melvania

Tonight Caleb did his first voluntary poo on the potty. We haven't been doing anything really structured, just telling him when he's talking about poos & wees that he can sit on the potty to do it if he wants to. So we were totally not paying attention, and he sat down on the potty, did his poo, then told us about it. (Yes he was naked - in this kinda weather it'd be cruel to make him wear clothes. If he does something on the floor, we just clean it up.) This is after a day of sitting on the potty voluntarily AFTER he'd done a poo. We're making progress.

At 5:04 pm today, at Parafield airport (the nearest weather station to where we live), the mercury hit 43.4 C, or 110.12 F. Maybe the hottest natural temperature I've been exposed to; definitely the hottest for Caleb.

Oh, and the next three days are supposed to be that hot too. I hope our air conditioner can keep up.

It feels good to be able to keep on top of the housework again, AND do some stuff I enjoy doing. Still having the occasional nauseous day, but they're getting fewer & further between.

I made a purple t-shirt for Caleb out of one of my old shirts. He loves purple, and the holes in the armpits weren't worth fixing anymore. He loves it.

Thanks to my little garden helper, I now only have one cucumber plant left - the one in the hanging basket. I have five broccoli plants still making broccoli. This morning I ripped out a couple of the ones I'd cut down too far, so they weren't getting the side shoots they're supposed to get after the main head is cut off.

We're getting new tyres put on the back of our car tomorrow. I'm planning to keep the old ones and use them for my zucchini.

One of the dead branches on our apricot tree fell off this afternoon - right onto Caleb's sandpit. Lucky he wasn't playing in it at the time.

And...uh...I think that's everything. Now I need to go have a shower so I don't have to do it in the morning.

{mosimage}So in the last week I've gotten the sewing bug again, partly because I want to make some maternity clothes, but I have too many other projects half-finished and don't want to have yet another one sit around for months. So here's what I've done this week:

• Replaced elastic & made boosters for a couple secondhand Baby Beehinds and 4 Peapods nappies, from someone online. She said they were all useless to her and that she'd give them away for just postage. I figured I could fix them all, and I did. Yay me.
  
• Put the back elastic on all the pieces for my next batch of nappies.
  
• Pinned the insides & outsides together for the nappies.
  
• Fixed one of Darrin's favourite T-shirts.
  
• Made Darrin a new pair of pajama shorts out of another of his old T-shirts.
  
• Started picking out the stitching in one of my pairs of shorts so I can replace the elastic. I got interrupted by a little boy who wanted to go to bed.
  

Still left to do, at least what I can remember:

• Finish Caleb's pajama pants, even though they won't fit him for at least another year or two.
  
• Make boosters for some more nappies for Caleb & sibling.
  
• Finish off the nappies for sale.
  
• Finish off the other wet bags, also for sale.
  
• Fix whatever other shorts & T-shirts are sitting around in there, and whatever's not fixable, stick in the scrap pile.
  

Projects to start:

• Pajama pants for Darrin for winter
  
• At least one pair of pajamas for me over winter
  
• Some pajama shorts for me
  
• A few long sleeved shirts for me to be pregnant in over autumn/winter
  
• Probably other things I can't remember
  

So yeah, that'll keep me busy for a while....

And the 42 degree day claimed the lives of 2 pumpkin vines, one zucchini plant, and one cucumber plant. Everything else is looking okay. The cucumber plant in the hanging basket, however, is looking MORE than okay. It's the only one to have flowers, and it looks like it's trying to climb up onto the roof.

So yeah, part of the reason I haven't been posting much lately is because I've been too tired/nauseous to do so. And because Caleb comes and tries to drag me off if I've been sitting at the computer longer than two seconds. The nausea is starting to fade though, so I'm hoping to feel more like posting, and playing with Caleb, and whatever else that I've been neglecting the last couple months.

Veggie garden is going strong. I've harvested five broccoli heads and have two more (plus one with side shoots) still growing. And I now have heads on all four cauliflower plants, but they're looking yellow. I guess they're not kidding about tying the leaves over the head once it forms.... I also have some strawberry flowers, and I moved all my potted plants over next to the main garden so I don't have to go more than one place to water everything. And on Christmas eve, I went to a nursery and bought some seedlings & plants - 1 capsicum, 2 zucchini, 4 cucumbers. I put one of the cucumbers in a hanging basket and the other three in small pots. The zucchini & capsicum are also in pots, because my little patch is filled up. No idea what's up with my pumpkins & watermelons - they've been flowering for a month or so but there's no fruit that I can see. I've read something about rubbing the male flowers on the female flowers to fertilise them, but I can't tell which is which.

Caleb has another new molar. Well, half of it anyway. This just leaves the last two on top. Would be great if they both appeared before his sibling is born, but we'll see. My last ones came through when I was 2 and a few months, which is about what he'll be then, and he's been teething at about the same rate I did.

Due to interest rates dropping THREE times since our last quarterly mortgage statement, we are now making progress on our loan. As in, our payments are finally more than our interest. Yay. Our statement now says 16 years remaining instead of the 21 it said a year ago.

Tomorrow is going to be the first stinking hot day of the summer. Over the next week, the coolest day is supposed to be 27 (80F) on Thursday, and tomorrow? 41 in the city, 42 (108F) in our area. So yeah, I'll just be staying home with the air conditioner on full blast, thanks. That or camping out in the shower.

Pretty sure that's everything I was thinking to post about.

Alex & Kelly in May. Karleen & Paul in June. And us in July. So that'll make the tally, what, nine?