Not a Cat person or a dog person ??

Yep it's true, Izzy the border Collie I loved but she was frankly a pain and didn't listen to a word i said, see untrained no matter how much jolly dog whisperer i watched on the telly . Toby the cat well .... He definatley pee'd in our room at some stage as it smells like cat wee's only I don't know where so I will have to just clean all of the carpet I guess, and now that I have finally booted him outside after a week of hiding under a spare bed he has now spent a week outside hiding under the deck. How is it possible that neither cats nor dogs like me I thought you just automatically got one or the other. In young Tobys defence his previous owner did say he was a pretty independent cat who liked to spend much of his time outdoors and I did find half a mouse on the driveway this morning. Hurrah the farmers got a cat !! look out little mice. Perhaps I'm just a Goat person....

Looking foward to starting work I have my very own name badge and have met the lovely women I will be working for. Fins enjoying kindergarten but we are still having trouble with the whole me leaving part so hopefully he gets over the tears part soon becasue that is certainly not very nice.

Charlie has been sent packing from Fins room, as soon as I wrote he was doing well be promptly started waking up at 3 am to cry or grizzle for a couple of hours a night. Sunday night I was desperate for a good night sleep as I had some training the next day so I took Charlie back to bed with me when he woke. Big mistake for me in the fact that I did not get any sleep at all with Charlie the acrobat in bed but a good thing in the fact that I realised just how much he moves about at night and popped him in the bed in his old room the next night and he promptly slept through again after a week of interrupted nights. So who knows if it was the brother or the cotsides waking him up and frankly who cares I'm just happy to be getting some sleep again.

Young Nev is much the same working hard and very tired.

The house is much the same, did some grubbing this morning which needed doing those horrible thistles just keep coming back even though it's winter and I don't really want to stomp around in paddocks looking for them, Fin and I did the front paddock today and we will do the back paddock tommorrow.

I have made some changes to our diet in that I now only make the 50/50 white flour wholemeal flour bread,  the whole family seems to be used to it, so hopefully that will be healthier for us all and keep little tummies fuller for longer.... although we still eat white rice and ordinary pasta not sure if I'll be ready to trade either of those for the wholemeal versions any time soon. I have also decided to only buy the greek yoghurt yoghurt mix packets as all the flavoured home yoghurt sachets are way to sweet and awful tasting, I'm not sure if the greek yoghurt mix will be that much better for us but at least it doesn't taste as awful.

my 'baby Charlie' where has the time gone how is he old enough to be in a bed now I can i feel like i've barely blinked since taking this picture.

Jobs and stuff

Good week scored a job, only a couple of hours a week for now but that is just perfect to have my finger in a pie at least, it is with a homehelp, cargiving agency. Fin has scored a place in kindy for monday afternoon and wednesday afternoon, might change him to full day wednesday if he loves it. Charlie has a day homeday care with a local mum on the monday so yes that means I get mondays all to myself , apart from the couple of hours work but still I kind of look at cleaning without two kids as 'me time' anyway.  The other great thing about Fins kindy is that it takes children from 2yrs so Charlie will be able to join him next year which leaves me with two days .......to start preparing myself to re enter the work force when the boys start school. I need to be sure what is I want to do next.

Toby the cat has moved in however he hasn't started catching mice yet as he spends all his time hiding under a bed in the rumpus room hopefully he gets a bit more confident and starts exploring soon. He is happy with Fin and I, however still a little weary of young Charlie.

Home progress has kind of stalled at the moment to be honest I think I've been busy with things away from home and I guess with the stink weather I hardly feel motivated to get outside.

Boy roomsharing is going well , still no guests in the other room so that's another thing I need to organise/follow up on.

Fin is good we are still struggling with the 'whinge' if any one knows the answer of how to get a 3 year old to use his words and stop screaming and whinging the instant something doesn't go his way I would love to hear it. For now I will just try to carry on not letting it get under my skin and sending him to his room when I really need to breathe , the advice is always to pick your battle and I dont think I am being unreasonable with choosiong the two battle of not hurting and using your words eg not screaming. Also perhaps these issues will magically resolve when he starts kindy and we have a couple of breaks from each other a week.
Charlie is good however I have noticed he sets Fin of and Fin sets him off so it's either lovely and calm or a dual whingathon in our house .

Wet week

I have found the perfect Cat he is a four year old Tom fixed and vacinated,  who loves hunting mice and sleeping outside at night, he is free to a good home. Perfect he will catch the mice he wont try and sleep inside and upset Nev my dog loving cat hating hubby. 

I had some intrest from a job application this week, unfortunatley the hours were casual which doesn't really suit me as I need to know when I would be needed in order to arrange daycare. It was however a nice confidence boost to attend an interveiw and know that I still appeal to prospective employers. I really do think weekend or evening work is still best for our family as once I am earning our household income comes very close to the childcare subsidy cut off in which case it won't benifit us to have me working for a low wage if we are paying full daycare fee's. I am also in the process of getting our name down with a couple of language schools as the student I had interested a few weeks ago never came through.

The weather has been a bit grim hence no progress has been made with the moving of rocks in the driveway. Also it's a really really boring hard job. I am thinking about placing an advertisement for a helper some one who lives with you and works four hours a day in exchange for board, although I don't know how much intrest I'd have given it is such a stink job. I think it would only take about a week but I guess they couldn't do anything on the days when the weather was bad either ...

Finley has a new trick which no one in the house is to impressed with which involves moving furniture and scaling a bench and climbing down draw handles in order to gain access to the kitchen at 6 am. Where he helps himself to golden syrup, Jam, sugar etc Dad sat him down for a serious talk last night about how this is not acceptable and is punishable by 'time out' and it hasn't happened again today so fingers crossed a stern word will be the end of this new trick. We are also now using a timer for time out to ensure he stays there for the three minutes and this has made life much easier and time out more effective as it makes me follow through.

Charlie is still impressing us all with his speech and impress's me even more with how much he understands. The other day he ran off with a pair of pyjama pants and I asked him to put the pyjama pants in the washing basket which he did. He understands simple instructions now so this is great most of the time. Not so great this morning at playcenter when I asked "Charlie would you like to come inside for morning tea" and he responed with "no".

I finally have some pictures of our sheep . No close ups becasue as I mentioned they are still pretty skitty. Here they are playing sheep games in the evening they get a bit crazy at dusk and start running and jumping our 'pond' in the paddock. Ok that's a sheep photo about 2 minutes after they stopped playing sheepy games because I came outside to take a photo and interupted their sheepy games. Here is a photo through the window of sheepy games