Here’s one I am incredibly proud of. I “scouted” this “shoot” on the way to Jaxon’s school…on school holidays. When I got there I was the first one there. My internal dialogue “Yay…I’m the first one here….um, where is everyone??” Duh! So Jaxon got very very upset with me when we didn’t stop the car and didn’t walk in and was crying a bit. We first drove a bit around town looking for a good location for these photo’s and then went to the park.

I’ve been quite a few times to this spot this week. This was my first night. Over the weeks I will show you more. And perhaps show you the progression through 5.20pm to 5.45pm when the sun sets.

This was our morning sky (6.45am). The fog was so thick, the photo does it no justice!

Don’t forget to check out the other wonderful skies from around the world at…

Dookie and I had a snuggle on the couch this afternoon while Jaxon had a nap. When I got up and moved he made himself right at home.

Such a good puppy!

It’s a pity about the power line’s. This is right outside our front door.

Don’t forget to check out the other beautiful skies from around the world at…

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing sky’s from around the world at Sky Watch Friday!!

NEVER

EAT

SEA

WEED

And though this photo looks like my lens may have been dirty, it was in fact driving through “weed”. It was an amazing sun shower.

And in other news

…my Mummy’s going to kill me…but my Daddy understands

Meet, Dookie

Dookie is a 6 week old Staffy. He’s proof that being generous with your old baby stuff to friends who are going to breed their dog one day, pays off.

Mouse number 8!!

As you can see, he didn’t stand a chance!

Tim and I went to Bunnings (hardware store) today to get some mouse traps. Apparently the town is in the “grip of a mouse plague”

Now my Grandma, Jaxon’s great grandma…lived through a mouse plague and I image it was a LOT worse than this. You’ve probably all seen that video footage of million’s of mice just moving in one big lump across the ground? That’s what I image Grandma saw. That’s why, I image, she didn’t like to hear about my mouse breeding tales.

There wasn’t a single trap there, having all been sold in the last week. Only poison. And we can’t use poison with dogs and cats and kids in the house.

Tonight we’ll lay our own trap. A bowl of liquid malt. I’ve told Tim that I’m certain we’ll have caught our first mouse before we go to bed.

Dude, for now…is safe as can be living here.

Something weird happened here on Saturday night. Something that has never ever happened before.

Since moving to Queensland nearly 5 years ago, I don’t think either Tim nor I have ever seen a mouse.

But while visiting friends for a BBQ, we saw our first one. They stomped it and fed it to the dog and we thought nothing more of it.

Until, while I was changing Jaxon for bed, I heard “Um, Boo” from Tim in Jaxon’s room.

And there, sitting on one of his spare ducks…was a mouse. It just sat and stared at him like it was totally normal for it to be sitting there ready to go to bed.

Since Dude is ALWAYS here for bed time I picked him up…pointed out the mouse and within 30 seconds Dude had it in his jaws and was taking it outside to play.

Once again, feeling safe in the knowledge that we had only ever seen two mice in Queensland…we thought nothing of it.

Until the next night. When, while I was reading in the silence of the night…I heard noises. Coming from our walk in wardrobe. Scratchy noises. Noises that once upon I time I was very familiar with (breeding mice does that to you)

So I got up, took Dude’s bell’s off and let him loose in the house for the first time since we moved here. Dude never gets to be out at night. He is always locked away where he can’t annoy us by climbing windows to get out, meowing to get back in or…sleeping on the bed. He is after all, a very large and bulky kind of cat.

Some background to this part of the story is that since moving from our old place to this place, Dude has been walking on very thin ice. I love having a cat. But Dude was pushing button’s and doing things that I was not willing to live with for overly long.

The first thing we noticed was that if he was inside he wanted to be outside. So we would let him out and then he would do this little about face thing and want to be inside. But he wouldn’t just meow, he would climb the doors and windows. Sometimes he would ask to be out at the front door, would walk around the house and then climb the back door to be let back in.

He had once been a very tranquil cat. And Jaxon’s friend. But when we moved here (and perhaps that we lost Oscar) he started attacking. He would strike without warning as you walked past him. And he would get you good. On Christmas Eve he jumped up from behind the couch and scratched Jaxon so close to his eye that he nearly didn’t get to see the night through.

But I persisted. Thinking that there must be a reason for the mood swings. We got him to the vet and cleared up a urinary tract infection and we installed a cat door for him to get away from Jaxon if he needed. This seems to have done the trick, though he still nibbles my toes occasionally.

