early morning wake up call

For the last few nights the little fella has decided that the hours between 3am and 6am are to be his "fun time". Lets just say not so much fun for mummy... But he is back to "normal"(??!!??) today with sleeping through until about 5am, then wanting to be awake. Sooooooo, I have had a bit of a revelation: instead of just sitting around in the bedroom trying (in vain) to get him back to sleep, that I should actually GET UP!

yep

start MY day at 5am too!!!!

crazy way of thinkin', ain' it! lol.

I am NOT by any stretch of the imagination a morning person, but I have realised that if I put my mind to it, I can get up and actually GET SOMETHING DONE while the kids (or at least one of them) is still asleep. I have even done it once or twice before today, too ;-). And obviously now that it is nearing summer, it is light outside from about 4am or something rediculous anyway!!

So this morning, it was a 5am wake up call. And a very productive one at that: I got a load of washing hang out, and another put in the machine; took the dog for a walk - there is my morning exercise too:-),managed to get a blog post in, and even got a cuppa, all before 7am!

And on my walk, I saw several houses with their washing already hanging out too - so obviously this revelation of getting up early to do things has hit others too (insert cheeky grin) coz of course no on in Japan would hang out their washing the night before or worse still not bring it in overnight (insert cheeky grin times two).

But one thing that has me baffled: why is it that 99.9% of the time, babies will wake up anytime you try to put them down quietly after being in the sling or held when you DONT want them to wake up, but if you put them down somewhere innapropriate (like on the sofa, where they can possibly roll or fall off) for just a second so you can get the baby bjorn ready, then why is it that the STAY in a DEEP sleep only then? When you can't even really leave them there for fear of them falling off the sofa??)

Anyway, still got a bit of time before the fam wakes up (although I assume that all my "tiptoeing" around has probably woken J up at least) and we head out to playgroup today. What fun thing can I do for the next 45mins or so of my new-found FREE TIME? haha.

maggies and crows (and bears).....oh, and turtles

I remember when I was at primary school, we had to walk through a park along the waterfront on the way to school that has these huge trees in it, and there were nesting magpies there. They used to swoop down on you if you walked under them during nesting season. Magpies are notorious for it!

There is even a list of magpie HOTSPOTS to be avoided! (fwiw, I just love "Dave's" comment there about how he "was intending to go for a walk to loose weight but I gained a PHOBIA !!!",
and also the response from Matty D who writes: Next time he swoops you, bash that little once with your sunday mail! It will be the last time he bothers you! No need to use excessive force. Just a reminder of who’s boss! )

anyway, when we were growing up, a friend's younger brother always seemed to be picked on all the time by the maggies. We used to wear special "hats" (ice-cream buckets on our heads with little eyes drawn on them) to try scare the maggies off. Dont know if it really worked or not, but cool hats, and a great excuse to eat more ice cream!!

(But as Geoff writes: a friend told me that placing an ice cream container on your head is good protection, but be sure you have all the ice-cream out first ! Otherwise you will look like the Magpie got ya ! ) Of course there is always the suggestion from a commenter on this site who writes: i prefer to wear a fashionable tin pot on my head whilst out and about. that way they see the shiny metal, go for you, but you chuckle to yourself cause you know you have adequate protection and once they swoop it'll be 'THWACK' on the beak for them fuckos.


But I digress....



Anyway, over the weekend, we were walking out from PIL house to the train station, going past a big uni with lots of trees in the grounds, and all of a sudden a young lass coming towards us was swooped on my a crow! At the same time, another kid on a bike was yelling out to his mate that "someone else has got attacked by the crow". I so didn't know that crows swooped like this during nesting season. But now that I do, I was shit-scared walking down to the park yesterday morning as there was one m-f*ker of a crow watching us the whole time.... I was swinging my arms around mine and L(in the baby bjorn)'s head as well as K's head too, freakin out that the crow was gonna get us. Luckily we escaped unharmed!

