While my gorgeous little boy sleeps on the couch beside me, i have a few precious minutes to jot down some words.
I'm finding parenthood such an incredible experience. Reduced to tears from sheer exhaustion some days, and other days i just stare into his perfect little face and think how amazing it is that we now have a little person to love so much, and wonder in amazement at the things we will be able to teach him, i imagine his first steps, and first words, and how great it will feel when he reaches out to me for a hug. I think about our fights when he's a teenager, and that brings me to the reason for this blog.

There is so much I told myself as a teenager that i would remember, so I didn't make my kids feel quite so bad as I felt once upon a time.
Parents look at teenagers and think they are lazy, that they have no responsibilities and all the freedom and they don't appreciate any of it. Of course that is the case, when i think back to high school i think how easy life was in some ways.. but i never want to forget that in many ways my teen years were so hard, i prefer the life i have now and i never want to go back.

My last year of high school I often felt lost. I didn't know what to do with my life and leaving high school felt like leaving my safety net behind. I was good at school, I was scared of the real world, a world i had NO IDEA what i wanted to do, and everywhere i turned people were asking "what are you going to do for a living? what are you going to achieve?"
I spent my high school years trying to acheive! and i did well. Was it that much to ask that I had a year or two to NOT achieve much? to just live? and when i went to uni and failed miserably, it was a rather low point. And it didn't help that everyone still somehow expected achievements.
Don't forget that feeling. 17 is hard. be easy on this little fella when he is 17.

When i was 15 i saw an ad in the paper for working in american summer camps. And it became a dream of mine. It wasn't a dream that people identified with, not teachers and parents anyway. I only realised this morning during some good meditation, that it really was my dream, and i really did achieve it and it made me feel amazing. A lot of people asked me if i was going back to uni, and didn't seem to realise i had just made my DREAM COME TRUE! it was a big deal!
And i'm truly appreciating now, years later, that it doesn't matter that I am slowly working on a three year degree that has already taken me seven years and is still incomplete. Because, although its on my to-do list, its not my dream. And i made a dream come true. I have already achieved a dream and i feel great about it!
so, I will keep reminding myself, don't think you know Tyson's dreams better than he does. His dream might not be something that sounds amazing to me, but it might be the one thing he wants more than anything.
Sometimes, i may NOT know whats best for him, and he might. Keep open to that idea, hard as it may be.

Its hard to imagine that this tiny little boy will grow up to be taller than me one day, at the moment its even hard to imagine that he might sleep through the night and not cry for me 2 minutes after i leave the room. But it will happen, and I want to always remember that while teenage years were fun, i felt lost a lot of the time. And hopefully I can help Tyson through those years with minimal scars and a bit of guidance.

Welcome to the world baby boy!

Wow. What a week. I'm still rubbing my eyes and checking that it wasn't all a dream.
On Tuesday morning at some ungodly hour, Tyson Harley made his entrance (eventually) into the world.
Its funny because I tried to go into that labour room preparing myself for the worst pain i could imagine, and yet, nothing could have prepared me for that! It was just out of this world.
Now i know why people have never gone into detail about their births... it would just scare women off of ever becoming mothers!!
I had a little trouble pushing the poor lad out, as he was sunny side up and struggling, so they helped me out with the vacuum suction which left a big bruise on his head, but that has faded now and he is looking beautiful!

I got a bit emotional today, i just looked down at him and cried and cried that he is so perfect and gorgeous.. how did we manage to produce this little being?? its just incredible.

He's a good baby so far. And he's been asleep for about half an hour now after a 3am feed so i REALLY need to sleep too.
more to come, i can tell i will be doing these middle of the night blogs a bit more regularly!

5 things.. from Kim

So Kim tagged me and wanted me to say 5 things that make me feel fab/sexy/beautiful...

not a lot makes me feel sexy right now at 8 and half months pregnant, thats for sure! lol but things that always make me feel fabulous..

1. Cooking something delicious. I love cooking, and i love having people appreciate my cooking.

2. New hair colour ALWAYS makes me feel great, especially when its something really different than I had before.

3. A swim in the sea

4. Getting dressed up, and Nate telling me i look beautiful, which he does every time I wear heels. its so easy to please some people! lol

5. funky scarves. i don't know why, but i have a few that i wear out in winter, and for some random reason i always feel a bit special wearing a cool scarf!

