Day 212 - Leah Turns 29.5

Today is Leahs's 30th birthday, but she is not acknowledging that she is that old and instead this year she is turning 29.5. After ordering balloons yesterday we raced into spotlight to pick them up on the way to swimming this morning. I underestimated the amount of space that they would take up in my car when I ordered them so it was a very nervous drive for me out to Majura Park for Maddie's class. I love my rear view mirror and it always baffles me how people can drive with their boots stacked so high that they aren't able to use it, but driving around today I realised that it isn't nearly as bad as I thought.

After swimming we raced home to collect the cake and only just made it to the Mawson Club in time to get everything set up and the cake hidden away. The kids had an awesome time playing and I'm pretty sure loved the cake, and I think think that Leah had a nice afternoon out celebrating turning 29.5. I wonder if I will freak out when its my turn to hit the 30 milestone, it just doesn't seem as old as it did a few years ago.

Day 211 - Maddie's New Bike

Dad bought Maddie this awesome bike for her birthday which she absolutely loved and wanted to ride inside last night when it was delivered. Unfortunately for Maddie the house is over run with a crazy amount of toys and presents she is still refusing to unwrap so there wasn't any room to ride it inside. So bright and early this morning she went hunting for her helmet, demanded it was put on then pleaded at the door to go outside and ride her new 'girls bike with the bell.' She hasn't quite grasped the concept of peddling correctly but she sure did think it was awesome being able to slam on the breaks while I was trying to push her, and loved ringing the bell and playing with the tassels. Eventually she got the hang of doing a few pedals so we took her out the front so we could attempt to go further and actually go straight. Maddie demanded that we go for a ride to the little shops, but she isn't advanced enough to go near a road and by then she was getting tired from trying to pedal uphill. Thankfully she didn't put up any fight when I said no to the trip up to the shops and settled for going back behind the gates to try some riding without any help.

Day 210 - Maddie Turns 3

Nathan gave Maddie her ipad when she woke up this morning, so I didn't wake up until Nathan was ready to go. Luckily he was running a few minutes early so we were able to get Maddie up and do her birthday presents together. Maddie had Hugh and Hunter come around for a play in the morning as well as the Grace visiting in the afternoon. Between running around with her friends, Maddie had a lovely time with her Nanna Gail who arrived in time to help me put up the streamers for her home party. I'm pretty sure that Maddie had an awesome day again today, hopefully she doesn't think that her birthday continues for too many more days?

I still cant believe how quickly time goes as you get older, it seems insane that it was three years ago that Maddie was born.

Day 209 - Party

Party day, the two words that were seemingly on repeat this morning as Maddie ran around in circles while I tried to dress her to get her ready for her birthday party at Lollipops. To say she was excited is an understatement, we are lucky she didn't tire herself out at home before we left for the party. Maddie loved having her friends and family all in one place at the same time to see her, not that she saw a lot of some of them as she was too busy off running around having a great time among a crazy amount of people who were also at the centre.

I have never seen Lollipops so busy, and to top that off they were also short staffed so a lot of the things planned for her party were missed, actually the whole party upgrade didn't happen, and one of the adult party food platters came out cold and had to be taken back. Luckily we hadn't discussed the specifics of the party with Maddie so she was unaware that anything was missing from the event and thought that it was the best party ever. She was particularly impressed with the cake, which was layered pink and white on the inside and topped with sprinkles in the icing and what I suspect will be her new favourite princess crown.

Maddie was not interested in opening any presents at the centre, only opening one card from the Morgan's which she then proceeded to carry around with her while she played. Thankfully she did open it there as it was full of confetti that went everywhere!

Day 208 - Grooving

I took this shot from a video of Maddie dancing to the tunes that her microphone plays today. She absolutely loves dancing to the music it plays but gets frustrated that the songs end so quickly, which means she has to go over to the microphone and start them all over again. I suspect I will be over this toy pretty quickly, but the music is better than her yelling into it, her every order for me. Maddie is most definitely way too much like Nathan!

Day 207 - Cute

I love the Hungry Caterpillar, and Maddie seems to have an unnatural interest in bugs at the moment (eewww) so when I saw this I thought that we will have to try it when the weather warms up as it is so cute. Hopefully Maddie's interest in bugs in a sign that I haven't passed on my issues with them as I really don't want her to pick up on being as terrified by moths and butterflies as I am.

Day 206 - We're Going On A Bear Hunt

After singing a verse from the book and sending it to Grace yesterday, Maddie has become re-obsessed with this book. If we havent been sitting down reading it, we have been singing the song or playing bear hunt adventures all day. Mum bought this copy for Maddie as a Christening present and we have read it so many times its starting to look well loved, and these days Maddie knows the words almost as well as I do. It's a shame pop up books are so hard to find over here, I love them and Maddie seems to aswell.