But, back to the story. I just wanted to tell you how close to being shafted Dude was!

So the next morning we all woke up. Same old same old. Except for the blood bath all over the kitchen floor. Clearly Dude had caught his fair share of mice for the night.

Good Dude!

It continues still. There was two mice that Dude was teasing last night. They had climbed up the brick wall and were trapped so Dude just sat there. Biding his time. And he got them.

Then this morning, Tim found yet another mouse in our spare room, once again sitting there like nothing was out of place. But once I set Dude on him he didn’t stand a chance.

I don’t know what’s going on. This afternoon when Jaxon and I went out for a drive, a mouse jumped out from under our car and dashed as fast as he could back to the garage. And then when we got back Dude once again saved the day by catching and killing a mouse out near the BBQ.

I’ve never really been happy about cat’s without bell’s on. And Dude sure does sneak up on you when you can’t hear him coming. But until this mouse thing passes, Dude will have free range of the house at night, and no more bell’s!

Dude rocks!

As you can see there are some pretty drastic changes around here at the moment.

I don’t like them. I like my old theme but when I tried to re-insert my photo album something else went wrong and it’s all a bit beyond my knowledge.

So just give me a few days to sort this crap out.

Hopefully I will like the new look as much as I like the old look.

A little delayed since we reformatted my computer last night. But we’re back!

This morning as Jaxon and I ate our rice bubbles, something a little unexpected joined us.

As I looked down at the floor, unaware that Dude was behind me…a lizard casually skittled by my foot.

Now I am not squirmish. But not expecting to see a lizard walk past my foot IN the house…I jumped a mile.

And then grabbed the camera.

If you look very closely at the first photo you can see where the lizard (or skink, or whatever he was) was starting to part with his tail. Dude tried to use him as a play thing for two minutes while I took a couple “happy snaps” and the tail stayed on. But wouldn’t you know, the moment I picked him up to save him from Dude, the stupid thing dropped his tail right there in my hands!

AND!! Oh my! Someone knocked on the door. So there I was, holding half of a lizard and the wiggling decoy tail!!

I am pleased to say that my lizard friend was successfully released back in to the wild, safe from (any more) harm!

Unfortunately, this photo is not a sunset photo like I would normally post.

It is in fact, a sunrise photo.

A power line just up from our house got struck by lightning a couple weeks ago and broke this morning at 5.30am. It also happened that Jaxon woke up at 5.30am this morning too. And that NEVER happens. Jaxon has learnt well from his mother and father to appreciate a good sleep in.

But today, he has a very bad cold and I guess when his humidifier stopped working he stopped being able to breath and that was the end of sleep until 2pm!

That field normally has cows in it. I wish they’d been there this morning for this photo.

Don’t forget you can check out hundreds of other sky’s from around the world by clicking on the following link!

It’s tough being here where we are away from family. But I don’t notice it as much as I do when Jaxon is naughty.

He’s a really good kid. But on those odd occasion’s when he does something and I must in turn punish him, I really just wish I had someone to back me up. Someone to be in my ear saying “Great job Boo! That is exactly what I would have done in that situation”

I’m sick of second guessing myself. Sick of wondering if situation’s were dealt with the correct way and if the outcome I want from my punishment’s and verbal commands is going to happen. Tired of constantly wondering if someone else was Jaxon’s mother, would he not have done that. Would he have learnt that quicker. Would it be the same.

I just wish sometimes that I was living much closer to family. So that I could get to see how it get’s done in other house holds. Because I have no one to learn from here. It’s all trial and error for Tim and I. And what if the way we deal with thing’s is “wrong” or isn’t going to teach Jaxon the things we’re trying to teach him.

You’re probably all thinking I’ve joined some other little click where I take photo’s of the morning moon but this post has nothing what so ever to do with THE moon.

More to do with our bedroom window at 6am in the morning.

The story goes a bit like this.

Our bedroom looks out over a fairly main road. The window’s are tinted and during the day I knew that you couldn’t see through them. So if by chance I was laying there naked while a friend drove by I knew that she couldn’t see me.

But a few weeks ago that same friend came in to let me know that while yes, during the day you can’t see through the window’s…the same can’t be said at 6am when the morning sun hits my naked white ass.

So on Friday Tim put in a garden bed for me. He’s never done anything like this before and I was pleased that by the end of it he said he was ENJOYING himself.

