Went out for a friends hen night on saturday – 10 more sleeps Kylie! – and stayed out way too late. Got home right as Aidan was demanding his 4AM bottie. I didn’t drink much so I wasn’t battling any hangovers, but it seems my immune system is a tad fragile at the mo. I didn’t get the opportunity to catch up any sleep on Sunday, and the resultant breach in the immune defenses has left me with a fiery throat, post nasal drip and ringing ears – with the accompanying light headedness. Not fun. Rather annoying in fact.

But now, one day later it seems like Aidan is coming down with the same thing. Not enough of a gap there for me to have given it to him, I suspect we both picked it up from the same place. Thing is, I can’t recall us being around any sick people 3-5 days ago. We did visit my SIL and Aidans cousins on sunday but they were all in good health…

It’s so frustrating. It seems to me like my boy gets sick from every sick person he encounters. When is his immune system gonna strengthen up? He’s a well fed boy, I have him on a multi-vit designed especially for respiratory tract support and it’s still summer! What more can I do without barricading us in the house 24-7-365?

Argh. Imagine what we’d be like if he were still in daycare?

Kay, I’ll stop whining now and get my sorry arse to bed. Maybe we’ll all wake up healthy in the morning.

I’m not vocal about breastfeeding habits. That’s because I’m a bit of a prude when it comes to mentioning certain body parts on a public forum, but I have been breastfeeding Aidan. It was pretty successful after the first few chaotic days of figuring it what, where and how much were behind us. In fact, in his first 8 weeks the little guy was gaining more than 400 grams a week on average. For perspective, the norm is 100 – 300 grams. There were two weeks where he gained 500 grams, so I guess that’s proof that breastfeeding was working for us.

Then in week 8 thinks started to slip. A couple of factors influenced this, including Aidan’s first round of vaccines, but mealtimes became a stressful situation as Aidan refused to take a full feed. We pushed through and things got back to normal after two trying weeks. It was a horrible time for me as my little guy actually pushed me away screaming after a half feed, something that was very hard for me not to take personally. But like I said, we got over it.

Then things started going wrong again last week. I decided t give it a week to sort things out and see, before we tried offering him some formula. I had planned to keep up the breastfeeding until Aidan was 4 months old, and then most likely swap him onto formula when I went back to work. I occasionally even considered the noble intention of expressing at work and keeping it up till 6 months, but that was a fleeting idea and not practical. Books and magazines like to tell you how you can make breastfeeding and going back to work, well, work. How you should lobby to get a breastfeeding room set up in your workplace and etc. Well that’s not going to happen at my work, so it’s my car in the parking lot or a stall in the bathroom. I bit exposed and unhygienic respectively. Not to mention that my breastpump isn’t the quietest on the market.

That week ends today, but I gave in early. We gave Aidan a bottle of formula yesterday afternoon and he gobbled it down with no ill effects. And though he had breast again at bedtime, he slept for 7 hours last night. That’s not seven hours between feeds, which was his previous record, that 7 hours of sleep, 8.5 hours between feeds because he wasn’t at all inclined to go to sleep last night – do they put vitamins/caffiene in formula?

I’m still a little hurt that he doesn’t seem to want what I have to offer anymore (though he’ll take breastmilk from a bottle fine – salt in the wound) but I’m going to cut my losses now and make the swap. It will allow me stop worrying about whether this feed he’ll get a full meal. It’s a concern that raises itself every 3 hours, though my going into the situation stressed probably doesn’t help matters. And I can stop watching what I eat. I can have a good strong cocktail. I can go horse-riding without having to make sure I have some top-up milk expressed because that always diminishes my supply. I can put my fat arse on a diet and shed the rest of this weight. I don’t have to go and sit in another room to feed Aidan when we are at friends or have friends over. Aidan should go longer between feeds on formula, and hopefully that will mean only one night feed in future. And it’s easier for dad to feed.

