Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Sick and Tired

    The kids and I are all sick, Amy is slowly coming off her gluten high and being nicer, just as Isaac refuses to sleep. He screams in his cot while Amy swirls and twirls in front of me, just our of reach of my grabbing arms and the hairbrush. My stress levels are through the roof and today’s bedtime is not a good one.

    Every time I cough I feel faint. It’s just a bad chest cold, not an infection, so short of staying in bed for a week, there is not a lot I can do to help it move along and fuck off already.

    Can you hear my maniacal laughter at the thought of actually getting to stay in bed?

    AHAAAAHAAAAAAAAA.

    Cough.

    Splutter.

    Aside from that, things are good here. So much nicer now that Amy is off gluten, even if our time out count today was much too high (throwing food, throwing toys, she got into a bag of flour, etc etc). We’ll hopefully see the results of those tests in about 3 weeks.

    So that’s me.

    How are you?

  • Alternative uses for Chupa-Chups

    Chuck’s Life Less Serious Champion Challenge

    Earlier this week, I was approached by Maria on behalf of ChupaChups, asking if I’d be interested in a competition. OF COURSE I said, because I mean, what is better than competitions?

    So she sent me out a tub of ChupaChups and a Chuck Doll and asked me to write a blog post in a category of my choosing. Of course, the category that humour fits into won. Sometimes I’m funny.

    This is Chuck:

    Chuck is challenging people to get Less Serious over on his website. There are competions and prizes to win, so go and check it out.

    So yes. Let’s talk about alternate uses for ChupaChups. They’re handy little things, round and tasty. You can use them for all sorts of things!

    Like holding up the TV cabinet:

    TV cabinet

    I call this one the mousetrap. It sits under there, attracting mice so I can schwack them.

    Mousetrap

    Barbie was unhappy with what life gave her. She felt dowdy and small; like you could walk past her in a crowd and not even notice. Not now though. Now? Barbie STANDS OUT.

    (I should say though, Barbie probably shouldn’t have gone the cheap route. She looks a little lopsided…)

    Barbie

    You can make ChupaChup soup. (Chuck’s favourite dinner. And lunch. And breakfast)

    Soup

    Chuck delights in growing new and exciting varieties of ChupaChup. I must say, I want some of those seeds he’s using!

    Garden

    What’s that you say? The baby won’t sleep? Well, I found the cure for that. Just use The Pacifier and he will be out like a light.

    Sleep

    And last but not least, what they were designed for. Surfing the internet of course!

    Chuck Internet

    Hehe.

  • Can I just say…

    NO MORE GLUTEN!

    YAY!!!

    Suddenly, the world looks so much brighter. This last three weeks has felt interminable. It’s been horrid. Horrid I say.

    She has a blood test tomorrow, this daughter of mine who won’t sit still to have a splinter pulled. We will head to the hospital and arrive 20 minutes early so they can put numbing cream on her arm. Then we will do everything we can to get a little blood out of her.

    Then we’ll need to work out what to celebrate with.

    Suggestions?

  • This gluten challenge is killing me

    Bleurgh. This gluten challenge has sucked all the energy out of me. Amy has been …. a nightmare.

    Case in point:

    I baked the test wedding cake this weekend. Leveled the layers, wrapped them and left them on the bench. I also left the levelled bits wrapped on top of everything. I’d made lemon curd for the filling, straining eggs, stirring for ages and finally straining and cooling.

    So when I woke up to tears and tantrums at 5.50am and stumbled out to the lounge room, only to discover that the tantrums were over the fact she couldn’t carry the bowl of lemon curd back to bed with her, I was a little upset.

    There were also cake crumbs all over the house and lemon curd all over the floor and just ugh. She’d also stirred greek dressing into the curd and well, we’re just not thinking about that. (I couldn’t taste it after I strained it again and gave it a good stir. We’ll just ignore that fact.)

    I nearly cried.

    She tipped pine-o-clean on Isaac, she’s been racing to do things FASTER as I yell NO! and run for her and just ohmigod.

    OhMYgod.

    I’m ready to be done.

    I feel like I’ve had all the energy sucked right out of me. Shhhhhlrp. Gone.

    On the upside, the blood test is on Friday and Thursday will be the last day of gluten.

    So um yeah, WOO HOO!

  • I have a confession

    I have a confession.

    You know how a lot of people worry about messing up their kids? Yes? Well… I don’t. I never soul searched while pregnant with Amy, wondering how it would go if I did everything wrong. How she’d grow up if I fucked it up.

    Never. Not once. I still don’t. Somehow, I trust implicitly that I’m not going to fuck it up, that even if I make mistakes, I’m pretty sure both kids are going to be okay. I love them unconditionally and I’m happy that some days, that’s enough.

    However, I worry that I’m going to fuck up these horses.

    I worry about that a lot.

    I think part of that is the fact that I haven’t actually ridden in oh, about 6 years? And that now I’ve got horses that I am responsible for and ohmigod, I think I’ve forgotten how to put a bridle on. How am I meant to be the ‘alpha mare’ if I’ve completely forgotten what I’m meant to be doing?

    Emma is forgiving. Belle, probably not so much. Belle is highly strung. She’s more interested in being a horse than having human interaction. Getting a halter on her the other day was an exercise in patience.

    Cue minor panic attacks.

    And it’s stupid, truly it is, to be having panic attacks over horses. Horses for goodness sake.

    I think I just need to remind myself  that everything will be fine. That doing something wrong once is not going to fuck everything up forever.

    You know, as long as the ‘something wrong’ is not something major. Like uh, forgetting everything I’ve ever known.

    I wish Nan were still alive.

    And breathe.

    ***

    I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that my other website ‘Two Mares‘ is live. I’m over there writing about the horses and the issues I’m having/not having with them.

    Feel free to click over and have a look. I’ll be editing this post for language and cross-posting it there too.

    You could even subscribe for me…

    If you’re interested that is.