Headaches

Went to bed with a headache woke up with one, not the best.
Need to be all smiles and cheer at work as the name of the school is Happy Marian, go figure. Also the last teacher (that was fired, i might add) was very into playing games and jumping around with the kids...they didn't learn much but had fun. now i have been told that some of the kids are board in my class as i make them work too much. great right, they want it to be like it was before....where they learnt nothing but had a laugh. i guess i would too if i was them, so this week i will try to play more games and smile smile smile....

Weekend and nanny update

So this weekend we spent it with The Hammonds again, this time however i feel that i let the side down a little. I was a little out of sorts and i didn't really help out at all. i have come away from this weekend thinking that i was more trouble than a help, a little like the extra short people in The Lord of the Rings that went along to "help" frodo take the ring to that place, but in fact held him up some what as they all had to be carried by normal sized people...(can you tell i am not the biggest Lord of the Rings fan, i just watch it last night, well a bit of it). I don't know what got into me, well it was "that" time of the month, so i guess it could just be that. I am also worrying about finding a good nanny, a nice house, and how on earth will i afford all of it ( i need to wait to get my finance back on track after leaving one job and starting another, you know it's a waiting game). I (well Grace that i work with) found one nanny that i will use in April if i can't find anything better, she's alright but not perfect...or as good as the current one. She has two of her own children that come home half way through Sarah's stay there, which is fine. i met them, they are about 4-6 years old one boy and girl. They were in the pjs (so pretty Taiwanese). I just can't get past the fact that she has these old mickey and Mini stuffed toys that looked about 20 years old and never been washed. I just have a feeling that it's not that clean you know. It looked ok, cluttered but alright, but i think to myself, if i was having someone over to interview me for a job i'd wear nice clothes and straighten up the house...no? if this was her at her best...well lets just say i really hope it wasn't! Those mickey and mini dolls get to me, and the fact that her kids pjs were old, stained an rather shabby (but they can afford other nice things such as a beutiful big key board that Sarah loves)...and her husband was overweight...that shouldn't factor in but somehow its something i keep thinking about. I am way to quick to judge i know, i hate that i am so judgemental, i remember i thought her last nanny was a mess too...but she turned out to be very sweet and really loved/loves Sarah. which is way more important than a clean neat house...PLUS i am not that clean and really not tidy at all!...my house is normally a tip, but compared to these two people, my house pretty tidy. I however grew up in a house where there is way way too much STUFF and too much dust and too much dirt...i came out just fine, if not a little messy.
SO i will shut up, and wait to see what happens. It's very close to the school so i will get to spend way more time with Sarah than i do now so that is a big big bonus. Now i just need a house to go with the nanny....

Awards a plenty

So Essie over at The accidental mommy, has kindly given me two awards. I am humbled to get them as i don't think i deserve them and i don't think i've ever been given an award for writing...which blogging is all about.

The first is a Dardos Award given in "recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.....
These awards were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.
It comes with rules, but you don't have to do them you know as you wish some people already will have the award and others won't really care too much about it... but here you go.
1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.2) Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.
The Second award is the Lemonade award The "rules" are almost the same...bar you get to pick 10 rather than 5.
My two cents is that i found some new blogs to follow from other people posting their awards so you know it guess it works....however i am not too sure its a great thing as no i have more blogs to read and comment on which is a good excuse not to work. You've got to love the Internet for the distractions it causes!
So i will give both awards to my little list of blogs i love to follow, some of you will already know them and if you've ever looked at my blog roll you will see them all there...you know i advertise them all the time.

