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!!!!!

All about baby!

I posted these from my mobile while in hospital(accidently to my food blog - oops obviously forgot to change post to settings, haha!) so here is the story so far:

Posted Sat April 24th
Welcoming our own little volcano.......that waited and waited then couldn't wait no more!(a little story of major ironic proportions)

Wed afternoon:Had my 39w1d check up in the morning
Skyped with J in paris who was abt to visit the eifel tower- about 10mins after hanging up he rang bak to say he just had a phone call from ana and would get on a flight that night!!u beauty!

Thurs am(just after midnight): j rings to confirm he is getting on the plane and coming home : yay!(he missed out on sightseeing tho, zannen!)
I spend whole day on couch to avoid jinxing myself or baby in any way. J gets home around 6pm and we head out for celebratory kura sushi(where i have a major pigout)! ge home and J has a bath with kyla and then i have relaxing bath, and put on 2 loads of washing (nothing left in laundry basket). head to bed round 11:30pm but cant sleep so play space invaders type game on keitai.

Fri April 23 (39w3d)
12:25ish - finally fall asleep only to wake up minutes later feeling odd, followed by a small popping sound and the slightest feeling that i had wet myself. freak out that it might be my waters breaking so wake J, call hospital(1250), then begin to doubt self as no running brooke, not even a trickle, but in for check anyway.

130am: check shows faint positive of broken waters, so I am hospitalised. J sent home as no contractions, and still only 3cm so it could take days!

145am:shown to bed in labouring room, put on baby moniter.a bit of tightening tummy but nothing out of norm.

215am: bumped from labouring room as 2 new cases coming in (with real contractions!)get put on drip for gbs.

245am:drip finished, go to loo

300am: start to feel dif, like a wave of period pain. easy to breath lightly thru it. seems to come again in 15mins so start to time it.

400am: tell nurse abt 15min contractions that seem to have mini-contractions at half-way point. go to loo a few more times.

457am: painful contractions(can still breath thru alone tho) start coming what seems every 3mins, wtf? figure must be timing wrong. go to loo again.

515am: back from loo and gripping on to side of bed for dear life during contraction: no more doing this alone!. manage to do a nurse call. she gets narky at me when I have a contraction and tell her I wanna do poo half way thru. she tries to tell me it is a sign baby is coming .

520am: midwife comes to ask how I am - measures me at 5cm and decides to call J to come bak. I wonder how am gonna get thru another 5cm as already the pain is killing- start wishing for drugs.
525am: try to get a quick sms to J to remember camera but can hardly even write 5letters「忘れないで」 in so much pain.

532am: nurse has returned to check me as am writhing like a possesed mad woman but decides we go straight to birthing room (turns out it is the operating room as nowhere else free!)manage to walk the 4m to or before another contraction hits.get up on bed (aka operating table)

5:42am: i am now 8cm dialated but it is decided that the baby is coming so lets push

push thru 3 maybe 4 contractions(this was the easiest part)

548am: baby slipped out.measures 3286g and 49cm.
552am: j arrives at hospital only to be told that his son was born just minutes ago!

so ironic!!!


So in the end our little baby boy was born in quite a rush. We are both doing well & feeling fine, and now trying to come up with a boys name!! I have to keep fending off J's suggestions, like "Ice". Hope we come up with something more suitable soon.

In the meantime I am getting bored in hospital - talk about 暇! and that is even with baby boy rooming in!

I cant believe it is a boy!!!!! wonder what the final score on my poll was? congrats to everyone who voted correct- u get to share in my sleep deprived blog dribble here for, oh the next year or two haha!

Posted Sun April 25th
Baby day 3: and gratuitous baby photo!


Had busy day with visitors yesterday and unsettled baby boy (maybe i have to make up a nickname to refer to him -"vanilla ice" maybe?) from abt 11pm for a few hours- just as my tiredness was peaking!) but after a midnight snack (for him) he slept thru past his 4am feed until 5:30 so I got a bit of rest and am feeling good again (^-^)

Talking abt food....just waiting 4 lunch now- food is average. VERY small portions (or maybe I just still have my piggy appetite. Rice 4 every meal getting boring but I guess at least i dont have to cook it. and i have smuggled in heaps of treats to keep me going .