Council worker's mate, what can I say?

I don't care whose fault it is mate, I want it fixed and I want it fixed NOW!

Here you go. Have a cold one on me!

Jaxon is a bit funny about getting his hands dirty. He wont even finger paint at school. So this was about as close to the dirt as he got. At one point he even patted Dad on the back to tell him he was doing a good job and then walked off.

There are 6 viburnum (my all time favorite!) and 2 gardenia’s there. They wont do much for “moon cover” this year but we hope they will be great for next year. So I can continue to sleep naked with the window’s wide open (hence why we can’t just close the blinds)

Someone sent me a link to Sky Watch Friday.

I’ve decided I will join in. I don’t know if this means my Sunday Sunset’s will go. I think I’ll keep them too.

Here’s my very first entry.

This photo was clearly taken at the local cemetery. We decided to go hang around there for the sunset and got some pretty good shots, which I’ll be adding to the photo album shortly.

Don’t forget you can check out heaps of other sky’s from around the world by following the link below.

I don’t know what else to call this post. It will be a short and sweet one anyway.

It annoys the hell out of me that some woman do pregnancy tests fearing that they will be pregnant. Sitting there waiting to find out if their life is going to be ruined because a baby with so an so not father material would just totally suck at that point in their lives.

And the woman who have unsafe sex and then abortion’s like it’s nothing to be blessed with being able to fall pregnant and make a new life without a second thought.

And then me. Sitting here wanting nothing more than to see two line’s on a pee stick…having my heart ripped out day after day because it never happens. Not that it wont happen. But why can’t it just be easier?

Daddy’s going to kill me for this post. But I did make him an author here so really he could just defend himself whenever he likes.

Tim’s a clumsy sort of man. If anyone is going to hurt themselves in this household…it’s Tim.

And it seems that part of him has passed on to Jaxon.

Tonight he was walking through the back door, tripped and fell face first on to the metal rail that the sliding door runs along.

It was a BIG ouchy. Jaxon has his first fat lip…and though the photo’s don’t show it at all, he also had a bump on his forehead.

So by now everyone should know that I am trying very hard to build up a photography business. So far I have no formal training, though hopefully next month a local tafe will be holding a course that I hope to get accepted in to.

But this has nothing to do with that. Or sort of.

This past weekend I went to a friends basketball preliminaries, semifinal’s and championships. My FIL gave me a really good book on the steps you should take towards running a photography business and I’m pretty sure that the very first step in that book is “Be organized”

Which is why at 3am on Saturday morning Tim and I were up making make shift business cards. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if we had decided on the business name. But we haven’t. We put on the card JP Photography. But that’s definitely not what I want the business to be called.

So I need your help. I KNOW I’ve put this call out in various places all over the net but nothing has jumped out at us and slapped us in the face.

We don’t want it to be cute. Because I’m not really one of those cute people. I don’t do cute. I don’t have the light and bubbly personality that screams cute at anyone.

I guess I could go funky. Though maybe I’m too old these days to be funky. And I certainly am not the fashionable funky down with it kind of girl. So maybe not. But you could try.

Someone on one of my forums (ok…THE forum) suggested Above Parr and to be honest I love it. But it brings to mind sports photography and I don’t want to be associated with that and that alone. It also happens to be a sporting term and being above par in a game of golf is not actually a good thing.

To be honest I am not sure I want to use my name at all. Or my initials. JTP photography has a nice ring to it but it just doesn’t click. I don’t like it THAT much.

And then of course I know it would be somewhat unprofessional of me to use my nickname on my business card. But using my real name doesn’t sit well with me. The business cards we handed out on the weekend had my real name on them, but then everyone was getting told to come and see Boo. So the name could contain the word Boo. I’m even considering putting it on the card instead of my name. To save the confusion which is awkward for everyone.

Boo’n'You Photo’s was one idea I had. But I don’t know if I like it enough. You’n'Boo even. Peek A Boo makes me think it’s children’s photography and like I said with the sports, I do not want to be associated with a certain type of photography and miss out on other opportunities.

So. Any idea’s?? I’d really like to have this name out soon. So I can get proper cards made up before I get another job to do.

Everyone would know that I just did some photo’s for our local basket ball team. I was really nervous about it. But it was all good and though I was scared I wouldn’t get any photo’s worthy of someone’s wall I was surprised to see I got quite a few. I took nearly 6000 photo’s over two days. Tim even came to help me for a couple hours.

