September, October 2018 Monthly Recap

As I’ve been slack on the blogging front, here’s a recap of what’s been happening the last 2 months.

September

Happy spring!

Although the weather was very erratic and horrible. Warm one day, cold and raining the next. As a result, we as a family got pretty sick and the inconsistent weather was a contributing factor for sure.

My husband returned from his business trip earlier in the month and we were continuously getting sick since his return. Munchkin recovered after about a week and a half but I haven’t been able to shake it off. My husband still has a cough which just won’t go away.

Decluttering

After procrastinating for a while, I finally decided to start selling some of my clothes online. I have never sold clothes or shoes online and these are items that are still in good condition, some hardly worn and just don’t fit me anymore as my body has changed since having my first child.

So far it has been good. I have managed to sell several items and I still have more items listed. I haven’t made a large sum of money from these sales and most of my pencil skirts have been selling for around $5. But that’s fine by me and I am just happy to be offloading these items and getting a small amount of money in return.

Reading

I managed to read one book this month. It was a very short book about positivity.

MINDSET: How Positive Thinking Will Set You Free & Help You Achieve Massive Success In Life By Benjamin Smith

This is a very short book which gives some decent advice on how to change your mindset to think more positive. It’s not groundbreaking and doesn’t really offer anything new. However, it does serve its purpose as a quick reminder and inspiration to change our outlook and be more positive in our lives.

October

The sickness in my household continued in October. It took me a while to shake it off and just when things seemed to settle, munchkin got really sick 2 weeks ago with a bad virus which involved him getting high fevers in the middle of the night. My husband left for a business trip 2 days before munchkin got sick so that was even more stressful for me. Luckily I have my parents to help me out.

We had a long weekend at the beginning of the month and I was able to meet up with one of my dear friends for a day out. I haven’t seen him in the flesh for over 2 years and a lot has happened in his life during that period, most notably a divorce. But he has picked himself up and achieved so much since that horrible time, including getting promoted at work and buying a house so I’m very proud of him.

Pregnancy

I had my 28 week scan at the start of the month and I’m happy to say that the baby is on track and growing well.

As I write this I am 33 weeks pregnant and I cannot believe how fast this pregnancy has gone. As munchkin came early at 37 weeks, I am almost expecting this baby to come early as well. I would like to get to 38 weeks this time however, fingers crossed.

Other than that we packed up 15 boxes with loads of baby items and other necessities and shipped them off to Sri Lanka. We will most likely be moving there in February.

I have also continued to sell items online. I managed to sell several more items of clothing and shoes and have also sold our IKEA shoe cabinets. There’s still plenty more to sell before we head off overseas.

Final Thoughts

Well the last two months have been busy but have also been consumed by sickness in my household. I really hope there’s no more plagues of sickness in November, however I have already managed to get conjunctivitis in my right eye 😦 I’m hoping that clears up in a few days.

November is going to be busy as need I to get as much done as possible before the baby arrives. I will also be going on maternity leave at the end of the month. Here’s hoping for a productive and sick free month!

August 2018 Monthly Recap

August was a busy month.

At the very beginning of the month I had my 20 week scan. We saw our little munchkin moving around and being a champion. The baby was on track in terms of growth and the results showed that everything was moving along very well. Far cry from the ordeal I had to go through earlier in the pregnancy.

To celebrate our good news and to treat ourselves for the rough few months that we have had, we decided to go on a short getaway. We decided to visit the Sunshine Coast in Queensland as we knew the weather would be nice and the flight time was just over one hour. The weather was beautiful and we had a really nice break. We visited Australia Zoo which was beautiful, although I think my son is still a bit young to truly enjoy the zoo. I did feel like the food was average as was the hotel we stayed at. However, overall it was nice to get away and munchkin had the best time so it was well worth it. This trip was our “baby moon” 🙂

Taken at Australia Zoo

I feel like I have only really started to enjoy my pregnancy this month. As I had to go through a few pre natal tests and wasn’t sure of the outcome, I didn’t want to get too attached. Although had the outcome been bad, I would have been devastated nonetheless. Detaching yourself completely is truly impossible in my experience.

So as we started to announce our pregnancy to our friends, I found out that one of my oldest friends is also expecting. This is her first pregnancy and I am so thrilled for her. She is due about 2.5 months after me and our babies are the same gender. I still can’t believe we are both pregnant at the same time.

At the end of the month, my husband had to go overseas for a business trip. Of course this always leads to me being more busy but I had my parents to help me out which was great.

