Timeline of a 2am spew fest

Scene: It is very early in the morning and you are lying in bed enjoying a peaceful sleep as you do every night. Next to you is the tiny figure of a child, who makes their way into your room every night for snuggles, but tonight is not like every other night as you are about to find out.

1:58am: You notice that the figure next to you is more restless than normal. This fact barely registers in your sleeping thoughts, but you do notice it through your dream.
2:00am: You are woken up by the first choking sounds of an impending spew by the body next to you. In your sleep addled state you have the presence of mind to throw the blankets off her before the spew-pocalypse begins. There is no time to do anything else after that.
2:01am: You turn on the light and see the huge task that awaits you. There is now a vomit covered child sitting on a vomit soaked mattress crying. You run to the kitchen to grab a bucket in case there is any more vomit to come, but you might as well not bother, the damage is done. You insult the small child by offering her the bucket as she no longer possesses the desire to throw up.
2:03am: You gingerly strip off the child and send her towards the bathroom to await cleaning. You figure that area is all tiles and lino so it will be easier to clean if her reassurances she doesn't feel sick anymore turn out to be all lies.
2:04am: You turn to your bed, which now resembles a scene from Dante's Inferno and begin stripping the bedclothes. You sigh as you add  this stain to the long list of pre-existing stains that your child has already kindly donated to your mattress.  The bedclothes are piled up outside the laundry along with the pyjamas.
2:06am: You grab some clean pyjamas and a towel for your child and head to the bathroom to break up the argument that has started between her and your mother, as she insists that YOU are the one who must now clean her up. You throw the clothes on the floor then remember that you forgot underpants. You dash to the bedroom, nearly breaking your next in the process on the mountain of toys on the floor that she insists is her shop. You run back to the bathroom where the argument has continued in your absence and confirm to your child that you are indeed going to be the one who cleans her up. Your mum heads off to make you a coffee. You are going to need it.
2:10am: You end up having to get into the shower with your crying child, because she has just remembered she is terrified of the shower and is refusing to enter alone. It doesn't matter that you already showered today, you're now going to have a record breaking two showers in one day.
2:16am: You have scrubbed your child from top to bottom and she is finally not crying, and no longer afraid of the shower. In fact she is now "swimming" on the shower floor and giggling, her recent stomach fireworks a distant memory. This is the point at which you realise you never grabbed a towel for yourself.
2:17am: You are now standing naked and dripping wet in your bathroom drying off your child. Both of you are shivering, but only one of you is covered by a towel and receiving a rigorous drying off. The other of you is a grown adult and has to suck it up. You quickly throw on your nightgown after a quick check to make sure you ducked the contents of her stomach earlier and curse as it sticks to your wet back. You get your child dressed quickly and send her to the lounge room where your mum has turned on the heater. There is a coffee waiting for you, but you want to complete your next task with an empty stomach.
2:24am: You have dragged all of the soiled bedding to the bathroom and commence rinsing everything off before you put them in the washing machine. This task comes complete with gagging and heaving, because of course, you are a sympathetic vomiter. This is why you needed an empty stomach. The mess compels you to ask your child exactly when they ate lettuce, because you know they hate lettuce, but you have evidence on your sheets that they have somehow consumed it today.
2:34am: Gasping for fresh air you march to the laundry with your newly rinsed pile of laundry and get it into the washing machine. You add a double scoop of laundry powder and some soaking agent with anti-bacterial stuff in it. You hope this is enough to convince your brain that these bed sheets are not horror tainted evil forever more so you can put them back on your bed tomorrow.
2:35am: Before you head to the lounge room you go back to your bedroom and throw open the window as wide as it will go. You hope this is enough to get rid of the smell.
2:36am: You finally get to sit down to a coffee. This is the point where you realise you have nowhere to sleep tonight, as your bed needs to be scrubbed down and blessed by a priest before you will lie in it again. You decide to grab the mattresses from your child's bed and the trundle bed you keep for sleepovers and drag them into the lounge room. But first, coffee.
2:50am: You watch your "sick" child dance around the lounge room with a seemingly endless source of energy. You wonder for about the millionth time since becoming a parent whether she is siphoning energy from you. It is at this point where you remember that her dad is meant to be taking her to the park tomorrow so you send him a quick message explaining that she is possibly unwell so tomorrow's excursion will need to be cancelled. You do not expect a reply because only an idiot would be awake at this time of the morning.
2:55am: You drag the mattresses into the lounge room and set your child up to sleep. You turn on the TV to get her to sit still. Your mum returns to bed, having kindly kept you company during the grossest parts, she is relieved of her duties and free to fall back into the kind of sound sleep only someone whose child has not just thrown up can have. You envy her that luxury.
3:05am: You turn off the lights and try to fall asleep to the sound of Dora the Explorer. This fails as you haven't seen this episode, so you can't resist the temptation to watch. This is why you watch the same movie every single night to go to sleep. You can't sleep through something new.
3:30am: You finally turn off the television. Neither of you are sleeping and you can't handle the excitement of Nick Jr. any more. You spend the next twenty minutes reminding your "sick" child that she is meant to be sleeping right now and stroking her back. Every time she makes a new noise you feel compelled to ask her how her stomach is feeling, just to hear her say it feels good and calm. This doesn't fill you with as much confidence as it should. You do not trust your child anymore.
4:00am: Your child is finally asleep. You think this would be your cue to sleep as well, however this is the point where you discover your daughter makes really loud noises with her mouth in her sleep. (Has she always done this?) Every new noise jolts you awake and you regret not putting a bucket on the ground next to her.
4:30am(ish): You finally fall asleep somehow, but it isn't a restful sleep. You are still paranoid there will be a repeat performance and you can feel the ground underneath the paper thin mattress you are lying on. You resign yourself to the fact that tomorrow is going to be a bad day.
6:00am: You are woken up by a bright eyed and bushy tailed child. She is feeling fabulous and wants food. You turn on the television to distract her and go back to sleep. Might as well catch some more sleep while you can.
9:00am: You are woken up by the telephone. Her father has been trying to get on to you for an hour now and wants to make sure everything is OK. You reassure him it appears to have been a one off event, but she needs to stay home today just to make sure. He informs you he is coming over today to see her, and you resign yourself to the fact that your sleep is over. Thank God for coffee.