Essie of course what can i say, she is funny sassy and her blog is always good for a laugh. she is the one that i read every time i am online.
Heather is my real friend..you know i physically see her every week, she doesn't always write much on her blog but the photos are very cute. She is an adoptive mother (*international and domestic.) She also gave birth to a little lili, who has all the makings of a stand up comedian at the age of 2! She travels a lot (husband is a missionary), so her kids were born and raised in different countries. She is now thinking of adopting the fourth little Hammond, and is just waiting for God to shine His light down.
Lisa who is a very savvy, and manages to do lots of cool things with her blog...that i can't image how she does. She has a cute little Radish as she calls her, and is crazy enough to be trying to adopt a second. She is the go to for advice on RAD, and other older adoption/just adoption issues.
Tudu, is a pretty amazing mother and has a pretty amazing story to tell. She should write a book...but i guess she has (ie her blog). I printed out her blog so i could get the back story, and my it's worth it. Her kids story will have you in tears of sadness and joy. Its a great /yet terrible story. read it.
Torina is amazing, she champions adoption like no one else, and makes me think i could adopt an older child...maybe in the future i will. She has a great story to tell and i'd recommend you read it.
Tami is always there for people in the blog world and i am sure in the real world too, she also adopted from Tawian, a little boy about the same age as Sarah. Her blog full of cute photos, and i suspect she reads your blog, she always has a nice word to say about everyone.
Dawn Davenport Ok so i guess you all know her site, but i can't not mention it. Her blog and her pod cast are great. She talks about everything to do with Infertility and Adoption. Check it out if you haven't it's pretty neat.
There are tons more that i could say, all of wish i list on my blog roll so take a look.
I wish i had more time to read more blogs... but then i'd never get anything done or spend anytime with my lovely daughter.

Weekend of fun with five children, and two adults.

So last weekend, (and maybe again this weekend), Sarah and i stayed with Miss (really Mrs) Heather and her 3 kids plus a baby. The baby is 5 months old and from the same orphange as Sarah. He's in a weekend foster care program, bless his cotton socks. So Heather took on this challange. However, normally she has a helpper ( a Yaya) but her Yaya has gone home for 2 months, and her husband, Chad, is off in India (which is often the case as he is a missionary that tavels ALOT). So she was on her tod, plus 4 kids. So we went over to help out, but mostly as i wanted the company and i knew we'd have fun.
So the weekend was wet, really wet so we didn't get to go out. We stayed at home (Heathers home which is my home from home) and had lots of fun doing stuff in the house. We'd pop out while the other stayed with the kids, if we needed stuff (yes she left me with all five kids man that was so hard!!...they were all sleeping, so not really!). Te little baby is a sweet pea and easy, not real fussy, however he is on lots of medication and we have to get up at 1 to give it to him and then at 5 for milk. This would be just fine, however Sarah seems to know when i am cheating on her (so to speak). She'd wake up right when i has my hands full forcing 5 ml of medication into a little baby. She starts screaming upstairs, and me helping turns into not helping at all. So Heather has to get up to do the thing i was trying to do to help her out...ho hum i tried. i even slept downstairs so i wouldn't wake Sarah up, but i guess she just knows (or the baby screaming alerted her to the fact that i was not in bed with her). I have to say that this weekend she was pretty good about the baby, she even asked me to pick the baby up at one point, and only told me to put him on the floor a couple of times! She's getting use to him i guess. This child normal is jelous when the cat is sat on my lap, let alone a baby. She was jelous but not too bad.
She was having way too much fun with all the kids. Tilly tot and Anna came over on Sat afternoon, and the girls (Sarah, Lili, and Tilly) all had a blast. It was great to see. Sarah did however get two time outs for hitting, one time was with a hammer...oh dear! i don't know what i will do about that hitting thing, its not too bad but poor tilly is normally the one to get it. bless her. Isn't it terrible when your kids do something like that, i mean i feel like a bad mother. She's pretty good normally, but just sometimes she gets really angry about something and gets tense and clenches her fists and pulls this Aggh face...then she often hits the person she is angry with. What on Earth do you do about that?? i never deal with anger well..i cry when someone shouts at me, i avoid all arguments (that are personal), and really don't know how to deal with feeling angry. i normally just get angry with myself for feeling angry/useless (if you know what i mean). Which in the past led to my own distruction. So how do i teach my kid to deal with these feelings? most of which is just frustration, more than anger. I don't want her growning up like me and not knowing what to do with all these feelings. Any ideas would be helpful even if i disagree with them!
On a lighter note, they all did dressing up on sunday and had a blast, running around in strange outfits. Little lili was by far the funnest, she is such a princes dressing in her high heels with just a nappy on...so funny, i think this girl was born wearing heels! seriously she walks better than i do in them. Sarah on the other hand...well she tried them on for the first time and i got it on video.