Hopefully the Morgan's are loving my tone deaf singing, or Grace has become tired of listening to it, listening to myself once was more than enough!

Day 205 - Another Survival Week

With Maddie's new swimming classes they do survival week once a month, which really seems to mix up the routine really quite well. Maddie was so well behaved today at swimming and I am wondering if that is because she is getting bored of the same routine week in and week out. She definitely loves the survival stick ride where she has to yell out help and then reach for the pole, before being dragged around the pool as fast as they can go, it is all I have heard about all afternoon!

Day 204 - Decision??

Fish tanks are literally the only thing that I took photos of today, and it turns out that these photos are a total waste of time as I have officially decided that I do not want to get Maddie anything that is alive for her birthday. I think Nathan was looking forward to getting a tank and is a little disappointed but when I think of all the dust the extension will cause I just don't think that it is the right time to be starting and aquarium.

Day 203 - Turtle

Nathan is thinking that we should get Maddie a fish tank for her birthday, I would prefer a turtle but after a lot of shopping, and asking questions at the reptile place in Kambah today, I think that I am sold on Fish. Apparently a turtle like this will only last in a tank about 4-5 years, and then it will need to go into a pond in the backyard, and supposedly, one turtle makes about as much mess as 15 or more fish. I was unrealistically hoping that you could have both turtles and fish in the tank, but the woman looked at me horrified when I suggested that and quickly and discreetly pointed out that the turtles like to eat fish.

Maddie loved looking at the lizards and turtles in the shop and thought that this little one was 'so cool' so she was pretty disappointed to be leaving it behind when we left the store and cried a fair part of the way home.

Day 202 - Christmas in July Markets

The Q put on a Christmas in July market today which had very little to do with Christmas but was still so packed full of shoppers that you could hardly move. Other than buying a cushion for Karyn and a Headband for Maddie, we didn't find anything that we wanted, so after Maddie's awesome face painting was finished we headed out to Bungendore for lunch and to look at their pet shops. It turns out that the pet shop was closed out there, so after lunch we went through the nursery and got some good advice on not putting in our plant of choice (Japanese Maple) in the deck cut out. Now we have to look at different trees to fit our requirements, hopefully we can find something just as pretty.

Day 201 - Window's

Rob came by today to help Nathan start to install the windows for the extension. It is crazy having them started and the 4 that could be put it, with relative ease are done already. The big one in Maddie's old room needs to be pulled out to go in the new little room, and the bathroom window put in but otherwise a big step done today!! It is very exciting to have things moving again on the extension and I am so glad that the weather held out for the few hours that were needed to finish these guys!

Day 200 - Rain

Literally the only photo I took today on this cold and crazy rainy day, is this one of the windows just after they were delivered so that I could show Nathan that they came with flashing attached to them. The windows are a lot lighter than I expected so I lifted them all into the protection of the extension and placed them as close to where I think they are going to go to make it easier for tomorrows installation.

Day 199 - Ballet

At dance today, the kids had their first introduction to the ballet bar, and every parent got a little snap happy. It was pretty cute watching them be helped into position one and then do their arabesques with the help of the bar. I wonder if Maddie will end up interested in Ballet when she is old enough to start classes, I think she will need to settle down a lot before that happens.

Day 198 - Teasing

Its cold. Its wet. I am over being cold and it always raining today and these lovely pictures keep popping up on my news feed from tourism Fiji. We should move to Fiji, although it would be raining there more than it is here I am sure, but at least we would be warm.

To escape the weather and actually get out and do something we went to see the special screening of Alvin and the Chipmunks - Shipwrecked today. It was pretty funny and I think Maddie liked it, but then it may have been that she had her favourite friends there with her too. We met Leah and Grace, and Lucy Mel and Gem to watch the movie today, Maddie was pretty impressed with everyone being there and kept looking to make sure that they were watching the movie.

Day 197 - Prohibited

On Facebook today someone had posted a link of the top 10 places that you will never go in Australia, and I have to say that now that I have been told that I will never go there, I totally want to go there right now! This little heart shaped reef in the Whitsundays is protected so you cant even snorkel up to it, which, while understandable, makes me wonder why it is used in so many tourism adds, surely that is false advertising.

I have to say, 3 places on a list of 10 being prohibited for Military reasons seems low, and super interesting, I bet that after the article was published lots of people became more interested, I totally want to go to Pine Gap now that I know it exists. While the heart island and Pine gap would be nice to visit, Heard Island totally tops my list of places I would want to go that you just cant. An active volcano, penguins, glaciers and lava flow all at once, that is just cool.

