Feelings

I got up this morning to head to the studio to do my yoga practice but I was reminded of the fact that I only have a Nanny 3 days a week now (a story for another day) and Elijah will start school today (a related story for the same day). I knew Darin would be swamped trying to get both boys ready in time so I decided to practice at home.
So I don't if it was the practicing at home that made me lazier than usual but my practice felt really hard today. All my movements felt slow and heavy and I was out of breath already on my 3rd sun A. It felt like I was moving a huge lump to try and do anything. Also, the weather is changing so it's feeling really hot and the first sign for me is that I get really dry feet (granted I'm way overdue on my pedicure) and they also felt really huge and swollen. I am almost 24 weeks pregnant so I guess this is when I really start to feel the difference in my body but boy does it make practicing that much harder.

Day 2

I can't flake out on the second day already, even though I came quite close. I'm blogging from my phone so there really is no excuse. Man, 30 days is a long time...

My Nanny was sick this week and came back to work today looking a little worse for wear: pale, cold sores and a weird look in her eyes like she was overmedicated. I wanted to send her home but she said she was fine. But there was no way I was leaving Elijah with her. I spoke to her about what was going on, and she was open with me about going for all the necessary tests and that they were all negative. I told her that I was worried and that I felt she was not looking after herself and that may be this job was too stressful on her health...
In the past 5 years I must have been through about 7 nannies or more. I am very fussy and we live in a tiny 3 - bedroom flat and I can't stand people in my space for too long. I have really tried with the last 3 though and I thought I might have this one for a long time.
The reality is that I'll have 3 kids soon and I need a Nanny that's good at her job and is in 100% health, I can't have someone like this around my children and her and Elijah are in close proximity of each other all day everyday. It is so hard to find good help. Well, for me it is and it makes me super stressed. We are house hunting at the moment which means are expenses are about to increase and life is about to get that much more difficult. I am finally starting to feel a part of the family business and I am trying to give it my all but my kids will always come first and when things like this happen I know my number 1 priority to be home with them. But I still need to work, I can't stay home and get paid but I can't be at work and worry about my children all day.
So, I've decided to send Elijah to Noah's  school from Tuesday, 3 times a week, until the end of the year for my own piece of mind. I know it's going to take some big adjustment from his side, just today, he bawled buckets of tears when I left him with Noah's class so I could talk to the school secretary - I wonder what it will be like when I leave. But at least I know he will be safe and if need be Noah can pop in to say hi from his classroom.
Let's see how this pans out...

All I want is a (mom) blog

You'll see from my intermittent posts that I've been wanting (trying!) to blog for years. I always had a way with words but I lost my flow over time and children... my brain is not what it used to be. I feel like a blog would be a great outlet for me, I feel like people would want to read what I have to say but that also makes me quite fearful at the same time. 
I want to blog about everything that makes me happy in life: my kids, my husband, my yoga, clothes, coffee, cooking... the intention is there, the follow through, not so much.I always have such great ideas but putting them into action is always where it stops for me. That must be fear, right? I'm so scared that what I write will be lame but I have to start and just keep going. 
I know I set out to do a 30 day mysore challenge a little while back which I was supposed to blog about. I subsequently did do it, and lasted 20 days which surprised even me but it was a few months down the line and I didn't jot a single word about it. 
I dont want to say it out loud but I just want to blog, every day, for 30 days. Just try and write something. Every day. And see where we go.

Hey look, day 1 is already done.

Here we go again

You'll know from a previous blog post that I am a mom to two of the most beautiful little boys, Noah who is 5, and Elijah who is nearly 20 months. They are just the best ever and they fill my days with lots of cute and crazy. 

My 2 crazies sampling out our homemade coco pops
we made the other morning

It is hard work being a mom to one child, never mind two. I chose to give birth to both boys naturally with no drugs of any kind and I followed the style of attachment parenting. Both boys slept in the bed with me for a long time and never in a cot: I wore them both in a wrap; I breastfed Noah for 15 months and I am still breastfeeding Elijah; I stayed home with Noah until he was 19 months and with Elijah I am fortunate enough to work within the family business so I only really work for a maximum of 3 hours a day. I know some moms aren't as lucky as I have been - they have no choice but to go back to a full-time job after maternity leave, they need to leave their small babies with a caregiver, they're not able to breastfeed and they choose to have their child be in their own room. There have been many times over the years where I wish I had done that because being at home with your children almost all day everyday can make me feel like I have no other purpose in life than being a mother and although I love to "mom", I am more than that. 

