Military Mummy

I spent 10 years in the Army Reserve where I met my husband, Mark.

I wonder sometimes if the influence has been greater than I thought. I have a cold this weekend and to get through the Easter weekend in one piece and to make sure I had 'me' time I organised the roster below.

Mark was fine with no 'me' time as he regards a sleep in and doing the tax as enough relaxation. hmmm... Anyway: I wonder how many other mums organise their long weekends like this? My friend asked me if we coudl catch up and I said Saturday afternoon with the kids was the only available timeslot and she looked at me a bit weirdly - like how do you know that's the only time you have free..... Well, um, yes I KNOW. See below.

Friday
Kylie to sleep in (until 8.30)
Kylie to tackle the garage and look after La & Bella at same time (9-12.30)
Mark looks after Mack and works during his sleep time (awake time – 12.30)
Family lunch
1.30-2.30 – Mark watches all 3 kids while I do a bit more on garage
3pm-4.30pm Easter Egg hunt with the kids – Kylie to take all of them
Mark to do the tax (2.30-5pm)
5pm – Kylie to get on exercise bike while Mark looks after the kids

Saturday

Mark to sleep in
Kylie to get work paperwork and baptism invitations sorted (10-12.30)
Mark has all 3 kids (10-12.30) – take them for a walk out of the house if he can or movies while I watch Mack (Mack sleeps for 2 hours)
Family lunch
Mark to do tax/buy net nanny software/sync iphone/ipads done etc (2-5)
Kylie to look after all 3 kids (2-5)
Call Atholl

Sunday
Lakeisha has the birthday party at the zoo in the morning – 10 until 12ish (check time)
Mark to drop her off and work on laptop while waiting for her in the cafe (10-11.30)
Call Dad
Kylie has Mack and Bella – Kylie to try and tackle garage with the kids
Lunch – family
Kylie to get nails done/jewellery repairs/neurofen kids/pick up photos 2-4ish
Mark has kids 2-5.30ish
Kylie gets on exercise bike at 4.30pm

Monday
Mark to do RPL paperwork 10-12.30
Lunch: Family suburban walk – take prams and baby bjorn or have an Xbox party if it's bad weather
2-6 Grandma comes - yay- & looks after kids - Kylie tries to have a rest, Mark does RPL

The pics from this weekend so far are great in that they show how much Mack is adored by his sisters. The poor thing gets no space when they're around but look he pleased with himself he is for being able to walk with an aide. He refuses to crawl but seems to be almost walking. I never used to think this was really possible but he's got his own way of learning and I just have to watch and let him choose walking over crawling!

Moral and medical chaos....

We’ve had an interesting last few days full of moral dilemmas, medical issues and laughter.

I realised just how different my morals are to Marks. I have always looked for the easiest way to do something and as long as it’s legal and not hurting someone – hey it’s okay! For example, I love to cheat at board games and I remember my great friend Renata and I having massive fun fights as we realised we both do it and would end up play fighting with pieces going everywhere when someone went too far. Mark used to be completely bemused by this – he just didn’t understand (and he still doesn’t understand why you’d want to cheat). You can imagine then how proud he was when I told him how I was trying to teach Lakeisha to cheat in her homework this week and she refused to do it - telling me off. She wanted to do it properly! It involved writing her 10 spelling words out 4 times on the computer but once we were through the 3rd time (which took a painstaking 40 minutes as she’s not familiar with the keyboard yet) I figured she’d practised enough, dinner time was looming and I was bored so I showed her how to copy and past the words instead. OMG! She reacted like I’d taken her favourite teddy and torn off his leg. Dinner was late that night....... And she made me delete my cheat.

Now we come to dinner...... it’s chaos at our house most nights at dinner time. We always turn off the TV and use the time to catch up on our day with everyone at the kitchen table including the baby. Last night it was simply triple chaos. Everyone had an exciting day, we were all were talking over the top of each other and even the baby wanted to chuck in his two bob’s worth. I ducked away from the table for a millisecond to get more apple juice and came back to find Mark happily eating his dinner with his super duper army issued noise cancelling headphones on! Yes – it was funny, but I was more jealous than anything. I want a pair as well.

