Hi all can you guess who has been feeling sick for the last few days, yeah me, aching body, headaches and just feeling kinda blah but it is now a lovely cool and wet Monday morning and I am feeling pretty much the same yeah I would love to be still in bed asleep but can’t happen as Leo will be here soon as well as Summer and of course I have to take Leo to school and Summer will be here till her mum is able to get her.

So what has been happening in my life since I last wrote, well nothing much to be honest. I did have the girls here for lunch on Saturday and yeah I wasn’t feeling good but still managed to do a mince stew for lunch which everyone seemed to like. Natasha had two lots as did Jessica, now as some of you will know Natasha often doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive so going back for more is out of the norm.

I also managed to do all the washing yesterday but had to have a nap as I was so tired and felt like shit.

Last night Natasha told me that Jono (Blain’s dad) thinks that Blain should be staying with his mum while Natasha is at work as Tim and I don’t punish Blain and don’t feed him right as in don’t cook many real meals. He is right about the meals because often it is just me and Blain and he doesn’t usually want a proper meal, so I can’t see the point.

Now we do try to discipline Blain but he has a right attitude and has told us that we are not his parents and can’t tell him what to do, he is very cheeky and often talks back and gets this look on his face and rolls his eyes at us. Yes I know I am a softie but I do try, it is just not that easy at times. I have no problem with him spending a night or two at his other grandmothers place she has just as much right to see Blain as we do, now as I said I am a big softie but at times I think she is a bit to hard on him but then what do I know I am not there.

On Thursday night we had both Blain and Leo here but what a night at one stage Blain and Leo got into a bit of a tiff and then Tim got into a mood, he was so very angry over nothing really yes the boys where mucking up and Blain was being rude and disrespectful but Tim over-reacted and was making matters worse. I was calm and told Tim he was over-reacting and making matters worse which just made Tim angrier. The only thing all Tim’s carry on did was make the boys side with each other and get over their tiff faster.

Tim was complaining that he had to get up early Friday morning at 3.30am and needed to go to sleep, the boys were not loud they were in the bedroom playing the Xbox but when I went to bed I forgot to close the bedroom door, I like to sleep with it opened and of course Leo came into our room to ask me if he could have an ice cream, he could but that made Tim yell that he was woken up and needed to get to sleep, in fact he kept going on for a few minutes I ended up telling him to just shut up, he snapped I have to get up at 3.30am and I snapped back then shut the hell up and go to sleep.

Moving on to Friday night, Tim yet again got so angry this time because Leo was getting frustrated. Leo had received a bike for his birthday and Tim had put it together and yesterday evening he was attempting to ride it and was getting frustrated because it wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. Tim ended up yelling and carrying on like a child saying his back hurt and something else can’t remember what but I snapped back that I was on the phone and I also have a bad back, I always have a lot of back pain. Yet again Tim’s anger was over the top.

Now you may think I am just bagging on Tim but I am worried about him these flare ups are a worried, yes he has always had flare ups like this when the girls were little but I do worry about it. Getting angry is one thing but he will also say things like why does he bother or he is wrong and he doesn’t matter, he throws his hands in the air when he starts on his self bashing.

This is what worries me being angry is natural but we all don’t go on and on, over-reacting and saying that the family don’t love him and he doesn’t matter in the family and if he wasn’t here no one would care or we would be happier if he wasn’t around. I would like him to go back on his medication for depression but he doesn’t think he needs it. I, however, do think he needs it, but I don’t know anything according to Tim.

Ok it is now late in the afternoon, had to stop writing for a while, first I had to take Tim down the road he had an appointment to have his eyes checked and was convinced he would not be able to drive home afterwards. Of course he was able to drive his eyes were not blurry like he thought they would be.

Then I had to cook lunch for the family, just a mince stew, everyone ate it and Natasha even went back for seconds which is a bit of a shock as she doesn’t eat much at all. Then there was washing to hang out before Tim and I went to Officeworks to get ink for my printer. I come home and went to change the ink and guess what I bought the wrong ink so had to go straight back and change it, thankfully Officeworks is only just around the corner.

