Harvest!

Ahh lovely autumn. Warmish days, snuggly cool nights and mornings-and lots of food coming out of my garden!!
When you backyard is as small as mine is you have to make it functional. No leaving plants to do their thing when the season ends. So we pulled out all the vines, plants and bushes that were finished and have put some compost on the bare soil, ready for the planting of autumn veggies.

But before we did that we have been harvesting the all that we could.

The carrots didn't do so well-but the kids ate them! Straight from the ground. Zero food miles


And we got this massive haul on Sunday! I'm having a crack at making chilli jam this weekend. Fingers crossed it works.


Bok-bok is in a laying frenzy! We have had an egg 3 out of five days. It's very exciting, the kids love checking to see if there is one and they carry it in ever so gently. I think the other chooks are going to wait until spring. We'll see.

So I'm off to buy some seedlings this weekend and I've already got some seeds planted. Life is busy in the Yay For Homestead!

Imaging what I could do with acreage.....

Soooo tired...

I am busy.

No kidding right? 3 kids and all that.

We have a week that has a lot of regular stuff on. We have lots of lovely friends who we catch up with. I need to streamline my week.

There has been a fair bit of grumping from all of us of late and I think it's because we need to unschedule our week a bit and make more regular time for walks to the park and hours of unstructured play. But there is so many fun things to do! And I seem to hear of more each week.


But for the sanity of my family I need to prioritize some "us time".

My baby is one!

This time a year ago my waters had broken and not much was happening except that delicious feeling of anticipation that I would be meeting my baby soon. I spent a lot of that day sitting on a fit ball and having some quality time with my midwife (I miss all the massages and foot rubs!) and resting up in preparation for the big event.

The event itself was short and sharp-3 hours of labour and only 7 minutes of pushing!




My last baby is a one year old. Soon she'll be walking and I'll have a toddler. I'm a bit sad about it all really. It will be a new chapter in my life to not be the mother of a baby anymore. But as she is my last I guess she'll always be "The Baby". Poor love.

But enough about me-let's talk about the birthday girl!

She is very determined and wants to do all that her sisters do and gets VERY frustrated that her body won't co-operate with her wishes. She loves cuddles and being carried around. She loves the bath and is usually the first one in and the last one out. She loves her Daddy and is more than happy to come to me for milk only when he is around. She says Mamam and Dadad and bokbokbok. She said "wowow" (Willow) once and I think she is trying to say Harper "hahpahpah". She puts absolutely everything in her mouth. She can climb so get stuck in some interesting places. Tannah can get her to dance on cue.

Most of all she is a delight. I am so grateful that she surprised us with her presence! We love you Hah-pah!

Eggs!

After many weeks of wondering exactly how old our chooks were and more importantly when the big event of our first egg was going to happen we were starting to grow impatient. I was also mindful of the fact that winter is coming and as we have pure breed chooks, not commercial layers there was a very real possibility that they could go on cold weather strike and not lay until spring.

And then...


That little strangely coloured egg on the right is from our Pekin bantam Bok-Bok. I thought it was another chicken who produced the lovely egg but I practically caught Bok-Bok leaving another this morning and it is the same greeny-blue.

Who knew such a little egg could bring such excitement and joy to our house??

sick sick sick

My computer has been sick. It caught a virus from the big ol' interwebs and needed to go to the hospital and have serious treatment. It's all better now.

My small 2 have been sick. Willow has had a cold that just keeps going and going and going. But she did seem a HEAP better today. Willow and Harper had conjunctivitis. In our house that is referred to as the gift that keeps on giving. You keep giving it back to yourself and to anyone who touches you. It's awesome. But that seems to have gone away too.


I've had so many inane thoughts going around in my head that would have made perfect tweets, status updates or blog posts. Instead I've been forced to talk to people-the horror.


Here's to wellness!

Warrnambool camp

To give you a heads up-this is photo heavy!

So we're back from our first home ed camp. We had such an amazing time! We met lots of other families we hadn't met before and our kids really loved the park, beach and camping experience on the whole.

There was an amazing park (Lake Pertobe) across the road from the campground. Lots of space for kids to run

A lovely lake in the middle

and a flying fox that had a seat for smaller children! Ours LOVED it and spent ages on it. There was also a bigger flying fox on the other side for older kids (and adults!)


on the weekends you can hire little boats and drive them around the lake. Also a big hit


We spent a day at Tower Hill with most of the other camping families. It was full of wildlife. Like this little guy near the car park

Tannah loved the emus

Tannah went on a big (for her) bushwalk with one of the other Mums and a few kids. I was worried that she's get halfway through and start complaining about it being too far or other stuff. I almost talked her out of it but the other Mum said it would be fine and if she hated it they could just cut the walk short. Tannah did the whole walk! She saw a kangaroo and a tiger snake off the path-very exciting. It was a great lesson for me to realize that I shouldn't assume she will not try new things.