It took me about 3 years after Noah was born to get myself out of the haze that is motherhood sometimes, and re-find myself. I was back at work, my husband Darin and I were a "couple" again and I was finally back on my mat. Then I fell pregnant with Elijah and although I was so happy, I didn't feel like I was ready to do it all over again.

The second time around was really hard for me. The first five weeks I didn't have any help at home, Darin had obviously gone back to work and mentally checked out of life really (who could blame him!). I had a 3,5 year old, a new born and I felt like I needed to run far far away. I had forgotten how to deal with such a small baby and felt like I was failing Noah every single day as I was not 100% there for him. Things did get easier and time went by so quickly and before I knew it, Elijah was a year old and walking and becoming his own little self! After this whole experience of having 2 children, I knew that I didn't want to have any more and although Darin wanted to wait a few more years so we could try for a girl I refused and so when Elijah was about 15 months we made an appointment with a urologist to look at Darin getting a vasectomy. Because of the way I have chosen to live my life: as natural as can be, lots of yoga and good food, I have never wanted to go for the contraceptive options like the Loop or the Mirena - I just can't put something like that in my body and Darin was fine with getting the snip. We went to the appointment and it sounded like an easy enough procedure but for some reason we put things on hold as life got in the way. I am still breastfeeding and haven't had a period in about 2 years, I knew there was no way I could fall pregnant.

Since October 2016 I've had a pretty steady Ashtanga practice and manage at least 3 times a week. I eat well and also managed to lose 12 kgs which has taken me about 7 years! In 2009 I was put on some anti-depressants to manage my anxiety and depression with the intention that I would eventually be able to be off them. With all my good eating and my discipline in yoga, I took it upon myself to get off my medication and boy did things take a turn for the worse.

I went down to half for an entire course (about a month and a bit) and eventually got done to a 1/4 which is 5mg and halfway through the course I started to spiral out of control. Everything in my life felt extremely overwhelming. I would dread getting out of bed every morning, it became too much just to switch the kettle on to make coffee nevermind make the boys breakfast or start on Noahs lunch for school. I was angry all the time and Darin and I would fight constantly. I would hide behind my phone and never be present with the boys and I'd lie awake at night completely exhausted and unable to switch my mind off. It never occurred to me that this was all because I was weaning off my medication. I had started practicing drop backs and so I thought all the backbends were bringing all my "stuff" out and forcing me to deal with things. This was also true but things were on a whole other level and I couldn't handle even the simplest tasks. Darin and I decided to go see someone as our marriage was taking its toll with all the fighting and the night before our third session, I lay awake and it suddenly dawned on me the reason behind why I hadn't been able to deal with life on life's terms - my brain was all messed up from trying to wean off the meds but I wasn't sure if it was because everything in my life was on a downwards spiral because of this or if things just happened to be happening this way. I decided to speak to the psychologist about it and she advised me to look at going back on medication. I know its very rare to meet a doctor that will tell you otherwise but I had begun to trust this lady and I feel like she came into my life at a very important time. She recommended another doctor to me who I could talk to who would prescribe my medication who I went to see the very next day. 

Fast forward to about 10 days later, I was feeling much better but I was feeling very nauseous a lot of the time. I researched this and a lot of articles said that nausea was a side effect for about 2 weeks of starting new meds but it was weird as I was only feeling nauseous in the morning and at night before bed. Also, this medication was not completely new to my body - I had only been taking the generic form previously.
I decided to ask a friend of mine who recently started a similar type of medication a few months back to see if he was experiencing the same symptoms. He wasn't and he joked that I was pregnant and that it might be about time the third baby was due. I didn't find this amusing at all as you can imagine, but that thought stayed with me...
A few hours later I was in Clicks buying a pregnancy test, I left home in my slippers and rushed over there very impulsively. A woman walked into the store at the same time as me and landed up going to the same aisle as me (somehow I knew exactly which aisle the pregnancy tests were) and I pretended I was looking at Castor Oil of all things. I suddenly felt shy to pick up the test, which is so not like me, and I loitered around for a bit. Eventually I bit the bullet and lunged for the test and as I turned to speedwalk towards the till, I heard one of the shop assistants yell out "GOOD LUCK!" which I thought was a little rude to which I replied with the dumbest thing ever: "It's not for me! I already have 2 kids!" uuummm really Angie?? I don't even have words...
Anyway, off I raced home excited about the fact that my (regularly) full bladder could pee on the stick immediately as I got home. None of this first morning pee nonsense - I found out I was pregnant with Elijah at 6pm in the evening! - I was doing this now.
I watched the Control region line form and my heart skipped a beat as I thought no, that can't be the pregnancy line right, phew, no it isn't and then there it was... the test region line formed and very boldly at that and the obscenities just started falling out my mouth...