Dressing up is fun!

Nykolas pulling a scary face (really with a feather bower so scary!)

She's a girl in heels with a mobile...like she's 21 or something...oh minus the nappy and the naked part! haha

All playing nicely really they were no fighting no screaming just with laughter.

"Can i climb this? no, really just a bit? But Mia is climbing.."

Sarah in heels (i had to turn the video as i took it the wrong way up...thus she looks shorter and fatter than she is.)
Tom is right it really reminds me of this clip ( i tried to get a short clip but couldn't and couldn't edit it either...sorry!)

Bloggers Etiquette

So my blogger friend (Essie over at Accidental mommy, i looked for the post but failed to find it sorry http://theaccidentalmommy.blogspot.com/ ) did a post about this a while ago, but i'd like to say a few words on the subject too as i had been baffled by how to do some things on here

First of all i always wondered how on earth i reply to questions left on the comments page of a post, and how do i receive answers from questions that i have written. Well just the other day i was reading a comment from someone that posted 2 comments, the first was about the blog post, the second said oh i forgot to tag it the conversation so i had to pop back. this got me thinking... I am sure that most people out there are fully aware of this option but being me i failed to notice that you can in fact tick a box that says:

Email follow-up comments to

I had never noticed this option before and i guess this is how people get my replies if i just add a comment. It also means that i can see what other people write in response to my comments. how good is that..why did someone out there never tell me this...maybe cause its so obvious they never thought that i wouldn't notice.

So thats one thing i have learnt this month! nice huh.

The other thing with blog etiquette is if someone is kind of hiding the add comment link does it mean that they don't want me to comment? or just that they didn't know that its kind of hidden?? http://anatomyofafamily.blogspot.com/

is an example of this...may i should just ask them.

Also why do many of you use fake names for you kids? is there a reason for this? of course from this question you can tell that i don't...i don't know how to do that (ie i don't have enough imagination to come up with names...hense my blog has my own name in it.)

I understand if the kids are in social welfare system, but if they aren't is there a reason that i just don't know? please someone enlighten me on this... but it would be a bit late to change Sarah's name now...

Ok i'm off, its raining out there so i am not looking forward to leaving to be honest. Yesterday was so nice and today well wet and miserable. never mind, i guess it will get better soon.

needing to move.

just want to say aggghh.
never mind, she didn't sleep so great last night. but we are working on it. i hope that when i get a place closer to where i work we can get home earlier and thus go to bed on time and hopefully sleep through the night. i need to find a nanny too...oh it's not easy being green.
however i do get to look at my little girls lovely little face every day, and she makes me smile more than cry! She is such a cutie, but i'm bound to think that, all mothers think that. (but i'd like to add that she really is! and i am glad that other people think so too!)

Sleep and cupcakes :)

So we are having a battle in the house, as sleeping battle. but last night Sarah almost slept the whole night! it was a blessing that i prayed really hard for as i was starting to loss the plot...no sleep does that to you.
She only waked once, drank some "milk" and went back to sleep. Like a angel. She did wake again but for a short time so i didn't count that really.
It was SO nice to sleep. She was however in my bed all night, but still it was so much better than the normal waking up, even when she is in my bed. this time she kind of started out in my bed. Thanks to Essie for that suggestion, it seems to work. now what i want is twin beds so she can fall asleep with me and then i can push her bed away a little bit so i don't get woken up when she turns...but that's asking too much. i was SO SO happy to have a good nights sleep, and guess what she wasn't a grumpy little mare in the morning, she was sweet and chirpy. nice.
The other day we make chocolate cup cakes. Sarah isn't a big fan of the cake but she liked licking the bowl out. (its vegan so no raw egg...i use to eat that when i was little i am sure, as i am 100% sure my mum didn't make vegan cakes, it can't be good for you surely?!)