There was lots of hanging out at camp. My initial fears of me stressing about Tans needing to be constantly supervised were quickly put to rest. She was given safe boundaries and then we just let her be. She had a great time. She found it hard at first to crack some of the already formed groups-she is a year or two younger or older than most of the kids who were there. But she made some new friends and had lots and lots of free play.
She also got an early birthday present-a scooter!

Before I get told off for the no helmet thing-I should point out that at the moment she walks faster than she rides it!

Here are some random cute family pics








Of course all this play made for very tired kids!



When the girls were asleep Luke stayed in the tent and I got to spend the evenings chatting with the other Mamas. I really enjoyed this. We are the "new kids on the block" as most of these families have older kids-some have adult kids. I learned so much from listening and talking to them. About all kinds of things lol.

The camp was a huge success for us. Camping in a tent with 3 kids went really well. We didn't forget anything essential-although I do wish Luke and I had remembered our jackets, the nights were cold! The drive (3 and a half hours each way) was easy-we did it with no stops on the way home! Every time I meet and spend time with other school free families I feel so at home and that we have made the right decision for our family. I'm always blown away at the other children I meet-they blow the socially retarded stereotype to bits.

But now I'm faced with the folding now everything that needed washing has been washed and added to the pile of already clean clothes as well as the stuff that came back clean from camp....

Things I know

It's been a while....

-having the fundraiser chocolates in my house is dangerous
-small children delight in sharing wisdom such as "that is the daddy giraffe because he has a HUGE doodle" in public
-it's ace that my older two know how to cut with scissors, it would be more ace if they had any inclination to help me sweep up a million small pieces of paper.
-packing for camping for a family of 5 easily takes as much organizing as the moon landing.
-we live in a very sick society where children are taken from their homes and murdered. I just cannot get these awful stories from the news out of my head.
-me being on the computer during the kids waking hours is not fun for them-and they will see to it that I get off dammit!
-never assume that because a child has enjoyed a meal before that they will ever enjoy, or even try it again.
-Cola has caffeine in it. Don't be annoyed at the breastfed baby for not sleeping after you have a couple of glasses of it.
-love is having your almost 5 year old come and talk to you while you are in the shower and tell you that you are a beautiful Mummy :)

What do you know?

Surprise blessings

One of the biggest surprises in becoming a mother is all the beautiful women I have met. I have some amazing and lovely friends that I would not have met otherwise. The only thing we had in common to begin with is that we had children-but now there is more.

I have spent many lovely hours of my children's life enjoying the company of my friends while our kids have played together. There have been celebrations, tears, discussions, playdates, laughs and a bit of singstar.

So to those lovely Mamas I'm lucky enough to call my friends-near and far, online and in real life and especially those closest to me who I see very often. Thank-you :) It makes the journey that much easier and enjoyable!

Co-sleeping

We are a co-sleeping family. I think a lot of parents who practice Attachment Parenting have an area of excellence so to speak and we seem to be grade A co-sleepers! I'm yet to really full-term breastfeed a child (though I'm on my way!) and I do love a pram when a baby is happy to sit in one (which is not all that often) so I can be a baby wearer by default but we are all still in our big family bed. Tannah left for a few weeks to sleep in a bed next to ours but she is back.

We discovered co-sleeping by accident

Tannah took MUCH longer to resettle into the bassinet by bed and I kept falling asleep when she was feeding. We all seemed to get much more sleep so there she stayed. I was wrongly advised by a health nurse (yes, I saw the health nurse with my first)of the "dangers" of co-sleeping and that she would never learn to sleep on her own. We were whisked off to "sleep school" which solidified my beliefs that she belonged in bed with us.



When I got pregnant, instead of moving Tannah we just made the bed bigger and put the mattresses on the floor (a queen and a double)so when Willow was born there was ample room for us all. Willow was happy to sleep in bed with Tannah for the first part of the night (not until she was able to roll away) which made my life easy and the girls got company from each other. I'm not sure why they still fight like they do! So cuddly and peaceful asleep.





When Harper was born she just slotted into the family bed arrangement. There is plenty of room for everyone. Luke and I fit in between the girls.



I get plenty of sleep, I never have to get out of bed at night and keep super warm and toasty in winter. Not to mention the fact that night feeding is a non issue. Baby grunts I put breast in her mouth and I doze while she feeds. When she is finished she doesn't need to be moved and we both go straight back to sleep. It really is so easy-I partly have not nudged Tannah out of our bed because I'm lazy and have no interest in getting out of bed at night. But mainly because she is happy sleeping close to us.And I like having my family close. And this study was very reassuring :) There are safe sleeping guidelines but sleeping with your baby, toddler and child is safe..and lovely.