Getting back to normal

After the craziness of the past week, we are now getting our day to day life back to normal.
Well kind of.  We are quite a crafty family so a big part of our weekly routine includes drawing, painting and gluing things together.

While setting up our early morning paint session, Lala told me that she really wanted to paint some of the firefighters helicopters that we had been talking about and seen over the past few days.  Little kids are so switched on, no better therapy than some painting to help her move on and get over the stress the fires had caused.  I drew a few outlines of helicopters and while she painted them we had chats about how fires can be very scary but we were all safe now, because of the good firefighters and the helicopters that hold all the water.

After a trip to the park and a good play with mum and dad I think we have our happy girl back!

craft therapy

Play therapy

"I was scared of the fires mum" Lala 3.

We are having a very stressful few days, and it seems to still be going.

We started our Sunday morning on the 9th of Feb hanging out in our backyard having a pool party.  A pool party at our place consists of the girls sitting in their little mermaid shell pool eating watermelon and listing to Katy Perry.  After about an hour husbandito suggested that we head down to the local outdoor pools, so we all could have a cool off, I made us sandwiches packed our drink bottles and towels and off we went.  By the time we got down there and into the pool it had become extremely windy, so it was now HOT and windy, and we all know that is not a great combination when you live in a small dry rural town.  All of a sudden I got a feeling, it was the same feeling I had had on black saturday 5 years ago, I checked my CFA app and there it was, the first of 2 massive fires that would threaten to impacted our small town over the next 5 days.  At that stage this fire was dangerous, but not so big to cause too much alarm, it was over 20 kilometres away from us and there were already 23 fire truck at the site.  Still we decided it was best to get home and double check we had everything in our fire ready bag.  Driving up the main road our local CFA trucks had started to line the street, ready to head off and help out, this was about an hour after the first alert, within the next hour the next town over was is dire danger, and our little town was now basically surround with fires all about 10 to 20 kilometre away.  I mean every possible way out of the town was been blocked off because of the fires, we were still 'safe' at this stage, but we were pretty much trapped, no way we could get to our safety houses.  Things were happening extremely fast, we were now placed on the 'watch and act' alert which is really when you need to decided if you want to leave of stay, we had bags packed, but no where to go, so we started setting the house up for fire plan B, every bucket, shell pool and watering can was filled with water so we could defend off ember attacks if it got to that.  We closed the house off, moved gas bottles, and basically sat and listened to 774 abc to stay informed.  Then we got an out, we could safely make it to my Aunties place, but if we wanted to go we needed to go now. Of course this happened right in the middle of cooking dinner, so I started packing the car up and making phone calls while husbandito fed the girls, because we were well set up to stay, husbandito decided that he was going to stay while i took the girls away for the night.  A lot of people didn't understand why we did this, but it really came down to us believing that the only posing danger that night would be ember attacks, and we would feel better have him here with our neighbours being able to help stop any spot fires in our court.  Honestly if we didn't have children I too would have stayed, I really just wanted the girls out of there.

The following day we had the advice that it was safe to come back to town.  So we went about our day, as you may have noticed from above husbandito was and is still on R&R and holidays through all this, so we headed out to our fav local cafe for coffees and baby chinos, then we decided that seeing as everything had calmed down we might head down to the big smoke for a few hours.  This is something I wish we didn't do, it just ended up causing us all extra stress.  Pretty much as soon as we arrived I received an alert that our town was once again on watch and act, with in minutes my mum was on the phone too, we decided that we would finish eating our lunch then head home, we were at the car when my mum called again with news that the main way into the town had once again been blocked off and maybe we shouldn't go back at all.  Nope, we needed to get back there to get my dog and our valuables bag, which I had only just taken out of the car.  It was the longest drive home in history, it was the first time I really let my stress take over and it was the first time that Lala (3) became upset about what was going on.  Only 2 minutes out of the town we heard on the radio that the town had been put into lock down and no one could get in or out, this was totally false and made me mad that someone had called in to say something like that that hadn't been confirmed.  We pulled up, leaped out of the car, leaving the girls strapped in the back, and ran inside, I closed all the blinds, grabbed our packed bags and Bessie the dog, Husbandito grabbed his stuff, litres of water and our phone charges, which we really needed as both of our phones had died on the drive home due to all the alerts coming in from the CFA app.  We got out of town fine, headed to the relief centre, only to be there an hour and be told it was safe to head home, great, off home again it is then.  We were home for all of 30 mins when the next alert came through, I was expecting it to be a down grade as we were just sent home, but no, it was an up grade, and it said the words I just didn't want to see….'too late to leave, shelter indoors'.  Nooooooo this wasn't part of our fire plan at all. Then the power went out.

