Not Gisele: 23 weeks on and still saggy

 At least my old clothes now fit!

Well it's not as if it wasn't obvious that I wouldn't be modelling a bikini 2 minutes after giving birth, a la Gisele Bundchen. And, like I was at 11 weeks postpartum I'm still unsure as to whether I'll ever be able to wear a bikini again... I've already made Gam very sad by buying my first one-piece swimsuit in more than 10 years (i.e. since I had a say in what kind of swimsuit I wore!).

 Still have lots of extra skin...

I bought from Trixan Body, for anyone who's interested- I really hate swimsuit shopping... not because I'm insecure, but because there is just so much crap out there and I hate wasting my time trying it on. Trixan Body have 'free postage and free returns', so you can buy as many things as you like to try on, and send back what doesn't fit, and I took full advantage! I ordered 5 one-piece suits and sent back 3... brilliant system, even if I did buy one more swimsuit than I meant to! I doubt I'll ever shop for swimmers anywhere else.

 Bellybutton skin...

I've lost a bit more weight since 11 weeks, and am now back to my pre-pregnancy weight. The downside of that is that the stretched skin on my stomach hasn't kept up as much as it might have, and I still have quite a lot extra. However, it must be a lot better than it was, because it used to look so gross when I was lying down- all wrinkly- and now it doesn't look anywhere near as bad. More like the stomach of a 50-year-old than a 100-year-old... just a tiny hint of wrinkle now! Oh, but lying on my side my stomach still looks like it's melting off my body. Pretty bad, but it was fairly horrifying before, so it's definitely better than it was! I'm pleased with how the stretchmarks are fading too. Note to anyone who's curious: I did not apply any magic creams or oils, not even moisturiser... I did try and remember to do something like that a few times (no more than about 4-5 times in 23 weeks) with free samples of nice-smelling oils I got sent when I bought some baby clothes for Setri, but most of the time I barely remember to shave my legs, let alone apply nice oils and things... and at least this way I'm not tempted to credit magic oils and creams with stretchmark-fading properties, which I might be if I had used them on a regular basis.

Stomach skin... hard to believe that it used to be even worse!

My bellybutton looks normal when I lie down, but not when I stand up... it kind of slumps forward under the extra skin and looks pretty bloody sad. I finally got to see a physio at the hospital about a month ago, where my stomach muscles were checked for separation and I was also checked internally for signs of prolapse or other damage. There was good news all around in terms of the fascia between my abdominal muscles repairing itself, as well as there being no obvious internal damage, but the physio said that the fascia between my abs had been stretched and might always be a couple of centimetres wider than it used to be, particularly around my bellybutton, so I'll have a bit less waist definition than I used to, by the looks of it... My bellybutton is a bit of a joke, there is so much extra skin on top of it, and it's almost like it's been uprooted from wherever it used to be positioned in my stomach. I'm happy to know that I'm fine to do sit-up-type motions... not that I ever do sit-ups, but getting out of bed while lifting Setri, that kind of thing.

I was actually chuffed when the physio seemed impressed by my stomach muscles- Gam and I hadn't yet got around to doing even a token effort at exercise at the time. Since then we have been for one short jog and 2 days ago I attended a supposedly easy pilates/yoga-mix class at the gym my cousin Rach goes to... The muscles I do have are pretty strong (arms and stomach), but the muscles that have wasted in my year or so without exercise (bum, thighs, inner-thighs, calves) were so non-existent that I was in pain within a few seconds of starting the class! The pain after the class was all good pain, though, and I've resolved to do a bit more exercise.

I say I'm not insecure, but I have noticed that when we are having people over I avoid wearing anything that would require me to lift up my top to breastfeed Setri and thus reveal my stomach... so I guess I am a little insecure. I'm happy enough with how things are going, but I do feel my body is still a little gross for public consumption.

Not going bald, but it was a near thing...

I had a nice moment of surprise and relief the other day when I was brushing my hair (what little of it that is left) and realised that I had an 'undercoat' of new hair beginning to grow. Phew!