So of course in my twisted logic, this all made me think of the mighty brisbane bears (follow the logic: AFL teams Adelaide Crows and Collingwood Magpies), who seem to be not so mighty this year, and are actually no longer bears, but in fact lions. My brother sent over a super cute Lions supporter onesie and bib for L! Now if only we can get back to Aus during footy season one year to go to a game (sigh). And now both my niece and nephew are playing AFL too. To think when I was growing up, if you even hinted at any ball sport other than rugby (=league in primary school. Union in high school was acceptable, lol) you were laughed at. Now AFL has such big support even in Qld.

As for the turtles? Well, we visited friends over the weekend, and there was a small matsuri going on at their local shrine, in Kamata, Ota-ku. We went to have a peek, and I was stunned by the number of food and game stalls that were set up for this tiny shrine. I swear there was at least 500 stalls! But the most interesting one was the turtle scooping/fishing (亀すくい）stall. Catching goldfish has always been associated with matsuri (and even with the Ekka back home in Bris when I was a child) but TURTLES! I SO wanted to have a go, but J wouldn't let me - he said they were "green turtles" and they grow up to be quite big in size. Bummer, they looked so cute, and I reckon I could have scooped up a few ;-)

beating the flummy with Mr Donuts

After a restless night, where SOMEONE (no names being mentioned, but it was a very small SOMEONE) decided that the hours of 3am-6am were going to be playtime, I woke up feeling suprisingly ok and almost energetic. It was looking overcast, so thought should rush out for R's walk - we only got as far as the bottom of the stairs (although there are something like 108 of them) to the park, when the rain started. We turned back once, but I had to post a letter, and K had her umbrella with her, so decided just to keep going to the letterbox. It started getting heavier on the way back though - well, bigger blobs of rain more than lots of it. Still, not that wet.

OMG - just as i sat down, DD has woken up from her nap. Lets see if this post ever gets finished. for now, it's play time.

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5 hours later
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Kidlets 1 and 2 are asleep (well, in bed at least for K, and out for the moment for L anyway), J is at the gym and I have 5 seconds to myself (to either clean the living room of all the paper that K has simply "cut" - she is INTO scissors at the moment, or finish clearing the dishes in the sink, or put in that load of washing to be washed overnight....or just sit here.) I actually just filled in my calendar for this month...there seems to be a lot going on! I love summer, with all the meet ups with friends etc. Am hoping to have several bbqs here over coming weekends too (now that we have GRASS in the backyard, whoo-hoo) - just gotta get ourselves organized.

Um, so cant remember what this post is supposed to be about. I think the main thing I wanted to say was that I well and trully deserved my donuts from MR DONUT today. After our morning walk in the semi-rain, we dropped R off at home then basically headed straight out again (by this time the rain had stopped) and walked all the way to the next train station,about 25mins away, to go to the bank and just have a general looksie around. I got some french bread to bring home for dinner, and some onigiri for lunch (as the bread shop didnt have anything much to my fancy for lunch) and sat down at the shopping mall to eat it before dropping in to MR Donuts for a special treat of a donut each, and 4 to bring home for dessert (yes, they are well and trully eaten up by now). And just to make sure I really deserved hte donuts, we walked home! UP the continuous slope. Dont know how long it took, but pushing a 14kg kid in a stroller with a near 5kg kid strapped to your flummy body has to be doing some good, right?!?

And now that I seem to still have a few seconds (fingers crossed) I am gonna tidy the monthly budget and finances. Tomorrow is supposedly rainy, so we are gonna CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN (well, that is the PLAN anyways....). Feeling kinda motivated for a bit of spring cleaning, actually!

very clean

thats what i am after 2 baths (貸し切り露天風呂 and 大浴場) tonight. k had 3!(she went in with J too). prob have 1 tomorrow morn too.
reminds me a bit of my time in oita.
J even commented that we should do this at least once every 3months. Gee imagine how clean we would be then. haha!

5 mins later

I am waiting in car as J makes has a brief interlude at cainz home centre to buy weed killer for out front of house. dont know what possesed me to blog abt it tho.... haha.

impromptu road trip

and onsen 旅行.
j found a last minute deal on the net last night. we havent been to an onsen 4 ages.
just had lunch@ ringer hut (gotta scrimp somewhere) and now at a 道の駅 called 伊豆のへそ! nothing here but the name made me laugh.
right another hour or so until we reach the hotel. at least both kidlets asleep(gotta luv the car sometimes)

can hardly believe it

at 8:15am on a Monday morning and I actually have a few minutes to myself.