End Scene

Helping Mums in Need

Hello my lovely audience and a Happy Mother's Day for all of you who are celebrating today. I know a lot of people are going to be talking today about what makes a mum, what it takes to be a mum, single mums, mums to angel babies, mums to fur babies, and mums in heaven. While all of these are wonderful things to talk about, I wanted to take a different approach and speak about someone who helps mums.

There are millions of organisations around the world who help mums in need. This is a good thing for women who are in situations of domestic violence, refugees, homeless, victims of natural disaster and any other terrible situation you can think of that would prevent a mother from being able to provide a safe environment for her children. The one organisation I am most familiar with, and the one I have been following closely since not long after Miss K was born is St Kilda Mums. They are a not for profit organisation which has provided baby goods for families in need since 2009. Of course despite their name they also help dads, because they believe all parents deserve a helping hand. I spoke about them recently on my Facebook page to highlight the donation drive they were currently partaking in to provide toiletries and personal supplies to mothers in need. At last count they had received over 130 gifts from very generous people, all complete with uplifting messages to be given to the mums. 

But this one donation drive doesn't even scratch the surface of what they do over at St Kilda Mums. They take donations of second hand baby goods, repair them, clean them, inspect them and make sure they are still safe to be used and then re-home them with parents who cannot afford to buy simple necessities like cots, prams, car seats, change tables, you name it. The volunteers who work for St Kilda Mums work tirelessly to provide as much as they can to parents in need, unfortunately there is always more demand for baby goods. There is always a waiting list of patient parents who desperately need supplies for their babies, and the volunteers work their hardest to get through their list as quickly as they can.

While it is great that they help parents in need, I feel it is important to highlight the impact the work they do has on the environment as well. A lot of times these good would end up in the hard rubbish because second hand stores usually do not have the resources available to ensure second hand baby goods are safe enough to resell. By repairing and then re-housing these items, organisations like St Kilda Mums are reducing the amount of rubbish we already have polluting our earth. This fact alone makes them heroes in my eyes, but what they do with them once they pass muster again just makes them super heroes.

So if you have some pre-loved baby or children's items that you aren't going to use any more, before you chuck them to the tip, see if you can't donate them to a family in need. If you would like to help but find yourself completely out of baby goods, they also accept cash donations which help purchase brand new items, and also pay for the repairs on pre-loved furniture. There is also currently a huge need for warm coats for children, just in time for another of our horrible Australian winters.  For more information, and to see some of the stories of the families St Kilda Mums have helped, check out their website here. If you would like to see if there is an organisation closer to you for donations, they also have a page which lists sister organisations both around Australia and the world. You check that out here.

