kimbalicious

Full of New Year’s Resolution Spirit, I had a really productive day today.

Cleaned out a bunch of junk, donated 3 bags of clothes & toys to charity, listed more things on eBay, made a big start to sorting out my finances (still a long way to go, but I feel positive), packed up baby things to store in the garage, took back duplicated Christmas gifts, shopped well within my new grocery budget (gotta love Aldi!), found some promising-looking used cars to go and look at with Abang tomorrow, crossed a bunch of things off my to-do list, and, most importantly, also had a lot of fun with J-baby.

I can feel the stagnant energy of late 2007 clearing…or maybe I’m just an optimist

Today I’m thankful for: the lovely lady who randomly gave me a bottle of bubbles to amuse Jet while waiting in the bank this afternoon. Banks who actually care about their customers. Having the health and time and energy to get things done. Only gaining 1kg over the holidays, despite taking 10 days off my diet program (and I mean COMPLETELY off! heh) And the best mango season we’ve had in years! yum…

Another New Year’s Day already!

Is it just me or are the years just flying by right now? Seems like only yesterday that I was ringing in 2007 with a little 11 week old baby, and now here it is, 2008, with that baby replaced by a fully fledged boy running around, roaring, and climbing up the furniture.

So, its resolution time. In 2008 I intend to:

• Get my finances and debts under control, and keep improving my life-work-family balance
• Drastically de-clutter my home, sell half on eBay and give half to charity
• Take a photo of my son every day for a year (366 Day Project)
• Get my son’s baby book(s) up to date, before I forget everything
• Finally put together the scrapbook of my son’s first year, and stay on top of the new one for his second year (1 layout per month, surely that’s not too hard to do!?!)
• Spend less time on facebook and more time ‘face to face’ with the people who matter
• Stay on track with my weight-loss and lose the next 20kg (halfway there!)
• Blog more often so I don’t look back and regret not using the opportunity to note down all life’s little moments
• Try NOT to succumb to cluckiness I.E. try NOT get pregnant again (heh)
• Give thanks daily for all my blessings
• Hand-make everyone’s birthday (and other significant event) cards, and post them on time
• Send postcards and letters instead of emails
• Do a digital photography course to learn how to really get the most out of my camera and take beautiful photos
• Back up all my music, movies and photos onto an external hard drive

How about you?

Oh dear, how lazy have we humans become, when THIS becomes necessary, because it’s too much effort to walk to the fridge?

(mind you, they do kind of have a point about office seagulls thieving from communal fridges…)

From this…

To this…

To this!

I love this little person more than life itself, and I’m thankful every day that he chose to bless my life by sharing it with me.

I love waking up in the mornings to see his smiling face, I think about him all day whenever I’m not with him, and I miss him when I go to bed at night, even though he’s only sleeping in the next room. I love his smile, his laugh, his tantrums, his humour, his ‘words’, his noise, his mess, his determination, his personality, his courage, his pure joy in the simplest pleasures, his affection, his sloppy kisses, his smell, his skin, his hair, his face, and his precious little dimpled hands and feet.

The force of this love I feel for him defies description. I can’t find the right words. I got really emotional today at 5.20pm, the time of his birth. I held him close to my heart and tears started running down my cheeks, kissing him and hugging him and stroking his cheeks, the way I’d so wanted to (but couldn’t) at the moment of his birth.

Today is not just his birthday, but the day I was reborn, as a mother.

Happy, Happy 1st Birthday, my beautiful son!

Tomorrow my baby turns 1. I can’t believe how fast this past year has gone!

This time last year I was still desperately hoping I’d go into labour on my own so that I didn’t have to be induced. It was a stinking hot day and my feet and fingers had swelled up like inflated rubber gloves. I had no idea what my baby would look like, what being a mother would feel like, what challenges lay ahead. I was excited and terrified at the same time.

Today, a year later, and I love being a mother. I can’t describe the profound changes in me since birthing my son and sharing my life with him. Nothing in this world matters to me as much as him, and he’s my first consideration in everything I do. I don’t think I spend 15 minutes without thinking of him in some way. I’m so crazily in love with him. Of course, he’s not such a baby any more. He’s running around and starting to lose that chubby baby look (although it seems he inherited my chubby cheeks). He’s got a mouthful of teeth, and a cheeky grin that sucks the breath out of me. His eyes are still blue and I can’t explain whatever genetic quirk led to that! we expected them to have turned deep brown a long time ago. I still feel torn between the need to work and the desire to spend every day raising and nurturing him. I often fantasise about selling our unit, declaring bankruptcy, and moving home to live on the farm and work at woolies part time…who knows, it could happen yet.

