Dear Antenatal Depression… You Suck.

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Dear Antenatal Depression,

You suck.

You suck the joy and the passion from my days and the peace from my nights. You suck the strength from my limbs and the clarity from my mind. You drain the colour from the world, leaving only grey.

Grey days and nights that fall together in a row, one after another.

You take the light from me. You take the smile from my lips as I watch my children play. You have sucked the joy from my heart and the colour from my cheeks. Everything you touch is dessicated.

Your greed has swallowed my pride, my pleasure, the excitement of my tiny baby’s first kicks. My daughter’s first steps. You have taken the first four months of my pregnancy from me.

You were so sly at first, the way you crept into my being. I was so sick, I barely noticed the hold you took until it was too late.

I wanted to let you know that I’m doing better now. I’m doing better and I’m coming for you.

Sincerely,

Me.

The Baptism of Freya Rose

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Easter Sunday was extra special this year. Our little girl had her special day at our local parish, and was baptised by the ever loving and supremely joyful Father David, who makes those who know him laugh and smile simply by being his exuberant self.

Our lovely family friends, Mr. & Mrs. M became her Godparents, and we are forever grateful!

The very rushed baptism candle I decorated for her at midnight, with the help of her Fairy Godmother, Miss. H! We were in the middle of moving house, my morning sickness (all day sickness!) was peaking, and damn straight I wiped out those under-eye bags with the wrinkle remover tool. Take that, sleeplessness!! Unfortunately the wrinkle remover tool couldn’t do much for my bad hair day. It’s okay, there’s always the next baptism to get it right! 😉

At our parish, each baptism candidate is given a cake, made by one of the lovely ladies of the congregation.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but the Freya is covered in edible gold leaf. Such a beautiful, thoughtful touch.

The Good Shepherd cross that was gifted to her by her Godparents. It’s just gorgeous and so vibrant. I know she will treasure it forever.

 

Whew, so glad to finally get this post out, as short as it may be! I have sooo much to catch up on that I can’t wait to share with all of you!

As always, please stop by the comments and say hi! Your messages mean the world to me.

Stuff Has Happened!

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If you haven’t guessed, stuff has seriously happened over the past month or two. Serious stuff, joyful stuff, and average stuff besides. I think the first thing I should mention here is that I made a terrible mistake. I was very wrong in my last post.

A few days before the removalists were to take us to our new home, I discovered that I wasn’t actually suffering from a yucky tummy bug, it was PREGNANCY.

So with bated breath (and much vomiting), we await the arrival of our third child, due to make their appearance some time in late November.

Some of you may remember that with JJ and Freya, I had severe morning sickness. Much worse with JJ, when I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum which didn’t settle until 7 months. This baby hasn’t been much different to what I experienced with Freya, with constant rolling nausea and aversions to absolutely everything. Thankfully, this time it seems to be easing up early, and at 15 weeks, I am now finally able to start cooking for the family again and cramming some serious nutrition into my body.

Freya has grown and thrived, and while she’s still thin as a reed (look at her father!), she’s tall and strong and clever. She’s happily toddling about now, climbing and getting into things she shouldn’t. She has such a different little personality to JJ as a baby. He was such a little angel. Freya is balancing it out by keeping me and my already michelin man sized tummy on edge, 24/7.

She is growing up so fast, her baptism ceremony was held on Easter Sunday. She looked like a little doll in her pretty dress, handed down from her cousins, and the chrism! I could happily smell it forever. Most importantly, it was a beautiful, spiritual ceremony where we truly felt the love of the community gathered around us. I can’t wait to do a full post about the day. It was such a special Easter.

The house move is moving along, but with my sickness, we are still only half unpacked. Thankfully, my mother will be visiting this weekend, so we should be able to get most of the rest done while she’s in Melbourne.

Big News!

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I have most excellent news.

As a Catholic who blogs, I feel it’s my duty to say that no, I’m not pregnant. Ha!

Now we have that out of the way…

We found a new house!

It feels like the past few years have just been a blur of rentals going by, but each has been an upgrade in some way. For that it’s been worth the exhausting experience of packing up and resettling, if only for a year or two before moving on.