Then after dinner our lovely interim au pair takes me aside and tells me she allowed Lakeisha to use her laptop after school and when our au pair looked Lakeisha was on Google typing in the word penis. Oh dear! Time to get special kiddy barrier software. We think it's on her radar as her 9 month old brother has discovered his new toy and is making change time hard as he won't leave his appendage alone!

Then this morning Lakeisha asked me what the rocks in my bathroom were. Intrigued I followed her in to discover she’s pulled out every single little pill in my contraceptive pills case and re-aligned them on the floor. We keep a locked medical cabinet for everything except the pill (as there is no way I’m going to forget to take it and create a 4th addition to our house). I had to very carefully question her about whether she took any and she appears to have not realised they were pills. Phew! Mark and I had a big discussion about whether I should call the poisons line but decided it was probably fine. Nevertheless I took her to school this morning to monitor her and told her teacher just in case she did take one and had a delayed reaction – the teacher who is of course male and the brother of someone I went to school with. Very embarrassing!

I dropped off Lakeisha and then dropped off Bella to pre-school. As I’m waiting for Bella to apply her sunscreen I look at the kid’s drawings and there is a statement from Keirabella with a drawing of a sad face “I don’t like it when my sister hurts me but I like it when Mummy gives me a cuddle’. Oh crap. I register Lakeisha and I (the sister in question) need to have a talk and then I curiously look at some others which were “I hate it when daddy gives me a big smack’ and “I get scared when I get smacked...”. OMG!! I know it’s awful ‘poor kids!’, but I had to smile to myself. As bad as you think you are and as chaotic as it is, there’s always someone else with bigger issues!

In the midst of all of this I had to come home early from work this week as I was falling asleep at my computer. Mack is still sick with bronchitis and not sleeping, and the school easter egg hunt seems more difficult to organise than the construction of a new building. Sigh!!

Tantrumy thoughts mixed with evil ones...

I know a mother whose children do not, and have not, ever thrown tantrums (and who has no issues, and has never had issues, with either of them sleeping through the night). I’m serious! She’s not someone I’ve made up – she actually exists!
 
It’s funny but I never seem to be able to bond with this woman. EVER... I should be able to bond with her. Our kids are friends, we are professional working mums, we both drive safe boring cars, she lives in the next suburb so our kids could have play-dates, she seems smart and she likes shoes but...... every now and again I forget why I don’t like speaking with her and I accidentally find myself in a conversation with her.
 
Big mistake Kylie: I always walk away feeling like an icky, stinking, bad ass mother!
 
Let’s call her Stephanie.
 
Stephanie always smiles sweetly and tries ever so hard to understand problems of other mothers. Last week’s comments at a mummy coffee catch-up the comments were: “My sister in law rang me the other day asking for my advice on how to deal with a tantrum and I had to say that I’m so sorry but I just can’t help you - my kids have never thrown a tantrum and I wouldn’t know what to do”.
 
AND people listen to her and smile...... WTF?
 
This is not something I’ve made up. It’s actually a claim repeatedly made by her. Every time I go to school and see this woman there my heart sinks and I just know I have to avoid her or get a reputation for being a complete biatch because one day I’m not going to be able to keep quiet.
 
What I find amazing is that when my friend who was sitting next to her at the coffee catch-up was told this about tantrums (or the lack of) she did not react to this like it was a statement from an alien with green goop dropping from her nose, or ask the perfect mother what drugs she used. My friend is such an emotionally gifted person she accepted this fact very graciously while it took every inch of me NOT to jump in and query Stephanie further about her witchcraft skills and what nights she dances with the devil to achieve such almost impossible black magic night after night, day after day. It also took every inch of me not to pull evil faces behind her back and accidentally shove sugar sticks up her nose.
 
My crazy, hectic, juggling act of motherhood does not compute the absence of tantrums. In fact very soon I think I might be next to tantrum on the list.......
 
In the last few days we not only had to cope with Bella, our 4 year old, chucking her first major banshee tantrum in 12 months over the fact she didn’t want a glass of milk – an Oscar winner for over dramatisation if ever I saw one, but she then bit a friend’s 9 year old boy yesterday full on the stomach. The most perfectly round deep horrible bite I’ve ever seen. What I love is that my friend made a joke about being thankful it wasn’t lower and smiled at me – even though she was probably thinking I am never going anywhere with that family and that horrid evil banshee ever again.

