back in that old routine...

Once again I find myself in that old place.
Telling myself that I'll do xyz as soon as .... (insert current crisis here)

We are now officially living with my mum. It is less painful than expected. She does work a lot, and in recent years she has come to understand and respect that I am an adult with my own life. I think she is liking having people around, but not loving the noise of two boys (one unable to control himself and the other a toddler!!) particularly at the 6am wake up time each morning :)

As a result, we do not have our Christmas tree up. I have done no Christmas baking, and no Christmas crafts. I have done no Christmas decorating of any kind. It's quite unbelievable if you know me because ordinarily Christmas is a big deal for us.

The fact that I am now officially unemployed and we face financial uncertainty has made the decision to renovate and sell our house pretty damn pressing. It has gone from "yes we should reno and sell that" to "OMG WE HAVE TO SELL IT NOW SELL IT NOWWWWW"
Yes, it keeps me up at night. Frustrates the hell out of me at the moment because I am completely, physically unable to do anything renovaty-related.

I am still daydreaming about all the things I want to do. I am still spending hours on Pinterest pinning things I want to do, make, create, be involved in. But I am not doing anything about it.

Like usual, my thinking is "when I get over ... I will get right on that".
First it was "once this IVF is over"
Then it was "once I get over this miscarriage"
^ repeat the above ad nauseum.


Okay taking a minute to say HOLY OUCH CHILD THAT HURTS! It feels as though the bebe is sitting resting its feet on my hip flexor and just kicking the crap out of it. Feels literally like a knife in my side. Is it January yet??? Jeebus.

Anyway. Wah wah wah I'm sick of being lazy...but not enough to do anything about it ;)

Declaring bankruptcy

no, not literally (thank the gods we are not at that point yet). I'm declaring an internet bankruptcy.

I did not have the headspace to deal with anything beyond what I had to do on a given day for the last month or so - the idea of blogging, reading blogs, twitter or facebook (beyond my random updates on my personal page) was just too much to deal with. I did not respond to emails unless I really had to - I have barely been keeping up with text messages, it's been bad.

Today I feel like I can finally open the computer again (the only internet I've been using is on my phone!) and dive back in, because I kind of miss it. I do love me some interwebz, but I am glad I took the time off.

So I have cleared my inbox, marked all items as read in my google reader, and started on a clean slate. Lets see how long I can keep it up...my life is still pretty chaotic!

more changes

Last week I lost my job.

We are all still reeling over what this will mean for us. I am in a better position than many of the other 11 redundancies announced the same day...but still. Just when I feel I can't handle any more thrown at me, the universe decides it needs to shake things up again!

overwhelmed

Things are overwhelming here in my little corner of the world.
I haven't had the emotional energy to come here and blog, despite having thoughts of what I could blog about most days...I sit in front of the computer at the end of the day and my mind goes blank.

I may have already said, but we got a bit of a rude awakening from our accountant recently regarding some financial decisions I made a few years ago, and it's prompted a total re-think of our investment strategy and had caused a great many late nights up reading, and learning, and reading some more.

I think I'm about on top of it, but it does mean that we have decided to sell our house without building the extension that's been in the works for months and months. It also means we have to get our butts into gear and renovate/update the place ASAP in order to make it enticing as it is (not a very big house currently, hence the extension plans). Hoping that a low price that allows us to simply break even will make it sell quickly, as it will be the cheapest beachfront property around.

All this in the same week that we settled on investment property #4 (only 2 currently held) - which puts all our reno plans for that one on hold indefinitely! Phew.

Add to that the fact that I am 7 months pregnant and definitely not feeling the best at the moment, and the 2 year old has reached hyperspeed and yells non-stop - there isnt a moment of peace around here!

Moving plans are well underway - you wouldn't know it by looking at the house but we are moving tomorrow (eep!) I should really be up right now packing, but I've woken up this morning with a pain in my hip that makes merely standing up a very painful exercise.

Moving should be fun!

Oh did I mention it's raining for the first time in weeks too? Typical...

28 Weeks

It's hard to believe I am 28 weeks pregnant today.

A year ago it seemed like this day would never come. I thought we were doomed to repeat the same cycle of loss over and over. To be honest, I didn't know how many more times I could put us both through it.

And here I am with a (so far) (knock on wood) healthy baby, weighing in at 2 lb 11oz already :)

Feeling all the giant thumps and kicks...amazing

Moving, moving, moving on

It has been a long ass month. And we are only halfway through it!

But finally I am moving forward. The past few months have been filled with plans of renovating, dealing with builders, day to day struggles of a high maintenance 9 year old and a willful 2 year old both trying to exert their dominance, deciding whether to continue at work or resign, and just getting into my rut of being brought down by the minutiae of daily life.

Of course I also decided to buy another investment property at the same time. An old stone villa in serious disrepair that was an absolute steal. Also possibly may fall down at some point. Structural schmucktural. I'm sure it'll be fine...Fairly sure...Yeah she'll be fine.


We are also literally moving......in with my mother. My slightly neurotic, gets on my nerves, too much like me, mother. It should only be for 6 months. While we renovate our house and put it on the market. Oh and renovate the new investment property. Oh and have the baby.

My mother has lived on her own for ten years. She's about to have a house full. My kids are LOUD. I am LOUD. My mother is QUIET. Should be.....interesting?

Survivor's guilt?

Mama guilt. 

We all have it. Some of us, like my Catholic mother, become experts at passing the guilt on to their children. But I feel confident in saying we all experience it in some form throughout our parenthood journey. Those of us who go back to work feel guilty for leaving our kids (at least I do). Those who stay at home have different triggers.

Mine feels like a whole new breed of Mama Guilt. That of the mother who survives a child.

I have heard so many times "losing my baby has made me a better person" and I've commented before how I didn't feel that was necessarily the case for me. Another gem that seems to pop up a lot is "I've become a better mother since my baby died".

Another one that just doesn't seem to ring true for me. It should, though. I mean, once you have buried a child, surely you understand just how precious and amazing a gift your living children are....right?

Well of course you do.

However. Having said that...your precious darling treasures will still drive you crazy with their incessant whining. As mine has today. It has been a hard work day. And I have yelled. And then I felt guilty. And then I walked past photos of my Starbaby and felt doubly guilty.

Because I love my kids. But my WORD can they drive me insane.