daily bread

Elijah got nul points last night for stealing most of my sleep FOR NO GOOD REASON. Seriously, I can do the Florence Nightingale thing when they are sick, I can even feel compassion for the midnight growth-spurt-munchies. But I have no patience for being kept awake because someone is in the mood to PLAY…for 2 and a half hours. No thank you.

So, feeling a little grumpy and at odds with the world I made myself a delicious lunch. Omelette with red onions (caramelised in balsamic vinegar) with pecorino cheese and bacon. Jm gave me a child free hour and I took it outside to the sunshine with a hefty glass of white wine and sat and fantasized that I was really somewhere in France on a child free holiday with my sexy lover Jean-Marc. Sigh.

All very nice while it lasted.

Getting wipsy in the afternoon is to be highly recommended.

A full night’s sleep. Ahhhhhhh…..

I am slightly shamefaced at this but I have to say that the re-emergence of computer games into my life brings me a lot of happiness. I feel slightly less guilty when my husband gets just as sucked into them as I do. You’ll all be very glad to know that I Escaped from the Museum today and that I look forward to discovering the Secrets of Treasure House.

I’ll keep you posted.

Date night. Jm and I escaped to the Regent annual booksale for a bit and then to the cheapest cinema ever to watch Michael Clayton. The only disappointment was that we couldn’t find a suitable receptacle to sneak wine into the cinema with. Shame.

Lovely care-free, child-free evening.

(Coincidence? I think not.)

Stashing the boys in  BOB and going to the very serene Japanese garden right here on campus. The cherry trees are just on the cusp of blossoming full of the promise of a riot of colour.

Oh, and Caleb telling us that Jesus and God have the same hairstyle…..

I’ve been really struggling this last while with parenting these 2 boys of mine. The sleep deprivation, the battle of wills, ever-changing discipline strategies and constant streams of snot; all of it happens in the goldfish bowl that is my house and it’s been sending me over the edge of late. I want to give my notice or at least radically review my job description because this is, hands down, the hardest thing I have ever done. I’m trying to type this at 1030pm and in the background, blaring through the monitor, both of them are crying. Eli was up from 430am and there is every chance he will do the same tonight. So it’s very hard to find anything to be thankful for.

Knitting, west wing and ear plugs. Today, that’s all I got.

Our house seems to be the place where bugs come to vacation. They come, put up their feet and one by one pick off members of the family to infect. This time it was me and Elijah and yet another stomach bug. I was up through the night with it but knew I HAD to go into work. With only me and Amanda in charge of the soup we cannot take a day off. So I am thankful that I managed to make it in and be pleasant and helpful and that it ended up being our smoothest morning in the kitchen. Now, if I could just get rid of this bug…..

Normal service has resumed having been thoroughly disrupted by the birthday train coming to town. Me, Elijah and Caleb all have our birthdays within the same week which makes it a blur of wrapping paper over-eating and far too many small children. It’s been a glorious week of ups and downs and a small mid-life crisis (30.boo hoo.) but plenty of things to celebrate so I’m going to ‘do a Lily’ and summarise all the things I am thankful for from the past 10 days……

1. My husband finally learning how to do the birthday thing really really well. I’m a high maintenance birthday queen with impossible expectations for surprises and a bloodhound’s nose for secrets so he doesn’t really stand a chance. But he did very very well this year, even with all the dietary restrictions, and I’m so thankful to have such a patient, gracious and kind best mate.
2. To ease the pain of leaving behind Youth Part One (aka tweens and twenties) I decided to try something new and very un-Debs. So we went skiing for the day of my birthday! Neither of us had ever done it before and we had the most amazing day. I loved it and astonished myself by really taking to it. By the end of the day we were doing blue runs and parallel turns and to top it off…..I was better at it than my husband.
3. Watching Elijah eat his first cupcake on his birthday
4. Finally finding my longed for gadget at a great price 2nd hand. A 32 GB Ipod touch….oh, yeah.
   
5. Eating chocolate for the first time in 10months
6. Finding Season 1 of the West Wing at the library
7. A beautiful evening with good friends here to celebrate my bday. Wine, chat, laughter and an array of food all made so I could eat it.
8. Caleb’s face when he discovered where we had hidden all his presents on his bday.
9. ‘They crucified my Lord.’. Hearing this in my head on Good Friday and for once feeling the sorrow of it.
10. An amazing Easter service at a new church. I spent most of it in tears as I remembered yet again that there is a God law that Life has to follow death, not just for eternity but for the here and now. The things that I grieve, the losses I have lived through, big and small. All of it gets redeemed.

Amen

Sleep is slowly returning…

I’m thankful for lovely Brazilian babysitters who I can happily leave my kids with. Got to take my afternoon off and go play with gadgets in the shops.

I’m searching through the fog of severe sleep deprivation to find something to be thankful for. 2 hours sleep total over a 48 hour period makes me more than a little grumpy. And the worst of it is there isn’t even a bloody good reason. I wasn’t doing a Florence Nightingale for some sick child .I just. couldn’t. sleep.

So I shall be thankful for my husband who skived class to allow me to go to bed. My own personal hero. 

Goat butter. Who knew?

Helped me bake something vaguely edible.

Oh and I got a bit more sleep.