Oy, shocker few weeks here!

I was struck down with a nasty gastro bug that left me admitted in hospital fighting dehydration - my first night away from the baby, and it wasn't even to have a romantic weekend away with the hubby! It was pretty awful and I won't go into details, but I learned a few things from that experience: I missed Georgia like crazy, trying to find breastfeeding friendly drugs is HARD, and pumping every 3-4 hours sucks. Literally.

Dude - being sick sucks on its own. Being sick as a mum is a nightmare! No sick leave from this job, that's for sure. Especially when you are single parenting during the week when hubby is working away. All I can say is this: thank the heavens for awesome family members.

I've been fighting the bug for the past week & have had a few recurrences (joy!) but in the meantime, Georgia has been amazing! Maybe it's been a necessity, or maybe just a fluke, but she has been SO good with other people since I've been sick. The last few weeks she's been very clingy, crying when away from me and upset with other people holding her. This week gone by? She's all smiles. Loving cuddles from her grandparents, her aunty & uncle and some family friends at her Christening. Hopefully this trend continues.

Speaking of Georgia, she has outgrown her cradle at 23 weeks old, so we got a good stretch out of it. She could still fit in there length-wise for a while longer, but she's rolling and kicking now, and is constantly waking up with arms and legs hanging out of the bars! I'm not ready for her to be in her own room yet, so we're starting to transition her into the full-sized portacot next to our bed. Naps there started today - not very successful so far, but day sleeps have always been hit or miss around here. The test will be the evenings...

I am in major nesting mode right now... and I can't do anything about it!!

Before I blog anything, let me say something up front: NOT COMPLAINING. Just tired and feeling lousy.

These past few days have kicked my arse, literally. I'm coming down with the second of two colds... in a month. My throat is on fire, my head and my back have been throbbing constantly, and Panadol just isn't cutting it. I'm tired, I feel like crap, and I'm pretty sure that 99% of it is flu related, not baby related, which is kind of depressing.

The food stuff though, that's most definitely baby related. I went to dinner with a friend of mine a few days ago, and she saw me morph from a twitchy, miserable, nauseated mess into a cheerful, relaxed happy crazy-lady in a matter of minutes, just by scoffing a strawberry milkshake & getting some food in my belly.

I'm thinking of taking tomorrow {Monday} off work, going to a medical centre, and having them check me over, just to make sure this is just a cold & not something else that might need antibiotics. Plus, I just need a rest. Collapsing on classroom floors of exhaustion during a 25-minute lunchbreak is not how I want to spend my days.

On the bright side, I'm 6 weeks tomorrow. It seems much more 'official' than 3 or 4 or 5 weeks pregnant, you know? There are so many things that could still happen, but I'm starting to feel more positive that this just might be happening for us. I am so ridiculously happy, despite the sickness. So happy. FULL OF HAPPY. I'm bursting.

Also, this picture... I know. I KNOW. Couldn't help myself. I really wanted to see it hit 3+ weeks. I'm done now. :)

I have to apologise for the doom and gloom around these parts lately. I'm really in a strange place right now. On the one hand, I'm really calm and mellow about this cycle. I know what to expect, I'm feeling good.

But on the other hand, this cycle feels like it has more at stake. More sadness, if it doesn't take. More waiting around if it does, waiting to see how long we wait before we try again. It's affecting me at work too; I feel preoccupied, that I'm just going through the motions. I'm doing the best I can, but it feels a little harder this time.

Tomorrow is the start of double injections. Lucrin has been going fine; now we're adding in the Puregon. Last cycle, I took 125 each day. This time, I'm taking 175 x 4 days, then dropping to 150 for several more. The goal is to get a better response than last time, but not to get TOO high, as I'm still at a higher risk for hyper stimulation thanks to my stupid bung ovaries. It's time to cross my fingers and hope my reproductive organs do their job properly.

... watching the baby names you've adored for the past [insert time frame here] get snapped up, one by one.

Last week, I picked up a stomach bug from my kids. It was a virus that had been going around the classroom (vomit! yay!) and my immune system decided that it was shutting up shop. That was a lovely two days, let me tell you.