In other news, Setri is crawling, but not very far, nor very fast. He is obsessed with the cats and tries to crawl to them... they feel perfectly safe sitting still and watching him until he comes within arm's reach. I figure the day they high-tail it as soon as Setri starts marching their way is the day we can truly say he is crawling.

The Australian wets itself over Green-bashing backlash

The Australian has gotten all defensive over the unsettled reaction among its media colleagues and competitors over the way it engaged in open Green-bashing last week. What a complete joke. Seriously, 'tough reporting'? Portraying open calls for the destruction of the Greens as serious journalistic scrutiny?

They're not kidding anyone any more, and it's got them worried.

Chickens!

We did it! I am finally, as Gam put it, 'living the dream'.

2 weeks ago we got ourselves 2 chickens, a pair of scruffy ISA Browns. We had figured we'd be waiting a few years before we got ourselves a couple of chooks- that we'd first make sure we had proper fences, at least- but a work colleague of Gam's was giving away a couple of tame-ish chickens, so he volunteered to take them, and spent a weekend knocking together a rather nice coop for them in our concreted, unused 'pig-on-a-spit area'.

Given that the two chickens (as yet unnamed and referred to as 'Bad Chicken' and 'The Other One') had supposedly once been pets prior to residing with Gam's colleague's mother, I was surprised they were in such poor condition. They were underweight and their feathers were dull and patchy. I was a little worried that they might be a bit old, but we'd been told they were regular layers, and they were. I think that rather than being fed layer pellets and grain they'd merely been left to forage for their own food in the nice old lady's backyard.

Unfortunately they don't seem to know how to perch and have been roosting in and on one of the nest boxes, meaning I have to clean their poo out of it every day! Thankfully they lay in the other nest box!

Anyway, after a couple of days of ready access to feed they were already noticeably heavier. Two weeks on, they've grown more feathers and are much glossier and healthier looking than in these photos, though they are still missing a few feathers in places.

They are reasonably tame, though not as tame as the chickens I had growing up. They have each laid an egg every second day (on the same day, in the same nest box) since we got them, but I figured that frequency of laying would increase once they put on some condition, and we were duly rewarded with one extra egg on their 'off day' on Friday, so that's a good sign.

It's so nice having home-grown eggs- they are noticeably fresher than bought eggs, and I love knowing they come from happy chickens. The girls are mostly confined in their yard, but I let them out for a scratch in the dirt most days, which they love. They dug up the herb garden (which survived), and my Mum and I went for a walk after forgetting we'd let them out and came back to find them scratching in our neighbour's yard! Oops! Thankfully we have great neighbours and no damage was done, but Gam was a bit cranky with me and started muttering something about 'stew' when he found out...

Gam is already talking about getting a couple more chickens- I'm keen on getting a couple of heritage-breed chicks (I have always wanted to own some cool-looking fancy breeds... I once had silkies and they were great) from one of the local places that sells them- but I want to wait a while, as baby chicks need a lot of care and attention if they are to become as tame as I'd like, and when Setri is a little bit older he will get a lot of enjoyment out of raising some, I reckon.

First eggs! Of course I had to photograph them!

In Australia we don't even get the pretence of 'fair and balanced'

That fine old mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch, The Australian, has openly called for the Greens to be 'destroyed'. Every person with two brain cells to rub together knew that the News Ltd rags are biased, sure, but for them to be so bold as to actually come out and say it is a pretty scary thing, in my view. They have just called for the destruction of the only party with a humanitarian, non-bigoted policy platform, the only party in favour of free universal health AND dental care. The only party who support an egalitarian system of free public education instead of funnelling money into the pockets of schools attended by the children of people like Rupert Murdoch. The only party who have enough conviction on climate change to actually do something about it. Rupert Murdoch wants them destroyed. Makes me even more glad we signed up as Greens members after the election. That's just incredible. What a bloody hide.

Via Jeremy @ Pure Poison.