This time though, we hope that this new rental is for “keeps” because there ain’t a single average income earner alive that can afford to buy a house in Melbourne’s East where the median house price is ONE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS. Actually, a modest 3 bedroom home on our street just sold for $2.5 million. I know this because two real estate agents in very expensive looking suits turned up on my doorstep to tell me so. Really, who does that? They do, apparently.

So, I’m standing there at the door, covered in dried paint (don’t ask), clutching my one year old daughter who is frantically trying to stuff her head down the front of my t-shirt.

Me: “Can I help you?”

Suit Guys: “Hi! We’re from XYZ Real Estate. Just wanted to let you know we just sold 123 Yourstreet Rd for 2.5 million dollars”

** long pause **

Me: “Umm… That’s great?”

** another long pause **

Suit Guys: “Yeah! Okay, uh bye…”

Me: “Um bye.”

I kid you not. This happened.

Did they expect a party? Did they want me to pop open some champagne while simultaneously throwing confetti and doing the hula? I don’t know.

But I digress…

We’ve been considering moving from our tiny unit for a while. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you would be perfectly aware of how often I complain about the size of this place. It’s small, it’s all weird coloured carpety, there’s no actual laundry or real garden, and no dishwasher. It gets worse when my mother comes to stay with us. Cramming three adults and two children into a small two bed unit seriously sucks, so we decided to make yet another change of residence.

We weren’t even seriously looking when we went to inspect the new house. The photographs online weren’t the best, and when we drove past to check it out, the garden that I wanted so much looked abandoned and half dead.

But it had a dishwasher and hard wood floors, so we went along to check it out anyway.

When we got there, we realised that it was significantly bigger than we had anticipated. While only 3 bed, it had a sprawling floor plan and a massive extension out back with an entire wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the unkempt, dried up garden. There are old, original picture rails lining the walls, and a real proper entrance foyer. All my Pinterest dreams can become reality! (well, the ones that don’t require sewing skills at least!)

I loved it straight away, but I tend to do that. I stayed up late playing mental tetris with our furniture and all those rooms. I dreamed of the day I would say goodbye to the bright blue patterned carpet that stretches from wall to wall of our current space.

And then the call – we got the house. I wasn’t expecting it, but we made it.

So in a couple of weeks, we move again. To hard wood floors, a dishwasher, and a huge garden. I have such a list for that garden! The dozens of rose bushes all have black spot, the lemon tree is nearly dead with disease and gall wasp infestation, and the once beautiful water feature is dried up and full of slime. I have so much to do, almost everything is struggling, but the two pear trees we found hiding behind chest high weeds are strong and covered in fruit. The citrus in the far corner is heavy with limes. There are old garden beds that may only need revitalisation before our urban homesteading dreams can become a reality.

It must have been stunning in its prime. Someone loved this place very much many years ago. You can feel it in the dry earth and see it through the clever landscaping that hides beneath the weeds.

It’s a quirky house. A little run down, a tad broken, but whole and bright where it counts. It reminds me a bit of our quirky little family, so ready to love and to turn to joy despite our imperfections.

I can’t wait to make it our own.

** Image By Amada44 via Wikimedia Commons

My Husband Said I Am A Bad Homemaker

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I love my husband, my beautiful children and my home, and I do everything for the incredible humans in my life. I love them so much that it was a slap in the face when so casually, while discussing “work titles” for stay at home parents, my doting husband informed me that I wasn’t “a very good homemaker”.

It hurt, but it shouldn’t have, and although it was oddly intended as a compliment, and was quickly followed by “but that’s because you spend all your time looking after the kids! You’re a great mum!”, it still felt like a harsh criticism.

I didn’t understand for a while why it bothered me so much. I’m the first person to admit that semi-organised clutter rules our tiny unit, and that I don’t actually remember if I mopped the floors in the month of February, but hearing it from someone else stung. But of course, my guilt ridden brain did a running tally of all the jobs around the house that I’ve failed to do and of how many times I’ve turned away guests because of my own discomfort with all the STUFF that occupies our entire home.