Just a quick update for August. I’m looking forward to spring and the warmer weather. Hope you all had a great month!

July 2018 Monthly Recap and a Special Announcement

July was the month of stress!

Getting Organised

I seem to write something about getting organised almost every month. It’s so hard to keep on top of, especially when our home keeps shifting. This continues to be a work in progress, that’s for sure.

I have decided to use an app called Wunderlist to help me with my quest. It’s free and has a desktop version as well which is useful. So far it has been working reasonably well.

I have to give a shout out to Sherry at Spend Save Splurge who’s organisation posts I have found motivational and inspiring. These two posts in particular were very helpful.

• Get yourself organised with 5 simple steps
• Overwhelmed? How to clear your To Do tasks and lists

July was reasonably productive and I managed to complete the following tasks.

• Decided on an organisational tool to use and get started ie: Wunderlist
• Updated my laptop. It was so out of date, I hadn’t even setup the wifi on it since getting back to Sydney. It was also behind on several OS updates and I also had an issue in Chrome, which was not allowing me to click on links in Hotmail. Resetting Chrome back to its default settings fixed the problem. I also installed Wunderlist, uninstalled unrequired programs and organised my desktop.
• Setup direct debit for my internet bill and also switched to having email bills instead of paper for this bill.
• Did a heap of laundry. Aside from the regular laundry I also washed all of our dirty bedsheets, pillow cases and quilt covers which had been piling up over the last few months.

Special Announcement

I am expecting baby #2!!

The baby is due at the end of the year. We are all excited and looking forward to welcoming the newest addition to our family. The age gap between my son and the baby will be 2 years, which is what I always wanted.

My pregnancy journey so far has been quite stressful unfortunately. At 12 weeks one of the prenatal tests I was asked to do returned a high risk result for a chromosomal abnormality. I also did another test around the same time which gave me the all clear. However due to the discrepancies between the two tests I had to undergo further testing.

The genetic counselor and doctors that I consulted all told me that I was a low risk candidate which was reassuring, however it did leave a small doubt in our minds. So at 17 weeks I underwent an amniocentesis prenatal test and it took another agonising 2 weeks to get the full results back from that test.

The results from the amniocentesis were good and we got the all clear for everything. It was a huge relief and we could finally tell our family and close friends that we were expecting. Yes we kept it a secret from everyone for nearly 19 weeks! The only person I told was my manager at work at the 17 week mark. I told him because this whole process was taking longer than expected and I wanted him to be aware that I was going through some health issues. Telling my manager relieved my stress levels too as I had to take some time off and I didn’t want to feel judged and guilty as a result of this.

Other Life Stuff

Munchkin finally settled into day care this month. He has stopped crying during drop offs and he generally seems content and happy whilst he is there, based on the photos I get of him throughout the day. He received his mid year report card (so cute!) and it said he was settling in well and learning to become more independent.

The government also introduced a new child care subsidy in July. In the new system we are getting a bigger discount compared to before which is nice. This is mainly because our incomes have dropped. I don’t know how the whole thing works, but I am happy to get any financial assistance with day care as it is so expensive.

In the end, July ended well for us. I am carrying a healthy baby who I cannot wait to meet at the end of the year. Hope you all had a great month!

2016 End of Year Review

I haven’t posted in a while, life just got really busy since the baby arrived. But I am trying to get my life into some kind of order now and hopefully I can start blogging more. Apart from life getting busy I also lost a bit of motivation to blog so I am hoping I get my mojo back. Well I guess writing this post is a start lol so hopefully it continues as I do enjoy blogging. I wrote 21 posts all up last year and looking back I liked writing the monthly recap posts the most as they helped me reflect back on what happened every month.

OK so I thought I would review the year that was 2016.

What a year and it was pretty much dominated by my pregnancy. I think we were very blessed to fall pregnant reasonably quickly although it did feel like forever.  Overall I would say that I had a pretty good pregnancy. The morning sickness wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either. I didn’t vomit and I didn’t have any weird cravings so I can’t really complain. The final weeks were uncomfortable just like any pregnancy would be I suppose, but I stayed healthy and as active as possible right till the end. The baby surprised us all and came 3 weeks early too which was something I never even considered would happen. My advice to anyone expecting is to start organising and prepare your hospital bag at 35 weeks because you just never know!