Last weekend, I felt the tickles of a cold starting. It got so bad over the long weekend that I didn't leave the house, not even for our wedding anniversary. We ended up ordering in Thai food & eating cake. In pyjamas. It was special.

This week, I am still sick. This cold will NOT quit. I'm so tired, because I can't breathe while sleeping at night. My throat hurts, my sinuses are giving me constant headaches, and I've worked every day this week because I need to save up the last of my work sick days for IVF #2 when it comes around. I'm just wrecked.

I've had 12 kids in my class all week - out of 24. Literally half a class. No wonder we're all sick!

On top of the illness, school reports and data has been due this week. I'm finished for now, but after my supervisor edits them all, I have to get them prepared to send home in the next few weeks. If I can get through this next fortnight with no more illness, I'll be happy.

11 work days to go, but who's counting?

This is the longest two week wait ever. That is all.

Whoops!

All of a sudden, it's March - and I've been a neglectful little blogger, haven't I? In truth, there's really not all that much actually happening.

TTC has taken over my brain, and we're waiting around for our IVF appointment next week. The waiting, waiting, waiting is so hard. I hate this part. You try so hard to live your life and not let it be the sole focus - but when it's all you want, how do you do that?

Work is work. My Year 1 class are tough little nuggets, let me tell you.

The house has been wonderful - on the inside. Sydney weather has been so completely rotten - we've had rain constantly this year. That means that our driveway? Still isn't finished. Landscaping? Nope. That means we're living in a lovely house... that is surrounded by muddy, clay puddles. It's awful. I know it'll happen eventually, but it's a mess right now.

Speaking of the house, we've been so unlucky - we have been cursed to move next door to an asshole. He's been difficult for months on end now, even before we had built the house. He was rude to the builders, he parked his old, oil-leaking car in our space, and his evil wife even rang our site supervisor, screaming her head off... and pretending to be me. (Seriously - I've never been impersonated before. I'm torn between feeling flattered & incredibly stabby.)

Well, they've laid turf over our property line & are refusing to accept that. We've sent them survey copies, we've sent them the plans that prove the line, and they're having nothing to do with it. Jase went to serve them a notice of intent to remove the turf - they threw the written letter back at him and slammed the door in his face. He put the letter in their postbox & emailed it to them as well - and we found the soggy envelope thrown in a puddle on our front lawn today. Say it with me now... assholes.

Thing is, we try hard to be good neighbours. The one on our other side are fantastic - we've had a couple of wine and cheese nights with them, they've cut our hair (a hairdresser next door=fabulous) and we've cat-sit for them. We're nice people. We do the right thing. It just sucks when people take advantage of that. Well, no more trying anymore. Hopefully we'll solve this whole thing soon, so we don't have to have anything to do with them again. And we certainly won't be offering to loan them any sugar, should they ever need it.

Now... what's been happening with YOU lately?

P.S. I have two adorable kitties. Just saying.

... & so little spare time to say it all.

I have so many things to chat about, things to share with you & even a few amazing reviews too. School work + wedding planning + life in general is going by at crazy speeds, and I'm barely keeping afloat.

Since it's Monday already (how did that happen!?) I'll leave you with one of my favourite mellow songs, by the musical genius that is The Cure. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Excuse me while I interrupt my lovey-dovey wedding happiness - I need to vent, and it's not going to be pretty.

Job hunting sucks, you guys.

It's still early days in the school term, but I've not had any calls for work. It's frustrating, that's for sure - but in actual fact? The more I think about it, the more I feel that I don't work well with this whole casual teaching thing. I did it for a while when I first arrived in London and ended up hating it - the waiting around, the different place every day, the never knowing what's been planned, the complete disarray that comes with it: all things that this uber organised girl struggles with.

