Philoxenos

As you already know, I’ve recently given birth to our third child. Now, not to make anyone jealous or anything, but I have this amazing ability to actually lose weight during my pregnancies. With all three I have lost weight for the first six months or so (25 pounds for #2) and then slowly gained a little back for the next three months, which means that usually by two weeks post partum I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight or lower. This is by far the best weight loss programme I have ever encountered. I tend to be a bit on the round side so this weight loss does no harm to me or our babies.

I’m now nearly three weeks post partum and I’m about three pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight. This is with no effort on my part. I produce enough milk to easily feed triplets and as a result I inhale massive amounts of food and water. Unfortunately, I get very used to just eating, eating, eating, not really caring what it is. So a friend brings cookies by? No problem, I’ll eat them, often in the middle of the night when I think I’m going to die of starvation. Leftover enchiladas? No worries, I’ll finish them off for morning tea.

A friend brought over a cake about an hour ago, while we were getting the kids ready for bed. Can I even admit to you how much of it I’ve already eaten??? And man, it was good. But eventually the nirvana of post-partum metabolism must end and with it the ability to eat huge quantities of sugar-laden food without regret. But somehow an apple just doesn’t have the same taste as chocolate cake.

My daughter is currently laying on her bed, during our mandatory rest time. I knew she probably wouldn’t actually go to sleep since I started rest time at 12 pm, instead of closer to 1pm as usual. She was incredibly quiet for most of the time, so I was able to get a nap and get started on dinner without worrying about any children.

Just now I walked tiptoed down to her room to see if she was possibly sleeping. As I neared her bedroom, I heard her chanting “mommy, mommy” almost under her breath. But as I got to her door I realised that she was actually singing “mommy, mommy” to the tune of New Zealand’s national anthem “God Defend New Zealand”. Can’t say I’m not raising a patriotic daughter!

I think a fly just dropped another dead fly on me. ICK!!

There are a few markers that I’ve always used to note what growth milestones my children are reaching. One is, obviously, what the scale says. My second daughter, who is 18 months old, is very nearly the same weight as her older sister, who is 3.5 years old. They have completely different builds.

Another is what size clothes they wear. Again, my younger daughter can often wear the same size as her big sister, although pants and dresses are too long.

The final one is what size nappies they wear. My oldest daughter is potty trained, but even since she’s been potty trained I’ve had to buy a larger size panties. Today I had more nappies delivered for my second daughter, in a larger size. It wasn’t until I used one of the new sized nappies that I realised how small her other ones had become. I’ve never had a child that wears such a large size. I don’t know when she’ll be potty-trained so it’s possible that she’ll go up even another size.

But one of the bittersweet moments of the day was when I was changing the nappy of my newborn son, who is two weeks old today. When he was first born and we were in the hospital, the nappies were just so big! I didn’t even have to stretch the tabs to make them meet and overlap in the middle. This afternoon, I realised that I was having to stretch the tabs in order to make them meet in the middle. My little boy is growing up I realise that this is just the first of many, many milestones that he’ll reach, but just something about having him grow up in such a short time made me almost sad. What’s next??

… you eat leftover enchiladas at 9:30 in the morning because you’re starving and man, they taste good!!

I have a number of things running through my head at the moment, so I’m just going to write a list.

1. It’s definitely autumn here. The mornings and evenings are definitely nippy. My oldest daughter got a pair of slippers in the mail from her grandma, which she thinks are so cool and she wears them faithfully each night after baths and each morning when she wakes up. She’s been wanting some slippers because her daddy and I both have them. Unfortunately they’re a wee bit small, but grandma to the rescue! She ordered another larger pair and will bring them with her when she arrives in a few weeks.

2. I’m feeling very housewife-y at the moment, meaning that I’d really like to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, making bread and other baked goodies and trying out new recipes that I’ve found on tammysrecipes.com . But it just ain’t gonna happen. My energy comes in spurts and of course there are the three children that now live in my house to consider. In case you’re a new reader, these three children didn’t just appear overnight but it’s just dawning on me that I am now the mother of three children under 4 and that means that I get like five minutes to myself at a time, if I’m lucky. The bathroom is no longer a sacred place. My husband can often be heard saying “Leave Mummy alone, let her have some privacy” as he shuts the door to the toilet again. I have a feeling that any creative time in the kitchen will be done after the kids have gone to bed. In theory this is fine. In practice by the time we get the kids to bed and I’ve fed the newborn (he’s only 10 days old after all) I’m ready to hit the sack myself and there is no way that I’m going to dirty up the kitchen that was only recently cleaned after dinner. So I think the best way to remedy thisis to start keeping a list of recipes that I’d like to try and when I eventually find myself with a spare 20 minutes or so I can try them out. I must remember that I won’t always feel like this.

3. I’m currently trying to work out what to do with the sleep schedule of my oldest daughter. We have a mandatory rest time in our house which is about two hours. This is required so that I can have a sleep while the kids are sleeping. This is an absolute must for my sanity and the safety of the children. A few days a week the oldest doesn’t actually sleep, but she’s required to at least be quiet on her bed and rest, with some books to read if necessary. Most of the time she’ll fall asleep and sleep for over two hours. But I’m starting to wonder how this sleep is affecting her nightime sleep. See, it’s currently 3 pm and she’s still asleep. Betime around here is from 7-7:30 so it’s not all that long until she’ll need to be heading to bed and I can guarantee that because she’s slept so long she won’t actually fall alseep until after 8:30. I don’t really have a problem with that as long as she’s quiet in her bed, but she usually comes up with 101  excuses to get out of bed. So, do I cut down on her quiet time, which therefore cuts down on my quiet time? Honestly, by 12:30, I’m ready to hit the sack so I hate to keep her up longer. And often the time from 2-3 is when I am able to do a few things that I want to do - blog, read , start dinner. I’d be interested in some feedback if you have some ideas. I think we might need to extend the quiet time part, but shejust does it outside of  her bed. If she knows that it’s still mummy’s quiet time then maybe she will still be quiet. Might have to work on that one.

