Holidays

My family and I went on holidays. For the past 3 weeks, my biggest concern was if I put sunscreen on the children and which restaurant to eat in for dinner. We had a great time. It was a big, 3 week driving holiday, from inland NSW, to Sydney, to Hervey Bay Qld, and then back down the coast to Port Macquarie. And then home again, home again jiggity jig. We saw both of our families, met new little people in our families, and just spent time with our nearest and dearest. It's been a long time since we had seen some of these people. Some hadn't even met Buggity Boo, who is 2 2/3 years old! So it was lovely to catch up.

We also got to spend time as a family of 5- WonderHubby, Bear, Little Dude and Buggy and me. Enjoying each other, driving each other bonkers and loving each other. We didn't need to worry about money, or school, or work, or cooking or cleaning for a whole week. We went to the beach, and swam in the pool and shopped and ate food other people cooked. It was wonderful!

My beautiful kiddos- Buggy (2 2/3 yrs old), Bear (6 1/2 yrs old) and Little Dude (5 yrs old)

I'm feeling it (just a little bit!)

Positive that is. About being me. About living in my own skin. About not caring what other people think about me. About my size, or shape or looks. Because I am a pretty cool person.

I am generous. I am kind. I am giving. I am intelligent. I am sympathetic and empathetic. I am loving. I am creative. I am considerate. I am sensitive. I am supportive. I am friendly.

I am also very lucky. I have a wonderful husband, who is loyal and loving and generous. I have beautiful children, who are intelligent and healthy and amazing. I have friends who care about and laugh with me. I live in a great country, town, home. I have plenty of clothes, a bed, belongings and more food than I need, than my family needs. I have enough money to do what I need to, and also what I don't *need* to, but want to. I have more than enough in life. And I am so amazingly blessed and lucky to be me. I have enough. I AM enough.

I need to really start appreciating that. Who gives a shit about how fat I am or how I look, or what size I wear, except me?

I believe:

I believe:

If I can make my thoughts positive, get to a place where I can love me, for me, no matter how I look, just because I am a good, giving and generous person; then I will be able to give back to myself. I will realise that I am worthy of any effort I put into myself. I am working on it.

Where I'm at

It has been a long time between posts. Sorry about that. I have not been feeling like much of a success at anything, so have just felt deflated and like I have been going around in circles. Doing the same things, saying the same things.

Re-reading a few of my posts, I guess I am in a pretty static kind of pattern. Not much has changed really. I am still over-weight. Parenting is getting easier as the kids get bigger, though I still have moments of big stress and anxiety with it all. WonderHubby and I are doing really well together, though we are usually pretty happy with each other and it was never a concern of mine to improve or change our relationship. I did begin studying, and I am happy to say passed my first Bachelor's degree (in Early Childhood Teaching). I finally have my degree, after 8 years of on and off study! I applied to do the Bachelor in Primary Teaching, though after a slow, and not so great start (with sick children and myself being sick at the beginning of the course) I have put that on hold until this time next year. I am going to enjoy just being a wife, mum and me for now.

Unfortunately I am no fitter, stronger or lighter than I was before. I have actually gained a little more weight, and neither have I really come to terms at all with how I am or who I am. Which does not help my desire and need to lose weight and get fit at all. I have begun to research some different methods of controlling weight and ways to learn to love yourself. I'm trying hard to just get on with liking myself. For the way I am now. Not for the way I want to be, or the way people tell me I 'should' be. I'm working on it still.

I think the changes I need are mental. Once my head is in the right space, then the body will follow. I don't want to 'diet'. I want to be able to eat healthy foods and exercise, like I used to, and just be fit and active and happy in life. But a lifetime of self deprecation and self loathing will take a long time to change. It will take time for me to think myself worthy of loving me. I think my mind is changing slowly. My thoughts are becoming more positive. But I have more negative thoughts than good when I think of me. It's hard for me to list good things about myself, to say positive aspects of me. If someone shames me somehow, or says something negative about me, I am quick to believe it, and it takes a lot of hard work to change that. Particularly when it's friends and family, and particularly when it's about what I look like, wear, eat or do fitness wise. Even if it's unintentional, I am quick to believe the negative stuff and find it really hard to actually believe the positive stuff. And it's even harder for me to truly believe and say it about myself.

