Turning 40 tomorrow...

Now that I've typed that title, I've realised I don't have much to say about that except that I wish I was looking forward to it more.

I've been feeling a bit tired, lonely and blue for the past few days. Not sure why. Maybe it's the cumulative effect of seven weeks of interrupted sleep and my advancing age (!). Rowan has been fussy with his feeds. The big boys have been fighting with each other more than usual. I think they are bored. Rosie screams a lot when she's asked to do something. The C string tuning peg on my new ukulele is loose and that string goes out of tune really quickly. We've been trying to plan for Liam's birthday party with family tomorrow and get the house and backyard tidied up. I'm feeling a bit sad that we don't get invited out much as a family anymore and worrying that it's because there's far too many of us (or alternatively, that we're not good company?). We invite people over but I find that exhausting and usually need a couple of days recovery time afterwards.

What I really would like to do is plan some fun things to do together as a family. Everything feels like it revolves around baby feeding times at the moment. I know this will pass, but the next few weeks of holidays are feeling like they will be an effort to get through...

Okay. Time to stop moaning. I think I should get out and do some exercise. I'm going out this afternoon to a fundraising afternoon tea for our friend who is off to Nepal to teach in a missionary school. And I need to practise playing Happy Birthday on the ukulele for Liam's party.

I'm hoping all that will lift my spirits a little bit.

Petrol gauge anxiety

By nature, I tend to be an anxious type of person. I think I've gotten a little bit better over time. Having a fairly laid back husband helps. And funnily enough, as I've had more kids, in some ways I've become calmer. Not in everything, but if I still worried about all the stuff I used to, I would be a nervous wreck.

But there are a couple of things that I still get anxious about. The petrol gauge falling below a quarter of a tank is one of them. I'm not sure why I still worry about this. I've never ever run out of petrol. But when the tank shows a quarter or less I start to get stressed. I constantly look at it while I'm driving to check the little warning light hasn't come on.

The other night I went out by myself in the evening. Chris told me there should be heaps of petrol in the car to get me where I needed to go and home again. When I got into the car, I saw the little needle below a quarter and immediately felt my stress levels go up. I was running late to get where I needed to go, I knew by the time I came home, all the petrol stations would be closed. What to do? Compulsively check, that's what. It's very distracting. Fortunately there wasn't a lot of other traffic on the road.

And of course, he was right. I made it there and back with no problems. The warning light didn't even go on.

I'm not sure why I'm like this. Maybe it's because I first started driving around the same time I started my first job. It was a job out in the country where I had to do lots of driving between small towns and out and about doing home visits. One of the rules was that you had to fill up work cars when the tank showed under a quarter. I was very good at making sure that got done. And if I was driving anywhere in my own car, if I was by myself and ran out of petrol, I would have been stranded. Mobile phones weren't around back then.

But even though times have changed since then, I still can't seem to lose the fear of driving with a low tank of fuel. I think I might need to do some cognitive-behavioural therapy so I can move on.

Am I the only person like this, I wonder?

Happy New Year!

A busy few days here. Liam and I share a birthday on New Year's Eve. Good in some ways. For instance, there are always fireworks on in the evening which we like to pretend are for us (we can see them from our front deck so the first photo is an actual view of what we saw, I just need something better than the railing on the deck to hold the camera still), lots of extended family around because it's holiday time, generally our family don't forget our birthdays and we usually have a family get together at our home for lunch on New Year's Eve to celebrate.

The downsides to all this are that often there is only time to make one cake (Liam's, this year a fighter jet, see above), friends are more likely to forget our birthday (although having all the family around kind of makes up for that), and the planning and work involved in hosting over twenty people at home is exhausting.

After the party, we have given my sister and brother in law the weekend to themselves and now have our two teenaged nieces and nine year old nephew staying with us so we are experiencing what it is like to have a large family. They are fairly low maintenance kids, but if we all want to go somewhere together, both our cars are required. And it is raining here...again...so options for outdoor fun at home are limited. The Nerf gun (Liam's birthday present) can only be shot so many times inside before everyone is over it.

Fortunately, we are now the owners of a Wii (my birthday present) which everyone is currently upstairs playing. I am still dubious as to whether this will be a worthwhile long term investment, and can see the novelty may wear off quickly but for the short term it is saving our sanity.