Stephanie Rice is NOT the problem

I don't really want to defend Stephanie Rice. What she wrote on her twitter account after the Wallabies beat South Africa was pretty much the equivalent of dropping the N-bomb. But it was absolutely not used in a way such that she intended it to be homophobic. It was the equivalent of calling someone, or something, 'gay' in the schoolyard, without giving second thought to its meaning. Doesn't mean it's alright in any sense, but after seeing the media gleefully pile on and refer to her tweet as 'homophobic' and 'anti-gay', I really feel like that's a little much. Ian Roberts, too. What, do you have another book coming out, Ian?

This is the same media that won't call someone like Tony Abbott a homophobe. It won't call the so-called Australian Family Association's strident opposition to gay marriage, adoption, IVF and pretty much the entire existence of anyone with same-sex attraction homophobic. I could go on. There are just so many examples of genuinely harmful anti-gay views in our society that I really resent the media using something like this as a distraction. Especially when the media is a big part of the problem. They treat views like those of Tony Abbott and the AFA as legitimate, their anti-gay sentiments as part of a 'debate'. It's bullshit. There is no 'debate'.

So, a little bit of understandable schadenfreude from the ordinary person aside, leave Steph Rice the hell alone. Once society is rid of genuine homophobia and anti-gay views, the little things like using the word 'faggot' in stupid schoolyard language will naturally follow. But something like this should never be allowed to divert peoples' attention from the real issues, especially when the diversion is created by people who bear a lot of responsibility for the climate that exists in the first place.

Update: Matthew Mitcham's defence of Stephanie Rice has hit the news. He essentially said the same thing yesterday on Facebook, but I suppose Ian Roberts' attention-seeking better fitted the media's desired narrative.

Not *quite* crawling...

I'm willing to call it: Setri will be crawling properly at 5 months.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was crawling within a week, and I would be surprised if he's not crawling within 2.

Yesterday he crawled (forwards) across the bed. It was slow and halting, with a couple of rest breaks/face-plants into the mattress, but he did it! This morning he scrambled the short distance from the bed to his cot (which is attached to the bed and remains largely unused) to fetch his ball (a soft toy soccer-ball with a bell in it). Then, as Gam was leaving for work, Setri crawled a couple of 'steps' across the floor. This from a baby who won't even reliably roll over... I won't say 'can't', because he can and we've both seen it, but he still seems to prefer to wait for one of us to do it for him...

My parents are visiting us next week, and I think while they entertain him I am going to spend the week childproofing the house.

Meanwhile I can't tell if I have mastitis or the flu, but whatever it is it's nowhere near as bad as when I had mastitis when Setri was 3 weeks old. So I'm pretty ok (and relieved).

Australia just dodged a bullet.

We were *this* close to having a Tony Abbott government. I felt sick just thinking of it. Thank god Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor opted to back Labor. The Mad Katter didn't, but regardless I enjoyed the spectacle he provided and appreciated that he is at least openly and honestly representing his electorate. I think Bob Katter holds some absolutely loony views, but he's not a slimeball. I even hated listening to Julia Gillard's press conference this afternoon, so refreshing has the straight-shooting, spin-free style of the four independents and Greens' Adam Bandt been.

Hopefully politics in Australia is not business as usual from now on.

Still expanding my food horizons

Recently I had the opportunity to try a bunch of new and  interesting cheeses when we held a cheese and beer-tasting night- two such nights, in fact, as we had so much leftover cheese and beer from the first. I thought I'd have a bit of a blog some of my more interesting discoveries.

Chocolate stout: I am a big fan of dark beers- stouts, rich, sweet trappist beers and the like. I've always wanted to try chocolate stout and oatmeal stout. I wasn't able to find oatmeal stout, but I did find a decent-sized bottle of Young's Double Chocolate Stout; A friend of ours was obviously of the same mind, as she brought alone the same thing! As it turned out, it was both delicious and chocolatey, but not in a sweet way. More like a stout with definite notes of cocoa; it was a perfect foil to some of the stinky washed-rind cheeses we had (and in the case of the munster, an absolute necessity). That same friend and her partner also brought along a Red Oak 'belgian chocolate stout' that is still sitting in our fridge, but given how good the other Red Oak beers were, I'm betting it's at least as good as the Young's, possibly better.

