So I went to the dentist this morning because of my sore mouth situation. They did one of those proper cleanup and polish manouvres on my teeth. Seriously that machine sounds like a thousand angry kittens let loose on a blackboard…*shudder*

The lady said that actually it doesn’t look too bad and the issue I’m currently experiencing is inflammation of my gums. That is why my entire mouth hurts. This can theoretically be sorted out with salt water rinsing a couple of times a day until the whole business calms down again.

It would have been just delightful if the story ended there, wouldn’t it? Well it doesn’t. She then took some x-rays of my teeth just to be on the safe side and found that one of my teeth actually does have a cavity (my first so it’s a bit traumatic) and even though I am experiencing no pain on that one whatsoever the situation is getting very close to the nerve where, from all accounts, all hell will break loose. Best case scinario I will have to go back once I get authorisation from my medical aid to get that drilled and filled. Worst case scinario I will have to get a root canal and some other fancy dental work done.

They will send me a quotation for the worst case scinario and once authorised I will make an appointment and get it sorted. “Good times”. Please keep your fingers crossed that this turns out to be a best case scinario. I haven’t had a root canal before either but it sounds much more unpleasant than a filling.

If you assume that a lot of your child’s behaviour is mimicing what other people do around them when they’re this age I suppose that I can take credit for the first photo’s multitasking aspect , but I have never felt the need to apply body glitter to my couch so I’m not sure where that comes from?

What I have done in August:

1. Start writing poetry again

2. Buy a tumble drier

3. Take Nicola to go visit my grandmother in Thabazimbi

What I have done in September:

4. Grow a veggie garden

What I have done in October:

5. Sort out my bookshelf situation

6. Chuck everything unflattering out of my wardrobe

7. Stop smoking (again)

7. Buy a couch

What I have done in November:

8. Grow a herb garden - 13/11 (Thanks Tamara!)

What I have done in December:

9. Organise a really awesome birthday party for Nicola

10. Make some new MP3 disks for the car

11. Open a savings account for Nicola

What I have done in January

12. Begin…and finish reading at least 12 books – #1 The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, MD #2 Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson #3 Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Part 6 of 3, And Another Thing…by Eoin Colfer #4 The complete practical encyclopedia of Bonsai by Ken Norman #5 House Rules by Jodi Picoult #6 Easyway to stop smoking by Allen Carr #7 The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn #8 The witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho #9 Greywalker by Kat Richardson #10 I want my Life back by Steve Hamilton #11 Spud Learning to Fly by John van de Ruit #12 Worth Dying For by Lee Child

13. Get Nicola’s vaccinations up to date

14. Start teaching Nicola how to swim – we officially started swimming lessons at a school

What I still intend to do this year (in no particular order):

1. Move to a 2 bedroom place
2. Maintain an actual hairstyle (possibly the one you see me sporting in this photo) – had a refresher cut on 9/12
3. Print some photos for our albums – busy editing like crazy
4. Lose another 5kg (hopefully around my non-existent middle) – I am back to 5 to lose on this one
5. Find a job/career I love – Plan is in process. Macgafter (CSP Boiler) is being tested. Presentations are being compiled. World domination is imminent!
6. Have a beach holiday and relax – Looks like end Feb for this one
7. Have at least 4 weekends away – 3/11 Nylstroom weekend
8. Go and see at least 2 movies in a cinema – 6/1 – Puss in Boots
9. Keep my car clean (inside and outside) – Dismal fail
10. Get Nicola potty trained – Good progress this month, she now asks to go to the loo fairly often
11. Have a birthday party for myself
12. Update my will
13. Take or have taken more photos of Nicola and myself together – This is going very well so far
14. Wear a dress now and then (at least on Spring day and Valentines day) – 1/9 Spring day skirt wearing *check* – 25/10 Wore a skirt again (no pics this time sorry) – 11/12 Wore a long-ish skirt to lunch
15. Make homemade gifts for my very special people – Ongoing
16. Go to church more often (this will not be hard to do since we didn’t go when we were sick, and we were mostly sick) - 22/1 attended a service at a different church, still not the right fit for us
17. Random acts of kindness whenever I can – this went very well for January
18. At least one grand adventure!
19. Put a serious dent in my debt
20. Stop smoking (again)

So out of the 12 months I have to get this list done we’re in month 6, the halfway mark…so ideally I should be about halfway with the list too if I want to hit all my targets. That would be 17, and I’m only on 14…tsk-tsk. I better pick up the pace a bit! (I have to be honest and tell you that although I am working on the smoking one I have more or less lost hope on the keeping my car clean item).

Lets start at the beginning (as one does). On Friday when I picked Nicola up from school her teacher commented to me that Nicola was really very funny that day. When I asked her why she told me that during the day she was asking the class to put away some toys and Nicola, out of nowhere, turned around and waved her finger at the teacher and said, “Hey! Jy’s cheaky.” as she was telling me this she was laughing so much it took a while to get through the story. apparently this is the first time one of the kids told her that… not too sure where Nicola picked that up, because it’s not something I ever say to her.