Day 196 - Personal

Today I had my first appointment with Dr Devine where I traded at least 30 pages of my referral paperwork for 5 pages of tests to start trying to sort out my hormones. Maddie behaved awesomely for the whole 45 minute appointment while I was bombarded with crazy amounts of information which I am still trying to process. There is so much to consider with fertility treatment and finding the cause of any issues, that it is still mind boggling hours later. After a 45 minute appointment I am exhausted trying to remember and understand everything that is to come, and feeling kind of fuzzy about the diagnosis of secondary infertility. Fuzzy probably isn't the right word, its more like complete bewilderment and something that I cant seem to get my head around. Despite knowing people that are or have gone through fertility treatment and having done some research, I feel totally unprepared, ignorant, overwhelmed, terrified, and today, alone, despite having my awesome family and friends around me.

I attempted to get the first lot of tests done after my appointment but apparently the Pathologists machine is broken and they said no other clinics are currently doing those tests. I think that one is to check my egg count, I wonder how they do that, its insane the things that blood can tell. Next cycle day 8 I have my first of between 5 and 7 blood tests to track my hormones, and if it all looks good I will be given a trigger shot to help ovulation to occur. What the hell that is, I really dont know, as I didn't think to ask anything important at my appointment, which means that I have no idea what half the things we discussed are, let alone any of the procedures that will occur. Hopefully before the next appointment I will be armed with some questions to ask so I know a little bit more of what to expect from the processes we will go through, but for now, I just feel overwhelmed and want to go to sleep.

I gave a lot of thought as to whether to run with this blog or go with something different for the day as I know it goes on line for anyone to read, and fertility treatment is so personal. Clearly I ended up going with this, not just for me to be able to look back on in the future, but also as a way for me to get my thoughts out of my head and hopefully coherent enough that it all starts to make sense. I'm not closed to discussing my treatment at all, or anything like that, but it is a weird topic that no one really talks about. I guess that is what is good about this Blog, it is for me, and if people don't want to read it, they don't have to, but if they do, then it is there for them to see.

Day 195 - White

As the weather is miserable and Nathan refuses to work on the house in the rain we had a nice relaxing day today. A trip to Bredbo in snow traffic on a Saturday morning really showed how the Monaro highway has so many fatalities, people are stupid idiotic selfish twits on the road this time of the year. There was one car in particular that over took on blind corners, and multiple cars at a time, which came scarily close to causing a head on collision that would have collected more than his car and the one who was driving the other way. Gosh drivers like that make me so angry, and where are the Police when these things are happening?

Any way this is the only photo that I have for today, I absolutely love the white wall that the Barn has going this year, it makes such a statement. I cant believe that I didn't take a photo when we took Maddie to see Epic at Hoyt's this afternoon, or of anything else that we saw in the shops, that is so unlike me.

Day 194 - Painting

I finally got off my butt and did some more painting of the house today. After spending literally all day on this part I have this wall finished and I have to say I actually really like it. The more area that we cover the less blue the colour looks and it just makes the house look entirely different. I appear to be re-obsessed with us picking a colour for the other areas so I can see it all together so I totally want to get started on the carport and stairs, but I will resist and continue to focus on the house first.

Day 193 - Salad

Nathan really wanted to go out for dinner tonight but I so didn't want to so we compromised and had take away from Central Cafe. After whining for ages that they forgot my salad last time we had take out from there Nathan made sure that they included one tonight. I have never had a salad with sweet potato curls on top before, they were super tasty, although I am not convinced that they were healthy.

Day 192 - Feeding the Ducks?

Maddie and I went for a walk around Lake Jerrabomberra today to feed the ducks, at least that was the plan. Rather than give her bread to the birds Maddie ate almost all of her slices even though she had eaten two breakfasts and morning tea before we left. When we were finishing up our walk we came across this family of swans by the side of the path. I am really not a fan of swans, especially when they stand up and start walking towards you, and with Maddie in her trike which doesn't go cross country very well, I was in a little bit of a panic. Thankfully the Swan only came to about a meter away from me before it stopped so we got out of there as fast as we can. In hindsight, stopping to take a photo was probably not the smartest move to make.

Day 191 - Fairy Garden Progress

Maddie and I did some more work on the Fairy Garden today, well we added another tree like plant and a Fairy anyway. It is crazy hard finding little things for it whether it be plants that will stay small or ornaments. I would love a little house like Cockington Green has, but I can not find one anywhere and I am running out of places to look. I did find a shop in Adelaide today, maybe I will have more luck on line searching for smaller shops rather than through Amazon or Ebay.