So anyway we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy! The last two and half months have been challenging for sure but it’s also been very rewarding. The constant lack of sleep can really take a toll and I also faced breastfeeding issues and loneliness from staying at home. I have been working in some capacity for nearly 18 years believe it or not, so when I was home alone for the first time it wasn’t an easy change to adjust to. It has taken some adjusting and it is getting better, however it’s something I continue to work on. But despite all these challenges, I would never want to go back to how it was before. I am so lucky to have my baby boy and am so thankful that I get be his mother. One thing I have learned is that the sooner you accept that – this is how life is now and that this is what normal is, the easier it gets. It took me a few weeks to accept this but once I did life became so much better.

So apart from the highlight of having a baby, at the beginning of last year I set myself a goal to start reading books. I am proud to say I definitely accomplished this goal! I actually set a small goal to read 5 books and I ended up reading 12 books!! I am so thrilled with that number and even more thrilled that I have discovered a new hobby.

Here’s a list of all the books I read last year.

1. The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella – Review
2. 101 Ways To Save Money On Your Tax – Legally! 2015-2016 By Adrian Raftery
3. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan – Review
4. The Zero Waste Home: 101 Ways To Reduce Waste & Save Money In Your Home by Kate Anderson – Review
5. Last Shot (Dev Haskell Mystery #6) By Mike Faricy
6. A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes #1) By Arthur Conan Doyle
7. The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes #2) By Arthur Conan Doyle
8. Love Muffin and Chai Latte by Anya Wylde – Review
9. Mr. Swirlee (Dev Haskell Mystery #2) By Mike Faricy – Review
10. What to Expect When You’re Expecting By Heidi Murkoff – Review
11. 30 Days Change Your Habits Change Your Life by Marc Reklau – Review
12. Thirty-Two Going on Spinster by Becky Monson – Review

The book that really stands out as my favourite is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. It was such a fun book to read and I really want to read the next book in the series.

I also set a goal to track my expenses every month. This didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, I was actually doing really well up until November but as soon as the baby was born I stopped tracking. The process I follow to track my expenses is very manual and moving forward it is just not practical to continue tracking this way. A few people commented on the post I wrote about how I track my expenses and mentioned that they made use of online banking tools to do this automatically. I was aware that my bank offered this feature too so I’m planning on getting this set up so I can start tracking again.

Having a baby changes everything 🙂

In regards to our savings, I think we did pretty well most months. Our savings rate was in the black almost every month, it was just one or two months at the end of the year where it went in the red. This was mainly due to costs associated with our upcoming home renovation. We are currently waiting for approval from the local council, so once that comes through we can start getting quotes and then start the renovation. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final product and to have a more comfortable house that my little family can enjoy.

I also made a bit more money last year without really trying. I received a small pay rise from work and I was also added to the on call roster which means that for the weeks that I was rostered to do out of hours support, I received an allowance.

What were the other highlights….

Oh yes, our holiday to Cairns back in August was very nice. That was our “babymoon” and it was a very relaxing and memorable trip. Hopefully we will be able to take more trips like this with our little munchkin in the future.

Cairns Queensland Australia

 

Overall 2016 was a pretty awesome year…a year I will never forget!

November 2016 Recap – The Most Memorable Month of My Life

I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy! He was very impatient and decided he had to come 3 weeks early!! I definitely wasn’t expecting to give birth 3 weeks early and it all happened so quickly. But he is here, healthy and has brought so much joy to our family ❤

I took 3 weeks off work before my due date and thought I had all the time in the world to get organised before the baby arrived, I was actually a little worried that I would feel bored at home. My last day of work was on a Friday and I gave birth 2 days later! It was a massive surprise but we feel so blessed. The feeling you get when they finally arrive is truly amazing!

I’m hoping to write my birth story and share it here on the blog so I don’t forget it. I need to do that sooner rather than later.

Tracking expenses and calculating saving rates have been put on hold for now. I haven’t tracked anything since the birth and I’m unsure when I will start again as I have my hands full these days.

As far as my reading is concerned, I did finish a book in early November which I started reading the previous month.

Thirty-Two Going on Spinster by Becky Monson

This book is pretty average and predictable. I found the constant self loathing, procrastination and over analysis by the main character to be really annoying at times. There are another two books in this series but I won’t be reading them. I wouldn’t say it’s the worst book I’ve ever read, I started to get into it more towards the end but it was the main characters self loathing that really put me off. You just want to tell her to snap out of it!

So November turned out to be a truly blessed month for us with the safe arrival of our first child. Hope you all had a great November and have an even better December! Take care 🙂