Hello! It’s me, Talia.
Recently I gave birth to my fifth baby – a boy to break the tie between boys and girls in our family. My eldest is 12, my youngest before the baby is 4, and it’s been a rollercoaster ride being a new mum again.
A lovely rollercoaster ride of course. Like the low grade little kid ones at Aussie World. Not the Joker ride at Movie World, OR the most terrifying roller coast I’ve EVER been on in my life and highly regret – the Scooby do coaster, also at Movie World *shudders*.
All my big kids love their baby brother, and well, so do my husband and I. He smiles more than I think a baby normally does, and this is just like honey for the soul. I often hand him over to a sad faced big kid and ask if they want some baby therapy. It almost always perks their mood up (except for that one time someone got peed on and they thought it was the most disgusting thing in the entire world, and thought they needed to burn their clothes now because they were ruined forever…).
I think the most common thing people say to me when they know I have five kids is that I have my hands full. And that is unequivocally true. I do have my hands full (though they’d be a lot less full if they were at school instead of homeschooling. I’d literally have 2-3 days a week with just me and the baby!), but I don’t feel… overrun, as I imagine a lot of people think they would feel if they had five kids. Part of this is that I’ve had them one at a time, so you sort of get your footing with 3 and then have the fourth. Get your footing with four, then have the fifth, etc. It’s also because they’re MY kids, and I know them pretty well. Despite my near constant worries of leaving them with unending childhood trauma every time I raise my voice or swear under my breath, I think my husband and I actually have a pretty close relationship with all of them. Room for improvement I’m sure, but every now and again I get pleasantly surprised at the personal and brutally honest things they tell me about themselves. So yeah, I’m busy, but I’ve got this.
The last few weeks I have had thoughts of needing to up my game in a few areas though, and so I feel like I am on the precipice of a new version of myself. Me with a diary. Haha. Seriously though, I’m getting a diary. I need to write some stuff down. Baby brain + no discernible sleep + homeschooling 4 kids + running around to a kazillion appointments and activities = Needing somewhere to collect my thoughts. I anticipate writing lists of things to do, and collecting notes from various allied health appointments, and maybe even a bit of on the go curriculum planning.
Anyway, welcome to my ramble, ramble blog. I’ve been a blogger since 2005, and I had a break for the last few years, but I’m back baby!