Saint Marcellin: A washed-rind cheese that attracted my attention because it came in its own little terracotta pot. It was the last one in stock and I snapped it up. It was extraordinarily soft when I bought it and on the night, a week later, it was the consistency of pouring cream- the terracotta pot is functional, rather than simply decorative or kitsch. It was an incredible cheese. Just beautiful. So good, in fact, that for the second beer-and-cheese night I couldn't resist buying another when I saw that Superior Fruit had restocked it. It was slightly less ripe, but I figured within a week it would have ripened sufficiently. What a nasty shock I got. A friend who'd enjoyed the first one at the previous beer-and-cheese night tried it first and warned me that it was nowhere near as good. Boy was that an understatement. It literally tasted like vomit. "Not to worry!", I thought, "I'll just pop it in the fridge for a couple of weeks to ripen up more, then I'll enjoy it. And it did ripen somewhat over the next two weeks, so I tried it. Still tasted like vomit. Another week later, it was significantly softer still- and still tasted like vomit. To the point where I immediately had to search for something strong-tasting to rid my mouth of the taste! I was so put off by the experience that I seriously considered throwing out the rest of the cheese (heresy!). So Saint Marcellin would have to be both one of the nicest and most revolting cheeses I have ever tasted! Nothing like a Camembert or Brie which, if underripe, are boring and chalky at worst. When underripe, Saint Marcellin is seriously offensive stuff!

Munster: I had great hopes for the Munster. "Let us know how you go with that one", said the guys at Superior Fruit. They'd only just got it in stock for the first time when we were about to hold our second beer-and-cheese night. By the time we got home, Gam was complaining that the Munster had stunk out the car. After a few minutes in the house, he was complaining about the stench in there, too! He grabbed a ziploc bag and sealed the Munster safely inside, but in the few days it was in the fridge its smell had permeated the plastic and it was busy stinking up the fridge. A good sign, I thought! I knew it probably wasn't going to be to the taste of most of our friends, but I was convinced that our friend Rob, a chef, food technologist and adventurous food-enthusiast, would appreciate it.

When I unpackaged the Munster it was fairly soft and a small chunk of cheese adhered to the packaging, so I ate it. Boy was it strong. It was a great flavour, but with a hell of a strong aftertaste. I immediately felt the need for a swig of something strongly flavoured, and the chocolate stout fitted the bill perfectly, and actually worked brilliantly with the cheese. I later tried it with the blue-label Chimay and a couple of other dark beers, but none matched it so well as the chocolate stout. Pretty much everyone tried the Munster, and pretty much no-one went back for seconds. Rob was sitting at the table close to the Munster, and periodically he would jerk his head back and lean back from the table. After the second or third time it happened I realised that it was the scent of the Munster assaulting his nostrils! He laughed and admitted the smell was just too much, and moved the cheese out of the way. He had a French friend who loved really stinky cheese, he said, but the Munster was a bridge too far for him and I was definitely on my own with this one!

Tete de Moine: This was Gam's pick for the first night, and as it was sold only in an 800g wheel, it lasted through til the second and is still being consumed even now! Of all the cheeses we bought and tried, this is the one I would want to buy again, even in spite of the eye-watering price ($75!). It is a simply brilliant, big, beautiful cheese. It's a hard Swiss cheese, made from unpasteurised cow's milk. When first unwrapped it had an eye-wateringly pungent ammonia smell, but left to breathe it revealed real character, and the ammonia smell largely disappeared. It is supposed to be shaved with a special gadget, with the finest curls of cheese supposed to develop the flavour to the cheese's fullest potential, but we didn't have one... I use a fruit peeler or a very sharp knife. I've been eating it most days since then, and it's particularly good with vegetables. I eat shavings of it rolled up in lettuce leaves as a snack or for lunch, and tonight I had it melted on steamed cauliflower. Gam reckons it would be a great cheese to have on a burger and I agree, but we haven't got around to making burgers yet.

