Insert witty title here

Because... I'm back! It's been shall we say a little while! I stopped blogging last year around the time I found out we were going to have another baby.

She was roared earthside in July of 2013 and is a pixie to her pickle of a sister. 

The number of times I hear people comment that D looks like S is a little irritating because to me, D looks like S *now* but as babies they looked quite different!

Childerbeast is now Elderbeast. She's 3:9yo and an absolutely amazing kid. This week she asked what comes after twenty, and told me how to draw a T, and that her names starts with a sssss for snake.

Our family is complete now. We still live in our itty bitty blue and cream house in the Adelaide Hills. TheHusband's job still challenges us and I'm struggling to find a work:life balance for myself. 2013 is drawing to a close and 2014 is dawning soon! so here I am, planning on blogging a bit more.

On being a grown up

TheHusband has some leave this month. After working crazy hours (what, you've not heard me whine about this yet?) and crazy days, and going days without seeing me in sunshine, his job has changed. And he also has leave. How refreshing!

I have clients booked and a new one came to me for next year and I thought hey, we'll take a short holiday, combining the former with the latter. A few days in Queensland perhaps, sun surf and sand, hire a car and visit the grandparents and my parentals, and just chillax a little.

But then - reality hit. We are replacing/upgrading the kitchen in our house. What I designed was simple - 600mm 3-drawer cabinet, 900mm corner cabinet, 900mm straight cabinet, 900mm 3-drawer cabinet, maybe an infill if required, then the stove. Plus two end panels.

I used to do this for a living ;).

Oh and an 800mm wall cupboard with 2 end panels, and a 900mm wall cupboard with 2 end panels. Thus HUGELY increasing our benchspace, storage space and sanity for using our teeny kitchen.

So this is what I designed (A).
This is not what the company ordered (B).
What was ordered was also not what was delivered (C).
What we now needed to achieve The Plan (D).

Sigh.

So instead of spending yesterday ripping out the kitchen and installing bits of it, we spent 3 hours trying to work out A B and C above to achieve D. Which we did and were mighty cranky about.

Anyways, in deciding all of this I also realised that summer is upon us shortly. And while it is brief here, it is harsh and really we are going to want/need some kind of cooling system in our house. We have an old fashioned noisy, inefficient and ugly one. And it won't do much as one of the household members refuses to let it be put on as it's so noisy!

So instead of a trip, we're going to have a staycation, a night at a B&B and a new airconditioner.

In the garden

I just started to update my FB status with this:

Planted more this morning - squash pumpkins watermelon tomatoes sage basil rocket lettuce tomatoes basils to go with the radish chives and something else that are already going, the beetroots carrots sunflowers garlic spinach coriander rosemary and parsley already going in the ground out the back, the asparagus and rhubarb that are growing strong, the aloe and other medicinals, the peas going crazy over the side, and the orchard-in-progress out the front.

and realised it probably needed a blog post instead!

Gardening is not one of those things that comes easily to me I have to admit. Between a dodgy back, a string of rental properties in the past and other things on my mind, nurturing things and putting down roots has not been high on my list of things that I've done well.

So the fact that there are more than a dozen trees - mostly fruit but also a bay and some privacy trees - out front, and pots going with various plants that I've sprouted myself from cuttings, or free plants from people, or sad plants from the nursery that I've nursed back to health, makes me feel like this is Home. Which is ironic given that if TheHusband's job continues to be awesome, it is really not very sensible for us to live here. But in the meantime, we make compost and wait to see what grows out of it.

For a Wednesday, it is surprisingly productive!

Yeah my plans for today were a week out of sync with reality, so I was suddenly faced with a free day. So here's a list of things to do:

• go to supermarket and get something to slow cook for TheHusband for dinner (as I'm out!)
• check out the quaint little nursery around the corner from supermarket
• find rhubarb and asparagus
• and a bay tree
• and some medicinal herbs
• order from Diggers
• order from Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond
• do some homework
• update my business website
• paint my toenails
• get a chilli mocha
• spray the shower with something to get the worst of the surprise orange mould off
• go out for dinner with workmates
• organise pickup of coffee table
• organise collection of swing
• organise collection of new bag
• buy new shoes with voucher
• buy Volley's
• make quesedillas
• call the electrician
• washing

And a nap perhaps?

How is it mid-August already?

July FLEW by in a whirlwind of work, travel for conferences, and my first sleeps away from my baby girl. Who is not so much of a baby anymore but is still feeding a little. Yes, at 27 months the monster troubles that I had starting feeding her have not dented my commitment to breastfeeding. I feel like a secret agent for change when I offer her "bee boo"...

in public and continue with my latte-sipping, cake eating, life-living and life-giving adventures.

TheHusband is working stupid hours, so the past month has been full.on! He is doing 14 hours away ish most days, 1 week out of 5, 6 days a week. That means I do the wake-up, the morning, the midday, the nap, the afternoon, the dinner and the nighttime parenting and he misses out on it. I joke that I saw him once in the daylight last week (Saturday) - when I told a girlfriend that she laughed and said she'd seen more of him as she'd spied him *twice* on Saturday!

Hats off to single parents the world over. It is *hard* to run a house, run a family, work some, study and parent and keep sane. What falls down the list is me-things though, so I'm glad I fill my cup in a few ways:

• Doing something for myself beforehand
• Taking things REALLY slowly and leaving whole days unplanned, unfilled and unscheduled
• Investing in a slow-cooker so I can put dinner on at 9am and ignore it for the day
• Eating said-slow cooked meals over the whole week

That "something beforehand" was that I went to a breastfeeding conference on one weekend, and then the weekend after - I went away! I was meant to go to Hobart via Melbourne. Literally as I was boarding the plane I was informed that my flights were changed. Ok fine, that happens but I was not entirely thrilled with the 4+ hour layover in my home state's airport. I did not really plan for that so insisted on vouchers to spend on food. I had a laksa then an indulgent chocolate cake and coffee, killing time slowly doing some study. I then discovered that I was now going via Canberra, instead of the way I thought I was, which wasn't the issue - the getting in to Hobart at 9pm was though! So I missed the important part of the conference that I had planned to be at. That made me cranky/sad and tired.

I did get to meet the delicious Serendipity in Chaos though!!!! We had a total mutual stalking/appreciation club going on. I also re-met Kestrel from Bowl of Stones, who rocks in so many ways. It was an amazing weekend discussing homebirth and women and babies and birth and stuff and things. I also got to meet Rachel Reed of Midwife Thinking, of whom I am the biggest fan and who has re-instilled in me a love of the Welsh accent.

House wise - we are making great progress on the front yard. We now have 8 trees in, 4 more holes dug for something to screen and edge the front of our property, plans for a new path, a herb spiral and more fruit trees! Currently planted we have:

• lemon
• satsuma plum
• blood plum
• japanese mandarin
• prune
• peach
• pear
• something else

and we're going to put something deciduous in the front to give us a clear edge to our property and something else to look at other than the back of the houses across the road. 

In the backyard, the peas are going great guns, the beetroot and spinach are going well, the plot where the parsley, coriander and rosemary are was in need of a weed on the weekend because it's such a great spot for growing, and the ash is leafing at the moment!

Bring on Spring 22 September!