No more nappies... most parents of small kids dream of the day their toddler will toilet train. Let's get one thing straight... nappies are easy. When your child is in nappies they wee or poo as the case may be in their nappy, then you change it when you have a second. It doesn't matter if they are in the pram or the car, it can wait.
When your bundle of joy has started wearing underpants, or 'nickies' as they are known in our house things change. They go to the toilet on their schedule, not yours. If they need to wee/poo/whatever, you drop everything and take them as you can't take the chance that they are just kidding.

G has been dry during the day for about 4 months now, she decided shortly after her 2nd birthday that she was big enough to do her business in the potty/toilet and really hasn't looked back. Until last week when we had a bit of a regression she had had very few accidents. We are still doing night time nappies but that doesn't worry me in the slightest, she will be dry in her own time and there is no pressure, I was quite happy to keep changing her nappy during the day too but the fact that it was so easy reassures me that she was well and truly ready.

I had a rotten afternoon. Saturday night everything was removed from the boot of the family car as I was doing a market stall for the ABA and had to fit in a board, change table and some suitcases of literature and changing supplies... so come today I had an empty boot, containing only a stroller. Everything else from my car was at Chuq's work.

So, after our walk we had to go and deliver some nappies, no problems! Except for the fact that the skateboard for the stroller and one of the orders was at work with Chuq. No worries, we went and collected them. 'Do you need anything else put back in your car?' he asked. 'No, I don't think so' I replied. Fool.

So we head into the city to deliver the first order, easy one just have to pop it in her letterbox. The traffic was rubbish... it was after school time and had just started bucketing with rain. Took us ages to get there. Got out of the car, quickly stuffed the breastpads in said letterbox and then got back in the car. Greeted with the dreaded words 'mummy, I got poooooo'. I turned around to miss 2 and a half (almost) and said 'do you REALLY got poo?' she nods. Crap. The potty... it's not in the car, it's still in Chuq's car at his work. Deep breaths.

I turn back around... 'OK, can you hold on?' I toy briefly with the idea of putting one of the baby's nappies on her... it will fit but will it hold a full toddler wee? Doubtful.
More deep breaths. 'Ok, mummy will take you to the toilet, it will be a few minutes though'. After school traffic, bucketing rain... it takes about 20 minutes to drive about 1.5km and get into the carpark. Haul both kids out of the car and put little man in the stroller, little lady on her skateboard on the back (and doesn't she love that). Head down to the parenting room and get to the toilet... can't fit in with the stroller so just leave the door open. She sits up and hangs on... 'I don't got wee'. Deep breaths. 'You DO got wee, Mummy wasn't even coming into the city, we have stopped here just so you can do wee, please sit back up on the toilet and try'.
Success, thank goodness.

Whilst we are there I figure little boy should have his nappy changed too as he made some suspicious noises earlier. He doesn't disappoint either, full nappy. I manage to get poo on his feet, legs, change mat and overalls trying to clean it all off.
I look over at the couple sitting in the feeding area feeding their tiny newborn a bottle and wonder if we've amused them enough for one day. They would have heard every word in the toilet and also had my running commentary as I changed H's nappy. G asks if we can get that babycino (promised earlier) now, I tell her we'll see what we can do. I decide that we don't have time and promise her I'll make her one when we get home.

By the time we deliver the last of the nappies and get home, poor H is screaming his little head off probably from sheer hunger as it's been over 3 hours since his last feed. I'm a wreck from listening to my baby scream and not be able to do anything about it and am so glad to see our house so we can all bundle inside and I can feed him.

After we eat, G gets her babycino. I had a hot chocolate too, we both had a tic-toc (or two). I might keep the coffee machine out for a while :-)

Are you a Tasmanian with an opinion? Specifically, a Tasmanian who uses the internet to post your opinion on the upcoming state election?

Be careful - since 6pm tonight (Friday, February 19), any online commentary about the state election must include your full name and address.  This is according to section 191 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act.

This is a completely impractical situation.  The law covers all kinds of internet activity including Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.  For obvious reasons, many people are not comfortable with their full home address being linked publicly to either of these accounts.  Some reasons, such as privacy and risk of stalking or assault are obvious, but there are also some less obvious reasons.