Jessica helped Leo learn to ride his bike, although when I rang her at 11.25am to see when she would be here and tell her that Leo wanted his mum to help him with his bike she said I am no good at things like that, which really annoyed me and Natasha and Kathy she is the mum she should stop saying things like this are too hard.

Leo at first had a lot of trouble he couldn’t balance, and wanted the training wheels on it but they were shit and wouldn’t go on right so in the end Tim took them off and Leo learnt to ride it without the training wheels.

He was so happy he still having some trouble with his balance but he has improved a lot and we told him the more he rides it the better he will get at it.

Back to Tim for a moment the girls all had a talk to him this morning about his temper and mood swings, he said he feels like a failure and they all asked what does he think he failed at. They all think he is the best dad, they all told him that growing up he was firm but fair and yes he punished them but he was never abusive or anything.

Jessica said dad look at us, none of your children are drug addicts, none have ever been arrested, they don’t have a heap of children with no job and different fathers all your girls work and support their children. You have a wife who loves you and you have been with the same woman for over 30 years which is good. You taught us that working is part of life and after losing your temper with a child it is good to go back and have a clam talk with them and explain why you got so mad.

So all in all dad you have done a great job, you are loved and you are respected by us your daughters and yes we know our children at times do not show you the respect you deserve but we their mothers are working on getting that to change.

Now I have no idea if this all sunk in with Tim but I hope it did and that he realises how much he is loved and respected by his daughters and me.

Hello Monday, where did the weekend go, and why am I feeling like I have walked up a steep hill and then rolled down the other side. What does that mean you wonder, well it means that I am aching all over and feel sick in the tummy, but of course I have not told anyone except those who read my blog. Now some of you may be thinking if I am not feeling great why don’t I go back to bed but that isn’t going to happen as I have little Summer here while her mum is at work, Tasha is here but right now she has locked herself in Tim’s room so she can do her exercises. Like her mum she likes to work out alone. I might feel better after I eat, haven’t had the time to eat this morning but that is nothing new.

Moving on I am sure we have all heard the saying “best thing since sliced bread”, but how many of you/us know how long sliced bread has been around and who invented sliced bread. I didn’t so I decided to find out.

Slice bread has been around since 1928 so less the a hundred years, some guy named Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the first bread slicer, well he started working on the invention it back in 1912.

The first commercial use of the slicing machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company located in Chillicothe Missouri in 1928, their product “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread” was a success. Although many bread makers felt that the bread would go stale if sliced, because of this at first Rohwedder tried using hat pins to keep the pieces of bread together, naturally this didn’t work out very well. So he came up with an invention that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it in wax paper.

Of course at first most bakers where not convinced that sliced bread was a good idea, this changed when the Chillicothe baking company started selling sliced bread and found their sales skyrocketed , so other companies also started to sell sliced bread.

The first bread slicing machine was about five-foot long and three-foot high, they are of course not so big any-more.

It was in 1930 that the Wonder Bread company began to commercially produce sliced bread loaves, thus popularising sliced bread and making it a household staple. Sliced bread was advertised as “the greatest step forward in the bread industry since the invention of wrapped bread.

Of course before the invention of pre-sliced bread, people either baked their own bread at home or bought full loaves of bread, whichever they did they had to cut of a slice of bread every time they wanted one. This meant that often the bread would be hacked up with slices not the same size.

What made me think of writing about sliced bread this morning, is the fact that on Friday Natasha brought home a couple of unsliced bread which since I was out of bread yesterday I used. I liked that I could cut it nice and thick I like a thick slice of bread, Tim, however, doesn’t and because of that I usually buy bread sandwich sliced which for those who do not know is the thin sliced.

Anyway this morning when Kathy-Lee was here she sliced off a couple of slices to make a sandwich for Summer and she hacked at it one thickish slice and one not so thick slice, so then I started thinking about sliced bread.

Of course we all know that you can buy either sliced or unsliced bread, and there are heaps of different bread rolls one can buy.

What type of bread do you like?

I prefer white bread, or the high fiber low GI bread but that is 70 cents dearer so I don’t get that one very often. I prefer to get my bread for Baker’s Delight, I don’t like to buy bread for the supermarket as it doesn’t stay as fresh and doesn’t taste as good but that is just me.

