A Work In Progress

Grace: Mum.....(yelling from my bedroom) Me: Yes Grace (Down the hall in the lounge) Grace: There is something gross in your bedroom. Me: Okay, what is it? Grace: I think it's a hand Me:????? Me: Ummmm, a hand? Grace: Yep Me: Just a hand? A human hand? (So many questions but not sure if I should get off my arse and check. To be fair, our hall is really long so I want to be sure before I put in any effort #lazymum). Grace: Yep, it's a hand. Its gross. So I walk down the hall. Turns out the cat had vomited in out closet. Apparently it looked like a hand.

So our new student from Japan arrived this morning.  Some things to note: A) She has been wearing a sweatshirt all day while the rest of us a dying of heat exhaustion. B) Grace has been directing play since she got here C) Grace barely lets her talk D) I keep telling her she can do her own thing but she keeps letting Grace boss her round Oh lord. I hope she is having fun, but who knows!!!!

This week Grace has been doing a swimming "boot camp". The place she goes to for her lessons had identified that she was not moving up to the next class as fast as they would expect so offered us a week of free lessons.  So every afternoon this week she has had classes Grace has also been busy with her Geeze and with her Aunty during the day when they have baby sat her, and they have also taken her to the pool. So my wee girl smells like chlorine at the moment, but the good news is, her confidence in the water seems to be growing! Life is slowing getting back into a normal routine post the holidays, but Chad and I are really struggling to get a restful sleep with a combination of the hot weather and a small person who climbs in between us making it difficult to have unbroken sleep. I am trying hard this year to go to bed later so that I don't "abandon" Chad in the evenings to go to bed at 8pm, but it is hard to do that and then not get overwhelmingly ti...

Monday again and it feels like time is moving fast and slow all at once. I had to drop Grace off to a holiday programme at her school today. She was pretty teary but I stayed with her until she got her strength. I admire her so much, when I was little I had my older sister to lean on and navigate new situations with. Grace has to go it along which can be so scary. I really hope she has a good day. I know I will be sitting here at work thinking about her every second of the day and then calling Chad at 3pm when he goes to pick her up to check she was okay. I get so torn, I know that my parents would happily babysit all holidays but I also know that doing these sorts of things is great for grace. Every successful new experience she navigates will help her confidence and her her learn new ways to cope with the world. I find this part of parenting so hard as all I want to do is keep her safe and with me 24/7. So today, I try to get on with my work and not get to distracted worrying a...

End of day two at work and I'm shattered!  Grace and Chad are still on holiday and I'm super jealous! This year will be a hard at work, I'm wondering if I should jump ship before things get really dicey.  Hmmm, something to think about.

Time has passed so quickly since that wonderful day at work when I found out I was pregnant. Fast forward a few months and I found I was having a girl. And then she arrived and everything changed. Today she is six, she is feisty, funny, kind and smart. She loves cuddles and has such a beautiful laugh.  She can be fearless and fearful. She is everything. I wish I was a better mum, a calmer mum who spent more time listening instead of grumbling.  I hope she knows how loved she is and that I'm grateful everyday for her being in my life. Happy birthday Grace.

Today we celebrated Grace's birthday with family. It was a lovely day, starting with bowling with the cousins and then bbq lunch back at our place. Grace had a blast and Chad and I loved seeing our happy little girl rushing about in excitement. Tomorrow is her official birthday and I'll do another post then, but for now, I'm happy, I'm calm and the storm of anxiety from the last little while seems to have settled.

Such a productive day today, we got up early and went to the garden store to buy plants. Now our deck and the new planter boxes look amazing. Very proud of our efforts.  Go team McLaren! Then I worked on Grace's cake for her party on Saturday. Pretty proud of the effort! Mentally I'm feeling better. Working hard at acknowledging the feelings but not letting them sit with me. I know I cant get rid of anxiety, but I can learn to manage through it. There are good days and bad days. Today I'm doing okay.

2020 is here. I personally feel that any day can be a time to commit yourself to change or improvement, it's natural at this time of year to think about what you want to happen in the year ahead. I think I would settle for a calm mind that is not so obsessively worried about money, debt and property. Today we continue to chip away at the millions of chores around this house. I'm painting some planter boxes for the deck that we got for free off a friend. We figure it will help modernise the back area while we save to fix the deck, the balustrade and gazebo.  The house is really a five year plus project at this point, we need that amount of time to get money and the physical time to do all the work. At this point it's still an adventure and I hope to keep it that way for Chad as long as I can, otherwise it's so easy to get completely overwhelmed but all there is to get it to a point when we could sell for $2m, which is what we need to clear debt and still have enough to g...