It was heaps of fun and I hope I get to do it again next year! The testosterone in that gym was amazing. Ooopps. Did I say that out loud? I even got my boobs signed! (no, I didn’t…but that’s another story. That I wont put here until I tell Tim all about it [insert cheeky grin here]..disclaimer…it was Nic’s idea Tim!)

I’ve had to add photo’s in two lots. Not for any technical reason but because I have OCD and if I add the portrait photo’s and the landscape photo’s in the same gallery then it looks odd. This way, pleases me more

Consider this one BIG post. I would love to hear your feed back!!

Well tonight’s sunset sort of missed out. We had an awesome electrical storm go by. I have video of that that I’ll edit and upload soon. Here’s the “sunset”

Tomorrow I’ll share photo’s from the basketball preliminaries and championships. As well as what we did while the “sunset” happened tonight

I just wanted to put here that one of my oldest oldest OLDEST friends just found me on facebook and I am thrilled.

Kelly and I lived in the same block as kids. Her Mum babysat me as a really young kid. I think I was two or three. Maybe even younger. Our Mum’s met in hospital or something like that.

We ate cut fruit under the trampoline. We had sleepover’s. We danced naked under the sprinkler. We fought over who got to be in the pram after a long day of walking.

We were on again off again friends. And I probably wasn’t the friend that I should have been through some of those crucial life moments, like the death of Kelly’s Dad.

In the end we just fizzled out. Kelly moved away and we kept in contact for a year or so and then, nothing.

But she was at my brother’s funeral. And I clearly remember the hug she gave me and the words she said to me as Terry was lowered in to the ground. Even though it was three or so years since we’d seen each other. Her heart is massive.

I regret sometimes the way our friendship travelled. Maybe because I am older and wiser now, but I don’t think I gave all I could have given. I don’t think I accepted the friendship or our differences. Maybe I was even a bully. I don’t know.

But I am happy that she has reached out to me. Perhaps I can mend some of those broken heart moments that surely could have been dealt with differently.

I am sitting here on Saturday morning and I am 100% freaking out!

Tim and I have a friend, who coaches the local basketball team. Today is their championship match and everyone will be there and he asked ME to take photo’s. To document this moment for him.

Why do I feel like a fool? A fake? Why am I sitting here worried that I will fuck up that moment and get no good photo’s for him and his team?

I am so nervous that my entire body feels like it might just collapse right here on the spot. My finger’s are tingling, my legs are shaking. I’m sweating and I can barely breath.

The last two months I’ve been sitting here and waiting for an opportunity like this to present itself. And now that it’s actually here…I think I might send Tim along.

I often lay in bed thinking about all the things I need to write. But not wanting to get up and actually do it, it often doesn’t get said. So this is a rare moment. I’m awake. I have something to write about.

I’m watching So you Think You can Dance (or SYTYCD…like that made it easier to say right!?) I’m big on all of those kinds of shows. I don’t know why. I do know it started with the very first Australian Big brother, way back in 2001. Back then though, I was very very depressed. And living with my Dad. I hadn’t left the house or got out of bed for days and I was very alone. And Big Brother got me out somehow.

That’s besides the point though.

Years ago there was a singing contest show thing for girls…to start a girl band called Bardot. I think I was about 21-22 years old.

I remember watching that thing hoping that I would see someone I knew make an idiot of themselves in the trials. I DID. She sucked. Big time. I can say that without feeling too bad about it. She was the one girl in school that knew how to push all my buttons. You can find out more about her in this post…she was the absolute leader of the pack.

Anyway, getting right to the point. I’ve just had an epiphany. A light bulb moment.

I keep watching these shows hoping that I might see someone I know make a dick of themselves in front of the nation.

But I’m THIRTY ONE YEARS OLD. And “they” are 31 years old…and getting far too old to even cut it in the world of SYTYCD and Australian Idol.

I guess then, I have no more real reason to watch those shows?

We are lucky that we have a friend who owns working horses and he was nice enough to let us go and take a squiz. Notice that Jaxon’s body is almost as big as a Clydesdale’s head!

Todays sunset wasn’t taken from the back yard…I am proud to say! There are more photo’s of where we took them in the photo album…here.

Here’s a small preview!

It was a day like any other day. Sunday. And Tim and I are smack bang in the middle of (possible) ovulation.

That there my friends, should give you enough warning. Too much information…coming your way.

Still with me? You sick freak!

