Last night as I was getting dinner ready, the girls were sitting at the kitchen bench, entertaining themselves by watching videos on the iPad.
But they weren’t YouTube videos or videos on the ABC4Kids app, they were videos of when Esther was a toddler and Maggie was a baby. Poor Phoebe got frustrated when she’d see a baby and say ‘That’s Phoebe’ and I’d say ‘No that’s Maggie’. ‘But where’s Phoebe?” she’d exclaim.
I have quite a few videos of Phoebe when she started to crawl and when she started to walk. Thank goodness for iPhones that made it easy to film events so easily.
I’m so glad I took those videos on my phone because they have transported me back to when Jacob and I were in babyland.
I have a great video of Esther, then 3, saying ‘goo goo gaa gaa’ to Maggie, then 6 months, and Maggie thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. Her laugh was the best. It still is.
I also noticed in each of Maggie’s baby videos, whenever I’d want her attention, I’d call her by her full name, Magdalene.
It was my intention for Magdalene to be called Maggie, but when she was a baby, I’d call her by her full name.
It wasn’t until we started attending our current church and Maggie started going to kids church, one of the leaders said they called her Mags because it was so much easier to write her name on her colouring sheet.
These days she’s known as Maggie, and when I put her school enrollment forms in a couple of months ago, I filled in the name preferred as Maggie.
The trip down memory lane with the videos and realizing how much my girls have grown, puts in perspective how fast these years have gone by. There were some sleepless nights and tough months. But we got through.
And today is the 2nd of September. Only 4 months till Christmas. Or as Facebook reminded me, only 17 Saturdays left till Christmas.
Before we get to Christmas, we have a few things to look forward to in September and October.
August was quite the month for our household. We had Esther’s Birthday and celebrated friends’ Birthdays. We went ten-pin bowling together as a family for the first time and the kids loved it. With the girls getting older, we can start to do cool things together as a family.
Unfortunately we did get sick. I had a sticky situation where I was on excursion with Maggie out at Ipswich, and the school rang me to say Esther was complaining of an earache.
I told the school that my husband was at work, I was stuck on a bus on my way to Ipswich and my parents were in New Zealand, so I had no one to come and pick her up. But if she got worse, I would have to think of something.
I got a phone call half an hour later saying Esther had gone down hill quite quickly and needed to be picked up. Jacob had to leave work and used a taxi to get to our car that was parked at the Kindy. He picked Esther up, and she threw up. The poor pet was not well. A trip to the doctor that afternoon had us get diagnosed with the Flu and an ear infection. I got the last box of Tamiflu in my area. By Friday, Esther was better but her ears were still blocked. We got test results back to say she didn’t have the flu, but we got a referral to an Ear, Throat and Nose specialist to get Esther’s ears looked at. Thankfully the one appointment last Monday sorted out the problem. And she’s been great since. Touch on wood!
This week we got the NBN installed and so far so good. I was a bit apprehensive about it, because I rely on good internet to do my work and I have heard there have been teething issues with it. While it was being hooked up, I took my younger two girls to a park with a takeaway coffee in hand.
I realised it won’t be long until Maggie will be at school and it will just be me and Phoebe during the week.
The trip to the park reminded me to make sure we fill our days with fun things because if it’s 4 months till Christmas, it’s around 5 months till Maggie starts school.
I find I’m constantly battling work over fun these days and often work will win. Do you find it hard to have fun when there is so much work to be done? I think it’s one of the drawbacks of working from home or being a working mum.
One thing I’d like to do before the years end is to go through every cupboard in every room of the house and cull. We have a lot of stuff we don’t use and I’d love to see it being used by someone else. My problem is I cull and then leave the buckets or bags of stuff to donate around the house.
But I reckon if I do up a list and try and tackle one room or cupboard each week till the end of the year, the whole house should have less stuff and I will feel a bit better when I open a cupboard.
I recently did my walk-in-wardrobe and it felt good. There were clothes I hadn’t worn in over a year that I sold and a bag full of presents I had long forgotten about.
I have this crazy idea of trying to make $100 from each room by selling stuff from each room. The money could come in handy for Christmas. I might try one room and see how I go before I set it as a challenge! Can you see the irony where I complain that I choose work over fun, yet I want to do more fun with my kids.
Maybe I can get them to pitch in and help.
