I got a laugh, so thought you might too...

 

I think I may have left over Baby Brain.... this is what I feel like when I'm down at woolworths 

trying to add up how much the bread and milk are going to cost me...

 

 

 

Five Things

Rachael tagged me for this meme - list 5 or more things you're looking forward to, or things that are just exciting at the moment... so here I go:


1. Just exciting: Anthea's developmental milestones. She's such a cute little sweetie, and it's a wonderful joy and privilege to watch her clap hands, wave, push herself around in her little walking frame, play happily in the bath for as long as she's allowed to, and cruise around the furniture.


2. I'm looking forward to: School holidays start next week! It will (hopefully!) mean that Aunty Meaghan can come to visit more and we can have some sleep-overs and girly pyjama days! :)


3. Just exciting: I've been reading a lot of stuff (particularly on the Stay at Home Mum website) about cutting costs and saving money whilst raising a family... so I'm all inspired to see which bits I can implement next payday!


4. I'm looking forward to: Anthea's first birthday. We had decided not to do a 1st birthday party, but as it gets closer, I'm feeling more like I do want to do something to mark the occasion! Maybe even just morning tea at the park with her little friends...


5. Just exciting: Call me weird, but I love tax time (and not just because of all the sales)! I love getting organised and sorted, and seeing how my book-keeping skills have served us through the year. And this year it's just a little bit more exciting because of the Family Tax Benefits we'll be eligible for.


I won't tag anyone, but would love to see others' Five Things memes!

Photo update

I know it's been ages... apparently time flies when you're having fun. :) We're better from our colds, and Anthea is sleeping much better. We went out to Gilgandra for the long weekend and learned about long car trips with a baby older than 6 weeks. :P We've had a lot of rain, which means a lot of mud in the house. And Anthea has started walking around furniture. I'll save the rest of my wordiness for next time... but for now, some photos...

So, this first pic was taken on Mother's Day 2012 - four generations of women.

My grandmother with her daughter, four granddaughters, and great-granddaughter.

And here is a family photo taken the same day - of the family that were present.

 

Watching Grandpa hang out the washing...

 

Anthea's first Sydney Swans match - May 2012 - she even got a cuddle with Cyggy!

 

 

Helping Mummy weed the garden

 

Visit to Western Plains Zoo - June Long Weekend

Bath time at Nanna and Grandpa's is Anthea's favourite!

Just because it's cute:

Oh, and in case you thought she was happy all the time:

(This last one totally cracks me up - mean, aren't I?)

I must go to bed... it's late! But before I forget - for some photos of the 1920's party I mentioned in my last post, visit my friend Bethany's blog here.

* I have my sister Meaghan to thank for more than half of these photos. :)

On the mend...

We're nearly better, we just have those lingering coughs and sniffles that seem to hang around for ages and ages. Anthea is now sleeping 5-6 hours in a row at night... which is a far cry from her straight 10-11 hours pre-sickness, but still much better than the 2-3 hour stints she was doing while sick. I hope she gets back to her normal sleeping patterns soon. She's being so cute at the moment, having just figured out how to clap her hands... she sits up after a feed and claps with a big grin on her face. :)

Anthea and I went to a 1920s themed party on the weekend, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately because I am so dodgy, I didn't take a single picture at the party :( but there are sure to be some floating around somewhere at some point and I will see if I can post a link to them. However, I do have a few which Meaghan took of our preparations. My beautiful friend Donna made my costume the day before (!) because she is just one of the most amazing friends ever and loves to bless me. :) Anyhow, she got a a little carried away.... and before I knew it, Annie had a headband to wear too!

Not much else to report really. My house needs a good clean, but we're in the middle of a rainy week, so why would I bother when dirt, mud, squashed snails, sand, worms, leaves, and everything else you can think of is going to get tramped inside as soon as I'm finished. :P

I'll try to do a proper catch-up-on-photos-post next time.

Oh, I nearly forgot! My sister Meaghan has joined the blogosphere!!! This makes me very happy. :)

Sick... Take Two

My post on 14th May said I was sick... well... I thought I was. But in the last few days, I've been sicker than I've been in a loooong time. Wow... being a mummy when sick just takes one to a whole new level of everything. Selflessness. Sacrificial love. That sort of thing.

Alastair had Thursday and Friday off work because he's been sick, and on Friday I came down with it - hard. And I'm so glad that it's now the weekend... I don't know what I'd have done without Alastair. He has been such a wonderful husband as we muddle our way through this new experience as a little family. Today he's feeling a bit better, while I'm feeling about 100 times worse, so he's been getting washing and dishes up to date and looking after Annie while she's awake so that I can just rest and sleep.

I think Anthea is feeling a bit under the weather too, she's a little bit sniffly, but not blocked up... and she doesn't have a cough or anything. But if she's feeling anything like we have, she could have a massive headache and/or sore throat.... so hard when little ones are sick. Last night I was up to her several times, and thought my head was going to explode.....

Anyhow, we've just been lying around really... last night I got all the photos on the computer sorted into folders like I've been meaning to do for ages, so that was a good thing. I've got a whole lot more to share with you all soon. :)

Oh, and today I discovered these articles, and thought they may be an encouragement to others as they were to me... :)

Motherhood is a Calling

Motherhood as a Mission Field

You cheeky thing!