Well while I could go on and on all day about St Kilda Mums and all the awesome things they do, I now have to search for my Mother's Day gift with my eyes closed. (Seriously those are the instructions I have been given.) so if you'll excuse me I'm off to bump into every wall in my house for an hour or so. Have a wonderful day to all the mums out there, whether your kids live at home and drive you up the wall on a daily basis, or are all grown up and only call you when they need something, or even if it isn't Mother's Day where you are, you are all awesome and deserve a great day today.

April Secret Subject Swap - Trolls

Hello again my lovelies.  I'm back for yet another installment in the Secret Subject Swap.  Each month a group of brave bloggers swap subjects with each other, then we post based on what we were given to work with.


Below is a list of all the bloggers participating this month, be sure to visit them all and see how they manage to spin words into absolute gold.

http://www.BakingInATornado.com            Baking In A Tornado

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com        The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com          Spatulas on Parade

http://dinoheromommy.com/                       Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://themomisodes.com                            The Momisodes

http://morethancheeseandbeer.blogspot.com More Than Cheese and Beer

http://www.southernbellecharm.com             Southern Belle Charm

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part-time working mom

http://thelieberfamily.com                            The Lieber Family

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com            Someone Else’s Genius

http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com             Climaxed

http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/     Stacy Sews and Schools

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/                   Sparkly Poetic Weirdo 

http://www.silenceofthemom.blogspot.com    Silence of the Mom 

So this month my prompt is:

There is a troll in the garden.  What do you do? and it was submitted by the wonderful Stacy at Stacy Sews and Schools.

I used to be a skeptic about mythical creatures. They simply didn't exist. Fairies and elves lived in fairy tales along with knights in shining armor and happy endings. That all changed the day I discovered there was a troll living in my own garden. I had noticed little things at first, Miss K's toys would be moved around, or strange rocks would appear seemingly out of nowhere overnight. I thought nothing of it at first, probably just neighbour kids throwing things over the fence, or strong winds. But then random holes started appearing throughout my yard. I thought it was a feral animal, so I called animal control to come and inspect the place. The guy took one look at the holes then asked me if I had any piles of rubbish lying around. I showed him to the rubbish pile in the back and he started digging around. He lifted up a piece of corrugated iron, and there was a small living space underneath it. "Just as I suspected," he said, "you've got a troll problem here. You don't need animal control, you need a witch." At first I thought he was joking, I mean trolls just don't exist. But it turns out he was deadly serious. "Trolls are nothing to take lightly." he told me. "You need to get rid of it now before it starts causing real trouble for you." He then slipped me a small white piece of card. "This is the number of my cousin. She practices the craft. She'll be able to set you right." 

I called the number on the card and got the messaging service of someone called Tamara. I left my number and waited nervously for a call back. An hour later there was a knock at my door. When I opened it a small woman with dark eyes was staring at me. "I understand you need my services" she said. Then she turned and headed towards my back yard. Gobsmacked I followed behind her. "Who are you?" I asked. She ignored the question and headed straight for the rubbish pile. She stopped dead in her tracks a few metres away from it and stared quietly. She crouched down and touched the ground. I could have sworn I could hear her humming. After what seemed like an eternity she stood up again. "I got here just in time" she said as she turned to me. "This troll is starting to get comfortable here. If you'd left it another week he'd be permanent and you'd be stuck with him."  She handed me a small purple bottle. "Sprinkle this on the rubbish pile" she said. I followed her instructions, still feeling that this was just an elaborate prank that someone was playing on me, and as I sprinkled she muttered a spell. Once the bottle was empty she became silent. I stood there watching her, waiting to see what was meant to happen next. When she finally spoke her voice was grave. "What will happen next won't be pleasant." she said, "The troll isn't going to like what we've just done here, and he's going to try to resist leaving." "How long will it take?" I asked her quietly. "Depends" she replied, "could be a few days, could be a few weeks. Depends on how stubborn he is." "Stubborn is something I know well" I said with a grim smile. "Then you should be able to outlast him" came the reply. "Just whatever you do, don't leave anything even remotely edible outside until you're certain he's gone. And don't let him see that what he's doing annoys you, that will only make this take longer." With that she left. 

