penguin begets penguins: Cruddy stuff & good stuff

Okay, so there's much to catch up on & as usual my brain is a little rattled so this will probably be all over the place so apologies in advance.

First & most important, I am feeling much much better! Not perfect by any means but the heavy aches & pains from the surgery are gone & after six weeks, I can finally squeeze into one pair of non-maternity (but large sized) jeans & have graduated from my granny panties into my old undies. No comments on how much strain I'm putting on the poor elastic.

The bad news is today I thought I had thrush (yeast) in my nipples. I have been having some sharp booby pain & some of the other symptoms I had last time I went through this with Ben. Luckily, I didn't have it too bad last time & it didn't seem so bad this time either so I just ran down to the chemist & grabbed some ointment. But over the day I've been watching a big red wedge right outside my left nipple that doesn't hurt but is hot to the touch & feeling achy (not post-surgery achy, more like I'm coming down with something) so now my Googling has told me that I have mastitis instead. I am counting my blessings because I have heard mastitis HORROR stories & I don't feel too gosh awful yet & must have caught it earlyish. Do not search for mastitis on Google Images by the way - lovely swollen udders run amock. So anyhoo, I'll be off to the doctor. I already have an appointment for my 6 week checkup on Thursday but I'm guessing I shouldn't wait 2 days, should I?

All that aside, Evan is doing splendidly. He is a typical newborn with lots of sleeping, pooping blah blah blah but he also has a grunting problem. I guess he has gas issues & spends a lot of time trying to push wind & poo out with much gusto. Not fun for anyone in the middle of the night. I promised myself that I wouldn't spend time dissecting sleep patterns & theories because it is really annoying but if it gets over the top in any way, I'll be sure to let you know - he's perfectly normal, usually wakes me up around 3.30am then about 6am. If we went to bed earlier than 11pm, I'm sure I'd have to wake up an extra time. He is sleeping in his own bassinet so I'm sleeping a bit better than with Ben but since he's only 6 weeks I'm not comparing him to too much & expect changes, which could be good or bad, any day at any time.

My mom leaves us for America's fair shores tomorrow so I'm sad about that. She's been so much help & good company & I'm going to miss her a lot! And without her, I realize I am back to being a full time mom but to TWO boys now. This should be interesting. Oh! Ben is starting a new daycare because his old daycare lady stopped because she's having her own 2nd baby in the next month. We visited this new place & he LOVED it. It's not a family one so I was a little nervous but it was still smallish & he took off to play with the other kids instead of hanging out with Mommy (yeah, I'm suddenly Mommy instead of Mama for some odd reason - strange boy)(And seriously, what's with all my parentheses today???) during the tour. I thought it was a good sign that when we visited his age room they were coloring pictures of Ben's favorite animal, SPIDERS! And they had spider stuff hanging everywhere - I'm sure that theme will probably be done now but it was still exciting.

Anyway, all that was to say that I'll have a bigger break with Ben being happily in daycare for 2 days instead of one so I can actually do some housework & cooking without my little hyper "helper." Can I just say how much I miss that tornado of toddlerhood when he's gone! I'm glad he's having a great time with other kids & running himself ragged but I miss him. Evan has a lot of catching up to do with his newborn personality. BORING! Hahahaha.

So over the weekend we spent a day in Sydney with my mom & really had a great time. Sydney is such a beautiful city! We played tourist & did a double decker bus tour - Evan & I stayed below so I wouldn't have a sunburnt & wind-rattled newborn on my hands but Ben had the time of his life up there. We also hit up The Star (used to be Star City) casino for the buffet, which is a silly old tradition of ours - I love bread pudding & casino buffets always have it. But much more importantly, we visited my dream place!!! Brace yourselves. We went to Adriana Zumbo's new store, which just opened two weeks ago! I had macarons - delicious, silly, amazing macarons! Lime & mint mojito, Chocolate cinnamon & chili and tonka bean with passionfruit. Mr. Zumbo, I salute you.

Now I'm tired of writing. I think I made a mistake reading the symptoms of mastitis because I suddenly feel very fluish. I will leave you with random pictures instead. Sorry. And Evan doesn't feature in them because he slept pretty solidly in his pram most of the day. Marcel just avoids the camera.

I didn't take this picture. I forgot to take a picture.
I did spend minutes staring in the window, watching the pastry chefs work their magic.
I gawked so long that one of them smiled at me like "Get a life, lady."