little white truths

I'm absolutely exhausted because the whole household is sick, and on top of that, there was a ridiculous amount of very loud air traffic going overhead last night so all of us have been up with that and no one's slept well.

Honestly, the noise disturbance in this area lately has been unbelievable and we're at our wits' end - and we don't know what's going on because our area has traditionally been very quiet (one of the reasons why we wanted to move here). Ach.

Sounds like a good day for a monthly positives post. Let's see how I go at coming up with things...

We've had one of the busiest starts to the year that I can remember. Not only is Mex's mum in Melbourne again (so there are things planned around that), but we've had birthday parties on every weekend for the last month and we've also had extra appointments to get to.

Today is still busy because it's my daughter's fourth birthday party tomorrow afternoon (I need to do the cake and prepare the food) and we also have an appointment for her on the other side of town this afternoon. Tomorrow will of course also be busy as we get ourselves through the party, but once we've cleared that hoop, things will ease up.

Of course, I wish I wasn't doing the party feeling as sick as I am, but such is life and I'm looking forward to being on the other side of this weekend.

The kids have been sleeping downstairs because upstairs gets very hot in summer, so they're too young to eg put the air conditioner on if they need to and of course my son is still in a cot that he can't get out of if he gets too hot.

But we don't want kids sleeping downstairs when we're upstairs because they can leave the house without us knowing (not so much now because everything's deadlocked, but certainly as they get older and have their own keys), so we've wanted to move them upstairs for a while and that's happening soon.

Part of the reason for this is that my son sleeps in the quietest room of the house, but he's the best sleeper of all of us so it makes sense to move him into the loudest room (upstairs) because he won't notice the difference. As a chronic insomniac, I should really be in the quietest room - plus he's going to have a bigger room upstairs with more room for all his toys, and I don't mind being in a small room because I don't have much stuff - so we're going to do that switch soon and it will be better for everyone.

The kids have been behaving a little better lately

Sickness aside, I've found that things have been easier at home for the last few weeks. The kids were terrors over Christmas (too much excitement) and then they were awful for a few weeks after that because we'd had a house-guest for ages and my daughter in particular doesn't like changes to her home environment.

So the first few weeks of January weren't great at home because the gremlins were out, but for the past three weeks, I've noticed that life has become a little easier. What I've found is that I haven't been getting quite as much resistance when I'm getting them ready to leave the house, and they also haven't kicked up as much fuss when I say that it's time to leave the playground.

It's amazing how much difference those things make to your day, but if there aren't tantrums about not wanting to put shoes and sunscreen on, and they're not running off on me in the playground because they don't want to leave, that makes my life a lot easier and also means that I'm not wasting so much energy each day. Hallelujah. 

We're doing dinner and a movie this weekend for the first time in a long time

After my daughter's party tomorrow, Mex and I have arranged to go out for a fancy dinner and a movie - something we haven't done for ages. Yes we'll occasionally get a dinner in, but I can't remember the last time we went to see a film (over a year ago?) so I'm looking forward to doing that.

The restaurant we're going to is a Japanese joint that we've been wanting to try for a while. Japanese is one of our favourite cuisines but we haven't found a place we're happy with in our area, and this one we haven't tried before now because it is more expensive so we wouldn't take kids there, and we also had to wait until we had the budget for it.

Looking forward!

In sum

This was easily the hardest monthly positives post I've ever had to write, and I even had to get my husband to help me because I couldn't come up with enough ideas! Ach, that's what being sick and sleepless will do to you.

Still, I got there in the end and I'm really looking forward to being on the other side of tomorrow afternoon, I must say. I just don't have the head to prepare for a birthday party and host it at the moment because I feel so shocking and my head isn't working well, but I'll have to push through it because the show, as they say, must go on.

Now, to bake that cake...

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com