L is sleeping after a morning boobie session

K is still asleep in the bed, despite J leaving for work already (she normally wakes up when he gets up)

and my parents are gone (left Sat, boo-hoo)

So I am sitting with a cuppa and a Hato-sabure (the pigeon butter biscuits from Kamakura) to start my day in peace.

And now I can't think of anything to write, lol!!

Well, I will be trying to spend at least some of the day cleaning up our finances/paperwork which has gone to the shitpile since my parents got here/baby was born etc. Had a few overdue bills etc in there too. Oops. My mummy brain means that I can't remember much, or concentrate on much either so things tend to get put in the pile and left there. Our budgeting for the last 2 months has also gone to shit. This was kinda to be expected with more people in the house and doing lots of non-regular other things. And we were kinda off to a good start with the budget thing too, even getting close to the 6000yen a week for food.

Doh, K has just woekn up and is coming down the stairs - right, mummy T is being called into action. Might be calling on higher powers (a.k.a. DORA) today to get me through and to get anything done while I am at it ;-)

At least I got a sip of my sable and a bite of my tea (ykwim, haha)

more bullets

I reckon I've got a good, oh, 2 mins to update before L decides to let me know that it is "all about him", haha. For now, at least, he sleeps, so I will try:

L had his first trip to a shrine today, at 3 weeks old. We went sightseeing in Kamakura. He also had his first BF at a shrine, lol. I remember we took K out sightseeing with my parents to Asakusa when she was about 2 or 3 weeks old, and I was BFing her outside the main shrine there too. Too funny.

J rang up 4:30pm on Friday afternoon - on the home phone (bcoz I have a habit of leaving my mobile on manner mode so never hear it ring, oops). Was a bit worried why he was ringing at that time of day, thought something might have happened.....turned out he had just got a phone call from his boss (who himself was o/s on a bus. trip) with a decree to go to Indonesia for a trade fair. From Monday. So he leaves tomorrow morning, for a week. Gets back the day my folks leave, next Saturday. (sigh)

Made the trek out to playgroup during the week - was great to catch up with everyone, and show off L ☺
After playgroup, we walked around the shops for a bit too, so it was a long day in the end, but worth it! Although I passed out that night, and had trouble waking up Fri morning too (was actually woken by FIL's 100 or so phone calls - he was ringing to ask if it was convenient for him to come over and do some plumbing work here, (he is fixing up the outdoor garden hose connections etc).Granted, it was 9am or so, so any normal person would be awake, but I wonder why he thought after me not answering the first 5 calls to my mobile OR the call to the home phone that it might be convenient?? He just kept calling until he got me anyway, and came over anyway, so we were stuck in the house Fri while he did all the work. DOn't want to sound ungrateful as he has done a fab job of insalling hoses on the balcony, and in the backyard, but it is never at our convenience.....(see below)

RANT starts here:
On Sat the PIL both came over - was supposed to be the last time to see my parents, so we were gonna have lunch. Also a kind of late mother's day, since they were away last weekend. When I spoke face to face to FIL on Fri, I said that it would be better to do lunch, as L gets a bit fussy in the evenings, and also he wants to be nursed more often. I suggested a bbq at home, as going out for lunch is a bit 面倒くさい too, but he said that I should discuss with J when he gets home from work and get back to him (Why can things never be decided, always takes 4 or 5 times to get anything decided argh!)

Ater J's phone call that he was going on a sudden business trip, I knew that he would be late home Fri night, so rang FIL after dinner to say that we would just do lunch on Sat, prob go out somewhere as not enough time to prepare anything now, and that they should come by around 10:30am or so.

So come Sat morning, and they don't turn up until nearly 11:30am, with 2 boxes of donuts...Give them about 10mins here, and then FIL "suggests" that we go out for DINNER instead and just have something light (perhaps donuts?) for lunch.

