Beyond the Edge of Adventure

I want Ben to go back to shift-work!! HA! If you'd asked me that question 4 1/2 years ago, I would have immediately chosen for Ben to work 9-5, Monday to Friday, with every weekend off. Now, I'm so tired just getting the children to school every day (violins, please) that I'm aching for the weekend. I don't know how 9-5ers do it! Ben's been in the QAS for 5 years now and although I HATED it at first and struggled to adjust to shift work (it took about a year for me to work out how it worked), I'm now in a routine with shift work. Huh? Routine? Shift work? How do they go together? Beats me. All I know is, two days off in a row is SO not enough (keep those violins going!!) and I can't wait for shift work to resume in a little over a week's time! So, my dear friends who are following my blog - you are the ones who are to hold me accountable - next time I complain about Ben working on the weekends, or doing a 12-hour shift + overtime: REMIN...

I'm a cross Mumma today. Been a long day of multiple challenges. And I'm cross about the fact that secular environmentalist-type folk look down on me because somehow my work isn't 'work'. I don't 'contribute' to society and even worse, have given birth to four carbon-producing, footprinting, rubbishing little suckers. Well. Apparently raising the future teachers, doctors, check-out chicks, mechanics etc isn't important to them, but it sure is important to me. And more importantly, God makes it very clear that He loves children and loves families ("Let the children come to me." Matt 19:14, "Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." Psalm 127:5). To be quite honest, I reckon that most of the children of today will be so bound up in grief about their lack of identity in God and the hopelessness of a painful existence lacking in love that they won't give two hoots about how polluted the oceans or sky are. The pain ...

With each of my babies, I'd hit a point in my journey with them when I would realise that suddenly things were getting easy. I was no longer slogging up a hill, head down, working really hard. Needless to say, I hit that point a little earlier with Matthew (who slept through the night from 10 days old and breastfed with almost no trouble at all) and Denna (slept through from 8 weeks old and was a breastfeeding nightmare for 8 weeks, when it finally cleared up) than I did Joseph (who slept through FINALLY, aged 9 months old after 4 months of battling oral thrush....and moving our family to Roma when he was 10 weeks old)! Anyway, with the plateau thing: I'd realise that I hadn't spent a majority of the day bouncing the baby in her hammock, or I'd had a day without one painful breastfeed, or I'd do a 'rush hour' that didn't involve the baby bellowing while I scrambled to get dinner on the table or children bathed, or my personal favourite, I'd put the...