In return for these benefits I miss out on giving my son the best nature has to offer, and I loose the status of being sole provider of food for him. It’s a tough choice, but in the end I think we both, no make that all three – this isn’t a happy situation for Hunny either, can do without the tension around mealtimes. So it’s the end of an era. And funny to think this was such a tough decision for me, because initially I wasn’t convinced I wanted to breastfeed at all.

My blog is having RSS feed troubles. That means if you were getting updates via RSS they may not be working 100%, and if you read via Google Reader each single quote is replaced by ????. Sorry about that folks.

Seems my current wordpress theme doesn’t support the new version of wordpress I (well, actually Hunny, because he’s much better than me at that stuff) upgraded to, so I’m picking out a new one, and then Hunny will do some overhauling to make it right again.

We apoligise for any disruption in service during this time

 I came across this meme this morning, it’s quite fun.

Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, iPod etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You MUST write THAT song name down no matter how silly it sounds (I’ve included the artists in brackets)

===================================================

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY? Clint Eastwood (Gorillaz)
2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?  Take the Power Back (Rage against the machine)
3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?  Radio Nowhere (Bruce Springsteen)
4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?  Sugarman (Rodriguez)
5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?  What it’s like (Everlast)
6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?  I think I’m paranoid (Garbage)
7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?  Misery Business (Paramore)
8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?  Bonedriven (Bush)
9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?  Hanging with the clowns (Racoon)
10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?  The Art of Self Destruction (ATFN)
11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR EX?  Put the needle on it (Danni Minogue)
12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?  Almost easy (Avenged Sevenfold)
13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?  Gigantic (Pixies)
14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?  9 Crimes (Damien Rice)
15. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?  Amerika (Rammstein)
16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?  Baby (Serj Tankian)
17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?  Erase/Replace (Foo Fighters)
18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?  Flames go higher (Eagles of Death Metal)
19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?  Pure Morning (Placebo)
20. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?  Falling Away (Good Charlotte)

Now press “next” one more time and use it as your title.

Okay, so that was fun. I think my current playlist was way to broad to give an accurate reflection of my tastes. One song in there I don’t even know. I usually refine my playlists more to my mood, but I’ve been lazy recently, and just dumped my whole collection in there. SO while that probably is a reflection of my tastes, it’s not a reflection of my favorites

I love my music, most of my life is conducted to a soundtrack. I wish I was more skilled / creative in that regard, but the only tune I’ve ever been able to ‘play’ is “mary had a little lamb” on a telephone keypad. I remember crank calling when I was a teenager with a friend of mine. We came across an answering machine at one number. We phoned around 15 times in succession and played “mary had a little lamb” to the answering machine. Such rebels we were.

If you were wondering, you need a tone phone, and use the keys as follows
3-2-1-2-3-3-3  2-2-2  3-3-3. 3-2-1-2-3-3-3 3-2-3-2-1. Try it.

I was in standard 8 (around 16) when my mom suggested I dye my hair. Well actually she said “Your hair colour is rather boring, there is half a tube of hair dye in the bathroom cabinet, why don’t you use it?” The tube was an auburn that ended up a bit pinkish, but even some of my teachers said it looked great, so my mom was probably right.
 
That started my lifelong hair dying experience. I don’t think I’ve kept my natural colour form more than a couple of months since then. It ended up getting me into plenty of trouble at school. Funny that SA teachers don’t like purple hair on their students. How was I to know that cheap raven black dye comes out a kind of gentian violet purple?

Red’s, Oranges, purples and blacks were my colours of choice. I have relatively dark hair so dying it lighter was always a problem. I did try to go blonde once. I spent 3 hours of torture under one of those drier thingies with peroxide eating away at my scalp, only to end up a vivid orange.

I’m 28 now. I have seen my natural colour only twice since I was 16. Both times I near-shaved my head to find that natural colour. Both times I discovered that it hadn’t changed much *a dirty looking mouse brown* and both times I dyed it again shortly after. Thankfully my hair is incredibly resilient. 12 years of dye and I still looks and feels very healthy.