Bella embarrassed me further by refusing to sit in the naughty corner and then trying to reason with me that she’d said sorry so why was I still fussing? OMG – she just did not ‘get it’ that her biting was UNACCEPTABLE. She also knew she was in public with at least 100 observers watching Mummy surreptitiously behind their meal to judge my reaction and she knew she could push me and there was no way I was going to react badly and embarrass us. My only option was to leave so I could tell her exactly what I thought privately of her behaviour in the car – which is exactly what she wanted in the first place - to leave!
 
Bella was once so bad that my best friend banned her from her house in case she taught her own toddler son how to tantrum like an animal. I think it’s even more frustrating in that I thought she’d grown out of this evil, horrible stage and that she was the world’s cutest, most adorable child. Up until the last 2 weeks she’s been a dream child. But..... Tonight the teacher sent home a note that we need to talk as she's become rebellious.. My child? Never!!
 
I won’t even start with Stephanie's absence of issues with her children sleeping except to say that she must have shares in a pharmaceuticAl company, and that our 9 month old Mack slept through last night for the first time in months. Yay!!
 
On the upside..... I only have the next 11 years to avoid Stephanie at school. Oh crap! Maybe it's Mummy's time to tantrum.....

Baking evil thoughts....

Today I will try to just think evil thoughts and not say them out loud.

I couldn’t help buy a card that said this today after being chided again on a closed internet forum for my comments.

The forum is like car crash television for me. I know I shouldn’t indulge in it and I know it’s bad for me but I can’t help sneaking a peek. This one is a step worse than car crash TV as it can also attack back! Those of you that know me well know I have a quirky sense of humour for the ridiculous that most people ‘get’ in person – for example when one of my students asked for advice on her uni program and she was a bit stressed I told her to chuck it all in and find a Sugar Daddy. The reaction was confusion and then hilarity. Of course I didn’t mean she should do it but I sensed that this was a big issue for her keeping her awake at night and the comment was designed to flip the stress on it’s head and give her perspective. I can usually judge the audience correctly. It usually works. And it did.

My kids are very familiar with terminology like eating caterpillar vomit (avocado), squashed flies (sultanas) and saying butterfly poo instead of the s word.

So what did I say on this closed forum that was so bad? Actually in this case, it wasn’t the sublimely ridiculous. I was being serious but making it light hearted and recognising my shortcomings as the issue has had quite an impact on my kitchen habits. In a discussion about the Women’s Weekly cookbook and people posting up pictures of their wonderful creations, I noted that when I was a kid one of my friends lost his fingers in the mixer while baking (true and gruesome). Some of you that I grew up with will know the incident. I suppose in my own way I like to throw in the ridiculous and it's not the direction I think people thought the conversation would take! But I have to say that when I think of baking a cold hard stab of fear possesses me. I don't usually share why this is with people but hey - it's interesting in a forum with mostly strangers I feel it's okay to tell them my insecurities. Most people know I outsource birthday cakes etc and now they know why. In my mind I connect baking with blood and panic.

I said and here is my evil comment.... “I’m a Nazi with the mixer. Absolutely no-one else is allowed to touch it. I know it’s extreme ..”.

You should have seen the offence one woman in particular took to my use of the word Nazi and then she posted an independent post about my reference to the work nazi and..... I’m instantly a baddie! I called myself a Nazi in regards to baking and recognised my need to get over my extreme reaction to the trauma – perspective here sweetie. Is her reaction so overzealous that it’s a parody?

I know the solution is NOT to look at this forum again or not to post, but.... it’s hard for someone like me who loves people and who loves to interact to just butt out. 85% of the time I feel supported, loved, and receive great advice. I like to think I give good advice too, but I’ve realised a fault I have that I never thought was an issue. I am super sensitive to written criticism and I really need to toughen up.

This happened once before on this forum and friends asked me not to leave but ........... I have a self imposed ban for a few day’s and then I’ll probably accidentally say the wrong thing again. It’s funny as I never have this issue in person with people – so the written word really can be misinterpreted and people seem to be nastier online than they are in person.