I lost it. What is the fricken point of me sitting there the day before telling him that evenings are not so good, so lets do lunch, when they arrive and want to change the whole thing to suit themselves anyway????? If we go out for dinner, it means getting home late too, so K doesnt get to bed until too late, L being fussy, and someone having to prob hold him the whole time at the restaurant, and the biggest fear I had was that it would mean that PIL would stay o/night too. I am just not ready to have them stay over here, with my parents too, and me up half the night with L, and then have PIL up at 4am (coz they dont sleep) fart-arsing around the house, AND I would have had to get the futons out for them, and there is nowhere for them to sleep as I am in the spare room with L at the moment anyway. Just everything that prob doesnt seem like much now I have written it down, but man it pissed me off. They are nice people, and the do a lot for us, but it is often unwanted help. Take the backyard for example. They NEVER listen to how J wants it done. FIL just does it the way he wants to. Then they get upset and say we don't like the way they have done it - but they won't listen to our requests or opinions anyway.

I worked out the problem with them is that they don't OFFER to help/do things, they TELL US that they are doing the things for us. You can't politely turn them down, as they just won't listen. It is the same thing with going to their house and being GIVEN a cup of green tea/tea/coffee...as opposed to going to someone's house and being offered a cuppa "would you like a tea or coffee?". With PIL we just don't get a choice.

Anyway, the whole "lets go out for dinner instead" pissed me off, I got the shits, had a blow-out with J, yaddi-yaddah, you know the score. In the end we went out for lunch anyway (I guess I got my way, right?) and they left early evening to go home. I felt bad after having lost my stack with them, but man they get to me sometimes.

Oh and the best thing - as they were leaving yesterday afternoon, they turn around to TELL me that they will come back Sat morning (the day J gets back at 11am from Indonesia, and my parents leave around 4pm to go to Narita) to say good bye to my folks and bring presents for them. Oh, and that we should "DO LUNCH" then too. ARRRRGGHHH.

END RANT

L has woken up while I am writing this and is now asleep again on my chest. Cuddly little koala that he is ♥] but now I am getting tired and want to lie down....might try it in case I can get a whole 10mins in before it is boobie time again. The fun!!

talking about boobies, after nearly a whole week of pumping and resting, managed to get back to BF from Tues this week, and have been nursing at all but one feed a day (still get Nanna to give him a bottle of ebm around dinner time so I can get the prep done). Phew it has all settled down and we are back on track with that.

Dont even know if this post is gonna make any sense. Have some serious mumy brain going on at the mo. J asked me to get the bath ready for him and K while he went to the shop to buy some milk (which we had fully run out of) and onions for the curry he was making for dinner (thanks j, yum!), I nodded and said "sure" then promptly forgot about it, so he came home expecting a bath drawn, but instead had to clean out the tub himself, oops. Not to mention my lack of focus/concentration for anything/everything.

baby's got a name (and other tidbits)

♥ the baby formally known as tj-baby now has a proper name!! Managed to get his name finalised on the last day of GW, so I could register it at city hall on Thursday morning (SO far ahead of the 4pm deadline, lol!!) It was a really hard decision - lots of names thrown around, but many of them either names of other kids we know, or names that I liked J would veto, and names that he suggested I would baulk at. And the one name I had thought of before he was born (and really liked) just didn't seem to suit him, so I couldn't use that one. In the end, we came up with 3 names to choose from. Actually, J, K and I went so far as to pull them out of a hat on Wed morning trying to make the decision, but the ol' "best of 3" routine still didn't resolve our dilemma and we had to nut it out amongst the three names anyway. So we went with "L" in the hopes that it will be an international name, and as the kanji for it was better than any kanji we could come up for with one of the other names, and the third name J decided he didn't like it so much in the end anyway.

♥ despite the fact that baby now has a name, he still gets called "the baby" a lot, haha.

♥ and we didn't intentionally try to use letters in alphabetical order when naming baby, but my blog title is now "T JKL R" which kinda made me laugh.

♥ L's umbilical cord came off on Wed evening. Had to take him to the docs for a quick check up (don't remember doing that with K) and all is ok.

♥ L has been a trouper all weekend - we went to the beach looking for clams on Sat morning, but unfortunately there was none there (well, there was only shells left), so we headed out to IKEA for the afternoon. L basically slept the whole time! And today we went out shopping in the morning to "Donkey" (my folks love this shop, lol!) and lunch at local ramen joint and again L was quiet as a mouse the whole time.