We’ve never done this. Well. I lie. The first time we did this…we got busted. By Tim’s parents. They may not have known it at the time, though I suspect that my bright red embarrassed face might have given it away. And if they really didn’t know, they do now.

I am of course talking about DAY TIME sex.

Jaxon’s not well. So he was happy as Larry watching kids TV and snuggled on the couch with his ducky. He hadn’t moved for at least half an hour…so we thought perhaps we were safe.

We were wrong. Very VERY wrong.

The deed was done. But the act was not over. There was still the obligatory “hug” at the end. Where no one has moved and everything is still in position. If you get my drift.

Time stood still for what seemed like forever, when Tim and I heard a very faint but distinctive “click” behind us from our bedroom door. Neither of us would dare move. Everything, was out in the open.

And then, “Hi”

And Oh. My. God. The Laughter!!!

Neither Tim or I moved. Because Jaxon just walked right on by the cat playing with the fiddle and proceeded to climb up on the bed to play.

If I should happen to get pregnant this cycle…imagine the story we’ll be able to tell our kids! The punch line will be “Jaxon didn’t see it coming, but he sure came close”

I’m feeling very small at the moment.

I’m thinking about Terry a lot. Not so much about how he died. More about what it means to the world that he died. And then how that makes me feel in the “big scheme” of things.

One hundred and something years ago, my great great Grandfather and Grandmother met. They lived and loved. Had kids. Grand kids. And then, they died. They were important people. People loved them. Cared about them and missed them when they were gone.

And I don’t even know their names.

One hundred and something years from now. I’ll be a nobody. Just like Terry is fading in to the past because the only thing that keeps him and his memories alive is my memories of him. Me sharing what I knew of him, and his life, with you. And I don’t do that enough for my own liking. I feel like he was so long ago. So much has happened since him.

But how crazy is that? Everything seems so important to me right now. Terry. Mum and Dad. My past. Tim. Jaxon. My future. What I make of my life. And then one day, when the last person who ever knew me or ever heard a story about good ol Boo dies…it’s just gone. Nothing is left.

One day I’ll just be a name on a family tree.

I’m so small.

Re-post…thanks Emily for helping me retrieve this post

The most annoying thing about Tim and I trying to get pregnant, is my body.

While most woman have regular cycle’s that go for 28 to 30 days…I on the other hand have cycles that could last for as long as 60 or 70 days. It’s never the same. It’s never predictable.

So while those woman who have regular 28 day cycles get to test for pregnancy after a two week wait (the time from ovulation to the time they can test for pregnancy OR get their next period) I on the other hand am stuck here in never never land.

Those woman, have their two week wait, and then they are either going to get a positive or negative pregnancy test. If they get a negative one, they have maybe two or three days before they get their period and the cycle starts again. They can start trying again.

But I am on day 47 of my cycle right now. The time for testing for pregnancy ended two weeks ago. I suffered through the two week wait. I pee’d on countless sticks and I got countless negative results.

But I didn’t get my period. So that disappointment linger’s. Until we can start trying again.

And who knows when that will be.

That’s what makes TTC (trying to conceive) so hard for Tim and I. Not that we get negative tests month after month. But that while other woman get 10 to 12 cycle’s to try per year…I get five or six.

But the time in between is spent waiting for that magical day that most woman complain about…getting my period.

Respost. 22nd Feb

These photo’s were taken on Friday night in pitch black. I LOVE lightning!

Here I was thinking that I would never be able to blog again. With so much to say and not knowing how to say it. Or not wanting to offend people or bring people down.

Little did I know all I needed was a bee in my bonnet.

So what the hell is with other parents thinking it is OK to let their sick child play with my healthy child when the situation could have been avoided with a simple phone call. I’m sorry, but my child has green snot running from head to toe and we wont be able to make it tonight”

How easy is that? What is it with some parents? I once took Jaxon to the park with friends and this  mother comes along on her mobile phone and throws her 10 year old daughter and 3 year old son in the kiddie play pen so she could just stop watching.  Stop watching as her daughter kept knocking my 18 month old son off the slide…all the while snotting green goo all over the place. Not once did that mother have a close look. Not once did she bother to make sure they were playing nicely. Not once did she offer a tissue to her grotty daughter. She didn’t even enter the play pen.

Jaxon’s having a bad night. The second now. He can’t breath and that means he can’t sleep and THAT means I can’t sleep. And all because some idiot woman didn’t want to miss a few burnt sausages and drinks at a BBQ.