Hello Thursday, and what a hot Thursday it has been, this morning Leo got dressed in long pants for school and I had to insist that he change his pants and wear shorts as it has been around 36°c today and that is far to hot for long pants.

Also this morning Blain didn’t want to wear the only clean shirt he had as it was the really big shirt his mum bought him for school at the start of the year, so I told him to wear the one he wore yesterday and I would do a load of washing so he will have a clean shirt for tomorrow. Well he thought it would be cool to wear two shirts a normal tee shirt under his school shirt, and of course he got hot during the day. When asked why he didn’t just take the tee shirt off he said his teacher wouldn’t let him, I asked why didn’t he just go to the boys toilets at either recess or lunch and take it off and shove it in his bag. He didn’t think of that.

I don’t think I mentioned that Leo got a letter home from school it was a formal warning that he is on what they call an intention to suspend what it is, is a caution due to inappropriate behaviour. This is because a week ago while playing at school another child threw sand in Leo’s ear so Leo got pissed and threaten to punch the child for “being a dick” (Leo’s words). So he got into trouble over that, this happened a week after he was accused of being racist when another boy, made a comment about how white Leo is and Leo said so what you’re black. He didn’t think it was wrong he was just stating a fact and wanted to know why the other boy could call him white but he couldn’t say he was black, don’t think the teacher liked Leo asking that question. With Leo, he rarely will start trouble but he will not walk away either, you throw sand in his ear he will stand up and threaten to punch you.

Blain just realised there is a push bike out the back, it is Leo’s bike he got it for his birthday in January and pappa (Tim) put it together on the weekend but the tyres are flat and we couldn’t find a pump so I told Blain I will be buying a bike pump tomorrow when I go shopping. I also told Blain that he will have to ask Leo if he can ride it, because if it was Blain’s bike Leo would have to ask permission.

Also this week Jessica has picked Leo up from school each afternoon except on Monday and then that was only because she was waiting on her shopping to be delivered, so hopefully she will be able to get him tomorrow, as he will not be coming here tomorrow night due to being grounded. So I do not want to pick him up as it will only cause upset for him and me, spoke to her this afternoon asked how come she has been able to get him he said it was because the child she picks up has been getting out early but should be back to normal time out next week so I will be back to getting Leo next week.

Damn I just realised that Blain has gone to his friends place, yes I knew he was going but I was distracted and only just realise he was suppose to do his homework before going out, oh well I will call him and get him home and tell him he has to do his homework. I am expecting him to complain as he always complains when I ask him to do his homework, or anything really.

Toilet training my almost 3 year old

How do you know your child is ready to be toilet trained? For me, it was my child’s occasional interest in the toilet and her need to be like her big sister. She would see her big sister go to the toilet and run after her saying it was her turn. There were times when she actually used the toilet, but for the most part she had already gone in her nappy. I was never disappointed that she there was no action on the toilet, in fact I was rather excited that she was showing an interest.

I wanted to toilet train my daughter at 18 months when she originally started to show an interest. All I could think about was how much money we could be saving by not buying nappies every week. I could be one of those mums who was able to get her child to use the toilet completely before she was 2. But in all honesty, what would I accomplish by attempting to toilet train my daughter at such a young age? Yes she was showing an interest, but she was still using a bottle and slept with a dummy. She liked to be cuddled and enjoyed playing. Toilet training at this age? I would encounter disappointment, stress and more laundry and toilet cleaning then I would like. I had to wait for that right moment. I had no idea when it was going to happen, but I knew it would be around her 3^rd birthday.

The very idea of toilet training can be a dread. There are parents who have years of experience and know exactly what they are doing, while there are people like me who research the best methods. There are people out there who claim they can have your child toilet trained in 3 days. I did my research on this and found that the child had to be without undies and pants for a minimum of 3 days and you could only leave the house for an hour at a time. You had to monitor your child and their movements and look for signs of them wanting to use the toilet. Then you had to get them to the toilet and praise them once they had used the toilet. What person wants to spend their day looking for signs their child needs to wee or poo?