4 am...

Well i think my body is preparing me for parenthood, as its 4am, and i'm wide awake.. and have been for the last 2 hours. what IS this?!
I've been a total whinger about pregnancy the last few days.. i am so over it, and never being comfortable, and not being able to be selfish and go out and party cos i want to.
buuuut... then i hear about people who have really horrid pregnancies and realise mine has been a breeze in reality. Gosh i just want a healthy baby and want to meet him or her soon. And i really should stop complaining. My poor fella doesn't know what to say when i get all whingey and teary but i guess he couldn't imagine the CRAZY amount of hormones flooding through my system these days..

in other news... he has been in the big smoke this weekend and i had to stay home cos i couldn't face the long drive, which of course has made me more emotional being separated from him, but while he's been there he's talked to our friend and mentor Brad, the leader of our church at marion to see if its okay for him to marry us on this very weekend next year. And got us pencilled in for our reception! SCARY! now we need to magically come up with a deposit in 7 days hahaha looks like a bit of crawling to our dad's for some little loans.. is it ever ending...

anyway, i guess i better attempt at getting some more sleep. God knows i need it! mmmsleeep
and while i'm at it, i will remember that pregnancy is starting to get hard, but i must stop complaining so much, cos it could have been SOOO much worse...

Changes

Wow it is ALL happening right now. I'm now into the second trimester, we now officially have under 6 months to prepare for the little addition, to what will now be our family.
We are building a house, and are just headed into the 'absolutely strapped for cash' phase of our lives, that will hopefully only last for 6 months or so, not that i think we'll be rich after that, but we should have some breathing room.
I have had to start considering options for work, since my manager wants to hold my job for me, but i'm just not sure if its going to work or not. I said i would need six months off, but am I going to want more? also my job is two shifts a week, plus extra call ins as i am casual, and work full days when one of the other tellers has an RDO. I won't be able to just come in when they need me.. So should I give the bank job the flick? its been really great working there. Probably the nicest, and cleanest, job i've ever had. But then, if i go back to kitchen work, which i DO enjoy, bubs won't have to go into child care. I could do thurs, fri and sat nights, and Nate would be able to be home with bub. Man its so overwhelming.

I'm also concerned about how it will change us as a couple.. I mean, we are truly best friends, and i'm sure nothing will ever change that, but then i think of this little person who is about to become number one to both of us. But can you have more than one number one in your life? :) I know i'm probably being silly. But its such a massive change to our current life, and it will change our relationship regardless. I'm sure it will change for the better, its just that any change can sometimes seem daunting.
I hope we will still be able to be silly together, and not be stressed. Thats all.

hey dad

I never blamed you for leaving. I never did. I always had a surprisingly adult view of the break up, knowing that if two people are so completely unhappy together, then they should split and try and be happy again. It was never that part that bothered me, and i would like to get that out.

What bothered me was that after a while, you stopped making an effort to see us every week. And even once you got your own house, ten minutes away from us, we were invited over for tea once a week, but never on weekends, just to hang out. You never asked us to do things with you on random weekends... And Andrea it affected more than any of us, and you never organised stuff to do with her in the school holidays. And it really got to me.

I am coming to realise now though, that as I grew up, I stopped making an effort to see you too, in a sort of weird way of trying to get you back. And all the while i kept blaming you, even though now it was my fault too.
And since I told you that i was pregnant, and your absolutely ecstatic reaction, I am starting to realise that while our relationship has never been perfect, there are good parts that can be salvaged. And I am starting to hope that if we both try, we can fix at least part of this.

and I begin a new chapter

I always kept diaries as a teenager. Terrified of my mum finding them and reading them, yet hoping that one day the words would be read by someone. Or that I could look back on them and understand my teenage self better, and therefore be a better parent to my own teenage children, should they exist.
Now i don't know why I feel the need to keep putting my thoughts down somewhere. They are rarely interesting to re-read. But it feels good to clear out my head every now and then.

So here goes again...
Just as I am starting a new chapter in my life too. Living with my boyfriend, and we are planning to buy a house very soon, which is just terrifying! but I look forward to the little things, like being sick of staring at a certain wall and painting it a new colour.. like buying art to put on the walls.. (though how we'll afford it I just dont know!) ..i love being creative, and I look forward to creative freedom within a home that is mine to alter. That is exciting.