I know. I can’t keep him wrapped in cotton. But you know what? I don’t. With all the stunts he pulls Tim and I stopped trying to stop him hurting himself months ago. We figure he’ll learn eventually. We don’t know when…but hope it’s soon.

He’s been exposed. He has play dates. He goes to the EDC with other kids. Kids that are more prone to getting sick because most of them have bigger problems than a running nose to worry about.

But I just don’t understand how hard it would be to just keep that green snot at home. Like it was totally necessary for you to pass on your misery to me…without giving me a choice. Asshole.

I can’t tell you how devastated I was for three days thinking that I had completely lost my blog. For those three days, when I thought all had been lost (all, but the Kicking and Screaming side of things) I couldn’t stop thinking. I slept really badly, or more, I slept like I used to before I met my shrink. Every night I had three new posts in the making and no where to put them.

And now? Blah. Can’t think.

I think part of the reason is I found a new blog.

There is some sort of unwritten rule that if you read a blog, and you own a blog, then you should advertise that you read each other’s blog’s in the blogroll. For the most part I do that.

But this new blog is, well. Personal. I don’t want to share it. I can not explain it in the slightest. I haven’t seen photo’s, have just a nick name and an age. I don’t know where he comes from but slowly, as I move through his pages, I am learning where he has been.

It’s all different. His life to mine.  But it’s all the same. And reading his pages makes me feel like I could be reading an old diary entry from my own deep and dark past.

Somehow it’s given me writer’s block. I don’t know what to put here even though I want to put it here.

Never ever ever do that again!

Apparently my subconscious mind didn’t think I had quite enough on my plate. Perhaps deep down inside I’m bored. I don’t know. But somehow, I deleted one of the more important things in my life. My blog.

Even now all of my February work is gone. And that header image up there is a puzzle because all of the other pages have the header image intact.

I really didn’t mean it. But I probably should have known better.

I’d tell you what I did but I don’t really know what I did. Or I don’t know why what happened happened after I did what I did.

And then I wont even go in to the shit fight that happened with my “support” team over with my HostIcan (or can’t, or might…you may need to pay me. What? Unfair? I know. But you fucked up. And now if you want us to fix it, if it can be fixed at all…you might need to sign here on this dotted line. But that’s only if we can fix it. And we don’t know if we can)

Once again, and quite surprisingly, wordpress support came to my rescue. After three days of banging my head against the “I have NO IDEA what I have done and even LESS IDEA about how to fix it” wall, someone took my username and password and did it for me.

I will never do that again.

Normally I save my “You Should See this” posts for YouTube video’s. But today I have a special treat for you. And I must be fair from the start and warn you that you should probably go to the toilet before you press play.

Jaxon has been doing this for months but I’ve never been able to capture it on film. It is the funniest thing to watch and he puts SO MUCH effort in to it. He does this whenever he wants to make us laugh.

Enjoy!

I’ve been catching up with a LOT of old friends from high school lately and above all else I get asked what’s going on with Jaxon. It’s such a long story and it can’t be told in two or three sentences. So I write it here…

Jaxon was three years in the  making. In the “end” (the time just before we found out we were pregnant) I’d been told that I would not be able to have kids. I’d had blood tests for 12 months and hadn’t ovulated once…so that was that. No kids for Tim and I.

I was heart broken. But really, I think I had come to live with it for a little while.

It all started with a bit of cramping. And then sore nipples. I’m sorry, is this too much information for you? Tough. Ha Ha.

So one night Tim says to me about my incredibly sore nipples that I might be pregnant. But I think…no. I can’t be. That’s not possible. But of course, the mother in me jumped at the chance to do a pregnancy test. Not expecting that I would actually GET a positive pregnancy test.

But I did. I walked in to Tim, who was still sleeping…and told him. He said “that’s nice dear” and rolled over.

So the pregnancy was a bit tough. We had cramping for the first 8 weeks and got told we would lose it. That was just awful after all of that time to get pregnant and be told it was going to die.

But it all settled down. From 8 weeks to 27 weeks was all pretty normal. Until I got told I had gestational diabetes. It was that same day that my weight was just about to go over my “limit” and because of the diet I had to go on…I never went over it. I actually lost weight and it’s about the only time in my entire life that I have lost that much weight. While I was pregnant.

