Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • I’m all bald and stuff!

    Friday night, we shaved off most of my hair as part of The World’s Greatest Shave. Saturday morning, I tidied up the long ends so it’s a neat #4 cut. It’s COLD, Internet.

    Cutting off my ponytail

    Cutting off my ponytail

    Greatest Shave 006

    Greatest Shave 027

    My father and I, post shave

    2013-03-16 14.37.49

    Worlds Greatest Shave

    Ignore the grey. I’ll dye it pink or something next week.

    I’ve raised $1265 so far for the Leukaemia Foundation, but there’s still time to donate if you’ve got a spare $5 in your bank account.

    Sponsor Me

    I am so grateful for hats right now. Leigh knitted me the lovely red hat I’m wearing up there and I’m currently wearing a hat that Sharon knitted for Mum last year. THANK YOU BOTH.

  • Today I’m shaving my head for charity

    Today is The Day. Head shaving day.

    long hair

    Do you know how hard it is to talk a self portrait? It’s HARD. Those girls who take incessant selfies for facebook obviously have MAD SKILLS that I am missing.

    In any case, today I am shaving my head. I have a few more hours of long hair left, so Evelyn needs to get all of her finger tangling and hair pulling out of the way now, before it’s GONE.

    If you haven’t donated yet, I would love if you could. It’s for a good cause.

    Sponsor Me

    I am going to be so cold.

    (And yes, Frogpondsrock will be videoing it, so you can watch me screech like a girl.)

  • Invasion of the garden eating monsters.

    Nathan and I were playing Minecraft the other night when we heard a scream. It echoed around the entire house, leaving us listening for the sound of a baby waking up, or a terrified child.

    [Related, yes, we play Minecraft together. It’s not just a game for children. Shut up.]

    When no one woke up, we looked at each other and sighing, headed for the torch.

    “It was, wasn’t it?”

    “Yep. It was a possum.”

    I knew we had a possum, because the other night, she was dancing an irish jig on the roof above my bed at three am. Later, I prayed for her death, while wondering how wrong it was to hope for something that inconveniences me personally to, you know, DIE.

    We headed outside to our one large gumtree on the property and started looking. BANG, there she was. I glared at her and she chittered at me anxiously as I shone the torch in her eyes, wishing that my torch was actually a laser so that I could get rid of the destructive fucking thing.

    Not that I’m bloodthirsty or anything.

    (I am.)

    It’s no secret that I don’t like brushtailed possums. My wish for them to pack up their bags and move far far away from my house is well documented and loudly voiced. They’re destructive. They kill my baby trees. They break tree branches. One fucker has been stealing my chicken eggs.

    I am not impressed to have yet another one living near my house.

    However, if I’m really lucky, this one will also get hit by a car, at which point I’ll do a little dance of glee, before composing myself and celebrating internally.

    I am such a bad person.

    This is why I need a protective ring of triffids around my house. Not only will they take care of marauding possums, but I can put them to work hunting down the mice that are currently eating all my seedlings. Sure, they might kill me too, but DETAILS.

  • I’m all covered in snot and sadness

    Hey to all my new visitors coming from The Bloggies website. This post is about my baby Evelyn, who is ever so slightly complicated. If you’re interested in her issues, you can find more back story in my About page. Also, have a look around and vote for me if you like what you see.

    —

    There. Now that that’s over and done with, I can get back to the Very Serious Task of telling all of you, my regular readers, how Evelyn is doing. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by The Bloggies, and apparently when I’m overwhelmed I hide elsewhere and do other things. Silly, I know.

    ANYWAY.

    Evelyn has had a cold and the trickle down effect has been interesting. Not only has she been very sad and insisted on wiping snot in my mouth at least twice a day, but she’s also forgotten a lot of her previously learned skills.

    Being sick, and the slight sleep deprivation it’s caused, has made her seizures increase again and thus in turn, her hand control has gotten terrible. She’s forgotten entirely how to roll over and holding onto most toys is now beyond her.

