feel pretty happy about that. The risk is the same as that of a much younger woman. Gotta feel pretty happy about that too really! So - as far as we can tell (and we are prepared to trust the Gods on this one), our bubsy is going to be a healthy, happy little bubba not unlike our little Beanie. This also means that the hubble (who has been dying to spill the beans to friends and work colleagues for the last two weeks) can FINALLY tell everyone his wife is up the duff.

My wee girl is on a trip to the Botanical Gardens with her Auntie Elaine and Uncle Pam at the moment, so I have some rare and enjoyable time to myself. I can't help but have minor anxiety about her being without me all day though. I know it's silly, my sister is perfectly capable of keeping her safe but I'm just this way inclined. It will no doubt change with the arrival of the new baby and more responsibility. It's just I know how quick she is and how just a fraction of a second of distraction can be all it takes for something to happen. Ah the joys of nervous motherhood! She will have a lovely time, lots of fresh air and tons of attention. What could be better for a small fry eh?

A lovely clean kitchen is another thing making me smile, especially as I didn't have to clean it! i've also been enjoying the early mornings in our little inside/outside porch bit. The sun streams in there in the morning making it the warmest place in the house and with my new lovely armchairs and our little wooden table (op-shopped for a bargain!), it's just lovely and quiet and still and meditative. The view is across gardens blooming with flowers and trees coming into big leafy green displays. It's just glorious - even with a 3 yr old climbing all over my lap and shuggling my tea! My sister has taken to joining me and we've had many happy conversations there this week.

Anyhoo, it's time for a little lie down, so I'll see y'all tomorrow.

30 days of Happiness - Days Four, Five, Six und Seven

I keep meaning to do this daily - but it's been difficult to get near the computer given the amount of crap that lies between me and the screen when I enter the door of our study. We currently have my sister and her friend staying with us and it is getting pretty squalid in here, with no spare inch of space to lean, let alone type. There is no surface uncovered in shite. I personally cannot live like that. The rubbish and food and make-up and clothes and crap everywhere, would drive me insane. Hence my reluctance to get in here and do anything. Still, while they are elsewhere and the house is quiet apart from the stringent whinging of my girl-child, here I am. I'll need a hot shower after this.

Anyhoo - many things have been making me smile these last few days.
Days Four, Five and Six were all spent at the beach with Beanie and that's always funsies. She runs and splashes and squeals and plays and talks to complete strangers (before throwing a stick and making them 'fetch'). We have enjoyed the following splendours of the beach days:

Icypoles - many, many icypoles. They taste so good on a roasting hot day at the beach.
Exploring rock pools with my Beanie is to become a child again oneself. So many magical things to delight and entertain.
Starfish - many, many, many starfish (plus a dead octopus). Lily went into absolute paroxisms of delight when I gingerly picked up one of the many starfish to let her stroke it's bristly back.
Beautiful turquoise water on a hot summer's day.
Cafe food of which I am a big fan. What is it about other people cooking your food that makes it taste so delicious?
Catching up with friends at the park near the beach.
Bagging a bargain orange silk dress on a wee shopping trip with my sis and child yesterday. It's AWESOME and great for the ever burgeoning belly.

Then we had today's (Day Seven) little extravaganza - a 3 yr old birthday party in the park. Funniest moment was Lily playing the Doughnut game - (dress kindly created for my wee girl by the splendid and crafty DocWitch of The Magick Teapot Chronicles) where a doughnut is tied to a long ribbon and hung from a tree, the child then has to try and take a bite without using their hands. First bite wins a prize. Lily was hilarious! She cheated (naturally) and used her hands and her head but she looked so gorgeously funny trying to bit the doughnut as it swung wildly about. Definitely a game to include in all future parties, if only for the adults. We talked about re-inventing it involving adults and copious amounts of alcohol. Well, my birthday is coming up...



We then had my midwife appointment at the birthing centre where the next little tacker will be born. Few stressful moments as they couldn't find the heartbeat and then there it was...right underneath my steady beat, a fast little swooshing sound - the baby's heart. Thank the Gods!

I'm also big into the Cheese Twisties at le moment - yummo. Terribly un-healthy but full of anti-nausea properties for the preggie belly. What can I say? The baby wants twisties!

Lots going on next week, guests notwithstanding, and I will try to keep the posting going in the meantime.

Enjoy your week.

30 Days of Happiness - Day Three

The wonderful Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. I love this image of him. It so cheeky, like he was caught out by a really good joke.


Well, it's my day off today, so that's something to be happy about. My Beanie-girl is at her Nanna's for the day, (no doubt maintaining her worm farm and planting potatoes), while I prepare our home for incoming. My sister and her (very verbose and 'hyper' friend) are arriving this evening, for a stay of 3-4 weeks. Whilst I am looking forward to some time with my sister and will no doubt enjoy meeting her friend, I am also bracing myself for a break in the peace and quiet I have been enjoying recently. I'm not good with constant noise and I hate constant talking for the sake of it. My family is very, very good at talking and absolutely terrible at listening. In fact, the reason we are so very good at talking is probably because there has never been a lull in the conversation long enough for any of us to actually be heard. It's all about who is the loudest and who can keep going the longest. So, if my beloved sister describes her friend as 'talkative' I can pretty much guarantee that she is going to be a handful. Oh dear Lord.

Still, it's good to meet new people and the nice bit about having visitors is that they keep me in 'good parent' mode. I am definitely a better parent when other people are watching, LOL. They will also provide entertainment for my extremely active toddler AND my sisters friend is Indian, so she wants to spend her time with us cooking traditional Indian dishes. I am ALL up for that. I LOVE Indian food and have very fond memories of Masal Dosa's for brekkie and lovely veggie curries and naan at night, when we were travelling through there. Yummo.

