Now I have to clean!!!!

I’m always telling Poppy that he is my one loyal reader. Probably the only person who checks to see if we’ve posted every day. Work gets slow sometimes you see

Anyway I thought I’d test the theory. And invite him over for roast dinner TONIGHT. The 25th of August.

You can let Tim know via text and he will let me know. I promise…it will be roast like you had when you were little. None of that funny stuff….just roast.

I will need to know by 4pm so I can cook for two extra.

I doubt I need to explain this one!

Last week he was barely crawling.

Now he keeps up with us about the house!!

I think I’ve mentioned here a few times now that when I got pregnant with Jaxon I joined an online forum of woman who were expecting their babies in the same month as me. That was back in April of 2006. Now, five years on, we are still the best of friends. I have not met a single one of them, until now.

Jeannette is from South Africa. Her first born son James, was born 7 days after Jaxon. She and I have spoken on the phone, sent texts and emails. But finally, she came out to visit us!!

I was so nervous! What if she doesn’t like me?? Because a computer personality compared to an “in person” personality are two very different things. I had planned out my day perfectly. I was going to do some cleaning in the morning then shower and blow dry my hair in the afternoon. I was going to put on some make up and smell all pretty. I was going to go across to Coburg to buy Turkish food for them because it’s my favourite food in all of Melbourne. It was going to be special!

When the day finally arrived I had a shit of a night the day before. Tim, Jaxon and I were all sick with the flu. Jaxon was up coughing and spluttering all night and Dexter of course needed a bottle or two over night. They tag teamed me ALL night. So I decided I was too tired to sit in the car to get the Turkish (given that the entire trip would be spent in agony at not being able to move my leg to stop it hurting) and got Tim to pick up a hot chicken and some nibblies on his way home. I had a nap. I set an alarm for three, since she was arriving at 4pm. I was going to get up, have a shower and do my hair. But when I woke up at three and Dexter was still asleep and Tim and Jaxon were having fun together…I slept. Until I got woken by the door bell!

There was Jeannette, at MY front door! I didn’t have Turkish food to feed her. I didn’t clean the things I wanted to clean. I probably smelt really bad and my hair was a mess. But it was still special.

We sat and talked for hours like we were old friends just catching up. Not once did we run out of things to say. Tim and George hit it off with conspiracy theory’s and James and Jaxon didn’t bother us all night! They were so good to each other and played nicely all night with very little yelling from the adults. It was a fantastic night and we were all very sad that we couldn’t have spent more time together. Tim and I wanted to go along with them for a day or night but couldn’t because of my stupid leg and back.

It’s funny. Because a year ago Jeannette did a tour of the US where she went and met almost everyone off our forum. I kept imagining that it would be intimidating to meet all of those new people when you’ve known each other for so long via the internet. Would they have certain expectations of me given what they know of me already. I would NEVER have wanted to do it because in my mind it was going to be a bunch of awkward moments. But now, having met Jeannette…I want to go and meet all of the woman from our forums!!

It’s going to take quite a few years to get there. We have 2 and a half years left to see Tim through his degree in Engineering. Then we’d probably need to sort out our finances once he got a job.  But THEN, we can start saving for the trip of a life time! The kids will be older and it will be a great experience for them. I am 100% confident that the woman I am friends with now will be very close friends for years to come. We chat every day about random bullshit. We lean on each other through rough days with the kids. We comfort each other during hard times. And we laugh, so hard. It’s a very intimate group of woman and I can’t imagine my day not including some word from someone about how they’re doing, whats happening in their lives.

I can’t wait to have photo’s like this of ALL of my girls! Perhaps, all in one spot! They’ve already had to meet ups and I’m always missing out. One day I’ll be there at Myrtle Beach!

You thought I was joking, didn’t you Poppy??

My mother in law made us a new quilt for our bed. She put a LOT of time and effort in to it and it certainly deserves a mention here on the blog.

I’ve never had a quilt and didn’t know how I’d feel about sleeping with it on. But it’s surprisingly, ok. It’s also made it so I HAVE to make the bed every day. A doona can pull off the unmade look but this quilt does not!

It also looks awesome under our ultraviolet light in the bed room…

Well, it’s very hard to believe that 6 months have gone by. Needless to say though, they have been very long months!

