Happy Anniversary!

Yup, it’s been a whole year since we arrived in this sun-scorched land, and what a year. I’m not going to pull any “let’s rehash the year” stuff on you, as it’s all in our archives anyway and rehash episodes are lame. Could I sum up how we feel after 1 year? Hmmm. Still new (does that feeling ever go away?)…tired? Kinda broke. Loving the weather and fresh, cheap produce, not loving being as far away as we possibly could be from our families and closest friends. So happy about the great new people that we’ve met here, we’d be lost without them.

The real question is would we do it again if we knew what we know now…The answer to that one is still up in the air but leaning much closer to heck no (pardon my French, as they say in Canada). Will we look back on this and think “I’m glad we did that- we were so cool once”? I think we will. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve known for a long time that I would be spending significant amounts of my adult life in far off places. I know that I’d be stir crazy if we were living comfortably somewhere close to home having never really ventured, so really I have no grounds for complaint. I think that Tim is on the same page with me there. Tim and I have also known that our chosen occupations were not going to be huge money makers, and after a year of living on a minimal budget (that seems to get smaller and smaller), we know that we can hack just about anything. I think that we can safely say that it’s been good to get this out of our systems at this point. Perhaps the time is right to be where we are and doing what we’re doing. We’re hoping that the time to settle down in Canada feeling will be as apparent when we decide to do that.

So what’s been happening in Australia? Well, bushfires and flooding are still major problems in the north and south of Australia. Everywhere you turn there are appeals for both of these tragedies…Sadly the fires are still raging and floodwaters are still a problem. Actually, there is a fire warning out today for parts of Melbourne as a shift in high winds, 3 more weeks of dryness and 4 ongoing fires may combine in a nasty way. Thankfully, people are aware that they might be in danger this time. It seems that 3 weeks ago people had no idea that they were in the path of such fast moving fire. In terms of flooding, well, lots of people are still in trouble and the major impact that we see here is that fruit is definitely becoming more expensive. Tim left for attempt number 2 at wet season fieldwork (see last blog entry for details) this morning. This means that floodwaters have receeded enough for the vessel skip to be able to supply 9 days of food for the 8 person crew who will be carrying out this fieldwork (the flood-levels during the last trip meant that before the work could start, the vessel would have to sail 16 hours out of the way in order to be able to get food enough for the crew, due to supply shortages in surrounding communities from where they were supposed to be sailing out). So that’s hopeful. I think overall both the fire and rain situations are getting better, but there are a lot of people who have lost absolutely everything. I was reading an article in a Salvation Army publication this week about George Orwell’s take on poverty and what it would be if he were in Australia today…In the article, Sydney writer Jane Richards was quoted as stating:

“Today’s poor are no better off than the poor in the past if they feel poor and they see their situation as helpless”

I wonder how many people coming out of these tragic bushfires and floodings will now be ‘poor’ by that definition. Unfortunately, this is the kind of stuff (along with a number of other afflictions, of course) that can make people poor. Rough times.

On a happier note, Edie is doing much better than she was the last time that Tim left for the north. For those who didn’t know, 3 weeks ago the Edester was admitted to hospital to undergo treatment for releasing about 2 months worth of poo that she couldn’t pass on her own (she’s gonna hate me someday when she stumbles across this blog). Having been told all along that breastfed babies may not poo very often, and not seeing any signs of distress until maybe a week before she was hospitalized, we were crossing our fingers that our baby had a great metabolism. The night of the day that Tim left for the last fieldtrip I woke up to a screaming Edie and decided to call the health-line. When the nurse asked me how long it had been since we’d seen a significant poo, I was embarrassed to tell her that it had been during the month of December while we were in Canada. Yikes. So I took her to emergency and ya…She was chockers (Aussie-speak for full). The doctor had ordered an x-ray and I just wanted to cry when I saw the picture of her little bowels so packed up. Even the doctors couldn’t believe that she was so content and happy when she was so obviously full of poo. They decided to keep her in the hospital for 3 days to give her a naso-gastral treatment of stool-softener, and laxative suppositories from the other end (i.e. the bumbo). So Edie and I hung out at the hospital for those days in a room with two other babies who were much sicker than she was. Neither Edie nor I slept very much, and Tim was up north which made things quite stressful. Oh ya. And Edie decided that she didn’t want to be held by anyone else and let us all know. There were a few disappointed volunteer cuddlers who couldn’t settle her down, one telling me “I’ve never met a baby that I couldn’t get to sleep until now”. What a handful! When Edie allowed, I made a point of having a story time with the three babies together, it was quite fun. Honestly, I could read books to babies for the rest of my life and be quite happy doing only that. At the end of 2 days, the doctors released Edie simply because we weren’t getting any sleep and I could treat her at home more easily. We jumped all over that. So, the first week we were home Edie pretty much made up for the 5 months where we’d seen maybe 1 poo in 2-3 weeks, if we were lucky. On about the 4th day of treatment she pooed 14 times. Given that she’s only awake for 14 hours a day, it wasn’t a really productive day otherwise. She had a follow-up appointment early last week and seems fine. Hooray for that.

That whole episode was tough on us. Edie was waking up all hours of the night for about a month and, well, it just wasn’t pretty. We’re finally getting back to normal around here and it feels so good.

I mentioned in a previous posting that I’ve been playing soccer for the past couple of weeks too. Man, is it ever amazing to get back out onto the field. I don’t know if it’s because I’m recovering from having a wee one or not, but it just feels SO GOOD to be able to play again. Actually, I think that I do feel differently than when I wasn’t a mom. I’ve always taken playing any sport seriously, but now, maybe because time is so precious I feel super-compelled to work my butt off for that hour and a half practice or game. I feel like I need to squeeze whatever workout I can get for the free time that I have. So it’s nice to go to practice and know that Tim can handle Edie and that I can just focus totally on soccer for that time. And there are some great people on our team. All in all, I’m loving it (you can substitute ‘not being pregnant’ for ‘it’ in that sentence).

It’s autumn here now and the weather is cooling off thankfully. We’re now into the best time of year because we’re still getting all of the good produce but not sweating buckets everyday. Speaking of sweating buckets, Edie, me, the neighbor Nikki and her boy Remi have been going for swims in the local public pool over the past month or so. It’s great! It’s a heated pool and the kids love it. Edie likes to be held on her belly so that she can hang her tongue out and lap up the pool water (she does the same in her bathtub, kinda gross) and she likes to put her head under and kick her legs too. I think we have a little fish on our hands. Remi is 4 months older than Edie and likes to splash a lot, I think that Edie can’t wait until she has control enough to splash him back.

I hope that you’re all doing well. If you’re actually reading this, you’re most likely the people we miss so much. Take care and enjoy some new pictures!

Love to all,

Laura