At 33 weeks Jaxon was still in the breech position. No worries. We gave him 3 more weeks, but then planned his birth via c-section anyway. I still went in to labor and managed to throw up all over Tim’s feet in hospital the night before it was all to happen. What fun.

Jaxon was born at 8.27am on the 24th of January 2007. Four weeks early.  He weighed 5 pound something. An America friend was kind enough to let me know that our nurse had converted it wrong so I have no idea what he was. But 2.86 kilo’s at any rate.

He had trouble in the first week or two. He went purple in his first few minutes and couldn’t maintain his body heat. His blood sugars would drop for the first few days. Despite the midwives milking my boobs like a bloody cow. My milk didn’t come in so he couldn’t get much out of me…so they tube fed him. I wonder now if they didn’t just like doing that to babies. Another friend refused to let them do it and he was just fine.

Jaxon was born with a club foot, a brachial plexis and torticollis. You might need to look those up. In the 2 years that Tim and I had lived here in town we had never been to Brisbane. We moved away from the city for a reason and saw no real reason to visit another one. But when Jaxon was born we started going twice a week for 9 weeks.

His foot was treated with little boots (ponsetti boots) and at 4 months he had a tenotomy and cast on for three weeks. Right now, you just couldn’t tell me which foot was the “bad one” it is so perfect and totally fixed.

His arm and neck on the other hand are a different story. The c-section was apparently a difficult one…what would I know? Morphine rocks!!!!!! But the doctors tore the nerves in Jaxon’s right arm so when he was born, and for the first 10 months or so, he could barely move it. We’ve been doing physio ever since we found it all at 4 months. Today he can use it. He can flex his finger’s now. While that seems like such a little thing, to me it is massive. He can flex his finger’s. They told me he wouldn’t and I would like to think that it’s partly my hard work with physio and other such activities that have brought him to this stage, where he can grasp things with his hand.

His neck, it would seem, is less about tight muscles and more about…the 12 bones in his neck. I’ve got a video on the video pages that shows you what’s going on in there. He’s meant to have 7, like the rest of us. But he has 12 and they’re not exactly normal. They tell me that nothing can be done and blah blah blah. But then, they told me he wouldn’t use his hand…ever. So anything is possible.

I think I mentioned earlier that my milk didn’t come in. It never did come in despite us trying and trying for 8 weeks. At the end of the day, when they said Jaxon needed X amount of milk each day and I was only producing X-400 mil a day and supplementing with formula…it just wasn’t worth it. So we gave up at 8 weeks and put him on a full formula diet.

At that point, or shortly after…Jaxon started crying. He cried all day and all night. Tim and I would beg the doctors to help us. They worked through a list of medications for reflux and colic and blah blah blah. Which all translated in to “we don’t really care” It turned out he was lactose intolerant. And all he needed was lactose free milk.

Friends and family that we told about the crying and lack of sleep all told us that we had a new born baby…we should expect crying and no sleep. But they didn’t come and see that it really was ALL day and ALL night. It was tough.

Without family about, and very few friends in a new town, I broke down. To be 100% honest with you, I sat on the bed one morning…the day before ANZAC day, and I planned how I was going to make the crying stop. It was not pretty. And I wont put it here, how I was going to do it. Because one day Jaxon might read this and I just don’t think he needs to know. What he does need to know is that deep down inside I loved him enough to call the hospital and admit myself to get REAL help. To keep him safe.

And that was that. The trip from there on in has not exactly been easy. But I can say that since that day, our journey has gone on the up and up. We’ve gone through hell. He’s had a lumbar puncture, he’s had his shin drilled. He’s had an MRI and CT scan and X-rays and an emergency ambulance ride. He’s had more medical procedures in his 2 years of life than I have had in my 30. Ooops. 31.

And now he goes in leaps and bounds and nothing is going to stop him. His physio teacher’s are just in awe of him. They just love him to bit’s. His little personality is just…BIG.

Day by day he amazes me. I am privileged to watch him becoming, as a friend explained it to me. Every day he makes me smile and laugh and love life and love being more than I have ever loved being in my own time. I thought I was happy (and I was) before he came along. And for a while I thought I would never be happy again…but now I just don’t know if I can hold all of this love and happiness and PRIDE in with him in my life.

Nothing in life compares to getting the honor of watching something YOU created and gave life to go from a blob of mash that pee’s, poops and cries…to something that has words and thoughts and their own personality.

To be continued…

Somewhere between my new love of photography, family and sleep, I’ve lost my motivation to post here.