Digital Tasmania, supported by groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation, has written to the electoral commissioner requesting to not enforce this particular law, and for the leaders of the political parties to review the legislation when parliament next resumes after the election.  (Media coverage: ABC, iTWire, The Examiner)

The lack of practicality of this law was demonstrated by (or lack of) by iBleeter on Twitter who has started a drinking game - take a drink each time you see an example of the law being broken.  He was probably off his face after the first couple of hours, after breaches were spotted on the Facebook or Twitter feeds of David O'Byrne, Lisa Singh, Daniel Hulme, Will Hodgman, Jeremy Rockliff, ABC News Tasmania, The Mercury, Kim and Dave, Bob Brown, Forestry Tasmania, David Bartlett and Nick McKim.  Clearly if the Electoral Commission don't want to have a mockery made of this law they should prosecute all of the above.

Lisa Singh's breach is particularly amusing as she was on Stateline tonight - along with Cassy O'Connor and Brett Whiteley -where they were asked about the s191 law, and all of them supported it in its current form.

Even Mercury cartoonist Jon Kudelka has stated he will not be publishing his cartoons online until after the election.

One Western Australian has come to our rescue - just enter anything you want at his site at http://s191.org and he will automatically generate an authorisation for you - with his address way over in WA attached to the end.  No risk of vigilantes who disagree with your stance on the pulp mill, the Polytechnic, or water reforms egging your house!

And on that note - http://s191.org/56.

Or shall we call her.... Gastro G :-S

We had a fabulous long weekend... our first bout of gastro supplied undoubtedly by childcare. The first to fall victim was our beautiful baby boy... obviously infected by the love and kisses bestowed upon him by his sister immediately as she walks in the door from daycare of an afternoon.

Friday evening he vomited in his cot 3 times without a cry or any sign to let us know something was amiss... such a placid little thing he is that even on the third time (which I was standing outside the door for and recognised as a spew), soaking wet and stinking, vomit through his hair he didn't cry. I thought nothing of it other than, oh he's been vomiting so got him cleaned up, took him back to bed with us and fed him again.... and wore the lot. This is where I start to worry. My not quite 5 month old baby is unable to keep down breastmilk... something is seriously wrong! I tried again over the night, just letting him suck for a minute and then taking him off to try and just get small amounts of fluid over him, keeping him upright after feeds. In the end I threw Chuq out, propped myself up with a heap of pillows and just tried to rest with him in arms. He got a couple of hours sleep I got less. 5.30am and I try another feed. Wore it again and made the decision to take him to the hospital. Left home at 7am, him having not kept down a feed for nearly 12 hours I was starting to get concerned about dehydration. I don't know who it was who told me that if you need to take a child to the ED take them first thing in the morning but bless you.
We were processed and triaged pretty promptly... the triage nurse took one look at him and exclaimed with a huge grin on her face 'well, aren't you ugly' and managed to coax a smile out of my very flat baby boy.

So we were seen pretty quickly and I gave him another feed whilst waiting for the doctor. I caught my first letdown in a towel, thought it might be too much for him and then fed him for about 10 minutes and he fell asleep. Of course he didn't throw up one drop whilst in the hospital so we were off again on our merry way by 9am.
I went to grab something to eat, but a birthday present and wandered the city for a couple of hours as the little mite had fallen asleep and there was no way I was waking him. Still no spew, and no indication this was a horribly contagious, fast hitting gastro.

Arrived back at my parents' house where I was supposed to have spent the morning shovelling concrete and he had spewed in the car, only a tiny bit though.
The day went on, one more power spew, some small spews and then the other end started. Oh.my.goodness. Baby Beehinds Petite AI2s are AMAZING! How does a nappy so small contain a poo of such magnitude? As the day wore on, he was much brighter, almost back to normal. Thank goodness that was over. Oh how naive.
Sunday morning we wake to find that nobody has been sick overnight. Chuq heads out very early to do the 10km 'Run the Bridge' fun run. Mum and Dad have very kindly Kept G overnight so H and I stayed in bed until he got home.