Dexter is almost 9 kilo’s in weight now and in Double zero clothes but growing out of them and just started eating solids like he’s always been having it. He’s now a pretty happy go lucky kind of baby and he’s always smiling and giggling at us now.

The only complaint I have right now is he’s a SCREAMER! Man, the boy has LUNGS on him!! Even Jaxon cringes when he gets right up there. It just goes on for ever some days. Its not just one scream. Its scream after scream after scream.

Jaxon LOVES his little brother and is slowly learning how to “play” with something that lays on the ground rolling from side to side all day. But it shouldn’t be too long before he’s crawling! We’ve discussed this thing called crawling with Jaxon a few times but we still don’t think he understands just how much trouble we’re in for once Dexter can FOLLOW us!

I spend all this time not posting and then I start inundating you with posts. From MONTHS ago!! There is a perfectly logical and sane reason (other than pure laziness) for this and I WILL get around to writing about some of these things…but for now I’m just looking through the photo’s I’ve taken over the past couple of months that I SHOULD be sharing here!

To make sense of this story I first have to tell you about two different stories from my childhood.

In the first, on a walk I once took with Mum and Dad when I was very little. Perhaps I was 5 years old. We were just up by my primary school at the end of our street. Walking past some pigeons. I don’t know exactly why he said it but it was probably because I begged them to get me one for my birthday. Or just because.

My Dad told me that if I wanted a pigeon all I had to do was catch one. I could keep it if I did. And to catch it he said, all I had to do was throw salt on it’s bum. This, apparently, makes it so the pigeons can’t fly or walk. Because the salt on it’s bum stings and its bum muscles squeeze in real tight and they can’t walk properly. Then all you have to do is catch it.

For YEARS I believed him. I actually thought it was true. And in grade five, I had other kids convinced of this too.

In the second story I am seven years old. I was yabbying under the bridge at the Euroa caravan park. I had thought it a good idea to leave my line with it’s steak on it over night. To see if I could catch something in the morning. That was all good and well except that when I went to check my line in the morning there was no yabby. Instead, when I pulled on the line it seemed to be stuck. So I pulled harder. And when I finally got the line to move closer to the surface, there at the end of it, holding on to that bit of steak for dear life…was a turtle.

From that point on, for the rest of our 5 week holiday, I begged Mum and Dad to get me a turtle. They DID!

I, being the original character that I am, named it Myrtle. Dad and I built it a pond with a fence around it and I would wonder on down each day to feed it.

I don’t know how long we’d had this turtle when we went to my cousin’s 7th birthday party. I don’t think it was long. But when we came home, Myrtle was gone. It ran away. It climbed it’s little fence (I vaguely remember that it COULD climb the fence) and disappeared. Never to be seen again.

And now to present day. Where I start wondering about my turtle. Thinking about the salt and the pigeons and the turtle. Wondering, if maybe my turtle died. But Mum and Dad didn’t want me to get upset so maybe they lied and said it ran away instead. Just like you hear people telling kids about their dogs who “ran away” when really Mum or Dad backed over it in the drive way. All the while, the kids are so young and trusting that they believe everything their parents tell them. Like, how you can catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s ass.

Yesterday I had to know. Because if I could believe Dad for years that I could catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s behind, then how easy would it be to believe my turtle “ran away”?

I sent both Mum and Dad a text asking if Myrtle had died and not run away. Now that they’re divorced they’d either both say the same thing, or they’d each tell a different story.

Dad replied first. He tells me the turtle really did run away. And when I said I didn’t want to be one of those gullible kids that believed their turtle had run away when it was actually dead and that I was having trouble believing him because of the pigeon story, he STILL tried to tell me you could catch a pigeon with salt…as long as you got close enough. But the turtle really did run away.

Then Mum replied. Like Dad, she swears the turtle ran away and that we never did find it.

I’m still unsure. They each have told the same story. But Tim and I discussed this and perhaps, when I was very little and lying in bed, Mum and Dad stood over me with dead turtle in hand and one said to the other “She can never know about this”

Or maybe, when they got divorced it was a part of their settlement. You can have the couch, but the girl never finds out about the turtle. Take it to the grave.

I just have this image in my head of my head stone when I die. It will probably read something like this.