    It’s hard to watch, as her mother. I know that logically she will relearn how to roll over (again – it will be the third time so far) and that her babbling will start again and that one day soon I won’t have to fend off snot covered flailing hands, but it’s still hard. Her head control is a bit crap, to be honest and she wobbles like a bobble head sometimes, which has been made worse by her generally clogged state.

    It’s made her very sad, which in turn means I’m either breastfeeding her, pacing the floor with her, or rocking/patting her to sleep.

    And oh, the breastfeeding. I’m a little annoying that our next Paed appointment isn’t until May (MAY!) because we need to discuss this child’s feeding issues. Namely the fact that anything that isn’t tiny tastes of nectarine upsets her stomach. Also the fact that at seven and a half months she still has quite a strong tongue thrust. It’s bothersome, to be honest. She wants food (oh, the anger of this baby when I don’t share my food with her) but her body can’t quite keep up with her mental development and thus, no food for her.

    Thank God for breastfeeding – even if her increased need for calories means that I have porn star breasts, akin to those days shortly after she was born. It could be fun, if they weren’t so leaky.

    In any case, I know the cold will pass eventually, even if it’s taking her a lot longer than the older two children to fight it off. When it does, we’ll work on re-teaching her how to roll over and how to use her hands again.

    In the meantime, does anyone have a spare tissue? My shoulder is all soggy.

     

  • Unsolicited free stuff, a serious complaint.

    This morning I received unsolicited free products in the mail. My children were excited – since I stopped saying yes to PR stuff, the packages here have dropped off and they’ve been unimpressed with their lack of free stuff. Even when that free stuff was a handcream I was never going to blog about.

    We opened up the box and discovered Kellogg’s new liquid breakfast drinks.

    Now, I need to state, Kellogg’s have, in the past, been incredibly good to me. They’ve sent me cereal when Isaac wouldn’t eat anything except cereal. They’ve sponsored me to attend conferences and flown me around the countryside.

    But this time they’ve missed the mark. In fact, they’ve missed it by so much that they’re no longer even playing in my ballpark.

    Firstly, the two breakfast drinks I was sent were CocoPops and Nutrigrain. Both cereals I refuse to buy because they have too much sugar to not enough good stuff ratio.

    Secondly, we’ve recently started Isaac on the FODMAP diet. Kellogg’s didn’t know this, so they get a pass. In fact, hardly anyone knew this yet, because I’ve not really spoken about it. So while I wasn’t going to give the sweetened milk drinks to my children for breakfast, I was kind of hoping they could have them as a treat. I’m not averse to treats. I have them all the time.

    I read the ingredients though and was a bit flabbergasted. Firstly, low fat milk? LOW FAT MILK? Geez. I know we’re currently in a food culture swing of “fat is bad, OMG FAT”, but it’s not true. Children especially need fat for their brain development and therefore, in my opinion children should always eat full fat dairy.

    The second ingredient on both products was sugar.

    Head, desk.

    You know that there is something wrong when we’re removing fat from food and replacing it with sugar.

    Listen, I’m not anti-sugar. In fact, I happen to adore sugar. But having sugar as the second ingredient in a product designed to be a kids breakfast drink?

    No. Just no.

    The ingredients then go on to list a whole host of other things, including stabilisers, flavours, added minerals and vitamins (FYI, adding extra calcium and vitamin D doesn’t get you past the sugar debacle) “flavours” and acidity regulators. All this in something that is essentially chocolate milk. For breakfast.

    I mentioned to Mum that it was terrible, but that I wasn’t going to say anything because let’s face it, Kellogg’s has spent a lot of money on me in the last 2 years. But then, she asked, doesn’t that effectively mean that they’ve bought my silence?

    I don’t want to be that person who plays down the negatives of something because of brand loyalty, or fear of opportunities passing by later down the track.

    So, Kellogg’s, hear me out.

    I think these breakfast drinks are a ridiculous product. You’d be better off marketing them as pure chocolate milk, rather than something nutritious and suitable for breakfast every day. That’s my honest feedback and you’re welcome to it.