Saturday morning we were up and at it real early. We were at a kiddies party at 9! Actually since I knew we had to slip away for half an hour in between to go attend swim school we were there at 08:30. Esmeralda and Marco had a pirate themed party for their eldest son (3) and it was loads of fun. As mentioned we slipped away for a bit to go to our swimming class and then back again for more pirate partying and by the time we left there Nicola was so tired she hardly made it to the main road before she promptly fell asleep. Man…I would have loved to join her for that nap but someone had to do the driving.

We visited my folks in the afternoon and later on we all went over to my brother’s place with pizza for dinner (pasta for me since my teeth hurt way too much to chew pizza at the moment). My boet and his girlfriend were trying out something new this weekend, they had a young visitor (10 months old) – her brother’s son that they were babysitting for most of the weekend. The young man’s name is Nicolai, which confused the heck out of Nicola and she instead refers to him as baby-fly (not too sure what that’s about). The kids were doing well, even if they looked a little frazzled and they hadn’t even got to the sleepover part of the adventure yet. It’s a very brave person who will babysit someone else’s teething kid for a weekend, and an excellent audition for anyone thinking of dabbling in this parenting business I think. I checked on them Sunday morning and everyone made it through just fine, although getting up 4 times during the night for bottles was a bit of an adjustment for the lovebird. K actually said the sweetest thing to me after I checked on them. She said that she has a newfound respect for what I do with Nicola and that she thinks I’m doing a great job. Aaaw, very sweet – what a nice thing to say (and to hear). I hope they’ll do it again soon, I bet he’d be a lot easier on them when he’s not busy teething. He’s a real cuty though and you can tell that he’ll be up and running any day now – then the real fun starts.

Sunday we had Martha at our place to do a bit of a cleanup and ironing catchup again and Nicola and I spent most of the day at my folks. She was so funny when Martha came in though. She said, “Good morning Matha, how are you?” keep in mind that I don’t speak English to Nicola and Martha is actually Afrikaans too, so we were both equally surprised. When Martha started herding some of Nicola’s toys together, the pink terrorist was not impressed. She somehow came to the conclusion that Martha was trying to steal her toys and she was carting around as much as she could carry berating poor Martha quite loudly, “Nee Martha! Jy moet nie dit doen nie. Dis nie jou speelgoed nie, dis myne!” Eventually I managed to drag her through the bath and we got out of Martha’s way so she could get everything done (and dusted, pun intended).

At my folks place we had a lovely lunch, and I even took along one of our new freshly baked loaves of bread too. It worked out just beautifully, and as a special treat my mom made a delish chocolate baked desert. Very cakelike on the ouside and warm and goey on the inside – yum yum yum! Wanette came over a bit later too for a quick catch up and some tea, and I used the excuse to have even more pudding with her again (yeah, I’m not big on diets). I started knitting a scarf for my mom this weekend with the thickest fluffiest grey wool I have ever laid eyes on. It’s going to be gorgeous when it’s finished. I usually knit when Nicola’s asleep and I realised again why. She was peeping at this knitting business for some time, in between taking my wool hostage and kicking it around like a soccer ball and getting herself all tangled up in it. And then…when the oppertunity presented itself…like a flash she had hijacked one of my knitting needles and went on a “rampage” through the house waving it at everything going, “Bippity boppity boo!” (you may not be familiar with these magic words if you haven’t watched Disney’s Cinderella stories recently, but that’s what the fairy godmother says when she waves her magic wand at a situation). Definitely going back to knitting when she’s asleep!

We had a good weekend, but we were so busy I feel like I haven’t had any rest. Next weekend I’m definitely planning a quiet one. I need a nap!

How was your weekend?

Remember how I told you I had a tummy unhappy on Monday (of course you do), well I finally figured out what I did to deserve that. I thought it was a bit weird that my ulcer was acting up since I am not particularly stressed at the moment and that’s usually what sets it off.

It really starts with my teeth believe it or not! I haven’t been to the dentist in ages, mostly cause I didn’t have a problem and also I did not have money, so I let sleeping chompers be. However my teeth are killing me at the moment, literally my whole mouth is sore, especially after I eat something (a past time that I am rather fond of so it happens quite a few times a day).

Out of desperation I had two Disprins on Sunday, which I let dissolve in my mouth – that does really do wonders for sore teeth and gums by the way. In the process I conveniently forgot why I don’t take Disprin and haven’t done so for quite some years now…my somewhat dormant stomach ulcer.  (I’m actually a light-weight when it comes to pain meds, only have 2 panados every now and then and a bottle can last me mooooonths).