And here is that gratuitous cute sleeping baby shot to end with:


Coming home
Wed April 28th

Made our escape this morning around 11:15am, (after paying through the nose for a 54minute delivery (they count from when contractions are less than 10mins apart) and 6day stay at the clinic, pure daylight robbery I say!) and got home in time for lunch (toasted cheese and ham s/w, thanks mum!) then a nap with K (thanks mum!!) and a bit of organising the baby stuff that I hadn't yet got ready (cause forgot about it or couldn't find it!) Had a few issues ith b/f and cracked nipples, so have been supplementing with either espressed milk or formula, but didn't have any bottles cleaned or santised, and had to find them first!! Then I couldn't find the teats, so had to make a rush trip to the chemist to buy some, only to remember a couple of hours later where I had put the teats. So now I am over run with teats, lol! Oh well, hoping this time to espress a bit of milk anyway, so that others can feed the boy and give me a break. Am lucky that my milk has come in with no problems this time (volume wise). Now if only I could toughen up these nipples a bit.

Just finished an evening cuppa tea (thanks mum!!!!) and baby sleeping peacefully now. I give him another hour until the "fun" starts! It seems he has issues with the hours around 11am-about3am, which mean no sleep for mummy! So for a while I am gonna sleep in the downstairs room with him to give K and J a break. Also have all his nappies and other stuff set up there so it will be easier until we get into a routine downstairs.

39d1w

10am apt today, had to be there 20mins before hand to have the monitor on to check baby's hearbeat. It was dropping a few times when I had braxton-hicks so they kept me on for another 20mins or so....not very good, but not super-worrying it seems as I am home again and don't have any particular warnings from the docs or anything.

Doc again surprised to see me - when I got up on the chair for the internal, he said "let's shake this baby up a bit" (じゃちょっと刺激しようっか？but I promptly told him to keep his shakin' to himself - as J is still in Paris and we don't need baby to be coming anytime yet....

Doc said I am 3cm, and effacing (not sure what %, they are not so good on telling numerical values, and I always forget to ask again when I get out of THE CHAIR.)
He reckons I will go in the next few days (but, I remind myself that he has told me this AT EVERY SINGLE APT SINCE WEEK 36!!!). Nurse reckons that I will go tomorrow or so, since there is a low pressure system coming (!! I had heard about the full moon bringing all the babies out, but this was the first time to hear about a low pressure system having the same effect, lol). Nothing else to report, really, just had it drummed in to me again to get to the hosp as soon as I get contractions 15mins apart, as it will all move along quickly this time.

So flights have resumed out of Paris, YAY. But now of course we have the secondary (although probably bigger) problem that unless ANA puts on special flights for those stranded, J will have to wait his turn, along with thousands of others, until there is a spare seat on a plane (i.e. they won't bump passengers who are supposed to fly today for e.g. to put waiting passengers on instead) so it may still be several days before he gets home. SIGH. Pissing me off a bit now - I think I have been pretty calm about it until now, all things considered, and yes I know it is not like it is anyone's fault, but I just get pissed off when I see people on tv news who have been waiting for a whole 2 days get on a flight....NOT FAIR! I just want him home!!!!! And it doesn't help either hearing about other people who went via Spain or Portugal or Moscow or Sydney or the fricken moon or whatever to get home. And still J and his bosses sit in their little hotel room in Paris waiting for ANA to contact them and tell them they have a seat on a plane...... It would just be nice for it all to be over.

Otherwise, not much else going on - lovely day today that feels like spring is here, but it is supposed to be raining and 10deg tomorrow so we can't even enjoy it for long. K has just woken from her nap, so might send her and my folks off for a walk now while it is fine - tomorrow looks like another day inside....might be right for doing some baking then.

Oh, and I see it is totally split down the middle for the baby poll: 50-50 boy/girl! LOL.

soooooo.....

I am still here

TJ-baby is still in France

and J is not in labour yet

or is that the other way round?

Obviously, planes still grounded/flights cancelled indefinitely. J mentioned something about possibly taking the Siberian Railway home. I don't think he was 100% joking.....
He had to change hotels (to a cheaper one, work is a bit stingy) but at least the new hotel has a good internet connection and skype actually works this time, so we had a decent conversation tonight, first time since he got to Paris. K misses him and keeps on asking if that is him coming home whenever she hears a noise in the house (like my dad come home from a walk or something and closing the door).

Am taking bets on the sex of TJ-baby: voting on the sidebar.
I figure with all the drama surrounding it (ok, nothing super major, I guess, but it just seems to be something new everytime I freakin' turn around) that it's gotta be a boy, lol. But at the same time I am kinda thinking girl....but that is just me hedging my bets ;-)

No bets on date of arrival, as don't want to jinx myself :-) still hoping J will be here for it....

All I can say is thank goodness for comfort eating, and costcos cookies. And for everyone's comments and cyber-support! THANKS!!