Thankful Thursday

I would have made this an official Thursday Thirteen, but I couldn't be bothered working out all the blogroll & reciprocal commenting requirements... I just want to start making a list of positives each week!

1. it is now three days since I last breastfed Wombat. He is officially weaned. He listened to me telling him about babies (& puppies & kittens & calves & foals) drinking mummymilk, and looked at the pictures I showed him, and the pictures of older animals drinking from bowls etc, and he listened while I told him he was my big boy now & would only drink bottle milk from now on, until he was able to drink from a cup like Mummy & Daddy... he loved looking at the photo album that contains weekly photos of him from birth onwards (there are lots of gaps which I must print photos to fill in for him)... I thought he hadn't understood, but when I took him for his first non-feeding nap, he didn't even try to nurse... he didn't sleep either, but I was impressed at his understanding. When I pretended to be asleep to see if he's join me, he tugged his special blankey over & tucked me in (big grin!!!) I think he thought it was just for that nap though, because he got quite upset when there was no feed offered at the afternoon nap. I repeated my explanation of how much I loved my big boy and he wasn't a baby any more, and he stopped crying straight away! It hasn't been smooth sailing by any means, but I think we're over the worst, and it was nowhere near as traumatic as I'd feared.

2. it is raining

3. When I was feeling very sick on Tuesday, Yeti sent me to the doctor (and stayed home looking after a Wombat screaming with separation anxiety while I spent two hours reading Ulysses in the doctor's waiting room - my doc is never on time). Doc gave me fluid tablets - basically they help dry up the milk by pulling any excess stores of water to the kidneys for excretion. It may not sound very delicate, but it's an awful lot more comfortable than engorged boobs (and I want to be able to remember it for next time/advising friends)! It also reduces the chance of infection, which I was worried about - the last thing I need is another bout of mastitis (the way he explained it, imagine a dish of powdered formula and a dish of made-up formula - bacteria is going to grow in the wet stuff, but not in the dry.)

4. Wombat is napping! So he's only having one nap a day, and he's more teary than usual (which is also due to the teeth) but he went to sleep without feeding - only took singing Away in a Manger, Good King Wenceslas, and Morningtown Ride as lullabies! (He really likes Christmas Carols ;P)

5. Wombat is sleeping through the night. He wakes up crying in the mornings while I'm studying, but goes back to sleep before I go in to him.

6. the electricity bill arrived - at $925 it is more than I hoped, but less than I feared - and at least now I know the damage and can pay it & concentrate on saving for the accommodation we'll need for the onsite school.

7. Wombat had a perfect potty day yesterday - dry nappies & full potties all day! (Today has not been so good - but then, I was out teaching this morning & that always mucks up his routine, plus being cooped up inside doesn't help).

8. did I mention it's raining? (we are still technically in drought - though there has been flooding all up the coast in the last week... anyway, washing nappies on tank water means we need all the rain we can get)

9. Wombat discovered that - in the absence of a sandpit - he likes digging in the dirt. I was able to redirect him away from the tree root he was trying to dig out near the chook pen, and convince him to play in my garden - while I weeded! Doesn't sound like much, but the last time I had a chance to weed was before I fell pregnant, so a LONG time ago (while pregnant I was paranoid about coming into contact with cat poop). I had resigned myself to losing my garden completely beneath the jungle of weeds & grass... now I am resurrecting it a little at a time

10. my boxes from officeworks arrived - 20 lovely big archive boxes to play with... now I only have to find time to fill them with all the uni notes stored under the house, and the sewing stuff in the caravan... and find somewhere to stack them... hopefully I can get more organized before we are ready to move house (which may happen in a year or so) - I was going to separate Wombat's toys into daily boxes & rotate them like my sister does, but I realised Wombat doesn't really have enough toys to do that - and he knows all his toys and goes searching through for the one he wants - it is amazing the connections he makes now. He sees a horse in a book and collects together all his toy horses... sees a rooster and points towards our chook pen (from inside, which shows he has a great sense of direction!)...

11. I bought a new book on eBay about making cloth books for children... it looks great & I can't wait to start

12. after paying the electricity bill, & saving for accommodation, I won't have enough left over to buy new 'professional looking' clothes... but I am doing reasonably at making exercise a habit - have done at least 30 minutes every day, so far this week - and even managed the full 40 minutes on two days (that's 10 minutes each hour between 3am & 7am)... if I keep it up, I just might manage to fit into some of the clothes I had to put into storage! Especially since my appetite has decreased now I am not eating for Wombat as well! (His appetite has increased correspondingly - he is now eating almost as much as me each day - if I dropped back to what I was eating before I got pregnant, we'd be eating the same! lol... I'll have to have a highly paid job by the time he's a teenager - he'll eat us out of house & home!!!)

13. it's still raining and Wombat's still asleep (that's two hours!!! can't last much longer)! Tomorrow I will finish Trust & Office Accounting - finally - I have hardly had any time to work this week. But I am holding at only a week behind, which is great!