As you may or may not be aware, for the last several (probably three) months I have been trying to start Anthea on solids, and she just has not been interested. I have tried all different types of food, and prepared it many different ways. I've tried to make it a game. I've been stressed about it. I have been given oodles of advice from oodles of people. I've been in tears over it. And so on and so forth. So, in the end, we made the decision to just forget about it for now - she's obviously thriving. She's reaching milestones, cutting teeth, still sleeping through the night... she must be fine. Every so often I give her the option of trying something off my plate, (I'm over preparing "baby" food for her if she's not going to eat it!) but it's usually met with tightly closed lips and a turned head. If she deigns to open her mouth and taste it, then the response is always the same: she spits it all out with an expression that says "that was FOUL - what on EARTH did you just put in my mouth?" so yeah, I'm over it.

However... yesterday, I had her on my hip, and decided to eat a chocolate muffin for morning tea. She looked interested (as usual) and lent towards it with her mouth open. Hmm... that bit was new. So I thought, "who cares, what's the harm in trying, she'll spit it out anyway", and let her look at it more closely. And then - shock - she took a bite! And it didn't get spat back out... she looked a bit shocked at first, but then seemed to enjoy the taste and swallowed it! AND THEN SHE WENT TO TAKE ANOTHER BITE! Right, so there's nothing physically wrong, she IS capable of swallowing food and not just milk. That's good to know. :)

I decided to then try a piece of pear, just eating it myself and making out that it was the yummiest thing ever. Again, she lent in for a taste, and I thought, Yay! We've had a breakthrough! But no, she spat it straight back out, and then gagged on what was left. :(

Aha... I'm onto you, little one.Your new little tooth is quite sweet, I see! :P

Sick

I'm all coldy and fluey... nose running like a tap... sneezing almost constantly... sinus headaches... aches and pains... Anthea's out of sorts too, poor darling... and right now, Alastair's doing after hours work.

Plus, we just seem to have a lot of other crap to deal with at the moment.

Not such a chirpy post this time.

May I present: photos from the last couple of months!

                     Chomping on my toe (yes, it was clean!)                    All rugged up in Canberra

 Tired out after church... she fell back to sleep as I was getting her out of the car!

 Trying Easter hats on at the shops                   Very precious first Easter egg!

                   Trying on the hats we bought in Melbourne             Looking out the plane window

 I can play the piano already!

 Daddy's birthday present from Aunty Meaghan was a Superman suit for his baby!

Have I shown you this before?

I just found this photo... it's an old one (December last year!), but one of my favourites. I promise I'll post more recent ones soon!

I love crossing things off lists

I'm having a productive week, since all the busy-ness seems to have settled down. Crossed off my to-do list so far are:

• change sheets
• wash towels
• purchase and wrap 21st gift for Bethany
• ironing
• cook chocolate chip biscuits
• clean kitchen sink
• buy singlets appropriate for breastfeeding
• renew Bicycle NSW membership
• RSVP to two invitations
• mending
• pick up free PixiFoto
• clean bathroom sink and mirror
• dissemble and wash fans before packing away for the winter
• make little curtain for the pram
• cook pavlova for American guests we're having over tomorrow night

I've still got a few things left to do tomorrow, but on the whole, I'm feeling happy about my pottering around this week. :)

Now, in my second-last post I mentioned a few things I wanted to post about, one of them being the "12 Random Things" meme which I did, also Facebook, and photos of our little girl. So today I'm going to tackle the Facebook thing, and next time the photos - hopefully on the weekend.

So... where to start. Last November I deactivated my Facebook account (see this post), and had it deactivated for a few months. However, I missed the ease with which I was able to keep in touch with my family - especially Lachlan, since he's overseas. But, I loved not being in contact with so many random acquaintances who had gradually "friended" me over the years... I LOVED not seeing their silly status updates... and that got me thinking - maybe they loved not seeing mine too! :P Oh, and after deactivating, only TWO people (outside my family and my close circle of friends) noticed that I had gone from FB and chased me up. TWO PEOPLE. Out of nearly 200 friends. Haha. "Friends". :P

Alastair was also particularly concerned about the security breaching with FB, and their harvesting of information - something to do with them setting cookies in your browser and seeing everything and having access to everything that you look at....? Along those lines anyway.

We started to talk about how I was missing keeping up with people - and yes, I know that if the relationship is only Facebook-deep then what kind of a relationship is it anyway. But still, it's the little bits of involvement in people's lives... the people that I'm actually related to, or am really truly friends with. So we hatched a plan. :) If I used Facebook only in Google Chrome (set aside that browser to use for FB only, so that FB couldn't see what else I was doing when using Firefox or IE), and if I culled a whole lot of my "friends, then we would both be happier about having Facebook in our lives.

So... I whittled down my "friends list"... it wasn't very hard.... I got it down to 52. I now have 57 friends, since we're starting to get to know people from our lovely new church, the number has gone up :) - and when you think that probably nearly half of them are family and extended family, and some of my friends have three or four siblings, then I feel that's an achievable number of people for me to be in touch with, and a nice Facebook to have. :) I don't have to listen to the moany, crappy status updates from randoms I hardly know, those ones who I was just "aware that they were there" and was just "keeping up with the goss". My "news feed" only contains (well, 99% of the time!) the things that people I love are doing, and because I have way fewer friends, it doesn't get updated as often - so no need to check it all the time.

It's working well. For now. We'll re-assess it if we need to. :)