♥ I am still having bf issues - having split nipples is not fun! It makes for difficulties, as am pumping for each feed at the moment, trying to let the splits heal. Was quite upset over the whole thing Thurs last week, but a trip to the clinic for advice later and a few days of"ganbaruing" and things seem to be improving. Still not fully healed yet but hoping we can get through this in the next few days with no more issues and get back to bf-ing. It sucks because I had (different) bf-ing issues with K, and it took 3 months or so before I was comfortable feeding her. This time I thought it would be easy, and BAM! along comes a totally different curve ball that I wasn't expecting.

♥ hoping to head out tomorrow morning to Babies 'r'us for a looksies. Also think I need to buy a pair of pants to tide me over as seriously nothing fits, and after weighing myself today I found that I have now put on a kilo - yikes!! Wanna get this flab moving, but until that happens, I need something to wear.

♥ speaking of flab moving, I still have the dark line down my tummy (had to move the flab there to check it was all the way down, haha) Don't remember it sticking around after K.....wonder if it will fade/disappear eventually?

random mum & baby stats

Day 12 and things are going great.

K is a fantastic big sister- she helps get nappies, always wants to cuddle or pat the baby, tells me whenever he is crying (in case I didn't know, lol)

managed our first "3-way" today...me, K and baby all went down for a nap at the same time, haha! Not sure how often this will happen, but it was good.

I gained about 14kg overall, and only dropped 4kg after birth. Currently weighing in at minus 7kg. Only another 7kg to go to pre-birth weight. I lost a lot more to start with when K was born so am finding that I am really struggling for clothes to fit as I am in between sizes now - maternity clothes a bit big, but regular clothes still far to "pitchi-pitchi". Hope this weight comes off soon (but figure that with recent aquisition of more costco cookies and muffins that it won't come off THAT quick! oh well!)

so far we have done 1 and a half days of cloth nappies (Cloth Diapering = CD). Am hoping to do CD during the day at home, and disposables for night and when we are out and about. I realised on day 1 of CD-ing that some kind of nappy liner would be useful, so yesterday we bought some Pigeon brand disposable liners. They seem to work well and make cleaning poopy nappies easier for sure. May consider washable liners down the track, but for now they will do fine.

Merries new born nappies are the best fit at the moment. I also bought Moonie and Goon, but they are too wide and short, whereas the merries are longer and leaner fit on bubs.

Bubs is a lot more alert the last 2-3 days, more awake time, lots of looking around, and kicking (kicked his blankets off already!) Very good baby so far (TOUCH WOOD) doesn't cry or fuss that much and def. more settled than K ever was, even at this age. Sleeps well during the night, waking up around 3am and 6am or 7am for feeds. The 7am feed is the one that gets to me the most - so not a morning person!

I wrongly assumed that having bf-ed K until she was 14months, I would have nipples of steel and have no issues this time....but baby boy is such a good sucker, that he gave them a real work out, and I had to let the puppies have a few days rest when we got home from hospital and espress milk instead to try to save them before they got TOO cracked and sore. We seem to be back on track now, but I am still pumping for about one feed a day, just to give me a break, and Nanna some bottle time with bubs!

he is not so good at burping, so if he has a bottle, he often ends up with a little tummy pain that wakes him an hour or more after he has finished the bottle. Is much more settled when bf-ed.

had our first trip away from home on Sunday night to visit PIL - stayed overnight and came back yesterday afternoon. It did take it out of me though, and I slept until 10am this morning, then had an afternoon nap too. What a weak effort I am!! Then again, the paraphernalia from the hospital did say I was only supposed to lie on the futon and get up for feedings and nappy changes only for the first weeks....and I ended up helping with dinner and vacuuming at PILs! (While I make my mum do it for me here at home, lol).Will have to make up for all my efforts with another 2 days of lounging on the sofa at home here now :-)

and, yes, bubs still remains nameless!!! It may well be the case that we are running down to city hall at 4pm Thurs afternoon (a.k.a. d-day, day 14 after birth) to register his name. But we are making progress - there are at least 2 names that we both like, plus 1 or 2 others each that we can put a case forward for. So I am sure tomorrow we will make the decision - well, we have to, right? haha!!!!!