I think some sort of guidelines need to be in place for closed forums but I’m too scared to suggest it! I hope the investigation into that defence closed forum creates some kind of national guidance. I once suggested on the forum that we only say constructive, supportive things when people started attacking each other and they turned on me.

Maybe I should just watch more of Jerseylicious or Keeping up with the Kardashians – at least they don’t bite back! Maybe I could have some fun with this and just completely and utterly not censor anything???

I certainly know that I will never enter another closed forum ever again.

Bye Bye La Bella....

My family based business La Bella Creations will cease to trade from 31 March this year. Until then products will be on sale. www.labellaonline.com

It's been a difficult decision to make as La Bella has won awards, has a great fan-base, I've been able to run it flexibly and spend more time with my kids and we've made a profit in our second year of operation. I'm told this isn't normal and most businesses take longer than this to pay themselves and make $ - so I'm happy!

However, while I've been running La Bella I've also been teaching at university part time, helping my husband with his property business, running Mumpreneur Online and consulting for a global company. Oh and all the other things you do like being parent rep for the school and charity work in running balls to raise $ for cancer, Red cross, hospital helicopter services etc - and raise 3 kids all under 6 with a baby of 8 months.

This morning in an information session for year 1 - as the school requested parent reps my friend leant over to me and said a firm No! This reflects my general approach to 2012. I'm going to try and slow down and centralise my energy and business acumen a little more.

That's the thing. I'm doing so much in the world of business and it's all been quite successful and enjoyable that I'm not sure what I should really do when I grow up. I'm 40 year's old in a year so I should probably have worked it out by then!!

I've made the decision to close La Bella based on the fact that I make more money for my family helping my husband with his property business than I do with La Bella (as profit margins per necklace are $1 compared to $100,000 + per property) and he and I will be able to do it together and therefore see each other more often. I also make a lot more money consulting which is also flexible and it can help fund the property business, when needed. I've asked not to go face to face for teaching as it's lots of work and I'm instead running a university intern placement program for third years (some of who I've taught before so it's nice to help them transition to the workforce) - hopefully 2012 will be less busy!

In regards to my team, Bianca is now working with another exciting firm and we keep in touch and Misty has picked up work as a virtual assistant and can still help with the property business. The property work is also a lot less intensive than having to pack orders every day and deal with daily customer enquiries. Most of the work is based on knowing about strata titles, DA approvals and going through paperwork processes so it's less urgent and higher instant profits.

It makes sense to reduce my workloads, and it also means that my husband and I can cover up and double for each other whereas that's not happening with La Bella as he's swamped with his business and I'm swamped with mine. I'm not sure what else I will stop. This is my first step but I'll probably stop teaching at University in 2013 and I'm not going to sit on any ball committees this year - I'll just go along and enjoy the party instead. As much as I love it - I love doing lots of things and I can't do everything I love!

I'm not going to sell La Bella as I own the international rights for people/businesses not to copy the idea of tug proof jewellery around babies and it's worth quite a bit now and into the future. I'll simply cease trading and when my kids are older I'll decide then whether to sell La Bella, or start it back up again...

Slowing down and reducing my commitments means I can spend even more time with my family and with my husband on his business. It's saying yes to my family which feels right!

For now there is 50% off for me to clear stock and get the stock room back!!! I'm a little sad but mostly I feel free as I know I csn run an successful online business from home and now I need to integrate and consolidate my efforts with my husband so we can achieve great things together.

Baby weight gripe.....

Mack is almost 7 month’s old so I only have 2 month’s left to use the excuse that I’m 10kgs overweight because I just had a baby.

Mark bought me a set of weigh scales for Christmas that syncs with my ipad and tracks my weight loss- he’s a very brave man! After the initial shock and me wanting to dong him on the head with it – I quite liked it. Of course I threw a tantie over the fact that it was hard to set up and I pretended not to like it much – but secretly I love it. It has little charts and graphs and hey it must be working as the little arrow on the graph is pointing down….. for today anyway.

I was at the baby clinic yesterday for Mack’s vaccinations and I ran into an acquaintance who had her first baby 4 month's ago. She looked like a celebrity that freakily bounces back as if they’ve spent 20 hours in the gym a day and who eat 1 brazil nut for breakfast and 2 snow peas for dinner with oxygen in between for snacks.