Day 190 - Shopping

I despise shopping, unless I am at the Christmas Barn, but tonight I actually enjoyed myself. I went onto a few on-line sites to check out what toy sales were on and found that Deals Direct had one that was finishing tonight! Of course that meant that I had to look and buy things immediately, just in case they sold out while I was thinking about it. I have been looking for a doctors set for Maddie, with no luck for a while now, and while I don't love this one and imagine the quality wont be great, for $15 I couldn't pass it up. It wont matter if she isn't interested in it for that much. I wonder what else I can buy tonight.

Day 189 - New Park

It was looking lice a nice day today so Maddie and I went exploring for a park that the Morgan's have been telling us is just around the corner. Sure enough it is fairly close, and aside from the uphill part, Maddie quite enjoyed taking her trike out for a spin. It was lovely sitting in the sun watching her, but I think she got bored of trying to play Fireman Sam and talking to herself as she didn't even last an hour before she wanted to go home. We will have to remember that park is up there, it will be pretty good for as she grows and it would be quicker to walk to than to take the car out.

Day 188 - Cheesie Face

Out riding her very sun faded car that we picked up at a bargain target sale last year Maddie demanded that I took her photo. She was saying 'Cheese' while at the same time pulling weird faces, and of the 10 or so photos that I took, this one is the best. It looks like our little daggy dresser has had another growth spurt as those pants look way too short now, and those shoes are a whopping size 9. Maybe big foot Maddie will become a swimmer, or maybe a clown with those feet, they sure are bigger than her other nearly 3 year old friends.

Day 187 - Reminiscing

With only a few weeks until Maddie's birthday I have been looking through the photo's of her and how she has grown over the last year. I can not believe how much she has grown, developed and changed over the last year. I love this photo of her from her party last year, we just have to convince Nathan that Maddie needs to have a party again this year, and work out where to have it.

Day 186 - Slime

I have been looking at Slime recipes and contemplating making some for Maddie, but I am just not sure I want her playing with glue and borax. I just don't trust that she wont try and eat some as she is putting things into her mouth again. I was sure that it was made on cornflour prior to actually researching the recipe but, I haven't been able to find a recipe to make it that way so far. I must be a little bit Glow in the Dark crazy as I saw some stars painted with Glow in the Dark paint in the Bunning's magazine and I've been totally obsessed with them since.

Day 185 - Hoarding

I know, I know, always complaining about something, but today I thought I might make a start on sorting out the shed chaos. With good intentions I walked in there, then pretty much turned around and walked back out. We cleared out so much when we flooded that everything salvageable was stacked onto the table or in piles around the shed, and while I thought I could sort them out, clearly I couldn't as there is just too much stuff! Nathan likes to keep back issues of his car magazines, that if he reads once its lucky, so its not likely that he will ever read them again, but he has these piles in the shed, and more in the garage. One day maybe Maddie will be able to use them for crafts or something.. Maybe.
Now that I am thinking about it, I should do a shirts count seeing as Nathan said that he would go through his cupboards in December and now that its July, he still hasnt. Count for today, (12/8/13, I am a little behind on my blog) 72 Hanging, 64 on or in draws, 20 in the ironing pile and 4 that need washing. February last year he had 114, todays count is making the excessive amount from last year seem reasonable.

Day 184 - Hair Chalk

Whoever said that this hair chalk came out in one wash LIED! This stripe was put in Maddie's hair on Monday and while it has faded a little its still clearly there. The colour in my hair is even worse than Maddies and I have washed it three times. I am hoping that it comes out of Maddie's hair while she is in the pool today, and it isn't too long before it is out of mine.

Day 183 - Zoo

Mum's and Cubs ran by the Zoo had their second class today, and after hearing how awesome it was last time we had to check it out. Today the kids coloured in and patted a turtle, before being read a book, then going on a walk to attempt to pat the Kangaroos, which ran away, before heading on up to see the Dingo's. After a bit of coaxing and getting another handler in, Nara, one of the Dingo's came out for the kids (and grown ups) to pat. It was so awesome! Afterwards we wandered the Zoo for a few hours and saw the parts of the Aquarium that aren't under maintenance. It was pretty cute watching Maddie and Grace try to kiss a Crocodile.

Day 182 - Painting

We thought that we would try something different today, so we attempted to paint some plaster fairies that I picked up from Kmart a few weeks ago. It turns out that Maddie is a way better painter than I am, as despite me trying so carefully to paint mine tidily, Maddie had better luck painting the colours where she wanted them. Maddie sure did love the experience though, she really loves painting of any kind, I am looking forward to it warming up a lot more for more outside painting time as well as actually being warm. Is it just me or does this Winter seem like it is never ending