Early afternoon I packed both kids up into the pram and did my 6km circuit, a couple of minutes faster than last time too! Felt pretty light headed when I got home but nothing a glass or two of fizzy soft drink didn't fix. Had continued light headed episodes over the rest of the day, just put it down to the walk. Wrong.

Dinner time... I looked at it and headed back to the couch. No, Chuq's cooking is NOT actually that bad. I just couldn't bring myself to even consider eating.
And thus begins another VERY long night. I doubt I slept a wink.. if I wasn't gastro-ing it up or feeding a baby I was laying down with such a bad headache there was no chance of me sleeping. Then half way through the night I heard footsteps in the hallway and the other adult spewing up his guts. Uh-Oh.

Come 7.30am I phoned my parents to see if they could take miss G for the day as there was no way we could look after an active toddler given that neither of us could stand without a headspin. No, Mum had it too.

G watched more TV on Monday than the rest of her life combined I think (OK, slight exaggeration but she has never ever before had the TV on all day... she actually asked to turn it off at one point!). I spent most of the day in bed physically not able to get out, Chuq was mainly on the couch watching G. By 5pm after a nice long nap with H I felt well enough to put on a load of washing. Didn't go to bed until late but ended up feeding H ALL night anyway. I'm guessing that after H being sick then me catching it my supply had taken a bit of a beating.

So, Tuesday... Chuq has stayed home from work in case he is still contagious. G and I braved the supermarket for a few things for lunch, rang Mum to see how she is and she tells us that Dad has caught it too. Fabulous... the man who cannot handle spew is vomiting. At least we feel OK Tuesday.

Wednesday everyone is better finally, Chuq back at work.

G is still well. She is now to be known as Gastro G.

a)      Supporters travelling from the north to the south for matches (or vice versa - the percentage of people who suggested that they would attend a match at the other end of the state hovered around the 8-10% mark).

b)      Supporters attending more than one game

c)       Supporters from rural areas in the north-east, midlands, west coast, east coast, or Huon area

d)      Interstate supporters travelling to Tasmania

Of course as usual, the naysayers are up and about, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post.  One comment on Walter Pless' blog suggested that Tasmania's experience in the NBL and VFL are relevant to the potential for a Tassie A-League team.  He failed to mention our cricket team (which, although crowds are generally low, are comparable with domestic cricket crowds nationwide) and of course the large crowds which attend AFL and A-League matches at York Park.  If we can attract over 6000 people to a practice match between two non-Tasmanian teams in the middle of winter, how many would our own team attract?

If you want to know the answers to that question, TUFC has released a full breakdown of the statistics in a followup post on their site.

• Southern Cross news story - 3 Feb 2010
• ABC News - "Tas A-League pitch gains ground" - 3 Feb 2010
• The Mercury - "Support for soccer bid" - 4 Feb 2010

I received the approval to post the floor plan a couple of weeks ago, but realised I hadn't posted it here yet - so here it is for all who are interested!

Some notes:

* Top of the page is north.
* The block is fairly narrow - long sides on the east and west.  The width of the house is not much less than the width of the block.
* Views are to the west and south-west.
* Block slopes slightly towards the west. Both east and west neighbours are vacant blocks, eastern side is higher up than us (hence no windows), western side is lower down than us.
* First floor is 2.7m ceilings, ground floor is 2.4m.
* All marked windows are generally floor to ceiling windows.
* The scale may be out of wack, as a guide, the width of the pantry is approx 1m.

Note the "multi-purpose room" is not as originally planned, but we are working on how to spread those 'functions' into the other parts of the house - because everything else is 99% perfect!

We have still found a lot of little things that we could change, but before I list them I'd be interested to see what jumps out to everyone else.. always nice to have fresh opinions!

This may end up being a bit of a rant, for that I am terribly sorry.... but where better to get it out than here ;)
Firstly I would like to get something out there...

yes, really. I am one of those parents, you know the ones that breastfeed their toddlers, bed share with their children, wears her babies around in slings rather than the sterile old pram, would never leave their precious babies to cry, so it goes on.