Tomorrow is the end of Ramadan so we’ll be spending the day doing the rounds and celebrating Eid with Muslim friends. I have to cook up big batches of Indonesian foods (beef rendang, fried chicken, banana fritters) to take with us. It’s also Jet’s birthday of course so I’m making Nasi Kuning (yellow coconut rice) which is the Indonesian alternative to birthday cake. Then on Sunday we’re having a party picnic for Jet in the park with friends. And NEXT Saturday we’re heading down the coast to have a small party with my family (easier than all of them coming up here). Lucky Jet! all these celebrations. A lot more work for Mama of course, but I don’t mind…

In other news, work is going great right now. We just merged with another company and I was a bit apprehensive about where I’d end up, but luckily I’ve been slotted into a very similar role to what I’m doing now, with a bit more responsibility (so I’ll be asking for a payrise, heh). New boss seems great and we’re moving into a new office. It’s like having a brand new job only with all the benefits (and accumulated leave entitlements) of your old one, and none of the stress and anguish of the recruitment process and starting over. Only prob is that they might want me to go back to 5 days a week and I don’t think I could handle that just yet. The other thing is that I might have to do some interstate travel which could be tricky with Jet, I have nobody to take him to daycare if I’m not here, because Abang starts work at 3.30am…anyway, cross that bridge when we come to it!

Oh yes, and of course you want to know how I’m doing with The Weightloss, heh. Well, as of today I’ve lost just over 12kg in just under 7 weeks (official Week 7 Weigh in will be tomorrow), so as you can imagine I’m well pleased with that!!! That’s about 2 stone, as my mum would say. I was hoping to lose 10kg before Jet’s birthday, so I’m stoked to have done even better than that. I’m well on track to lose 20-25kg by Christmas, that’s for sure!

My son’s carer this morning, when I dropped him off, said to me proudly: ’He can say Mum now!’

Well, yeah, he’s been saying Mama since he was about 5 months old, but maybe she’s never heard it. It was one of the first recognisable, repeated sounds he made (much to the gladdening of my heart!) Then he stopped saying it for a while, but lately it’s made a BIG resurgence in his babble, although these days he tends to say it when he wants something I’ve got, wants to be picked up from his cot, or wants to be fed, rather than actually calling me Mama.

Anyway, I said to the carer ‘Yeah, he does say it now, it’s cute huh?’

And then she went on to tell me that yes, J got pushed over by another kid yesterday, and was crying and asking for ’Mama’.

Oh boy. I’ve never heard him do that! I guess because when I’m with him, I’m the one doing the soothing when he’s upset. Even when I drop him off with his carer in the mornings, he’s never cried or called out for me as I leave, although he still refuses to wave goodbye to me, just shakes his head (and I KNOW he can wave goodbye, he does it to other people). 

But I didn’t realise he was asking for ‘Mama’ when he needed comforting and I wasn’t around.

One one hand this is kind of gratifying and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy: awww, my son asks for me when he wants comfort! But on the other hand I feel horribly guilty: that I’m not there for him, that he misses me, that I’ve put him into this situation where he’s basically with strangers most of the day (although his carer loves him to bits).

I also feel angry, that he’s getting bullied. You see, the older kid (I think he’s about 18-20 months old now) who used to bite J (remember that?) is the one who pushed him over yesterday. Deliberately. Apparently he pushes him around, and always goes over and takes his toys off him. Abang had already told me he saw it happening yesterday when he went to collect J, and the carer confirmed it for me this morning in our discussion.

She feels that this other child targets J because he’s younger and smaller, and because he’s jealous of him. She tries to keep the little shit away from J, and distracted (while J is happy to sit by himself and play with toys all day) but obviously she has a few kids to look after and can’t focus all of her attention on this one child all day. It’s bothering her and she can’t do much more in terms of disciplining this other child either, she removes him and tells him no, but he doesn’t seem to care.

I don’t really know what to do. J is happy with this carer, she loves him, I’m happy with how she looks after him, and it’s close to home which means I get to spend just that little bit more time with him in the mornings. But I’m not comfortable knowing that he’s in a situation where a bigger child with an attitude problem is bullying him.

