Beautiful

"Why are you so beautiful?", I said. I don't know why I said it, she was looking intently at a tree (telling me about ants that were coming out of a joint), the sun was shining in her hair and she just looked so pure and innocent and beautiful.

She responded, without delay, "why are you so weird?". 

Isn't that beautiful?! She's not at all concerned with appearances, she's not vain, she is just so funny and witty and so, so beautiful.

Back to the start. Again.

Weight has pretty much always been an issue with me. I remember being in year 4 and looking at my school photo, comparing my size with that of the other girls on the year (and recognising a relationship between size and popularity even back then, I must have been advanced!). Actually if you go back even further I remember when I was 4 or 5 a dr commenting to my mum at a family visit that 'all but one' of us was healthy, and I assumed it was me, being fat, who wasn't. Now more than 30 years later, with some hindsight and photos of me with ribs I realise he was talking about my pack a day Marlboro red smoking mother but that comment has stayed with me since. Growing up in a house of 7 girls, I was always the larger one but again, with hindsight, I wasn't so much large as just larger. I was an adult size 12 for my year 6 graduation, my jean shorts in year 8 were an 11 (while my older sisters' wore 8's and 10's), at 68kg in year 10 I faked a sickie in science because we were told we'd have to weigh ourselves to find the class statistics, I was 71kg at 17 when my friend and I embarked on a huge weight loss mission because we considered ourselves obese. At 170cm, 71 is the upper limit but I think if I'd stayed 71, instead of dieting down to 51, I could possibly still be there today but instead I've gone up and down ever since. 73 when pregnant with c1, 90 at giving birth, 68 with c2, 88 at birth, and I forget the others but know I only got to 91 with c4 despite starting at 85. I figured, wrongly lol, that 90 must have been my upper limit of the weight my body wanted to stay at.

2 years ago I got down to 76 with a lot of exercise. Then c2 started school and with that stress, combined with whispers heard about how selfish I was doing so much exercise without the kids, my weight has climbed since then. The past few months, I've exceeded my highest weight ever. It's now time, past time, to try again. This time, now that I am 'middle aged' (argh! Lol) the reasons are as much about vanity as they are about health. 

But mostly I just want to go to sleep every night without rolling onto my stomach so I can't feel any fat rolls, and without berating myself for a bad food day and calculating how many cals to eat the next day.

So right now, I'm going on a bike ride with 3 kids, wearing size 18 tights and my husband's shirt. Looking fancy.

Then and now

Sharing some bath time

With a squid, octopus, tiger, dinosaur and lobster. I installed blogger on my phone and am trying to figure it out.

The post that isn't

I had a little video of c4 to upload tonight but it seems I can't do it without getting an app on my phone...an app that I can't get because my phone no longer connects to wifi. It will cost over $600 for an early upgrade to my phone so I'm just going to hang on for as long as I can.

If I told you I just heard a chicken clicking in my loungeroom would you believe me?! It's true, husband and c1 and c2 are giving one of our new hens some antibiotics. We only got her yesterday but she's not looking as healthy as the other. This one's name is Dash Diamond, the other is Gabriella Butter. C3 always names her pets Gabriella - probably not a fortunate name for any pet in this household given we have named more than a few and yet have only one survivor.

I don't really have much to say, I just wanted to add that video and since that's not working for now I'll go and check out the chicken (chicken, check out the chicken!) (knowing random song lyrics makes me wonder how much brain space I waste every day, and makes me feel old).

Please put some clothes on, stop eating, shut the door and find the remote!

Right now I am really frustrated with everything. I don't understand how, with all of my superb parenting skills and despite their increasing ages, these kids seem to be getting harder! Maybe my expectations just get bigger as they do, or maybe I really was in a fog for the previous years and I'm not remembering things as they really were. It's been raining all day and we are in a small space so the issues are literally right on top of me at the moment (C4 perched on the loungechair arm). So the issues are -


The clothes thing

I know they never used to wear clothes, it used to be a big laugh that in every photo there was at least one naked child, but now when they don't wear clothes I find myself getting irritated. I don't understand why they don't understand what used to be acceptable at 2, 3 or maybe 4 just can't keep going on now they are 4, 6, 7 and 8. C1 in particular will get around in just her undies, pulled right up, and think that it is quite alright to run to the door to whoever is brave enough to knock. She hates the feel of clothes. The others are mostly ok, except that's only until C4 goes to the toilet and then doesn't put his pants back on.