Here we go again. Onto number 3.  

Heading our way March 2018.

One solid month of Ashtanga

So, 6 years ago I embarked on my journey with Ashtanga, introduced via a Teacher Training course that I thought was a good idea at the time. Looking back, it was still a good idea but I had no clue what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. I had, at that point never ever done an Ashtanga class and I remember flopping around all over my mat during the first led class and literally crawling through each Vinyasa.
I remember how my teacher told us in the first module, which was only about 5 days,  that we had to practice daily and I remember one day calling her and saying that there was no way I could do this. It was just too hard and I didn't like it. And I really didn't. Like it, that is. I borrowed the David Swenson primary series dvd from my teacher  (well, really she pushed it on me) and when I watched it the first time my mouth must've been open the entire time. And when I practiced along with it, I hated every minute. I think I managed about 3 or 4 practices in about the 3 weeks until the second module started. My body AND mind ached before, during and after each practice and I just couldn't get my head around what was going on and what it was all for. Nothing made sense and I could feel the toll my body was taking. I started to feel weird and I was experiencing really strange sensations.
On the morning of the start of the second module of the Teacher Training, I decided to take a pregnancy test. It was about 5am, my husband lay snoring in his childhood room of his parents house while I peed on a stick. We had been back in South Africa for just over a month. I remember running towards the bedroom door and almost bumping into my husband, Darin, who was running towards me, and I showed him the pregnancy test and flung my arms around him. I was pregnant and we were both so happy. We were married just over a year.

Cut to 6 years later where I've had a very broken practice but have managed to keep it almost consistent though not daily since November 2016. Since then I have not managed to practice everyday and it's a goal I set for myself every Sunday and fail miserably at.

So hear I am, making a promise to myself but more to cyberspace and the non-existent followers of this here blog, that as of this Thursday I will start day 1 of 30 days of Ashtanga yoga and document it for ease of completion. If I can do 30 days then I can work on another 10 and apparently it takes 40 days to changed a habit. Let it also be known that every time I get defiant about following through with my practice it is always the day before a moon day (which is tomorrow) which somehow makes me feel even more guilty. It's like I tell myself "tomorrow I'll start my daily practice" but then tomorrow never actually comes because it's a moon day and I can never practice. 😐
So tomorrow I'll post on here again that I'll start "tomorrow" just to put an end to old habits.

No, actually...

I have thought about this blog a lot over the years, always with an interesting post to write. I even created a new blog on wordpress with the same title but I managed one measley post and it wasn't very good. Reading over the previous ones here, they're not too bad and I'm glad I finally made my way back here.
I need to edit my profile. Now, 6 years later, much of what I said I was, still prevails. A screenshot of what my previous intro said:

Newlywed... well, I have been married for 6 and a half years so perhaps that is still new. There are some days where I feel like I don't know my husband at all, let me tell you! 

I daydream. Still. Though I don't have as much time as I used to. It's mainly at night, when everyone is asleep and I've exhausted myself playing Ramsay Dash and Farm Heroes Saga. So maybe that's changed a bit. I nightdream (?) now.

Yogini? Yes. Ashtangi is better and I was lucky to discover the beautiful practice of Ashtanga shortly after the post before this one. I shall thank Madonna (you goddess, you) for opening my eyes to it nearly 20 years ago but I only actually did my first ashtanga practice in 2011 and it's been one of the best and hardest things I have ever undertaken.

I still adore fashion. My feelings are hurt by it at the moment though. A post for another day...

And last but most definitely not least: I am a Mom. Of two beautiful boys. They are the best things in my life and they are my E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

Time to update my intro...