Where am I?

Hi all,

I do hope no-one is feeling snobbed by me at the moment - I would dearly love to be spending more time reading blogs and working on my other projects... it's just that I have time for nothing but Wombat & study. This final course is the most intensive I have ever done - in 15 years of uni! Perhaps you will think better of me if I tell you I am reading & summarising around 400 pages a day - and they have to be good summaries, because I will need them in open-book exams come November... and that I also have at least one assignment every week, often more. ARRRGH!

I am writing this now at 5am while waiting for the kettle to boil for my tea - I have bought myself a vibrating alarm clock so I can wake myself without disturbing Wombat...

I was planning to start work at 4am, which will give me 2 1/2 to 3 hours before he wakes up... but he of course woke for his 4am comfort feed & it took nearly an hour to get him back to sleep - I can feel activity in his gums where the molars are starting to erupt, so it's only going to get more difficult over the next year. Good thing I like a challenge ;)

In case you were wondering about how we were getting along, I did manage to improve his mood. I decided he had outgrown several of our routines, so I moved the change table and his baby bath out of our bedroom & into storage, and transformed the bedroom floor for him, with a proper space for his potty and a lot of play room... I change him on our bed, and he now showers with me in the mornings, which is perhaps not the most efficient method of getting clean, as he refuses to be put down, but is otherwise an idea he is perfectly happy with. He has also moved to eating more 'adult' food - and has decided he absolutely loves corn-on-the-cob, and has to have it for every dinner along with his other veggies (he mainly eats the carrot) and a little bit of meat. I used to chop his veggies into little bite-sized squares, but now he likes to have them the same way we do, and pick them up to bite bits off. If there is no corn, though, he acts like he isn't hungry, and we go to the opposite extreme - I mash everything up together and feed it to him with a spoon ;P I'm not complaining, because he eats well at other meals, and at least he is happy to eat his vegetables one way or the other! Mashed, I usually manage to sneak some greens in as well - he really prefers orange or yellow vegetables, and only has little tastes of the others if he is feeding himself.

Ah well, the kettle is well and truly boiled now... time to get my cuppa and get to work. If I don't get the time to comment on your entries for a while - or write my own, I do hope you will think of me & smile, studying half the night, feeding chickens half the day...

they have settled in really well - and I finally got a good shot of Rufous's gorgeous tail to show the colour I love...

We have even had a few lovely little eggs...

Taking our lunch scraps out to them is a highlight of Wombat's day...

along with being dragged around on his cornpopper the rest of the time! (It seems Cornpoppers weren't meant for rural driving - the front numberplate gets bogged down every time the grass gets even a little bit bumpy - the cord helps by lifting the front over the grass tufts, and Wombat loves being towed around the garden to pick flowers...

He's walking very well on his own now, but does still need to have his hand held most of the time - especially when he's tired...