The next few days were a nightmare. Every morning I would go outside to find all my garden furniture overturned, and Miss K's toys scattered around in an absolute mess. I would quietly tidy everything up, not once reacting to the mess as the witch advised. When the troll realised this wasn't working he started getting worse. Suddenly I started finding graffiti scrawled on my outside walls in mud. Poorly spelled messages like "Yew smel" and "This haus is ful of meanees" Every morning I would go out with a bucket of water and wash the messages off, again not revealing how frustrated I was at the extra work being created for me. On and on it went for two weeks, the messes getting larger, and the messages getting ruder, until one day I went outside and the yard was exactly as I had left it the night before, except for one last message scrawled on my wall, simply the words "Goodby forevar". I was so relieved the ordeal was over, and was getting ready to celebrate when I heard a voice behind me. "I see you won." I turned and there was Tamara standing there. "Looks like I did" I replied. "Thanks for all your help." She smiled and turned to leave. But then something struck me. "Why did you tell me not to leave any food outside?" I asked her. She stopped dead in her tracks but didn't turn to face me. "For a person who spends a lot of time on the internet you sure don't know anything." she said. "What do you mean?" I asked. As she walked off she said "Surely by now you must know from public forums that you should never feed the trolls." 

February Use Your Words The Very Bad Day

Hello and welcome to the February edition of the new blogging game Use Your Words. It looks like this series was another winner for Karen at Baking in a Tornado, so she's decided to keep it around for now. 

This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now. 

So allow me to introduce you to the other bloggers participating in todays challenge. Be sure to visit them all and see how they manage to mold a group of random words into something beautiful. 

http://BakingInATornado.com                   Baking In A Tornado

http://www.justalittlenutty.com                 Just A Little Nutty

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com             Battered Hope

http://www.JuiceboxConfession.com          Juicebox Confession

www.theblacksheepmom.blogspot.com      Black Sheep Mom

http://stacysewsandschools.wordpress.com   Stacy Sews and Schools

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/              Confessions of a part time working mom

http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com     Evil Joy Speaks

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com         Spatulas on Parade               

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/               The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

www.fbxadventures.blogspot.com                      FBX Adventures (In Parenting)

http://www.healingtomato.com                     Healing Tomato

http://dates2diapers2.blogspot.com                Dates 2 Diapers 2

http://followmehome.shellybean.com               Follow me home . . .

www.outmannedmommy.com/                       Outmanned

Now the other thing you need to know is what words I have been given to include. This time my words were submitted by Spatulas on Parade and they are:  calendar ~ time off ~ jerky ~ teriyaki ~ hot dang ~ slammin 

So I mentioned in my last post how we had the worst bush fires in five years over the last week. I had to go to work on Monday despite the fact that the town I worked in was closed off from all freeway traffic and authorities were telling everyone to stay away from the town. Off course with all of this in mind, I had gone to bed the night before assuming that my boss would tell us to stay home the next day. Despite the fact that I figured I had some time off on the Monday, I was still up at 7am like I always am on a work day. (Trust my stupid body calendar to know it's a weekday) so I texted the office manager asking for confirmation that I should stay home and not do anything insane like drive directly into a fire affected town. Sadly for me she told me I HAD to go to work, and I would need to leave early because I'd have to find an alternate route into town. 

Now I don't know what any of you would do in this situation, but my natural response is to panic. I started tearing around the house madly trying to find clothes for me and Miss K and trying to remember where I put my shoes on Wednesday night after I finished work. I grabbed Miss K and started to take her nappy off, so I could get her cleaned up and ready for day care. What I didn't realise at the time was that I had grabbed her and ripped her nappy off mid bowel movement, when she was beyond the point of no return. I was so distracted and complaining to mum I didn't realise anything was wrong until I noticed the nugget on my carpet, looking a lot like a piece of teriyaki chicken. "Hot dang!" I yelled as I scrambled to pick it up. (Actually what I really said was a lot ruder and more appropriate for when you have a lump of turd on your carpet, but this is a child friendly place right here you know?) By this time Miss K was crying because she was upset she had just done a poo on the carpet, I was crying too from sheer frustration. I sat on my couch with my head in my hands heaving huge jerky sobs and just wishing I could go back to bed. (Or at least crawl into a dark corner and start slammin back the vodkas).

This was the point where mum stepped in and took Miss K off my hands so I could focus on getting ready for work. I had the quickest shower I have ever had, and then raced out the door while wearing my little sister's shoes (I never did manage to figure out where I'd hidden my own shoes until the next morning) and started the long and often terrifying drive to work along some of the most treacherous roads I have ever driven. A trip that normally takes me 15 minutes took an hour and a half of winding, narrow, unfamiliar roads in towns I'd seen on maps but never had the urge to visit for myself.