The food thing

They are bored = they eat. I don't think they have once felt hungry today. It's like a competition for food, if one kid is eating then the others must also eat. But when C2 picks a different thing to C1, who then wants what C2 was eating, and C2 wants what C4 is eating, but C3 has eaten the last of the thing that C4 was eating (but he's now passed that onto C1, and C3 wants something else now because C1 and now eaten 2 things) it gets very confusing. I've called an end to any more food being snaffled from the school drawer but there's still a sense of someone being hard-done-by in the air and wrappers aplenty on the floor.

The door thing

It is (now) Winter. We have all moved into the front loungeroom where the gas heater is, and we can heat this one small area fairly cheaply and quickly...until someone leaves the room and leaves the door open. As soon as that happens, in the time it takes for the offender to turn around and give a dirty look about being called back, the room has chilled again. If I only had a dollar for every time the door was left open or ajar during the day I could afford ducted reverse cycle heating in no time.

The remote thing

This is one of those bittersweet things. When they first learned how to use the remote, it meant sleep ins for me and no more interruptions to find Nick Jr while I was busy doing something outside of the loungeroom. Now they have mostly moved onto Cartoon Network and can capably find anything they want to watch all by themselves at any time, but this has meant we have lost control of the remote. I know one of them had it, because the tv has been stuck on Gumball/Adventure Time/Regular show for the past 4 hours and I didn't change it. But no one can remember who did change it, or have any idea where the control could be. C1 also tends to hide the remote when she leaves the room for just a short time (I bet she leaves the door open too...) so no one can change it in her absence. I have find the remote in the linen cupboard before, but it's not there now. I have looked.

I'm recording these things and hoping one day I will look back and smile. And right now any of these irritations are better than listening to them laugh and bang around in the bedrooms; when they do that it's only a matter of time before tears and always means beds have to be totally remade before sleep. I need a holiday.

ETA - I just went back through some old posts and found that in 2011 the remote thing and the bedroom things were annoying me even back then. I forgot all about that so that confirms my theory that this too shall pass (and by pass I mean be forgotten)

Unexpected

Every night I lie down with my kids and wait for them to go to sleep. Yes it's sometimes tedious, and sometimes there are just way too many other things I should be doing, and sometimes I end up falling asleep with them and don't get any time with my husband at all. It all started with c2's anxiety, he simply could not go to sleep with the nightly debrief and reassurances that we loved him despite his recurrent morning meltdowns. Sometimes even with all of the cuddles and tickles and talks he would still be wide eyed and restless at 11pm - by that stage my anxiety had increased (calculating how many hours sleep he should be getting and needed to cope with all of his worries vs how much he was actually getting) which sometimes made me snappy which didn't help him become relaxed at all! So yeh, the other kids who used to go to their own beds at bedtime happily started to ask for their own bedtime cuddles/talks and every time I rejected them I became filled with guilt, especially when in the morning they were also pushed aside as we tried to make the mornings run smooth for c2. So the new routine became c3 and c4 would go to bed with me first, followed by c2. C1 initially stayed awake with dad, which worked because c2 didn't want anyone else to go to bed with him when he was in his anxious phase but now c1 joins us. It doesn't take too long these days for everyone to be asleep, half an hour for all 4 kids would be the maximum time. But after all that lying down it is hard to get back up. Something else others don't understand about this arrangement is that our kids share bedrooms and they are close together. The times we attempted to leave c2 alone in his bedroom were disastrous for everyone, he woke everyone up, and once started a night terror for c4 in the process. Plus he would only work himself up more, meaning less sleep, meaning a bad morning etc etc until everyone was overtired and over it. We do try periodically, usually following a stay at someone else's house, whose kids watch the clock til 7.30 at which point they march themselves off to bed. Man. I want that! When I hear of people actually watching a movie with their husband after the kids have gone to bed, I want that too. I see other couples having a drink and cleaning up after dinner together and I even want that (although realistically that would never happen!). But if it did it would be nice ;) Anyway c2 is asleep now and I'm getting a bit sick of writing this post. It was not meant to be so long, or a justification for the one snippet I wanted to share that came out of bed sharing tonight. The first thing c2 said when the lights were off and our heads on the pillows? "Mum I didn't tell anyone at school today that you night have pooed when you pushed us out" lol of all the things that were on his mind after the day, and this is it. I think that's his way of showing his love for me!