playing in the rain...

here's how we've been coping with the rain in the past little while:



take care,
em

cheers God, life is good...

yesterday was the last day that i'll be looking after our little friend this year. the girls will spend friday together before really going their separate ways until school starts again, but they're really going to miss each other. it's been beautiful watching them grow and now play together - many "cheers God, life is good" moments, just like this one:



take care,
em

hello baby...

hello baby, so lovely to see you today, can't wait to meet you:



take care,
em

buttons, buttons, everywhere...

this morning i finished sewing the last button onto my advent calendar - now all i need to do is attach the pockets to the backing and it'll be ready to hang by december 1st!



it feels like buttons are everywhere at our house - this morning i found one in missy's dirty nappy! whoops...

take care,
em

new ways of dining...

this week i've been able to spend more time with my sewing machine, which has been so lovely. below is another crayon roll, but this time it's a gift for a friend to give to a child from her mum's group:



i enjoyed the process of refining my design (by adding an extra embellishment across the pockets and using a ribbon instead of buttons for tying it up), but got the most blessing from being able to support K in this crafty way.

during the past few days we've started dining in the beautifully communal way husband's family (both here and in friesland) do - with dishes and pots clustered in the centre of the table, for serving straight to plates as everyone sits together:



i want this to become our family way of dining - to practice sharing, serving one another, being generous and gracious and considerate of others. i look forward to seeing the beauty of this approach grow as our family grows.

finally, missy has been making some dining progress of her own - expanding the definition of finger foods to include things that i consider spoon foods, like hommus:



(i am okay about the mess, i am okay about the mess, i am okay about the mess...)

take care,
em

some loveliness...

some loveliness from our garden - husband's roses:



some loveliness from this afternoon - a trip to williamstown for a walk with a good friend in the sunshine and sea breeze:



some loveliness from yesterday - time to create this new space for my treasures to live, safe from the hands of missy the inquisitive one:



(hey bro/uncle G - three posts in one week, you've got to be happy with that!)

take care,
em

missy's happy day...

while yesterday was my happy day, today seems to be missy's. i've been getting worried that she doesn't like swimming, because all her interactions with her teacher and the other mums involve missy scowling at them, and she usually ends up chucking some kind of minor tanty by the end of the lesson. but not today. today she squealed delightedly and swam enthusiastically throughout the lesson, giving her teacher several smiles (which she seemed to appreciate much!) perhaps it's because missy's finally figured out that she can shut her eyes and her mouth whenever we dunk her, and then it's actually pretty fun...

when we got home, missy settled herself into this cosy nook:



for those of you i haven't seen in a while, i thought i'd include a pre-christmas bump picture - apologies about the hugely attractive outfit (we'd just been swimming...):



take care,
em

strong and loud...

i heard our new baby's heartbeat today - strong and loud. it made me teary - the first real sign (other than my growing belly) that the little life in me is going well. i'm glad that these things are just as thrilling the second time around...

missy is walking almost constantly now - she doesn't care who's watching or whether she's being coaxed, she walks now for her own pleasure. today i saw her stand up without holding onto anything, so she's virtually unstoppable. the only dilemmas left are stairs and steps...

here is the saturday afternoon view from my favourite window in our house - rainsoaked:



though i should have been working on my teaching portfolio, i spent a large part of this weekend making an advent calendar, while husband hogged the computer for his exam preparations. (the exam was this morning and went pretty well - it could even be his last, if he gets accepted into a research subject for next year.) how unfortunate, to be forced to sew...



i got my inspiration from here.



our front nature strip is a carpet of these purple flowers at the moment. husband is well pleased. the only problem with the abundance of these beauties is that they've hidden the parsley that also grows in this patch - parsley that regularly gives me a laugh from my kitchen window, as i watch passers-by cautiously look over their shoulders for an audience before pinching a sprig or two for their dinner. maybe we should put a little sign up, because they needn't feel so worried - they're welcome to it...

take care,
em

a fortnight of growing up...

apologies for my absence during the last 2 weeks - the cup day long weekend kind of threw out my blogging habit by a week, and the past fortnight has seemed quite full.

it also seems like missy has grown up a lot in the past fortnight. she took 11 steps in a row last friday and has been walking in short bursts each day since then. she's become quite a mimic, and now regularly says, "beep beep", whenever i open or close a door (regardless of whether she's in the way and thus deserving of a "beep beep" or not.) she's taken an interest in her spoon, and while she still needs help with scooping, she definitely has no trouble getting the loaded spoon into her mouth.

i think the most beautiful thing that has happened in the past week is that husband, missy and i have been able to have dinner together every night. with husband working on site, he's been home much earlier than whenever he's in the office, and with missy stretching her bed time much later than a few months ago, our family dinners have been a time i've treasured much. next week, or even tomorrow, depending on how things go, husband will be back in the office, so i don't know how much longer our dinner time togetherness will last. but it's been lovely while it's happened.

here are some pics of my ever-growing missy - from our dinnertime togetherness:





getting a proper haircut from beppe:



and to finish, i wanted to share these beautiful roses that my good friend generously gave to me a fortnight ago - her visit was uplifting, even if brief:



take care,
em

springtime life...

this past week has felt quite busy, as we've given our house a spring clean (in preparation for what turned out to be the world's shortest house inspection), baked sausage rolls and apple slice, gone to playgroup and church, played board games with friends we hadn't seen for a long time, made birthday presents and finished school artworks, and taken long walks in the sunshine, among other things.