It obsessed on just how many business shirts are stuffed into the ironing basket in the corner of our bedroom, and the fact that I’ve been talking about (and avoiding) raking and tidying the back courtyard for months. I lamented my inability to follow through with the DIY projects I had planned, the workouts I never did, the scouts badges I have yet to sew, and the music that I always forget to play. Worst of all was realising that my home was not a sanctuary to my husband – and not in a 50s housewife way. I mean, when David comes home I want him to know he’s returned to a place where he can relax and just be, not somewhere overrun by random things that we’ve hoarded collected over the years.

I want the satisfaction of knowing that with my own two hands, I made the nutritious bone broth that formed the basis for the soup we’re having for dinner, and that it isn’t just vegetable seasonings from a Massel can. I want my kids to be surrounded by beauty, clarity, and fresh wild flowers from the side of the road. I want them to remember the scent of furniture polish, the sticky sweetness of home-made preserves for breakfast, and the rich taste of warm freshly baked bread, the same way my own parents raised me.

I want to give my children a strong sense of the grace and beauty that comes with loving the space you live in and being proud of the way that you choose to live. It doesn’t matter if that’s a caravan trailer, a small apartment, or a mansion by the sea, taking pride in your home because of how you choose to keep it is something I want my littles to learn.

So I pondered, and I processed, and I realised why it hurt so much.

It was true.

I am not a good homemaker. My bathrooms are clean, my family is well fed, and the dishes get done, but where is the love that I could be pouring into my home?

How can I take pride in clutter and disorganisation when I can barely tolerate it myself?

As stay at home parents, we are under so much pressure to do the right things, to be these perfect mother wife housekeeper people who make Pinterest perfect spaces for our families and raise perfect children who are issue-free and always happy. For most of us, this just isn’t reasonable and is most definitely not feasible, and as long as your home is safe and your kids are happy and well adjusted, however you keep your house is PERFECT and wonderful.

Unless it makes you unhappy.

My home makes me unhappy and I want that to change.

Although I know that my homemaking is already good enough for my family, that my parenting is good enough, and that my panicked 12am ironing sessions on a Sunday night are good enough, that isn’t the kind of good enough that I want to strive for. And while I don’t expect that I’ll always find fulfilment in chores done well, or in finding the perfect throw cushions, right now, home is a place to tolerate while I chase the clutter from room to room.

That needs to change. I am good enough, but I want to do even greater things. I hope that blogging will help keep me accountable as I work toward becoming all that I can be.

No pressure though, right? 😉 xx E

Freya & All You Can Eat Melbourne

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As we are planning a big(ish) late birthday bash for Freya in a couple of weeks, we wanted to do something somewhat different for her actual birthday evening dinner.

David and I were struggling to think of something Freya would enjoy doing. I mean – she’s one year old. She likes milk, tiny little vegetable bits, silly faces and crawling down the hall with Papa, but one thing stood out.

Food. She really loves food. She delights in trying new things, new flavours and textures but since Crown moved our favourite affordable and surprisingly elegant restaurant, the wildly popular Kitchen Workshop buffet ONTO the casino floor, it’s no longer kid friendly. In fact they took a family restaurant and essentially banned families. Who even does that?

This little girl loves her food. Note the TWO bibs, and she still needed to have her suit changed before we put her in the car!

With the loss of our beloved Crown smorgasbord, affordable kid friendly restaurants in our area are few and far between, and there aren’t many places you can get a reservation last minute anyway.

So we decided to try Feast Ferntree Gully Hotel.

feast ferntree gully

All her wildest food dreams coming true.

This place has reasonable reviews, especially for a little buffet above a room of slot machines and the range is limited but fresh and delicious, and for February, kids eat for free. In fact, my only complaint was that the drinks are outlandishly expensive ($11 for a jug of soda!?!!!!!).

JJ loves it there, though he really only eats the vegetable stir fry and then decimates the dessert bar.

The birthday girl’s verdict? Freya loved everything at the cheap and cheerful Feast Ferntree Gully Hotel. She ate all they had there and finished it off with huge cubes of orange jelly. The staff were wonderful, JJ ate all the desserts he could get his paws on, and all of us walked out full of good, fresh, healthy food (and cake).

Although it doesn’t hold a candle to Kitchen Workshop, it gets bonus points for not being in the middle of a casino. We loved the laid back atmosphere and our quiet, casual birthday dinner with our little one.