You'll be pleased to know I made it to work in one piece, and while the office manager was totally unsympathetic to the rough start to my day, my boss was a lot more understanding when we spoke about it the next day. When the freeways were finally reopened and I never had to make that drive ever again. I think the next time the town decides to combust I'll be telling the boss to close the office for the day and just let me go back to sleep.

Well that's all for now, I am off to go share a single bunk bed with a two year old because that's what you do when you visit family for the weekend. Thanks to Spatulas on Parade for my words, especially because I've never been given the opportunity to compare bowel movements to Asian food before, so this was an exciting first for me. Now go on and visit everyone else and enjoy the rest of the festivities.

The good, the bad and the natural disaster

Hello again lovely people, I've come here tonight with a sad story and some scary photos. For any of you in Australia, you will know that Victoria has spent the past week battling hundreds of bush fires and dealing with the devastation that fire brings. You will also know that last Saturday was the 5 year anniversary of the Black Saturday fires that claimed 173 lives and destroyed 2029 homes. The fact that it was also the day that began the worst rash of bush fires since Black Saturday was just cruel irony.

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Just one of the many fires from Black Saturday.

A lot of the fires were very close to the town I live in, and the town I work in, which is just 12 kilometers down the road from my home was shut down completely as fires threatened homes. This town is actually a coal mining town, and there are two power stations in the area, which provide electricity to a large portion of the state of Victoria. Sadly one of these power stations caught fire, as did one of the coal mines. As of writing this post, the coal mine fire is still burning and it will be for a long time to come. This is just a fact of life when you're dealing with coal, and fires in the mines aren't uncommon. Fires of this size are however.

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What a burning coal mine looks like.

There is also a paper mill and the plantation which houses the timber for the mill. This too caught fire, causing a lot of damage. Another fire caused by a lightning strike managed to reach the freeway which links my home town and my place of work, which is how the fire got so close to us. They closed the freeway from right before it reaches the opposite end of my town, right up to the next town on the other side of my town of work. That is about 25 kilometers of road that was being threatened. The freeway was closed for two whole days while they fought the fires.

How the world looks when it's totally surrounded by fires.

The thing that saddens me is how many of these fires were deliberately lit. There have been reports of two young gentlemen driving around with lighters and toilet paper starting fires along a stretch of highway in another town nearby, which caused several thousand hectares of bush land to burn down.

Now I mentioned the Black Saturday fires at the beginning, the loss of lives, and the loss of property that it caused. I can remember that day clearly, and it was horrifying. Luckily for us again our town wasn't directly in the line of fire, but we were under ember attack, and I remember watching the debris fall down from the sky as the wind carried it over to us from surrounding towns. When it rained in the afternoon that day, the rain was black as the water mixed with the ash and soot in the air. The sky glowed orange all day and the atmosphere was suffocating. Back in 2009 our emergency systems were basic at best. There was no efficient way to relay information to people in danger and part of this is the reason why Black Saturday was so devastating. There was an inquest after the dust had settled, and the next few years were spent creating new ways to inform residents of current fire activity and impending danger. This included of course a Facebook page (where would we be without Facebook?) and a new emergency services website with constant updates which tells us exactly where in the country there are fires, and what it means for people in surrounding areas.

What the website looked like on Saturday. The red triangles mean get out now, the orange triangles mean be alert.

It is sad that it took a widespread tragedy to let people know that we needed a system like this, but hopefully the changes that have been made will mean that we never have a repeat of Black Saturday ever again. If this past week is anything to go by the changes are certainly positive. So far we have had one loss of life due to bush fire this year, which is a huge difference to the 173 lives that were lost in 2009. 

So now the rebuilding begins. Teams have already started cleaning up the freeway, and although it looks like a barren wasteland now with nothing but charred trees lining the roads, in a few weeks the green will start growing back and the trees will heal like they do every time there is a fire. The people will heal too. We're used to fires, we do live in the country after all. And as soon as the smoke finally clears we'll all be able to breathe a little bit easier. 

This is what we're breathing in at the moment.

I would like to take a minute to give a huge thank you to the heroic members of the Country Fire Association and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade who have come all the way down from Melbourne to help us fight these fires. Without these fearless men and women I'm sure this story would have a different ending. This includes the people working in the command centres, organising the information updates and making sure everyone knows how to stay safe.

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