Things I’ve been doing, because god knows I haven’t been writing.

It feels like it’s been a busy few weeks. Evelyn is amazing at hearing the clickety clackety of my fingers on the keyboard and deciding she needs to be sitting on my lap immediately. She also loves to climb onto my desk and type herself, usually deleting any project I’ve got open at the time.

Needless to say, I haven’t been on the computer much.

And considering it’s just taken me 25 minutes to write 65 words, I’m not sure this is set to change any time soon.

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Gardening:

I say gardening like I’ve been “doing it” but what I’ve really been doing is watering the gardens, picking the produce and thinking about the things I need to do for Autumn, rather than actually doing anything. The tomatoes and pumpkins are doing well, although it turns out I planted three tomatoes of the late fruiting variety and hahahahaha I’m an idiot. They’re only just finishing their flower now, which gives them a month, maybe, to turn into green tomatoes I can pick and hang.

It’s unlikely to happen.

Luckily the cherry tomatoes are doing well and the little gannnets I call my children are thrilled to be able to search and destroy red tomatoes. Nom nom nom.

The pumpkins, well, I only planted one variety this year and I’m a bit annoyed at myself. They’ve done well, but not amazingly, and I think I prefer a smaller variety of pumpkin which produces a lot, rather than a larger variety which struggles to squeeze out two pumpkins per vine.

The vines themselves have done well, growing along the ground to catch any stray chickens who might be looking for an easy meal, but the female flowers have started turning yellow and dropping off before they even get any bigger than a 5c coin.

Which: Hmmmph.

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Parenting:

Gah. Parenting. Who’d have thought having three children would make me so time poor?

Well, actually this is a lie. When I’ve got time to read books, play in the garden, game and do other things for pleasure, I’m really not time poor. I just feel like I am because yesterday, Amy talked non-stop. NON-STOP. Not even an hour at the dentist did much to stop her discussing everything from planets to oceans to the latest mods on minecraft in obsessive detail.

I had a headache by bedtime, but I was glad Amy was feeling better. She’s got an ear infection and I’m just grateful our doctor was able to squeeze her in so she could start antibiotics.

Isaac has adjusted to kindergarten amazingly well. I’m surprised and pleased at how well he’s doing. He’s confident in the space and comes home telling me about all the fun things he’s done at school. I’m pretty impressed.

Both kids had a great time at their athletics carnival. Isaac ran a fourth in the running race, and second, third, fifth in the novelties. So proud.

Amy did brilliantly too, running in every single race for her class group, which was frankly a miracle for a child as bendy as she is, and brewing an ear infection to boot.

Evelyn, she’s doing well. Not quite sleeping through the night yet, although now she’s back on pediasure rather than cows milk, she’s down to waking once, rather than five times. Turns out our dairy trial was a miserable failure, with Eve breaking out into eczema, getting constipated and otherwise being a miserable little git. Dairy doesn’t agree with her – although she seems fine with small amounts of yogurt and cheese. Something something enzymes partially digested proteins, something something.

I am worried about her overall mobility however. Her left leg keeps collapsing under her, sending her hurlting towards the ground more than I care to count. She’s hypermobile, and so low tone. I’d hoped a lot of this would improve when she was running around, but no, and in fact she’s been a bit worse. The physio team wanted to see her at 2, so I think I’ll move that appointment up.

She sees her Paediatrician this coming week, and while I’m sure he’s going to be glad to see how she’s grown and gained weight (HALLELUJAH FOR EATING), she’s not talking. Her receptive language is fantastic, but her functional speech is practically non-existent. At 19 months, she says Mum, Dad, Nan and HI! Occasionally if she’s in a good mood you can encourage her to copy words back at you, but mostly she silent except for various inflections of eh? eh! EH.

I’m hoping speech will just appear magically, but we’ll see what her team thinks. For a toddler who understands pretty much everything we say, I feel she ought to be talking more.

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Soapmaking:

New obsession.

I asked Nathan last night to come and smell my newest batch of soap (who wants plain soap when you can add things? CHEMISTRY! YAY) and he looked at me plaintively.

“I didn’t think you’d make this much soap so quickly.”

But it’s like Christmas! Waiting to open a soap mould, waiting to see what the chemical reaction has done to the ingredients, it’s so exciting. AND, I’ve only made five batches in a week, so I’m not sure what he’s complaining about. Also, who wants to continue making the same boring base when you can add things to see what happens? Honey and oats for example. Or kaolin.

I’m still very much a newbie at it all, but the science of soap is endlessly fascinating and I love how tweaking just one ingredient changes my whole soap makeup.

Science! Is fun!

So I’ve been making soap, and hopefully some of it is going to be amazing once it’s cured.

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Life:

Is good.