Anyway, I may have forgotten (briefly) about the ulcer but it did not forget about me. I had some Disprin again last night and so of course today I feel dreadful as expected (even though I chased it with a swig of Gaviscon). It appears that I am falling apart to a certain extent! My bits are not being compatible with each other at the moment. *sniff*

Thank goodness I have an appointment for next week Wednesday with the best dentist in the world (he charges a small fortune but he’s worth it *imagine a flick of the hair to go with that statement*), and until then I will try my level best to stick to soft squishy food and no pain meds.

Hope you all have a super fantastic weekend!

Back to the title of this post…

Last night Nicola and I were sitting in the bath relaxing, chatting and having a giggle – and when I looked over at her it just hit me how quickly she was really growing up! Anxious. It’s happening too fast! It feels like just yesterday when she couldn’t even sit up on her own properly, and here she is now chilling in the bath like a pro and chatting to me in full understandable sentences. My baby is a little girl.

Even though I’m not mad about how clingy she sometimes gets when I really need two hands to do something, it dawned on me, before you know it she’ll be an angry teenager and she won’t even want to give me a hug or the time of day and I’ll be missing my all day every day snuggles and the way she wants to help me with everything even if that means it takes three times as long to get it done.

She is so unbelievably cute at the stage where she is now. I totally get why a lot of people have this kind of age gap between their kids. You just forget about the colic and teething and everything else that may not have been so much fun and you think to yourself, “I could do this again – just look how cute she is!”

Well…I’m not exactly there (yet). As much as I’m enjoying this adventure I won’t do it as a single parent again. What I will take from this moment though is the message that I have to STOP rushing around so much and enjoy every second. Who knows what’s coming next and how quickly we’ll get there and this part is really awesome. I don’t want to miss a second of it because I was busy catching up on laundry rather than relaxing for a few minutes in the bath with my daughter and experiencing the little miracle she truly is.

Ps! On a lighter note and more or less on the topic of laundry. Our washine machine is in the garage, and it appears to have microsoft minutes even though it’s a samsung. For instance when you switch it on it tells you it’ll take 50 minutes and when you go there after 50 minutes it tells you there are still 18 left to go. Often I’ll say to Nicola, “Come lets go see how many minutes are left on the machine.” and then read out to her whatever it says when we get there. What Nicola has picked up from this experience is the expression “Veertien minute!” and she is convinced that that is the time span for almost any question relating to time. She also holds up any random number of fingers when she shouts it out, usually three fingers but on occasion more. I might ask her something like isn’t it your bedtime yet, and she will say no…still 14 minutes, yay! Or like this morning I said, “Nicola maak gou, ons is ‘n bietjie laat!” and she said, “Ja mamma, veertien minute!” Too funny, and she was actually right too – it was 14 minutes.

Nicola heard me groaning in agony at some point and she asked me what was wrong. I told her my tummy was hurting. Bless that child, do you know what she did? She kissed it better…too sweet. Those kisses, along with some black rooibos tea and a few swigs of gaviscon and I was almost good as new. But I bet the kisses helped most of all.

Yonk ago I bought a hologram Tinkerbell puzzle for Nicola to grow into at some point. Last night I decided to open it and have a look at it for the first time. It’s very pretty but let me be clear – I am soooo not buying one of these again. It’s bloody tricky since the pictures keep changing and if you don’t hold it at the perfect angle you’ll never figure out where it fits! Nicola was not to be deterred though – she just jammed them in anywhere where she could make them stick, not overly concerned with either of the two pictures we were trying to build. I’ve packed it away again afterward, maybe one day she’d like to try it again when she’s a bit older.

Mmm…I loaded two pics of the bread but I see only one made it. Oh well. *shrug* Steamcleaner, my rock star secret place manager, gifted me a breadmaker that she doesn’t use anymore. How awesome is that?! So last night Nicola and I made our very first mini loaf to try it out. It was so delicious that I have to admit I probably ate half of it warm just as it came out of the oven with thick  butter on it (thank goodness my tummy had settled by then!).

You actually cannot believe how good it smells when it’s baking. It fills up the whole house and makes your mouth water – yumm! It’s even got a little timer so you can set it to bake while you’re sleeping so you get to wake up to that wonderful smell. This machine is definitely going on holiday with us. I may have to roll home afterwards.

Ps! It dawned on me while the bread was baking that I do not actually own a bread knife and that I was meant to go and buy one before I started baking. Luckily I didn’t have to hack off chunks since I found a knife that will cut it even though it’s not a traditional bread knife – I actually forgot I had it since it came in a set of kitchen knives I bought years ago and this particular one I never used to it was still in the case along with the cleaver. What the hell would you use a cleaver on anyway?! I’ll need to find a safe place in my kutchen for the bread knife where little fingers can’t get to it. And I think I may need a bread tin too, if any of it ever makes it to the tin instead of my mouth.

How was your Monday?