Here lies Boo.

Wife. Mother. Daughter.

Gullible turtle owner to the end.

We decided to take a quick trip to Grandpa’s before Tim returns back to school. On the way we thought we were in for trouble. Jaxon kept insisting that Dookie had to come home with him. We actually thought we might have to fight Jaxon to leave him there with Grandpa. But within the first minute of our visit we knew we were safe. That was the minute of Jaxon’s blood curdling screams as he CLIMBED UP Tim’s body as Dookie very innocently came rushing out to greet them.

We had a lovely day. We had lunch. Two walks to the beach. Two walks to the park. And one of  us got to see a burning car on the drive home (that would be Tim, who, being the driver of the car…had to keep his eyes open)

Jaxon has accepted Dexter in to his home and heart as if  he has always been here. I didn’t think it was possible but the way he loves his little brother has made me love HIM even more. My brother was my best friend and I was blessed to have such a close relationship with him so I’m so thankful that so early on I can see that Jaxon is never going to let anyone or anything hurt his little brother. Just like Terry did for me.

You have no idea how close we came to losing the family blog. I have been SO UPSET all week.

The reason we wanted to change hosts was because our contract with the old host had expired. They sent us our new bill and I looked around for a better deal. Instead of having to pay $7.95 a month to host with the old host, I found a new one to host for only $3.25 a month.

So it’s logical. To save some money, we decided to change.

We followed all of the directions down to the last letter on how to change hosts. We backed up our database and files. And according to the new and old hosts all we would need to do would be to restore them in the new host control panel.

Well! We did that. And it did not work! If you’ve visited since Monday you may have come across a number of different fatal error warnings.

The new host is local to us. Australian. They boast 24/7 support.

They LIE!!

Each time I would send an email off and tell them exactly what I had done and what was happening (or not happening) because of that. And they would take their sweet time to reply. If you have 24/7 support, how can it take 8 hours to reply an email? I would say “I have done x,y and z and now I get a fatal error that says a,b,c. I don’t know why that is happening. Can you please tell me what I need to do to fix this?” and they would reply “Yes certainly we can help you. Please browse your web site again. And feel free to let us know if you have any further queries”

It seemed the angrier I got about their lack of support the less they replied. So I started calling them and even then, their support was anything but.

Last night, I decided that the only thing to do would be to renew with the more expensive hosts. I did not want to risk leaving my old account so long that they would delete discoverboo from their servers. So this morning I got up, tranferred the money from our savings account and paid up.

And here we are. Two hours later. Back. On. Line.

Crazydomains can go to hell. I would not recommend them to ANYONE.

You’ll have to excuse us for a moment, or three.

We are currently changing web hosts and this may or may not take us off line. We don’t know yet.

Since we have no clue what we’re doing (this is far harder than running a blogger blog where everything is done for you) this may take longer than it would take someone else to do.

If you visit over the next week or so and we’re not here, there’s a good reason for it and HOPE it doesn’t mean we’ve LOST the site!

I don’t post about being pregnant often. And that’s because up until about 8 weeks ago, I really had no reason to.

Jaxon’s pregnancy was fairly tough. With cramping so painful I couldn’t walk, a threatened miscarriage,  heavy swelling from 18 weeks on and of course gestational diabetes, I would have had plenty to bitch about back then.

But this pregnancy has been rather mild. All until I hit the second trimester. When the gastritis, heart burn AND MORNING SICKNESS STRUCK!!

Of course it’s any time of day sickness around here. It could be early morning, late night or even middle of the night.

I am SO over throwing up and still feel like I have so long left before baby arrives. I don’t know how I am going to cope with all this chucking and indigestion!?

Grandma came to visit all the way from Darwin a couple weeks ago. I KNOW!! You don’t need to remind me of how slack I am getting. But all I can say is that after nearly 4 years of blogging…it gets HARD!

I took these photo’s as an absolute last minute thought. We went to the Melbourne Aquarium, had a BBQ  come surprise baby shower at my old friends house and did all sorts of little things during her four day stay and yet I didn’t take many photos. I even FORGOT to take the camera to the Aquarium… a photo opportunity that I normally would not miss. Boy was a pissed at myself!!

In the days to follow I’ll try to get you catched up.