I spent the next few hours sitting at my front door watching helicopters water bomb parallel to our house only about 4 kilometres away.  I sat there in disbelieve that we were stuck in the town while there was an out of control fire being water bombed just over there.  We got through the night with little sleep, knowing we were entering another full on day, at least this time, we would not be heading out and about.  The day here was all about helicopters, big helicopters flying directly over our backyard and landing on the little athes oval to refuel, I had never seen beasts so big so close.  This was actually really good for Lala who was starting to get quite scared of the fires, she was hearing too much of our talking and was feeling too much of our stress, so it was really great for her to be able to wave to the pilots and yell out thank-you.  By afternoon our dot of a town had become the major staging area for the surrounding fires, hundreds of firefighters, not just from our local CFA's but from all over Victoria, from NSW and SA, more fire trucks than I could count and about 15 helicopters had all arrived to help fight.  Evening come and we all headed off to a community meeting to keep everyone informed about what was happening, and what to expect in the coming days.  Now we all know that at most of these things there is alway one village idiot, you know that one person that comes to the meeting all ready revved up and ready to yell and whinge about things.  Well the one village idiot choose to start ranting and yelling about the red cross, the one organisation that me and my family have strong ties with, I am a red cross member in the fundraising side of things as is my mum, but mum is also in the emergency service side of things.  Luckily for this ignorant out of towner (we know he was from the next town over, because he yelled it out a few times, not to sure why) he was only standing about a meter in front of me, so I got to put him in his place in front of a hell of a lot of people, saving him from yelling out more incorrect information, and making even more of a fool of himself, he spent the rest of the meeting with his head down. I guess on top of my quick tongue and he realised yelling at a concerned mother holding her one year wasn't a good look.

Finally yesterday late afternoon, we were told that the fires nearby had been contained and we were no longer under threat, hallelujah!!! So today although we are still living in a smoke haze we have been able to relax for the first time in 6 days, I actually got sleep last night too.

I started this post still in the mist of it all, and it has taken me a few days to get it all out.  What an emotional, and exhausting week we have had, as have many of the families in this affected area. I don't know what we would do with the amazing CFA, they are truly angels, selfless angels! THANKYOU, you guys have saved so many houses, towns, animals and most importantly lives over this past week.
xo  

Yoga update

I am pleased to report that so far operation yoga is going well. Over the past week I have put in place a routine of doing yoga one day and Pilates the next,  I have made sure that I am taking 30 minutes a day for myself to get it done, yes at times I have a toddler sitting on my head, or a preschool trying her best to also do downward facing dog next to me, but I am for those 30 minutes letting go of trying to control what it going on around me.  So the yoga / Pilates is probably being good for my soul not just my body.

I am also very happy with my yoga purchases I made earlier in the week, a new mat has made my life cushier literally and I don't know why I had never bought proper sports crop tops before, so much support, and so comfortable on you back, no clips digging into you when laying down.  Another bonus of the crop top for me is that I can clearly see my stomach muscle separation and this serves me with a great source of motivation to keep it up!

Feeling relaxed and stronger already!

Lala's first Ballet Class

Ballet bag packed and ready to go

Here I am sitting in a small concreted room as proud as punch, my baby girl, who isn't such a baby anymore has just gone in to do her first ever kinder dance class.  The small concreted room I'm sitting waiting in is such a familiar and homely place to me, it is the change rooms of the ballet school I danced with for just about 18 years.   Well before I had ever considered being ready to have babies I had dreamed about sending my children off to Shirlene's School of Classical Ballet, now it is actually happening I can't quite believe it. The smell of mothballs still lingers in the air here and the sound of the piano is the same too, part of me feels like I have stepped back in time and I should be getting ready to take a class myself.  I can not wait to hear if she enjoyed it…….