I've come to the realisation that I need to find something stable. In my perfect little career bubble, that would be in the form of a full-time, permanent classroom teacher role. Unfortunately, finding a school in Sydney that will take you on as a permanent member of staff is harder than finding a needle in a haystick. It's pretty damn irritating too, considering all teachers ever hear about is the dramatic shortage of quality primary teachers in the Western Sydney suburbs. Ha. Well excuse me, but I know of a fully qualified and experienced teacher, with a car, who is ready to settle down with a classroom of kids and willing to work in some of the more 'challenging' suburbs and she is STANDING RIGHT HERE. Well, sitting, but you know what I mean. AND SHE IS NOT WORKING.

{deep breath}

Anyway, numerous permanent job applications that I've put in through the Department of Education here have led to nothing. The system is ridiculous - it really is. I must have applied for twenty different teaching roles on offer in the last two months, and only one has even got back to me, just one. The one response I got? Was that the position had been filled internally prior to the ad going live. This leads me to question if the jobs on display are actually even vacant jobs at all, or just ones that are advertised because they have to be. Chances are, they've already got their own teachers slotted in for the vacancy - so there's no real job there.

As much as I didn't want to do it, I'm going to have to start looking for work outside of teaching again, because I can't afford to sit around and not work. We have so many things that need financing, and I feel incredibly guilty that Jase is busy working and I am not. I've tried to keep busy - I'm doing as much as I can to help with home/wedding/life stuff, so that he can relax when he gets home from work. But what about me? This is ridiculous.

Feel free to send your good-job-vibrations this-a-way. I'll take 'em.

Have you ever made a decision about something that ultimately came back and kicked you up the butt?

I have. And it did.

It was in that post-engagement glow period, where all I wanted to do was tell everyone! make decisions! book the entire shindig! all in the space of about a week. I was so far away from friends & family while we were in England, that I was itching to share all of my big plans with anybody who was willing to listen. (And even some who weren't willing to listen, if you know what I mean.)

One of the first things I wanted to do was to choose my bridal party. Before I was even engaged, I knew that I'd be asking my bestie, Miss K, to be my Maid of Honour - it was a given. But as for other bridesmaids? I wasn't sure. Newly engaged Bees, this is where I give you some advice: don't pick your wedding party too early. It's common sense for most people, but from personal experience, I know how tempting it can be to go with the moment and get busy asking straight away.

I asked two other girlfriends to be bridesmaids for me: one, a university friend of mine, who is one of my all-time favourite people and is always there for me, even when we're thousands of miles apart. Miss E is one of those rare friends that don't come along every day; the kind where you can not see them for months, organise a catch up session & feel like not a second has passed. She's brilliant and was thoroughly excited to be a part of our wedding day.

And then there was my final bridesmaid: let's call her Miss X. I've known Miss X for the past few years, though since she lives interstate I don't see her as often as I'd have liked. She is a mutual friend of Miss K & I - so I had grand visions of us having epic planning sessions and enjoying our time doing all things wedding together.. and, well, it seemed like a good idea to ask her at the time.

There were a few warning signs that things weren't starting off well. My parents, while polite about my decision, were worried that she, being a few years younger than myself, wasn't the right choice for a bridesmaid. (I believe Miss X sealed the deal with them when she made jokes at our reception venue about being placed near the 'open bar': I could see visions going through my mother's head of drunken and belligerent bridesmaids sloshing alcohol all over the pretty carpet.) While looking at bridesmaid dresses, Miss X shot down every single one of my suggestions: no long, no fancy, no satin, no strapless & also wasn't very supportive of my colour scheme. I'm not a diva of a bride, and I don't even have a specific dress that I want my girls to wear, but I felt like all of my suggestions were being thrown back in my face. And the last straw for me? Along with Miss K, we travelled through Europe together this past October as a threesome. Arguments happened, feelings were hurt, and true colours really shined through - suffice it to say that through travelling, I learned a lot about Miss X that I hadn't known before. After our travels were over, I finally stopped and listened to all the alarm bells ringing in my head, before realising that I'd made a huge mistake: I should never have asked her to be a bridesmaid.