I also read that one of the best methods to encourage toilet use is to put them straight into undies. This meant the use of pull ups was also not recommended. You would have to have at least 20 pairs of undies and a lot of dresses or loose pants. What about old towels? If your child hasn’t shown an interest but you want to have a go at it, you are going to need lots of old towels or hope the day outside is pleasant enough for you both to play on the grass.

I could go into many different methods of how best to toilet train your child, but in the end each child is different and the journey will vary for each family. I tried letting my daughter run around naked and taking note on when she needed to go. In the end I found myself doing a lot of laundry and dealing with what some people would call a wannabe nudist who actually enjoyed marking her territory. I guess I was lucky in some way, at least I didn’t have to scrub the poo of the carpet. She was kind enough to do it on the tiles in bathroom or in the nappy I placed on her because I had had enough.

One of the things you are told by professionals is to not get angry at your child when they don’t make it to the toilet. Put on a happy face and let them know ‘accidents’ happen; you as the parent or care giver are to continue asking your child if they need to use the toilet. Patience is a virtue.

I admittedly lost my cool just last week. The feeling of disgust I felt with myself brought me to tears. I was that angry at my child for once again not using the toilet like I knew she could. After that day, I put my daughter back in nappies and gave myself some time to think about what I should be doing. What was I doing wrong, my daughter is almost 3 years. She knows how to use the toilet, I’ve seen her do it. She knows her wees and poos go in the toilet. After every ‘accident’ my child told me she needed to use toilet. After a whole weekend of feeling like a failure and wracking my brain over what I could be doing, I decided that I would forego the toilet training for a few more weeks and wait until after her 3^rd birthday.

Come Monday morning and my daughter wakes with a dry nappy. I give her a morning cuddle and sit with her for 20 minutes while we Doc McStuffins. She turns to me and asks for apple juice. Placing her on the lounge I notice her nappy is still dry. Curiosity gets the better of me so I tell her I will get her apple juice if she goes to the toilet. Without hesitation my child runs to the bathroom and takes off her nappy. I follow her and listen outside the door, I can hear her placing the step near the toilet so she can sit down on the seat. Then it happens, she does her wee. I run to the kitchen and pour the glass of apple juice and place it on the table. Seconds after I place the glass down I hear “I did wees on the toilet”. I praise her by giving her a cuddle and her drink and go to her room to get her undies.

After that morning I realized that for my child, asking her when she needed to use the bathroom was pointless. The trick to toilet training my almost 3 year old was to have her use the toilet before she started something new, something she wanted. Now we have her go to the toilet before she gets in the car, goes outside, plays a new game, gets in the bath.

Five days later and we have had only one ‘accident’ each day. Even her day care said she seemed happier. It’s still early days, but something tells me this is how I will successfully toilet train my almost 3 year old. How do I know though? I don’t, but ask yourself; do you use the toilet before you start something new? When you start your shift at work, go to bed, wake up, go for a drive?

Kathy

Hello everyone it is now late on Monday and I am just getting around to writing a post, this morning I had Summer for a few hours while her mum went to work, looks like I am going to have her most Mondays and maybe one other day during the week. Kathy has decided to pull her out of daycare as she really can’t afford it. In fact at times she feels like she is just working to pay for daycare. Summer is no trouble and she loves seeing “uncle Tasha”, in fact when Tasha left today for work Summer sobbed, she didn’t even kiss her mum when Kathy left this morning but Tasha leaving really upset her.

I also had to drive Leo to school who isn’t a happy little boy at the moment he is in trouble and grounded. This is because on Friday afternoon he wandered off and I was unable to find him, he went up the road to talk to some other little boys, who he said he thought he had met with Blain the day before. He didn’t ask if he could go anywhere and I was in a right state because I was unable to find him, also because I had already had a bath and was in my pj’s I was not happy having to wander up the driveway calling him. In fact if it wasn’t for a little boy who lives in the complex telling me he saw Leo go out the driveway and turn right I wouldn’t had any idea where to look. So on Saturday his mum grounded him and then last night he went and stole some chocolate and tried to hide it from his mum and lied about it and all in all his mum added a couple of days to his grounding.