Waiting to go and 'play ballet'

Well the verdict is in, Lala LOVES ballet, the very first thing she said to me was 'oh great day at ballet mum'.  The whole drive home, which is a good 40 minutes, she chatted to me about what she had learnt, about how is liked Miss Jones her teacher, how she got a lolly and it was a blue one and how she is more than happy to go back again next week.  I feel so incredible proud of her, she had no tears at leaving me, and had a great time 'playing ballet' with the other kids.  I feel extremely blessed to be able to give her something I feel is so special, the gift of having the opportunity to learn an amazing art form.  And finally it feels great to be able to show her a little glimpse of my life while I grew up, something I hopefully will get to share with her for a while to come.

FIFO

As you may have noticed at the top of this blog it says 'a look at the FIFO life', yes we are a FIFO family, what the hell is FIFO???? Fly In Fly Out, refers to the type of job my husband S has. Our family is based in Melbourne and S works in a remote iron ore mine in the Pilbara W.A, it takes him a whole day of travel just to get to and from work.
We jumped into this lifestyle not quite 2 and a half years ago when our first babe was just 7 month old. S had always wanted to do it, it had been his career dream since he was 17, and I guess it was a mix of me feeling secure enough in our relationship and being sick of hearing him talk about it, but I was finally on board too.
I not going to go on and on about how fantastic it is and how great it has been for our family finically, both are true for us, but the the real truth is that it is hard work for everyone involved!  It's hard work for S who is actually doing hard labour in 13 hours shifts for 14 day straight, being separated from his wife, and two beautiful children, missing out of little family events like taking the girl to the zoo twilight concert of beauty and the beast. It's hard work for me, the stay at home mum, whose life in consumed with feeding, entertaining and cleaning up after two very active toddlers, without any knock off time. It is hard for my parents who are my rocks when S is away at work, they live about 800 meter around the corner and make themselves available for me night and day, always just a phone call away if someone is uncontrollable crying, has a raging temp, won't take a bottle or if I just need a shower because I didn't get to have one the day before.
Yes somedays I feel like a single parent, I feel like I'm doing it all alone, but I'm always quick to remind myself that I'm actually blessed, we have a good income that allows me to stay home with my babies while they are so little, we are a great family dynamic which seems to thrive off this lifestyle.
Just the other day I bumped into someone who I hadn't seen in about 3 or so years and when chatting to her about what S does and how often he is away she said something that no one else has said to me, it wasn't the usual 'how long are you going to do that for?, it can't be good for you relationship' type of comment, she simply said 'it would keep things fresh in your relationship'. It made me smile because that is exactly how I feel.  We miss each other fiercely while he is at work, even with Skype and phone calls, so when he arrives home I get butterflies waiting for him to get off the plane, and for the next 6 days we are extremely affectionate toward each other, which our girls love to see and love getting involved in a family cuddle on the couch. Our marriage is FRESH.
So to answer the question most people ask….We are going to keep doing FIFO until it doesn't feel right for our family anymore, when the bad out weights the good. But for now it just a good fit for us.

Low FOD what diet???