Guys, there is nothing harder to do than to tell someone that you're sorry, but that you don't think that their being a bridesmaid is the right decision to have made. Since I had no phone access at the time, I spent days drafting the perfect email that would explain the situation to her and when I finally sent it off, I felt awful. I knew it was the right thing for me to do, but that didn't stop me from feeling bad about doing it. Since I was still overseas at the time and with limited phone & internet access, I received her response a few days later: she was upset but she understood and hoped we could still be friends. I was relieved and thoroughly happy that she seemed to have taken things well, and on a personal level, it felt like a massive weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Unfortunately, the next week when I checked my emails once again, she had experienced a change of heart & sent me a long and hurtful email, ending with a request to 'not bother inviting her to the wedding, it would be too awkward'. I'm sad she feels this way, but I do understand the awkwardness -so I don't hold it against her: it would've been hard for any friendship to survive that whole debacle.

Here are a few tips that I learned throughout my whole snafu of an experience:

• Like I said before, don't rush when it comes to asking your nearest & dearest to be in your wedding party. Particularly if {like yours truly} you have a VERY long engagement - there's no real need to get that sorted immediately, and you never know what might happen in twelve or eighteen months time.
• Weigh up your pro's & con's of asking each member - what is your friendship or relationship like now? Has it gone through any weak spots? Do you see your friend still in your life in 1, 5 or 10 years time? Do they get along with your family members, your fiance?
• Trust your gut instinct. If you have a niggling concern, listen to it. You can always involve your friends in other wedding-related activities without having them be a bridesmaid, which is a potentially safer option if things go sour later on.
• If in doubt, fix things early. I was lucky in my situation, because no financial decisions or purchases had been made when it came to the girls. Things only get harder when money is involved - so I'm blessed that I made my decision early.

So that was my epic mistake when it comes to wedding planning so far. In a way I wish things had turned out differently, but I know now that I did the right thing and should have gone with my gut feeling all along. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I have a new third bridesmaid now: one who I was honest with sharing my story with, so that she wouldn't feel like a 'replacement' bridesmaid & who my heart tells me is a very, very good choice.

Originally posted on Weddingbee: view it here.

I think living in Britain has turned me into a whinging pom. Well, to be fair, I shouldn't blame the lovely United Kingdom for that; I've always had a tendency to be a bit of a whinger.

This weekend has been big - and by big I mean crowded, noisy, dirty and LOUD. The mild version looked like this:

How do people meet, get engaged and plan a wedding in less than a year - how can they possibly know enough about each other to commit for the rest of their lives? I'm a romantic by all means, but it just blows my mind.

What is the point in airlines making one-way tickets just as, if not more, expensive as return fares? I get they want the business coming back with them, but we aren't returning in that same direction!  Now I'm buying return flights just for the sake of it, which seems incredibly pointless. I'm already feeling guilty that one day flights will be held up waiting for us to board the plane for the return journey, which we never wanted to purchase in the first place.

After two years of ignoring the clothes line, why has Oscar become fascinated with it all of a sudden?

Why does putting weight on take no effort at all, but getting it off takes every little bit of strength and then some?

Is it normal for wedding traditions to be completely unfamiliar to the grooms-to-be? Jase isn't really aware of, or interested in, pre-wedding events like an engagement celebration, a bridal shower, a rehearsal dinner. Is it bad that the thought of not enjoying these events before we get married is making me miserable?

How can Disney claim to be the happiest place on earth, when it's ridiculous prices are making me unhappy?

When the tube is packed to the brim of people coming home from work AND summer tourists, why don't people move down into the middle of the carriages instead of creating hot and sweaty crowds by the doors?

Why is it that the one thing I want more than anything right now {remember this camera?} is the one thing I can't have, as we have too many other expenses right now? And why is it that everywhere I look, people are purchasing said camera, taking awesome pictures and making me more than a little bit green with envy?

Why haven't I finished this holiday planning yet when it really needs to be booked already? Get on with it, woman!

So technology hates me.

My laptop has been dying a long and painful death for the past few months now, every so often freezing up and letting out these horrible beeping noises. Not pleasant for anyone involved, let me tell you. The perks of having a computer literate other half is that I can always count on him to check things out for me.

Sadly, things didn't work out quite that easily.