Well, I better go wake her up. This has given me a few things to think about. I would have written in my journal but I can’t find it at the moment.

Yesterday my oldest daughter attended a birthday party for a friend from church who was turning 4. Normally one of us will stay with her at birthday parties because three year olds aren’t exactly reliable in their behaviour. But because of the new baby I was in no position to be going to a birthday party - honestly, one of my first thoughts was “What would I wear??”. My husband had already made plans to go chop firewood with a man from church, so he wasn’t available either. I rang the mother of the little girl and asked if it would be okay for us to drop her off, instead of staying with her. As she regularly goes to play at her friend’s house, it wasn’t a problem.

She came home a few hours later, hyped up and covered in remnants of jello. A good time was had by all. Not only was she given sugar at the party (and I’m not surprised by that at all) but she was given a goodie bag to take home which contained several pieces of candy to be consumed at a later time, hopefully determined by her parents. Of course she wanted to eat it straight away and I convinced her that she could wait until after nap time.

After nap time came and the first thing out of her mouth when got off her bed was “My special treats!!” She ate a little cupcake and a piece of chocolate and what I call smarties, but here they’re called smokies. She still had a lollipop and a piece of chocolate left and she independently decided to save them for today.

Just now, she ate her piece of chocolate and lollipop. Her sister was very upset that she didn’t get to have any and she grabbed the lollipop (by the sucker part of course) and broke it off the stick, much to the frustration of her sister. There was much screaming and gnashing of teeth. My husband realised that both of the girls now had very sticky hands, the kind of sticky that you have nightmares about. He quickly responded by saying “Hands in the air! Don’t touch anything!” So we had two little girls with yellow sticky on their hands, waving them in the air. The youngest thought it was a bit of a game and I’m surprised she didn’t start dancing, which is usually what she does with her hands in the air.

We put the oldest on a chair and instructed her not to touch anything - NOTHING. I saw her about to rest her hand on the chair and I yelled NO! She was a bit alarmed.

We got them both cleaned up and no furniture was harmed.

Something happened tonight that had blog material written all over it. I just have to share it with you.

Earlier, during bath time, my husband had taken our youngest daughter out of the bath and was getting her dressed for bed. He heard our older daughter shout from the bathtub “Daddy, I need to get out!” It’s not unusual for her to announce loudly that she wants to get out, so he simply told her to wait.

The urgency increased. “I need to get out!” Again, he asked her to wait.

Finally, we heard “The poos are coming!” At this point, I stopped what I was doing in the kitchen and walked as quickly as a woman recovering from major surgery can to the bathroom where I heard my husband say “Oh, the poos already came.” I thought this meant they were floaties in the bathtub, which I’m grateful isn’t a regular occurence in our home.

No, it didn’t mean floaties. There was a deposit on the bathroom rug. By this time he had already lifted her onto the toilet so she could take care of the rest of her business. He took care of the little gift and life went on.

Fastforward about 15 minutes.

We’re all in the living room, the girls are doing some colouring and husband and I are sitting next to them, reading some blogs together (Isn’t that precious?). I start to sniff. There is a definite odour and it’s not a pleasant one. I start sniffing around, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I tell my husband that I can still smell poo. He sniffs all around, trying to find it and discovers that the smell keeps following him. Much to his disgust, he discovers little remnants of poo on his shirt. He quickly gets up and starts to pull off his shirt while walking to the bedroom to get a clean one.

Now, think about how you remove a shirt. You lift up the bottom and pull it over your head, right? Of course, this requires the front of your shirt to go directly past your face. And of course the front of his shirt in the part that houses the offending odour. When he realised what was about to happen, he halted mid-strip, and with a look of extreme disgust and distaste he wadded up his shirt in an effort to contain any smelly bits and then gingerly removed his shirt. When he got his shirt off, I was laughing. A lot. He looked at me and said “There has got to be blog material in this somewhere!” Indeed there is.

This will be very short, I can’t tell you when I might write a longer version.

Our baby #3 (a boy) was born Friday, 9 March, at 9:23 am. After quite a long week of going to the hospital and telling them that I was in labour and yes indeed the monitors showed that I was in labour but no, they weren’t willing to perform the c-section until my labour was definitely progressing which at that point it wasn’t, just lots of contractions with nowhere to go.

Anyway, things really started happening early Friday morning and we headed to the hospital and arrived at 6 am and he was born a little later.

We’re glad to be home, he’s doing well, I’m recovering from the c-section and I only burst into tears once today

I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to post more (or read anyone else’s!) but I’m always happy to hear from you.

This post is for the benefit of my mother. She will truly appreciate it since she knows what my oldest daughter looks like

Just a few minutes ago I peeked in on my oldest daughter having her nap on my bed. We have the kids sleep in separate rooms for naps because it cuts down on all the silliness. Generally. But not this time. She had somehow managed to reach some of my clothes that were folded, waiting to be put away in the drawers. She was lying there, dead to the world, with her regular clothes on and one of my tank tops on top, which covers her from neck to toes.

This reminds me of another time when I found her asleep with one of my shirts on, my socks on up to her thighs and a pair of underwear around her arm.  High fashion at it’s best.