She was gasp..... SLIM!

I had to ask.... “How did you lose the bloody baby weight so quickly”?

I'm thinking... Don't tell me you lost the baby weight breast feeding, forgetting to eat because you are so busy, or that it just falls off from running after little 3 month old Oscar - who can't roll or crawl yet as that would be a porky pie lie. I KNOW better. I have 3 kids under 6. I am surrounded by tempting kiddy leftovers all day, I NEED to hit the calorie laden grog at night in excess, I don't believe you. Do I look stupid? - just freaking fess up so we can all enjoy the secret!

She tells me the worst response of all. It just sort of happened. She hadn’t noticed and it just kind of went. WTF?

How does it just go?

Baby weight: "hey sweetie I'm hitching a ride out of here as there's a mamma in the Whitsundays I need to visit".

Hrrrmmpphh...

I officially hate her! I want to be her! I want her genes! And I want to be able to fit in her jeans.

Oh and I’ve said this before - Miranda Kerr is an alien!! No-one looks that good in jeans (and on the catwalk) after a baby unless they have alien genes.

Watson Family Christmas Letter 2011

For the last few years I’ve had the time to put together a Christmas letter in a lovely professional newsletter format, pdf it and send it off. Not this year. I’m sorry to say this blog is it as with 3 children under 6 (one now 6 month’s old), a full time job, part-time lecturing at Uni and a small business I don’t really have the time to do this. Usually a Christmas letter is a bit show offy about how wonderful the year has been. I could write this up as we have indeed had magical moments like the birth of Mack, but it’s not all roses and I’d hate to lie. On the upside we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world with the most amazing facilities and we’re safe.

We had a fantastic first half of the year. Mack was born on 6 June and he is simply the most amazing and wonderful baby to complete our family of 5. He’s a very happy baby and quite go with the flow which I suppose he has to be considering his birth order. But phew, I’m so happy we’ve been gifted with our bubba that was so huge he had to come out early and he reminds me a little of Jabba the hut! He’s now 6 month’s old and weighs only about 2 kgs less than Keirabella who turns 4 in a few weeks. He may have a fabulous career as a sumo wrestler.

I struggled at the end of the pregnancy not only because I crazily walked over hot coals at an Anthony Robbins event (and have an embedded coal in my foot to prove it) but for the third time in five years (I’ve been pregnant almost two and a half years out of 5) I wasn’t able to dance on tabletops, eat soft cheese or drink copiously. My hip that was broken after giving birth to Keirabella was at risk, and quite sore, and I had to be very careful with everything I did. Towards the end of the pregnancy I was walking like my 97 year old Grandma, but instead of a support frame I was lugging school bags, library books, water bottles and swimming gear around for the 1.5 hour school journey every day (3 hours total in a day).

Our brilliant idea of getting an au pair to help me force feed the children, dunk them in the bath and cope with their protests as we ripped a brush through their bird’s nest hair and help with the school run backfired when we ended up with a strict militant German who everyone was scared of, but we survived. The German did her time and left and we got a new au pair from Austria who turned out to be wonderful. Jenny is the 3rd honorary daughter of the family and is loved by all of us. Her only weakness is an inability to use the iron properly and our clothes all look like we’re in competition with foil lolly wrappers. We can cope with that much better than the fear of being doomed forever and being criticised for hanging the kid’s clothes up in the wrong section.

Jenny’s influence has extended to my purchase of clothes as I bought a batch of non iron wrap dresses to make her life easier! This leads me to budgeting. A few month’s after our beautiful Mack was born we got thrown into having to budget for every last cent when a stalker at Mark’s work (which was our primary source of income) made it too difficult for him to stay and he switched to a new role elsewhere.

My need for security and concerns over running a family on 1 volatile income launched me back into fulltime work with a 5 month old baby, no sleep at night and running a household routine for 6 people that is akin to an under 6rs soccer game. No-one really knows where the ball is, half of us are crying at any one time about something trivial, people from the sidelines are yelling out conflicting advice and the goal posts seem to move whenever we get near them - or we get wiped out by a tsunami just when we think we have it together. It's had an impact on La Bella as although La Bella is successful in earning the equivalent to a receptionist level salary it's not enough to sustain all of us - yet! I'll have to work out how to balance it all.