Anyone who knew me in my previous (and currently on-hold) life as a medical scientist would probably never believe it, but I just don't give a toss about all the 'rules'. Western cultures seem to be preoccupied with 'training' your babies to be what you want them to be or to be 'good' babies... babies are babies. They aren't capable of being 'bad'.
I am not going to reference anything... anyone who wants to do their own research on anything I will talk about here is more than welcome, but this is about ME and MY opinions... I have researched a lot of this stuff in order to come to my own conclusions and I encourage others to do the same.

So, let me address each of my hippy traits as mentioned above.

First the breastfeeding... well what a hot topic that has been of late. Let me put it this way. Women are given the tools to make the perfect food for their children. If correctly supported there are very few physiological reasons for this system to 'fail'. Most shortened breastfeeding relationships are due to poor advice or little/no support from the wider community. For goodness' sakes, a quarter of Australians think that it is inappropriate to feed a baby in public. If that isn't going to put a whole lot of people off I don't know what is.

Let me make it VERY clear that I do not, nor would I ever put down any mother who has resorted to feeding her baby with breastmilk subsitutes. Every parent makes the best decision that they can with the tools they have available to them.

My problem is that the tools aren't being made available. For me, I don't ever remember seeing breastfeeding as a child. Maybe I can vaguely remember my sister being fed once or twice early on but that's pretty hazy. Really the first exposure I had to breastfeeding was when my niece was born in 2003. My brother and his family live interstate, however, so my exposure was limited.
When my first beautiful child was born in 2007 I assumed that breastfeeding would just work.... wrong! We were both learning! It took 5 whole weeks to get her actually gaining weight but we persevered and I went on to feed her for 14 months and 6 days... 10 long months short of my ultimate goal but still many months longer than I thought possible at the very start. The things that saved my breastfeeding relationship with G were 1. finding the ABA Forum and 2. A wonderful child health nurse who has since retired.
My story is not uncommon, especially for first time mothers who do not have a lot of breastfeeding support around them. So why is it OK for people all around them to say 'oh, just put him/her on the bottle' but if I were to give someone suggestions to help them breastfeed I am labelled all sorts of nasty things.

So it appears that the lovely Kint has bestowed upon me this award... thus I must share with you 10 truths about me... happy reading :o)

1. Despite the fact that I desperately want it to be tidy, my house is ALWAYS messy. This is not just due to normal kids mess, we also have just so damn much stuff and nowhere to put it. When we move into our new house we are going to have a serious cull. Nothing useless is leaving this house bar to be re-homed with someone else!

2. I nearly started point 2 with the same 3 words I started point 1 with... to re-word for number 3 ;-)

3. Even though in my 'previous life' before children I was pretty much a 'control-freak, stress head' I am a pretty laid back parent. So the small boy doesn't sleep too well... pfft, whatever... he is only 4 months old, he'll sleep eventually :) Yanno, that kind of thing!

4. Even though my youngest baby is only 4.5 months old and doesn't sleep we are talking about #3 already :o) (although the plan is not to be put into action for several months yet)

5. Before G was born I was of the opinion 'I'll give breastfeeding a red hot go, but if it doesn't work out... oh well' This changed the minute she was born... I was going to feed her at all costs. It took us a good 5 weeks to get things going and for her to regain her birthweight but my pig-headedness means that neither of my children have ever ingested a single drop of infant formula.

6. Even though I may project differently, I still need to work on my confidence. These days I can speak to groups, deal with new situations and give my opinion freely however I still get that little niggling voice in my head telling me that I'm not good enough. Even when I knew the answers at school I NEVER put my hand up.

7. I was _so_ well behaved at school it's embarrassing. A slightly pissed off look from a teacher would be enough to elicit tears.

8. It's still pretty easy to make me cry but I'm working on it :o)

9. I'm such a damn nerd.. one year I got a microscope for Christmas as that's what I wanted.

10. It's OK 'cos I married another damn nerd ;)

So, now I pass on the award to some bloggers who inspire me...

Laura - your dedication is inspiring

Phil - you are just awesome and I miss you

There are others but you've already done it :o)