J is pretty strong and tough himself, and is used to playing with the bigger kids at daycare, so it probably doesn’t bother him that much, but I’m really concerned that J is picking up some bad behaviour himself - I’ve noticed he’s gotten quite rough with us lately, and will smack at us, and pull hair, and hit us with toys - of course he doesn’t mean it and doesn’t understand, but it’s not appropriate, especially when we catch up with my Mum’s group and all the other little babies aren’t used to it. He doesn’t understand ‘gentle’ yet (not without lots of effort on our part!) and I don’t want to have to be constantly pulling him away and saying ‘no’ when he wants to play with them.

Hoo, mama. What to do…it’s awful of me I know, but I just can’t stand that other kid, every time I see him I want to growl at him and tell him to stay away from my babe! Every time I see his mother (who is incidentally really friendly and nice) I want to say to her ’please, take him away!!!!’ I keep hoping that they will move to another suburb or take him to a different carer…I should be so lucky.

Who knew that it was so hard to enrol an 11 month old in learn-to-swim-school? I called last week, only to be told that they weren’t taking new enrolments until next Tuesday (being today) and that I should call back then. Um, OK, too hard to take the details then and there?

So this morning at 8.45am I called back. No answer. Waited till 9am and redialled. Busy. And I kept redialling, and I kept getting that damn smug busy tone - for over an hour! GAH! I finally got through and the girl sounded like she was in a bit of a flap, to put it mildly. She said she’d literally just hung up the phone a second before my call rang through (um yes that would be because I was redialling as if I was calling through to a radio competition! heh). Apparently, her phone is running HOT this morning with parents desperate to get their wee kidlets into baby swim school. Who knew?

I was told that the Saturday classes are already full and that there was only one place left in the Monday morning class. Huh. Lucky I have Mondays off! Seems that every parent in the local area had called the pool between 9 and 10 this morning to get their kids a place.

I suppose I should have realised that this is what life with kids in the city is going to be like, if getting him a daycare place was anything to go by. I’m now wondering, if getting him into baby swimming classes is this hard, what’s REAL school going to be like? The mind boggles.

Now I just have to work out how to get J-baby to the not-within-walking-distance pool on Mondays without a car. Weehee! Fun on the buses, people.

It’s exactly one month today since I launched my latest weightloss mission. And, happy days, today I’m 8.1kg lighter than I was a month ago. Yippi-kai-yay!

Official 4 week weighin for my program is next Saturday, since I did a week of prep/ detox then started the actual program on 1st September, so we’ll see what happens…might hit the 9kg mark by then! ooh-err…

I actually had a bit of a crap frustrating week last week, where everything seemed to stand still, but it already seems like this week will be much better. Anyway even with that slower week, losing over 8kg in my first month is bloody awesome.

I feel heaps smaller, but when I look in the mirror I’m so not! ha. My clothes are getting looser, but it’s not really noticeable to anyone but me yet. Soon though! I can’t wait.

Anyone out there work for Qantas, or have a good idea of their international economy seating configuration?

I’m trying to work out which are the best seats to request for travelling with a 17 month old over to Jakarta next March.

Jet will probably be too big for the bassinet by then (he’s probably too big already) but should I request one anyway so that we get the bulkhead seats? There’s a lot to be said for not having anyone sitting right in front of us…or are there other seats better than the bulkhead? I know that we can’t sit in exit row seats with a baby.

I am feeling particularly happy and content today.

In no particular order:

 1) Jet slept 12 hours straight last night.

2) Two Three people have already commented on the (new, smaller!) top I’m wearing and told me I look ‘really nice’ today.

[Aside: I think I’m at that point where people can see a difference in me but it’s not yet obvious that I’ve lost weight. I remember this from last time, when people would say to me things like ‘gee you’re looking well’ before it got to the point where they’d say ‘you’ve lost so much weight!’]

3) At work today I finally got approval to book myself onto a ‘great for my career’ training qualification course that I’ve wanted to do for 12 months. It pays to keep asking!

4) It’s Friday and that means I now have 3 whole days to spend with my baby boy.

5) My current jeans are at the ‘almost too big’ stage, and I almost fit back into my old pairs from 2005.

6) The scales and cms keep dropping, and I am pretty confident that tomorrow’s weigh in will see me 7kg (15lb) lighter and many cm smaller than 3 weeks ago.

7) I scored 2 pairs of black GAP pants for $9.95 yesterday on Catch Of The Day (actually I bought 6, I’m going to sell at least 4 of them on eBay :D)

8 ) My shitty old work laptop died this morning when I got into the office and tried to boot it up, and they’ve just given me a faster, better, newer one, with wireless. w00t! it’s going to be so much easier to connect to the network when I do training at work now, and it’ll be great at home as well, no more messing around with cables.

And 9) I am daydreaming of our trip to Bali next year…