Well, folks, I have finished Civil Litigation and moved on to Trust and Office Accounting... no end in sight for me yet, though getting up at 3am to study is working reasonably - at least there are fewer distractions.
I don't think our eggs are going to hatch. Ruby is just too sporadic about sitting on them. I haven't decided whether to buy a new rooster yet, either. Yeti doesn't think Stevie is a boy, and I have read that Rhode Island Red Bantam cockerels take a long time to mature... but I don't want to buy a new rooster, have him fight with Stevie and have to separate them - I have enough to do looking after one pen of chooks and one mad parrot, I don't need the extra workload! Ruby is becoming quite a bully - every time another chook goes near her she raps it with her very sharp & pointy beak. I can't be too hard on her, though - she misses Rufous, and she is the only one laying at the moment.
Wombat has skipped a tooth! He has his four front upper teeth, and only three of the lower teeth - and he has started cutting his molars. This makes for a lot of interrupted naptimes, as the molars are quite painful and two or three seem to be erupting at once.
Those front teeth are exceedingly sharp, and I am beginning to think seriously about weaning him - when he is tired I can't get him to open his mouth wide enough and I have some very painful teeth marks at the moment. It is definitely NOT going to be easy because I still suckle him to sleep - naptimes & sleeptimes are so precious to me that I would rather put up with pain than turn them into screaming sessions that are exhausting for us both. My strategy at the moment is to switch back to drinking lite milk myself. This makes my milk more watery, and less appealing than whole cows milk, so he drinks less mummy milk, and hopefully I can gradually cut back to nothing. I would prefer to keep breastfeeding him until he was ready to stop, but I also want more kids and to be able to feed them in the future, so I can't afford too much damage now! An added bonus will hopefully be a bit of weight loss - I weigh more now than I did when I was pregnant, and the full cream milk is my major calorie intake. Of course, the lack of exercise sitting at the computer in every spare moment isn't helping.
Most panicking at the moment is the thought of the onsite school for my course. At the end of July/start of August, I have to spend 2 weeks doing exams and attending seminars at the College of Law, St Leonards. I have done some calculations, and a conservative estimate suggests it will take 3 hours each way to go from here by public transport. That means leaving before Wombat wakes up in the morning and getting home at his bedtime. Driving would be worse, considering peak hour traffic on Sydney's North Shore, my lack of experience driving in heavy traffic while under exam stress, and the fact there is no parking at the College. It would take even longer than the train. I can't possibly traumatize Wombat & myself by disappearing for two weeks, so my only option is to find somewhere in the city for Yeti, Wombat & myself to stay. This puts a lot of pressure on my 85 year old mother-in-law, but at least Yeti and Wombat could drive home every few days to check on her & help out, and we would only be a phonecall away (though it would still take a few hours to get back here in an emergency). There is also the point that accommodation in Sydney is going to cost me at least $100 a day *GULP* so when I am not frantically trying to catch up on my studies (I am running just over a week behind the timetable) I am searching the net trying to find somewhere in a nice location (preferably near a beach so Yeti & Wombat have something to do, even though it will still be winter) with good public transport to St Leonards (less than an hour, without having to change buses or trains) for a reasonable price. It also has to have space for me to study without waking Yeti & Wombat, so most hotel rooms are out. Wish me luck! It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack ;D
My sister, Steff, is now 8 months pregnant and starting to feel neglected by my continuing absence, so I will try to write quick updates more often.
2 comments:
I remember those law school days how hard it was to find time for anything besides studying. Especially during finals week.
Oh, and thanks for the comment on the short story. Oops! I updated it because it won an honorable mention in the creative writing contest here and I wanted the post to be the same as the text I submitted. I thought I'd buried it well within the archives and feeds but your feeds must have popped it up. :)
Doesnt sound easy - and st leonards ugghhh
Boys are aparently much harder to wean than girls - Kaelyn weaned herself :)
Good luck with it
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