My 35th birthday is in a few days and that is totally not helping in making me feel any better about myself and where I'm at. Whilst I realise aging is inevitable, I am feeling decidedly old this year. I put it down to a combination of my children growing so fast before my eyes, me feeling old because I am overweight and unfit, and just the fact I am 35. It feels like such an 'adult' age. I also don't feel like I'm having a lot of fun with life. The kids are my main focus, and between Buggyboo insisting 4am is the perfect time to wake up of a morning, Bear Bear having tantrums and meltdowns at school every morning when I leave her, and Little Dude having some sort of testosterone surge, with anger, frustration and hyper activity as symptoms, the burdens of day to day life get just a little boring, and laborious. Plus there isn't much fun to be had here in the sticks...

Tomorrow begins my first attempts in a long time to start getting into an exercise routine of some sort. I will be starting off very easily. A little walking, a little stretching and a little weight bearing stuff. Nothing too strenuous, and no big expectations of myself. Things I can do in my time, by myself, or with the kids around.

So that's it I guess. The last few months in a nutshell. Kind of. There have been a few more memorable things happen, but I will leave it there for now. Here's to learning to love me.

It's been a long while...

I haven't posted in a long time. I think in part that is because I have been unmotivated to, by my life in general. I feel I do the same things day in day out. But, in saying that I have also been super busy with all of that same-stuff-different-day stuff!

In hind sight, I suppose a fair bit has happened over the last month or two. Bear Bear started kindy, big school. She is absolutely loving it and is in her element. She has received several awards and is learning to read at a rate of knots. Little Dude has started at pre school and has made new friends and is settling in, and Buggy Boo is back at day care, two days a week this year and he just loves going. 

Little Dude and Bear walking Buggy
to day care for the first time this year.

I have, once again, started studying at uni. It is all a little overwhelming, but I am just sticking to the suggested schedule and doing what I have to. I will get back into the swing of it all, it has just been over 2 years since I have studied anything! My brain has turned into mummy-mush. Plus it's a subject I have failed (after having my babies #1 and #2) so I am a bit nervous that I might fail again. But I have plenty of time to devote to studies, with all of the kids in day care/pre school/ school for two days a week. I just need to be organised, which is so not my forte. I am working on that!

I am feeling a bit more in control of everything, and I think it's safe to say I am not suffering with my PND or any sort of depression right now. I am able to keep the house clean (more oft than not!), see the good in life and just enjoy the moment, not thinking of the "what if's", "what I did wrong's" and "how terrible I am's". There are more and more moments of loving life, and even a few of loving me. Whilst sleep is still broken and not ideal, I am rested most days and if not, I have two days to myself, where I can sleep if I need to, or just zone out and not stress about things (after I have finished studying for that day of course!).

On the weight loss front, well....I'm not losing weight. I'm not any fitter, but I am also not any fatter. I am still a working on it all, and I am getting there with prioritising me, and making sure I eat well and most importantly for me to focus on, that I get out and exercise. So much of it is in my own head and that is proving to be the tough part to really change. Yet another work in progress!

WonderHubby is well, just as wonderful as ever. He IS going absolutely great guns on losing weight, and has lost about 10kg since the beginning of the year. (Why, oh why, is it that men seem to do it so much more easily than women?!!!) And as proud of him as I am, because he is focused and determined and has done it all by himself, I must say I am also a touch jealous/frustrated/envious of how he can focus so well and JFDI (just fucking DO IT!!!). I have so much more weight to lose than him, and barely a kilo is gone since January this year.

Because I have more time to myself, I am being better. Better mum, wife, house wife, friend and even community member. I am finding my patience, my understanding, drive and my want to give again. MY mojo is returning. The mojo I lost in becoming mum. I am becoming a better me. Different to before, but the same too. I am finding my humour and my perspective. Clarity. Oh sweet clarity. It is great to have it all back. I am becoming a happy chappy again.