Now she has said to me that he will only spend as much time with me as she needs him to as I cannot be trusted to follow though on his punishment, which is to stay in my bedroom doing nothing when he is here. I said of a morning I do not have a problem with that but if that is how she feels then he shouldn’t be here next Friday night, in fact if she says he can come I am going to tell her that I will let him watch TV but that is all. If she isn’t happy with that then she shouldn’t leave him here, because let’s be honest here him being here is usually about her wanting a break more then him wanting to be here.

Oh yeah that reminds me he wasn’t suppose to use the internet of Friday night and I told him he couldn’t, but when he was here he asked if he could use my computer and I said yet but no internet if he just wanted to go into the paint program and do whatever he does on the program fine but no internet. So he sat at my computer thought about it and after a couple of minutes shut it and went back to watching telly. He did not use the internet but because he told his mum he was allowed to use the computer she thought I let him get online, this really pissed me off as she was saying I was lying.

I do feel that my girls have forgotten how lenient I was with them when they where children, many times their dad would ground them not tv, no nothing for a couple of weeks I stuck to it for the first week and on the second week I would say you can watch a little telly between the time they got home from school till when their dad got home from work. I have always been a softie when it came to discipline so why do they get all pissed off with me now, I have not changed I am still the big softie I have always been.

Hi all how are everyone today?

I was just looking through my unposted blog ideas folder looking for something to write about and found this idea titled I am white, it is some Facebook quiz thing I did last year and thought I would save what it said about me and use it as a blog post some time. Now to be honest I did this quiz thing so long ago I had forgotten all about it. Anyway you did the quiz and it gave you a colour and tells you what your colour says about your personality and such.

So I am going to share with you all what being “white” means now let’s not forget that this is nothing about race it is about what type of person I am suppose to be, read what it says about me and tell me if you think it sounds like me or not.

Whites are motivated by Peace. They seek independence and require kindness. They resist confrontation at all costs. To them, feeling good is more important than being good. They are typically quiet by nature, process things very deeply and objectively with great clarity. Of all the colours,whites are the best listeners. They respect people who are direct but recoil from perceived hostility or verbal battle.

Whites need their “alone time” and refuse to be controlled by others. Whites want to do things their own way and in their own time. They ask little of others and resent others demanding much of them. Whites are much stronger than people think, but are not often seen for their strength because they don’t easily reveal their feelings. Whites are even-tempered, diplomatic, and the voice of reason; but can also be indecisive, unexpressive, and silently stubborn. When you deal with a WHITE, be kind, accept and support their individuality, and look for non-verbal clues to understand their feelings.

So what do you think me or not?

Hello blogland, it is now Wednesday, didn’t do a post yesterday, why well no real reason just didn’t get around to it. Anyway, what did I do yesterday I went to a funeral, yes it was my brother in-law’s funeral. There was a good turn out, after the service his sisters where so upset that my sister had to get her father in-law to help support one of them. After the service there was a wake at the pup a crossed the road but I didn’t go to that and neither did my parents we just came home. Most people turned up wearing a flannel shirts as Mick was forever wearing them along with fluoro shirts. It was another bloody hot day as is today temps in the mid to low 30’s.

Anyway not doing a post just sharing this because well, because I have yet another bloody headache I am so over these headaches I have been getting a headache a lot lately. This morning when I went for my walk it was quiet cool, not cool now but at 6.30am it was cool enough to wear a light weight pair of longish pants. I am wearing shorts now.

Ok last week I mentioned that my brother in-law passed away, last night while talking to mum she mentioned that there would be a viewing of his body today this brought up a memory of a couple of different blogs that I have read where the writer said they had viewed the body of a loved on and both bloggers said it was not something they would do again. They said that it wasn’t like it is in movies or TV shows the body was kind of grey and was not how they wanted to remember their loved one.

So I put he question of Facebook and some said it was a good experience but most said it was not something they would recommend. I think a lot has to do with the funeral people, some may take more care with the body, making it look less dead and more like sleeping peacefully. I, however, would not like to view a body but that is just me.

In fact the only deceased person I have ever seen was Tim’s mum, she was still in the hospital when we arrived in Sydney she had only been gone a short time.

For those who are interested my brother in-law died of a massive stroke in his sleep last Monday night, I guess that is an ok way to go, he just went to sleep and died while asleep.