I have spent all morning emptying our closets and preparing bed's in our study/spare room (which has recently been revamped) and in our living room. They look pretty comfy considering. Excellent score of the week was the discovery of three packs of double bed sized, fresh, white cotten sheets for the bargain price of $5 the lot. They must have been in someone's attic for years because the packaging is vintage and the price was a supermarket sticker of $2.50 each! I even put out fresh towels and flannels on the end of the bed, like hotels do. It made me smile.

Interestingly enough, I have had two different pictures of the Dalai Lama come to me in the past week. I have always loved him. I refer to him as Daddy Dalai. My dad was so far from ideal I thought I would choose my own. He is it. Anyway, the two pics came at the same time as a reminder that the Dalai Lama would be in Australia in December for a series of talks.



Happy making is also finally getting excited about having a little someone small enough to fit into a pair of these. Now if I can just bribe someone to crochet them for me...

30 Days of Happiness - Day Two

Happy, Happy, Happy - Day Two

Finally getting my Amazon book delivery. A whole lot of books about gardening with children including the wonderful book Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots. Moon Garden here I come!

The quiet. As you know, noise has been an issue of late but at this time of day (early afternoon) it is very peaceful up here in these thar hills. I enjoy a quiet of soul soothing proportions broken more often than not by my own little noise maker. Tis bliss.

Spring Fairs - Tis the season of the Spring Fair and I LOVE them. Fun rides, great stalls, fresh food, little lambsies to pet and above all, lots of sunshine and fresh air. It's grrrrreat!

This song .

This clip - the funniest six minutes I've spent in a LONG time.

This photo of my beanie girl. God bless holidays.

30 Days of Happiness - Yup, Day One Again!

Rose of Grandmothers Songs by Frank Howell

I think I'll start this little effort again. It's been a weird month and I think I need to make a commitment to myself to post every day. That way, I'll find something to be happy about every day - even when it seems most difficult.

I'd also like to open this Joy-a-Day endeavour open to anyone who feels they would like to join in. Go on. You know you want to. Simply link back to this post in your first post and I'll try and make a list of everyone who participates. Note the word 'try' - I'm not that familiar with HTML code but I'll do my best.

So - 30 Days of Happiness - Day One - Again.

OK.

Well let's see. There have been many happy making days of late. Oh yes. Hence the me not being here.

Numero Uno

Weddings galore. We had the pleasure of witnessing not one but three sets of nuptuals in October. It was WAY more fun than it sounds. It started with a delightful wedding in Hamilton Island, where we spent a happy five days doing not much more than developing a delightful sunburn and visiting every more idyllic beaches. Oh and the main mode of transport over there is the delightful golf buggy, so that was hysterical. And the trio ended with the wonderful wedding of my darling Sol-y-Luna. She and the Ginge married in style in a beautiful garden setting in Beechworth at Beltane (also known as Hallowe'en in this country!). She entered like the true bride of summer and a glorious evening was enjoyed by all. It helped that the hubble and I stayed for two nights, sans kidlet, in the most gorgeous little cottage on a 75 acre farm. Oh sweet bliss thy name is no neighbours. If you happen to be up in Beechworth, do give Fleur and Digby a call at Candlebark Cottage. It's sublime. Hubble and I are thinking it might be time to bring back the name Digby.

Numero Dos
Finally finishing the painting of the Kitchen/Family Room/Dining area. It's only taken us the best part of a year. But yesterday, thanks to the babysitting sister-in-law and her new hubble, we finished it. Hurrah! It's fresh, it's white and it means that we need to paint our kitchen cupboards. It's finished just in time for my sister and her friend to arrive for a month.

Numero Tres
Entirley handing over the reigns for my 40th birthday shennanigans (or not as the case may be) to my bestie Sol-y and my hubble. Now I can simply get back to ignoring the fact that I am approaching 40 with indelicate haste and pretend it's not happening.

Numero Quatro
Spending time watching my Beanie-girl. She is so smart and so very, very funny. Even on my worst days, when I feel like I get everything wrong, I still find myself chuckling over the funny things she says or does. Plus, she's so purdy.

Spring Cloud by Frank Howell

Finally, Number Cinque
Being reminded by a good friend that I am never going to be the Earth Mother archetype of motherhood, no matter how much I wish this could be so. I am, in her words, a 'feisty' personality and as I think I have said before in my post 'On Being A Rooster' I have to start allowing myself to be the mother that I actually am. It comes from a place of fearing that I am never going to be enough, either for my child or myself, and it needs to stop. I have to find the positive aspects of being the feisty mother that I am and stop focusing all of my attention on the negative aspects of my personality. I am flawed, yes, certainly. I am emotionally unravelling, u-huh. But who knows? This may actually be for the best. Maybe when the unravelling is complete, there will be someone standing there free of all previous assumptions about themselves and free from the peril of always identifying with someone else instead of being themselves. It doesn't mean I can't strive to be better at some things but it does mean that I don't have to spend my life hating the mother that I am and wishing for it all to be different.

I know i've come to this realisation before but rather than being upset about it, I am grateful that I am being reminded that I already know this stuff. Because maybe, just maybe, it means that I know all the other stuff that will get me to where I want to be, too.

So jump on board the joy wagon and have 30 Days of Happiness with me. I look forward to reading your contributions and sharing in your happiness.