Roquefort with strawberries: this was a recommendation from my friend and fellow nutritionist, Rob's partner Nicole. I was sceptical. I love blue cheese, and the roquefort from Superior Fruit was a particularly good one, but I know that blue cheese can make certain other foods taste simply foul, so I approached this combination with extreme caution. Blue cheese and celery, yes... but blue cheese and strawberries? Well, it worked! It totally worked! It was so delicious I went back for seconds, and thirds. Definitely worth a go. It sounds adventurous, but it's shocking how well they go together- nothing 'out there', nothing to stretch the tolerance of your taste-buds, just your imagination.

Big props to Superior Fruit for having the most fabulous and interesting selection of quality cheeses I have ever come across. Superior Fruit makes all my cheese dreams come true. I don't know how we didn't discover them earlier. We used to drive by their sign advertising their 'cheese room' when I was pregnant and didn't visit because Gam knew I would go nuts and buy all sorts of cheeses I wasn't supposed to have. It's an all-round great, friendly, family-run deli. Their fruit and vegetables really are superior, too! I said to Gam that the only way it could be more perfect was if they opened 'Superior Bottlestore' right next door so we didn't have to drive so far for a quality selection of beers.

Re beers, First Choice now have a pathetic selection of interesting beers, as we sadly discovered after trekking all the way to Toowong (our old 'local') after figuring maybe our new local at Salisbury just wasn't up to scratch. No, First Choice just isn't up to scratch. Luckily we found Wine@era, who apparently have a great selection of wine, but we went for their selection of beers and weren't disappointed.

Hitting karma's sweet spot: Fred Nile's porn 'research'.

Seeing as I'll probably never get around to blogging about it myself, I would just like to highlight the recent, juicy and thoroughly enjoyable spectacle of Fred Nile's did-he-or-didn't-he office porn scandal. And come on, most of us can muster up enough common sense to agree on this one. Mikey made a great post about it, and revelled appropriately in Nile's most discomforting moment in the spotlight. A more deserving person, I cannot think of one.

Grr. Mastitis? Hopefully not.

I'm really hoping I don't have mastitis again. I still haven't posted something I wrote while I had it when Setri was 3 weeks old, but it was horrible. I have a kind of bruised feeling on my left boob and I can see a pink patch... and now, after 2 and a half hours of trying to settle a rather manic (but thankfully not screaming) Setri, I have one heck of a headache. No fever though. That was the real kicker last time. The pain was bad, but the fever was debilitating. *So* hoping it's not mastitis.

A great week for Setri-watching

He made some pretty determined efforts to crawl on one occasion last week, but only managed to shuffle backwards!

I think Setri must be having a developmental growth-spurt this week. He's started doing all sorts of things.


On Monday it was sitting up by himself for a prolonged period;


On Tuesday I noticed him banging a slotted spoon I'd given him to play with on the 'bongo'/footstool while he was in his Jolly Jumper- he subsequently copied me when I banged my hand on the bongo like it was a drum, then repeated the action later when I wanted to show Gam.

Wednesday, standing on the lounge and holding onto the back, he tried 'cruising' for the first time, although I grabbed him around the hips when I saw what he was doing, so he shuffled to the edge with me holding on to him (and just as well I did, because he apparently wanted to get to the colourful shopping bags on the floor, and pretty much tried to dive off the lounge... obviously still hasn't learned what the consequences of falling are!).

Also on Wednesday, Setri managed to crawl for the first time, rather than face-ploughing. Only problem was, he wound up going backwards! I think because he was pushing back with his arms. It was only for a few 'steps' before he realised he wasn't getting any closer to where he wanted to go (the remote control for the TV), and started whinging and doing his landed-fish impression (balancing on his belly and flapping his arms and legs).

Then, this morning, Friday, Setri actually managed to crawl forwards for 2 'steps' by himself. It wasn't very good- his back sagged in the middle, but he was otherwise in proper crawling position and propelled himself forward, so it's a start. He hasn't been able to repeat it, but he has been crawling backwards with increasing surety. The problem for him is that the times he's done it, his intention has been to move forwards. So he is winding up very frustrated. He's pretty proficient at face-ploughing now, too, but that only works on the bed or soft surfaces, not the wooden floor!

One more thing he's been doing lots of this week- although he'd done it on the odd occasion over the last few weeks- is a great big baby chuckle. God it's adorable :)