While we were backing up my laptop onto the external hard drive we've had since we arrived in London, J's foot got tangled in the cords and it fell off the coffee table and onto the floor - and stopped working. As in, totally died, mid transfer. Picture panic. All of our files, all of our photos from the last three years, all of J's coding for work - gone. Luckily most of the bits and pieces we had kept on our laptops, but we then had to fork out cash for a new hard drive.

The next day, J started the reformatting process, and (as I'm sure you've guessed by now) my laptop decided that was the perfect time to move on to computer heaven. OMG. I miss it. I got quite attached to my shiny silver Dell-ilah over the last three years, and being without a laptop at home always makes me realise just how much I take it for granted.

Thank goodness for my iPhone, but still... I cannot wait for my new machine to be delivered, because I am still horrendous at typing on it, even after three months. It has, however, led me back to my Twitter account (add me!) which is a bonus; I'd forgotten all about it.

Fingers crossed my new laptop will come before the weekend - I'll do my best to catch up on the blogging world then!

I haven't known you all that long, but I think you're a pretty cool person. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better over the coming months.

You are a very cool person. I wish I was more like you. Sometimes I worry that the feeling isn't mutual and that you don't feel the same way about our friendship as I do. Thanks for being there for me.

You were always a friend to me, but some things you've done lately have really thrown me and left me feeling deflated. I wonder if you even have a clue how hurt I am with the way you've been acting? I'm always the one who automatically assumes that the problem lies with me - well, I'm over that now. Either you grow some balls and tell me what your problem is, or I'm done trying to figure you out.

I hate the way your friend is treating you. You are a genuinely lovely person and you deserve so much better than that. I hope that you realise that! I wish that you lived in Sydney, so that you'd be there when I go home.

You're all I want, you're all I need, you're everything.

I wish that we could go back in time and change how things are with you. We had it all once, we all did, and now it's seemingly unfixable. I wish that you, and me, and the others, could all sort it out. Yes, it'd be hard and yes, it'd probably take a while to get back there, but aren't some things worth fighting for? I hate that things have turned out this way. I wish I could wave a magic wand and sort it out. Instead, I'm stuck and I don't know where we go from here.

I wish you and I hung out more often. I miss how things used to be with us, and I hardly ever see you anymore. I loved having a laugh with you over a cider at the pub. I wonder if you miss that too?

You are going to go on and do great things! I am sure of it. I know that all the hardships and the worries will pay off, and you'll achieve everything you hope for. You've got talent, and on top of that you're an amazing person. It will all work out, and then I will point and say 'Aha! I told you so.' And then I will hug you and we will go on and do great things together.

Thank you so, so much. You guys are amazing and I don't know how I can ever repay you - in both the financial sense, and in the support sense. I'm a really lucky girl.

I am sorry. I've said it before, and I'll probably say it to you again. I am sorry. I wish things had turned out differently. There's only so many times I can apologise, and you know what? It wouldn't hurt for you to tell me that you are too. We may never fix things, but I'm trying and I'm not done yet. I am sorry. I miss you.

I have the world's tiniest little cut on the tip of my tongue.

I bit it the other day, and it's been hurting ever since.

Now that I've noticed it, I keep running my tongue against my teeth and wow, it hurts.

It's really, really irritating me.

Did I mention that it hurts?

IT REALLY HURTS.

... and that's about all I've got to say about that.

In other news, our internet connection is on the fritz, meaning that a post this long is about all it can handle right now. I promise to never take the interwebs for granted again, when our new router gets installed, that is. Sad face.

Oh, I have been a glum little chicken lately.

Luckily I have been kept busy with work stuff and little errands that pass the time. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, keeping cosy indoors and doing a little wedding planning with Jason. Alright, well, it'll probably just be me doing that, because it makes me happy, but that's the loose plan at least! Lately the weekends feel like they've been few and far between.

But rather than continuing with the Whingy McWhinge routine, check out these babies! I'm kind of in love with them as a) they're cute, b) the heel is low enough that I can actually walk a few steps in them without keeling over and c) um, did I mention they're cute!? I may or may not be contemplating going back to the store and buying them in every colour because seriously... love.

And that's all it takes to make me suddenly feel just the teensiest bit better about things.