I recently was diagnosed with the very glamorous gastrointestinal disorder 'Irritable Bowel Syndrome' or IBS, this has come after over 2 years of stomach issues, only easing while I was pregnant with my second baby Deedee.
So lets go back to the day of my 30th birthday, My husband had not long started working FIFO so wasn't home for my birthday, I met up with my best girlfriend for lunch with my seven month old little lady Lala and her 3 month old little man. We had a lovely lunch but on the short drive home I started feeling ill, sick in the stomach and having a hot flush, this was the first 'attack' like this of many over the next couple of months.  I had various tests done at the doctors, from blood counts to pregnancy tests, two months down the track we finally found out that I had Giardia, a nasty little bug that you catch through contaminated water.  This was a very emotional time, not only had I been sick for a couple of months but the medication I needed to take meant I had to stop breastfeeding my baby for 3 days, which basically meant that I had to stop feeding all together, as my supply was crappy and I was having trouble pumping to keep it up while I couldn't feed her.  Things got much better within days of having my medication, but within a couple of weeks it became apparent that I had become lactose intolerant, a by product of having a nasty gut bug.  Lactose intolerance is pretty easy to control, these days there are so many options to make life easier, lactose free milk, cheese and yoghurt, plus there are some amazing dairy free recipes out there, and if coconut milk and cream isn't the bomb.
Jump forward to my second pregnancy-  Pregnancy does amazing thing to your body, for me to gives me a free pass to all the things I am allergic and intolerant to.  So for a good nine months I got to eat all the fruit I'm allergic to (thats a whole other story) and have all the milkshakes and ice-cream that a pregnant women needs, that of course was until I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes again (like the fruit thats a whole other story).  After I had Deedee it was going well until day 10, day 10 was when that lactose demon showed its ugly head once again, never mind I thought, I know exactly what to do, I even started making my own lactose free ice-cream, which is amazing by the way and I will definitely be sharing some great recipes with you all.  Over time even with my lactose free life, ok not completely lactose free, a girl does need a little chocolate from time to time, it became apparent that something still wasn't right.  I was still having attacks of ahem diarrhoea every week if not more and having tummy pain and bloating almost daily.  Sometimes the attacks are so bad they last hours and can leave my tummy feeling sore for up to a week.  The sad thing is that I think I just got so use to it and I accepted that it was part of my life. The bad attacks would unfortunately bring on panic attacks especially at night which would intern make my symptoms worse.  I started to not know if the tummy was causing panic attacks or if the panic attacks where causing my tummy issues, both go hand in hand.
So now I'll bring you to were I am now- A month ago I finally got my arse to the doctors, I actually went to go and get my over due pap smear done, oh the joys of being a woman, but started chatting to my G.P and the issues that I was having, She straight away suggested it could be IBS, but could be a lot of other things too, including the Giardia not being completely gone. So off i went to to be a pin cushion once again, getting tested for gluten intolerants amongst other things.  I was praying that something would show up and it would be easy to fix and wouldn't mean that I would have to cut more things out of my diet, alas nothing showed up, I am technically in perfect health, which is great news, but wasn't a real help with the tummy problem.  My G.P then started talking to me about having IBS and how I could start to try and manage it, she started rattling of something about FODMAPs and all these technical scientific words, I must of had a blank look on my face because she had a giggle and printed off a fact sheet for me.  The printout basically told me what FODMAP stood for,  Fermentable Oligo-saccharides,Disaccharides, Mono-saccharides andPolyols, and how to help control the symptoms you need to have a low FODMAP diet. She told me to have a look into it and see what I think, and that she can send me off to a dietician if I wanted to have any help with it.  I spent the next week researching, becoming really scared about and disheartened about all the things I would have to temporarily cut out, espacaily onion and garlic, seeing that I put it in absolutely everything that I cook.  The fruit side of thing, didn't bother me as I had come to term with not being able to enjoy fruit many years ago, the dairy thing, I already had covered, and I just needed to cut down the amount of gluten in my diet, a trip to the health food section in the supermarket and a few chats with GF friends had me covered in that area.  So last week I dived head first into a lactose, gluten and FODMAP free diet. 
So far the results have me astonished, I started this thinking, yeah I'll give it a go for the 4 weeks but I doubt it will do anything, but I have had days and days of no pain, nothing, nada! Days and days of 'normal' bowel movements!  In over a week, I have only had one episode of an uncomfortable belly, and that was after I was silly and ate some maccas fries while at the shops.  I don't want to get too excited too soon, but I am hopeful that I have found something that will help control what is going on in my tummy. 
Stay tuned for much more on this, and some of the Low FODMAP recipes I am trying out.  

Operation yoga

It's been over a year since I had my second baby, so it has been a whole year of me saying I should get around to strengthening up my poor old separated tummy muscles.  That's a whole year of thinking about it with no action at all! 

Well today things just got serious, I pulled out my pregnancy yoga DVD and did a whole 20 minutes of the post natal section!  I know I know, 20 minutes isn't fantastic but hey it's 20 minutes more than I have done in,  well I guess years.  I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed it and how great my two girls were while I did it, they even tried it and joined in at stages. 

Now here comes the fun part, tomorrow shopaholic me is allowing me to go and buy a yoga mat, and some comfy yoga clothes.  

So here is my pledge to myself (and being online surly means more I'm more likely to commit yeah?): 

I Amy-Carrie promise to take time out for me even if it is only 20 minutes a day, put on my new comfy yoga pants and my DVD and yoga it up baby!!!!