We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Monday, Sept. 05, 2005 - (Mamma)
OK, it took me about 24 hours longer than I expected to post the pictures -- but I couldn't seem to "get my feet on the ground" until my guys did. They're safely "home" in Melbourne and Rod is getting some well-deserved rest, I'm sure. So -- here are the photos from the recent buss adventure!
Overwhelmed
I haven't been able to think about much the last while except Rod and Jack leaving.
Oh, I've gotten my work done at work, and I've kept up with the housework, sort of.
But every hour of sleep seems like such a waste, and every moment not with my honeys seems like a week.
Unfortunately I don't do at all well without sleep -- a day I can manage, but by the time I've been short on sleep for a couple of days, I start not coping well and by the time a week passes with even one hour less per night than I need, I start to get ill. That combined with the fact that my job is both relatively demanding these days and very important to our family's welfare means that my getting enough sleep has to take priority.
Also unfortunate is the fact that at 2 and a bit, Jack knows that something is up, but he can't really comprehend what. And while he knows that it's "soon", he's not entirely sure what that means. Well, I guess that part is sort of OK -- better he know that something is coming and that we support him through it. But he has been dealing with it by resisting sleep and that has been unfortunate. He wakes up early in the morning -- often as not, before I leave for work. And he refuses to nap, and then he is cranky by 3pm. Some days, he succumbs to a nap at 5 or 6 -- which means that he is well-rested when he wakes up at 8pm and is ready to go for hours yet. Just when Mamma and Dad are ready to call it a night.
What all this boils down to is that Mamma hasn't had as much time with Jack as she wants -- because he's been asleep in the evenign way too often -- and Dad is hardly getting any sleep at all during the week and is exhausted.
And the trip is looming -- this is the last weekday before they leave. The last day to accomplish anythign that requires contact with "the business world". And at the end of the weekend, they'll be gone.
And what will Mamma do?
A friend asked recently what I intend to do with all my "spare time" while the guys are away.
I told her, truthfully, that I intend to mostly mope. That and spend a lot of time trying to stay in touch.
Oh, I'll get the apartment sparkling again and try rearrangiong the furniture again, since the current configuration isn't serving our needs. (That includes givign away the parlour furniture and just pulling thr dining room table out into the middle of the room. That's where we end up socializing anyway.)
That could take up a couple of days after work.
I plan to do quite a lot of scrapbooking.
I have contacted my local store and found out when they have classes and "open scraps" that I can participate in. I'll drop by there a couple of times a week. I can also do a lot of scrapbooking at home -- the open scraps are more about 'expanding my horizons" than about needing somewhere to work.
I had intended to drive to NYC to have my hair done at a George Michael salon...but $1,000 car repair bill before our trip to NY for the family reunion pretty much ruled that out.
I may well catch up on some reading.
I guess I don't have firm plans. To me, time away from my family doesn't feel "spare" it feels "lost". Everyone needs some time off, of course, but for me a couple of hours at a scrapbooking class is more than plenty. Needless to say, I haven't really made my peace yet with having children on three continents.
I think Rod and I would both have preferred that either (ideally) I could have come along or that Jack could somehow have stayed behind with me. As much as I am loathing the time separated from them, Rod is also overwhelmed at the responsibility of tending to a small boy entirely on his own, with no chance to sleep at all for more than 24 hours and with confined quarters that contain 300 people who don't want to hear a small child keening for 16 hours straight.
But we both believe that this is better for Jack. He will only be separated from one parent this way, and he will get to meet and get to know family and start to build an awareness of Australia and his eventual home. The alternative left him in the care of strangers for 50 hours every week his Dad was gone and that just isn't an option for us.
Another growth spurt!
And on a much less whiney note ... Jack has grown again!
We knew he must be about to, because he was very, very hungry for several weeks and began to resemble a little dumpling. Then he stopped eating and he stopped sleeping, and I got so tired that I forgot to keep track.
Last night, though, I looked across the room at him. He was standing behind a chair, and at first I assumed he was standing on a toy or something -- as I opened my mouth to warn him to be careful, it dawned on me that the only thing Jack was standing on was his feet!
I haven't measured him, so i don't know offhand how much he's grown, but I did notice at that moment that our budgie had also changed shape again. He's longer and leaner and more closely resembles the six year old he will become than the baby he so recently was.
His language skills have also taken off. Lately he converses in complete sentences and makes "small talk" and generally sounds like such a big boy!
Well, a big boy with a sweet piping voice and some still very babyish pronunciations.
"Dad, look, a castle! Oh no, ac-shully, issa a building."
"Please, Mamma, I cava dink?" (Have a drink)
And he pronounces "Yes" as "Yis". I thought it might be an Ozzie pronunciation, Rod thought it must be standard American Baby ... we've concluded that it's "just Jack".
And he's gotten very good at "using his words" when he wants something, though he does insist on whispering when he's afraid the answer will be no. Now, whispering isn't necesarily a bad thing, but Dad and Mamma are both pretty hard of hearing, and so whispering, unless we have a petty good idea what he's going to say, means we have no idea what he's said. Oh well.
A New Definition of Love
My friend, M, and I were discussing children and the effect children have on our lives.
(We were discussing the thousands of babies that are being evacuated from NOLA hospitals to Dallas, and the difficulties officials are having finding the parents to notify them that their children are now in Dallas.)
M commented that he thinks children are important and even worth taking care of, even when it's inconvenient. (M has a marvelous sense of understatement! He is more devoted to his son than almost any other parent I know.)
He then quoted a new definition for "Love" that he'd encountered in his reading. "Love is caring beyond the point of convenience." Yup. I can go along with that definition. Thanks, M!