Perhaps the biggest factor is sleep. Since I’ve been doing my “not now, I’m listening” thing, I just haven’t had the stories. It was that two or three hour stretch of time when I couldn’t sleep when I would lay there and think up things to write about. Some of my best posts came from that time when I couldn’t sleep.

Now that that time has been significantly reduced, I just don’t think about it anymore.

I don’t know if it’s a good trade off. Being able to get to sleep in a reasonable amount of time, or not having things to write about here. I think I prefer a good nights sleep.

It’s not even that I have nothing to write about at this point. We’ve had Tim and Jaxon’s birthdays.

We’ve had a visit from his Nanny and Poppy where we went on several bush walks and had lot’s and lot’s of fun. His Grandpa Ted and Grandma Ann came to visit too. Grandpa Ted passed on the family camping trailer (which he built himself), which I hope will give Jaxon as many years of joy and good memories as it did me.

We’ve been on our first camping trip and we’ve had leaps and bounds in Jaxon’s progress at the EDC and at the pool. We’ve taken some amazing photo’s and we’ve just been having lot’s of family time which has just be wonderful while Tim was on holidays.

Really, I have SO MUCH to tell you. I just can’t find the motivation and the words are not there yet. But I garauntee that when they come back, you wont be able to keep up.

Here are some photo’s of our camping trailer.

What can I say? The ball’s were dirty!?!?!

He had a “ball”…HA…what did you expect??

A well known American website has been under fire recently for a very brief post that they made about a photo that was taken here in Australia.

I’ve looked over their pages and I get it. They make fun. They find humor. They add funny little tag line’s and gossip about celebrities.

Here’s a snap shot of the post in question. You can also see it, and the rest of the web site here.

I guess it’s not the making fun of something Australian that has bothered me so much. I could really care less. It’s the fact that they chose THIS photo to make fun of.

The fire’s have killed almost 200 people. They’ve taken eight or nine hundred home’s and completely wiped out entire communities. Beautiful communities. The number’s will never be calculated but it is suspected that MILLION’s of wild animal’s lost their lives. In fire. Burnt to death.

The stories we hear are just awful. Nothing can describe what these people have been through. One man watched as his children burnt to death in the family car. Another watched the same thing happen to his father.  Husbands and wives separated by flames and never made it. People lost their entire families in one foul swoop. People have LOST EVERYTHING.

Perhaps it’s just hard to image what that would be like? Being burnt to death? Being trapped in a literal inferno? Perhaps the news feeds for our fire’s have shown the fire, but not the lives it took. Perhaps you saw the flames but not the tears and heart ache that is being felt all over our country.

The fires are still burning. The fire fighter’s are still fighting. While all hope was lost in one day for hundred’s of lives, and EVERYONE in Australia is feeling the hurt and the loss and the devastation that the fire’s have created this one photo shows up and gives us hope.

It makes us see that there were true hero’s fighting for the live’s and the life styles of people that we know and love. It makes us see that in the face of devistation, a wild animal who had been burnt but had managed to survive the flames, would be willing to trust a MAN to give it comfort.

Koala’s are not pet’s. Touching a Koala in the wild would be much like trying to pet a wild grizzly bear or befriend a poisonous snake in the wild. This just doesn’t happen. In fact, unless you’re looking for them and happen to be really lucky, you’re highly unlikely to SEE a Koala in the wild. And for anyone that doesn’t know? Under normal circumstances, this Koala would have ripped this man to pieces if he’d tried to get that close in the wild.

In the comments on that website, quite a few people said that Australian’s have a weird obsession with animals. No. We do not. But we respect what this photo signifies. And we did not make fun of people jumping out of the Twin Tower’s, or the people being rescued from roof tops when Hurricane Katrina hit. We pulled together, and we raised money to help.

We are a relatively small country. But we have big hearts. And everyone has been affected by these fires. Everyone know’s someone who has been touched by the flames. And for a heartless bunch of idiot’s to make fun of the very little hope that we managed to find when the smoke started to clear, was just wrong. The apology issued, was worse.

It makes me lose faith in the human race. That just because ocean’s are between us, they couldn’t see the hope that we found in that photo. They couldn’t feel our pain. That saying a Koala who has been burnt in the flames being given water by a man who may well have been awake for more than 24 hours to save lives is, being pampered? How do these people live with themselves?

Perhaps, this is how this photo should be remembered.

HOPE