So, how am I travelling, I hear you ask?

In light of the new year and all, I thought I would up date everything I had been trying to implement when I first started writing my blog. It was THE reason I started writing a blog, to try to do the things I thought of, to implement change and get to a place where I was happier with my physical self, as well as in my personal relationships and with my parenting.

Well, I have pretty much gotten nowhere on any of it, except for the fact that I am actually fatter and very likely even more unhealthy than I was before. I feel pretty terrible about it, because it has been over six months and I have done nothing to change. I complain and whinge, know what I need to do to change. And still zip, nada, nothing changes.

WonderHubby and I are plodding along. We are happy enough with each other. We rarely argue, or get angry with each other. We are great friends. Which makes life together awesome. There are things we need to work on, one of them being prioritising us. Being together with just the two of us. Having three young children, we rarely get the chance to just be the two of us. We need to prioritise this and make an effort to make each other feel special.

My efforts with my weight loss and getting fit....well. I keep thinking about it, giving a half arsed effort for a while, and then fall off the wagon and get fatter. I need to put in 110% effort. I need to stop making excuses and fluffing about with it all. I just need to do it. Pure and simple. I'm sick of it being the first thing I think about, thinking about it for half the day, but still I'm where I was 7 months ago. If I had have kept at it when I first started back in May 2012, I would likely be at or very close to, my goal.

My parenting, well that is leaving a bit to be desired at the moment, to be honest. School holidays are here and I am having no respite from the kids, so I am a little stressed and anxious. It is ridiculously hot here at the moment too, with most days being 35-45 degrees Celsius (around 95-112 Fahrenheit). So we are cooped up inside a lot of the day with a small window to play outside early in the mornings between about 6-10am and then at about 4-6pm (although it can still be stupid-hot at that time, it's no longer sunny then and we won't burn up like a rocket re-entering the earth's atmosphere!

I have realised that I am actually just not that great a playing spontaneous games. I don't really do spontaneous at all, and when it involves Barbie, Iron Man or My Little Pet Shop things....my brain liquefies. My speech turns gibberish and I just CAN.NOT.DO.IT...Even when I was 5 years old I didn't play Barbie. I played mummies, and teachers. Take a guess at what I do now?...Go on!

Does that make me a bad parent? I don't know, maybe. But I think it just makes me human. I am not good at everything. I am not good at a lot of things. Unfortunately for Bear Bear, playing Barbies is just one of those things that I am woefully bad at. We do things like craft, colouring, I build with Lego and train tracks, run around with a ball, watch movies together, I am trying to get the bigger kids into the kitchen to cook with me more often. I take them to the park, mothers group, playgroup and the library. So it's not like I don't do anything with them. And I do love mummy-ing most of the time.

I think personally, the two areas which stand out for me which I have made some progress in are my friendships and doing more for myself that I enjoy. Last year I went away with a friend ( this is my blog about it here- Excitement! ) to another friends wedding, leaving my family for the first time ever. It was liberating and I decided I need to do it more often! And, I also have made awesome friends. They have taught me so much recently. They make such a huge effort to help look after me. I love them to pieces.

I will be starting to study again this year, so that's a big step for myself. Hopefully by the end, I will be getting my Teaching degree. And I will have two, yes TWO child free days this year. It will help immensely with getting organised and with studying. I just don't feel like I can get things done well (I am a bit of a perfectionist and unfortunately for me, if I can't do it how I want to do it, ie, to the point I think it's 'perfect', I tend not to do it at all.) So two days 'off' will be awesome for me to get things done around the house, as well as being able to concentrate on my studies.

One of my favorite sayings is, 'nothing changes if nothing changes' I don't know who said it, or even if "someone" said it. There are other versions of it, but this is the simplest form. And how true it is. I have changed almost nothing in almost 7 months, so I am pretty well still where I was at then. I really need to haul ass if I want to make these changes. I need to stop procrastinating and get on with it. Stop whinging and whining. Focus on something and DO IT! Sort my shit out and get on with making myself happier and looking after myself...one step at a time.