The family budgeting process has been an interesting one as I’ve worked out just how much I spend on desperate interstate daily phone calls with Kate, my new technology addiction, chocolate, drunken bids at charity balls and the real killer: how much we actually spend on alcohol – oh dear!

The medical bills this year went through the roof with a birth and then surgery for Bella. Keirabella got sicker and sicker during the year with sleep apnoea and fever after fever, endless infections and huge weight loss. She had her tonsils and adenoids out a month ago and she seems to be thriving although her weight still worries me. None of us are exactly the build of a stick insect in our family but Keirabella seems destined to become a supermodel as she’s way too skinny!!! She’s still on my Mummy worry radar but I am comforted (and horrified) by the fact that if she could she’d eat nothing but chocolate and chips and seems to hold off on eating anything healthy until she gets her own way.

Lakeisha is a beautiful headstrong little girl who has a few select friends, loves to play with the boys and keeps swapping her dresses and other girly clothing with her male friends as soon as she gets them into her bedroom (a behaviour I hope she doesn’t repeat in 10 year’s time). Lakeisha wants an IPAD or Xbox for Christmas. Keirabella is a party animal that is friends with everyone and is massively into princesses and fairies (which Lakeisha proclaims she HATES). She’s usually dressed in fairy costumes that swim on her due to her small size and I’m constantly having to fix her wings and mend her wands. She wants chocolate or something princessy for Christmas. Mack is already tearing around the house in his walker, is accessing the lower drawers in the kitchen and takes great delight in ramming us against a wall or pulling our hair. He’s constantly eating and moving and laughs at every opportunity he gets.

We need more laughter next year and we’ll all have at least a week off over Christmas with friends and family which is going to be fabulous. We spent some valuable time with Greg and Danielle in Cairns for their wedding, we caught up with Bec on the Gold Coast and we hope that we can spend more time next year with our friends. We’ve planned a holiday to Bali next year with Laurie and Matt and Tim and Penny plus families, so we’re looking forward to playing with the kids, relaxing, swimming, drinking and getting cheap massages.

The Christmas holiday coming up in a few days is needed as after a few week’s of me taking a new job in November and being excited about it paying much more than I’d ever expect I began the new role and discovered that I had no desk for a week, the boss never said hello, no-one seemed to be clear on what benefits the project would deliver, and I had to work closely with someone who was completely incompetent, who liked to work alone, that preferred to communicate by email when they were sitting right next to me and who admitted they didn’t like socialising or people!!! Can you imagine me getting on with this person? After a few weeks I finished a planning document that colleagues told me would normally take 4 month’s to write (I did it in 2 weeks) and I chose to walk! It was nice to receive hugs of support and tears from people I’d only known for a few weeks!

I’m really pleased I was completely fickle about this as I’m now working for the most wonderful organisation with the most fabulous boss who says hello regularly, I have flexibility of work hours, a desk, a mobile phone, free fruit, a laptop, staff, a carpark in the city, I’m surrounded by clever, lovely people, I like my role and I have all the support I could ever need! Yay! There really are some toxic workplaces out there.

So just when we thought we had it together Mark’s anonymous stalker comes out of the woodwork the week before Christmas to try and sabotage his career again!!! I’d really love to just sit this person down and explain that their actions are hurting a whole family and that I’ve been ripped out of maternity leave and separated from my beautiful baby boy earlier than planned because of this person, but I suspect that they’re a jealous, crazy, malicious person and they may actually get some glee from this thought. I’m not sure they will get much traction as the powers that be are sensible and think it’s the actions of an unstable person but it’s not nice to think someone hates your husband that much that they’re seeking to ruin him.

I’m sure we’ll get through next year in one piece but first we need to survive Christmas Eve at our place with 13 people, lunch at the Tradie’s the following day and then a trip down to Merimbula to see Mark’s family and relax on the beach in the current un-beachy temperatures of 20 degrees average.

We’ve learnt this year that I’m having no more children (ever!), that we have very supportive friends and family, and that sometimes life knocks you sideways but you simply need to dust it off and keep going...

I have a feeling that next year is going to be AMAZINGLY good.