The thing about dying your hair though is that’s so expensive and it requires constant upkeep to keep those roots hidden. I have a lovely hairdresser, she’s not pushy about getting you to buy expensive products to use on your newly coloured hair, and she doesn’t charge a fortune. Still, I have recently found a shelf brand that gives me just about the same effect as going to the hairdresser at a third of the price. It’s a dark red with pale orange highlights I’ve gotten quite handy at dying my own hair, so the two-step highlighting process is no hassle for me.

I’ve had so many complements on my hair colour recently that I’m seriously considering taking Hunny’s advice to stop telling the complementing folks that it’s a cheap home box-job and just saying “Thanks”.

This is all good stuff, but I still need to get it cut… Which requires a trip to my kind hairdresser, and I feel guilty about that. I’m doing her out of business. My hair is now more than a month overdue for a cut. I’ve had both my sister and Hunny trim my ends to keep it from looking too ratty, but it really needs a proper cut now.

So what do I do? Find another hairdresser because I feel too bad about showing up at my usual hairdressers with my home job? Thereby doing her out of my business entirely? I really like Bronwen. Most hairdresser freak me out because they are too pushy, too chatty or oh so sensitive if you don’t like what they’ve just done to your hair. Bronwen is not like that. She listens to me and does what I ask. Hard to find in a hairdresser. I’ve been googling, but I don’t find much advice on how to let your hairdresser down easy. “Lets just be friends do cuts from now on?”

*sigh*

Triumph in the face of adversity

Two summers ago I planted some of these little seedlings in some pots near my front door. They only last a season but they seed enough to grow fresh ones the following year. I haven’t planted any more since that first year and I cleaned out the pots over that winter, but two years later these little things still sprout up between the cracks of the paving.

What a way to start my week

Set the scene: My car is parked in the garage, Hunnys car sleeps in our visitors parking bay because the bikes take up the other spot in the garage. Our garage has a switch which disables the remotes from working on the electric doors. Not what you want in the daytime because you wouldn’t be able to open the doors from the outside, but it locks the garage up nice and tight at night. We also have a door leading into the kitchen from the garage.

Hunny left for work before me yesterday morning, as most mornings, so when I realized that I couldn’t find my keys he was already at his desk and starting his day. I turned the house upside down searching for my keys, everywhere that I could look which was the whole house except for the garage. My kitchen-garage door key is on the missing set of keys, and because Hunnys car doesn’t sleep in the garage, he doesn’t go in there in the mornings, so that door was still locked. The only place the keys could be was inside the garage, and I couldn’t get in there for that exact reason!

I sheepishly emailed my manager and asked if I could work from home, as I suspected I had locked my keys in the garage so it was holding my car hostage. Doh!

My guess was right though. When Hunny got home in the afternoon and I got into the garage with his keys, this is where I found them.

(Yeah, hanging onto the keyhole, out the way of Hunny locking up the house with his keys last night! Sneaky buggers)

By the way, I was going to post this yesterday, but I couldn’t because I’d left my phone-to-pc cable at work over the weekend – the one I need to get the pics off  – and of course I didn’t go in to work yesterday!

Conversation between Hunny and myself earlier this week:

Me: Thanks for making me coffee every morning, but can you maybe make it a little less strong? (I recently swapped to coffee from tea)
Hunny: Okay… You don’t like it that strong?
Me: Nope
Hunny: I make yours strong because you make mine strong, so I thought you liked it like that.
Me: You mean you don’t like your coffee that strong?
Hunny: Nope
Me: Doh.

On a side note I have somehow managed to set winamp to repeat the current song only. It took me 20 minutes of the same song to pick that up. I have to click forward onto the next song each time, I’m listening to about 5 songs an hour at the moment. I tried rebooting, but that didn’t fix it. Will have to look through the settings…

Got me a plant to brighten up my desk space. A cute little cactus. Haven’t named him yet. Options so far: Tequila or Jack. What do you think?