i gave missy a bucket for toys that have been packed away in her room (rather than out in our living area), and was relieved to see her pleasure at being reunited with old friends:



apologies though to baby no.2 - you're not going to have many toys of your own, little one! we've got plenty already...

monday saw us hanging out with our friend again, eating sausage rolls:



and enjoying springtime life in the backyard:



take care,
em

fake laughter...

yesterday missy was working on her fake laugh. she first tried it in the evening, after discovering she could pull the plug out whilst in the bath (and it quickly stopped when mummy the party-pooper covered the plug hole with the bath mat - i'm still smarter than her! huzzah!) she tried it again when she was supposed to be going to sleep - i thought she'd become delirious at one point! after the laughing finally stopped, i peered into her room to find her pyjama pants on the floor, and a half-awake, bare-legged missy curled up at the wrong end of her bed. how she managed to get her pants off, i do not know...

and here is a pic of where yesterday's crazy antics began - after i took this picture, i let missy keep the bowl in her lap, and she proceeded to put each of the remaining blueberries in her mouth at the same time, one after the other. no table manners...



take care,
em

look, mum!

this is what happened this morning when I spent too much time doing my own thing, and not paying enough attention to missy:



and this afternoon i got to cuddle my friend's 3-week-old baby - i tried to soak up how tiny she is, now that i'm not in the sleep-deprivation-induced-fog that i lived in for those first weeks with missy - all in preparation for the new addition to our family, due next mothers' day...

take care,
em

our last three days...

from our sunday, games with daddy:



from our monday, watermelon with our little friend by the sandpit:



from our tuesday, waiting for our turn in the pool:



hope your last three days have been lovely!

take care,
em

sweet relief...

i just finished my last uni assignment for the year - hurrah!

and here's a pic from our monday - we spent part of the day caring for our friend from mum's group, who has progressed with leaps and bounds in enjoying herself while she's away from her mum and dad.

sweet relief, on both counts.



take care,
em

a colourful week...

this past week has been full of colour, from things i'm making for school:





to the gorgeous clothes we bought in holland that are now the right size for wearing:



to delicious blood oranges and beetroot risotto:





(yes, beetroot risotto does actually taste delicious!)

take care,
em

life with a 1-year-old...

this past week, missy and i have been fighting off our illnesses (missy is much better now and i'm okay), so things here have been pretty quiet. but we've managed to spend a bit of time outside - missy and i picked some flowers for our kitchen:



you can tell a flower picked by missy, because it has no stem, only a head - not so useful for a vase - but we managed to gather a little collection eventually:



for her birthday, from nanna and pa, missy received a pram, and from pake and beppe, a lovely doll. this week has seen big advances in missy's ability to push the pram and treat the doll gently - this photo demonstrates my confidence in her walking ability as much as hers (there are no early photos because i was afraid missy might face-plant into the concrete if i was more than an arms-length away...):



take care,
em

happy birthday missy!

today is missy's 1st birthday, so our house is uplifted by these colourful slingers in celebration of her special occasion:



unfortunately for miss, she's been a bit under the weather this week, as this picture from lunchtime yesterday shows (we'd just gotten home from a maternal child health appointment and all she wanted to do was sleep):



so her birthday morning did include a trip to the doctor (just a virus, she's on the mend, and she got a lollypop - which i ate, what a meanie!) but much more enjoyably, it also included opening presents (she got plenty of joy out of the box and bow too):



and making and eating sausage rolls for lunch:



miss got a bit tired this afternoon, but overall, had a lovely birthday. it's a little strange to think that we're now the parents of a 1-year-old...

take care,
em

in response to a (repeated) request...

this post is demanded, whoops i mean requested, by my mum, and features many faces of missy from the past week.








apologies about the quality of the collage - i was having trouble getting it to the right size...

take care,
em

3 achievements...

today was a day of achievements. the first being, that i managed to hang these funky bird trays on missy's wall in a straight line. huzzah! she pulled her last wall-hanging down on top of herself just after we got back from the netherlands, but there's no way she's reaching these rainbow beauties:



the second achievement for the day involved caring for one of the babies from my mums' group, and is a tad more impressive than the first. from next term, missy will get looked after by her mum one day a week - we're doing a kind of baby-swap - and today was the first day of H coming to our place. H is a lovely little girl, but she misses her parents terribly when they leave her. i figured she couldn't cry all day, but it turns out she could cry until 1pm. but from this time on, she found her groove at our place - smiling, rolling the ball, dancing to music, knocking over blocks... the flowers below were given to me by her parents to say thanks. during the morning i received a few texts from other mums in our group to say that they were thinking of us and that we were welcome to come and visit if things were getting hard. and i know that God was giving me an extra measure of calm and care all day. so this achievement - getting H to finally feel happy - is the result of much love from many directions.



and the final achievement belongs to missy, who is now the proud owner of 6 teeth - 3 up the top and 3 down the bottom. a little unbalanced, but she'll get there eventually. and her lop-sided pop-eye face when grinding her new teeth is quite amusing. here she is testing out those new fangs on an apple (she did quite well, actually):



take care,
em

buds...

yesterday was all about buds - the kind that go in your ears (or on the floor):



and the more beautiful kind:



this tree (be it nectarine or peach, we're not quite sure) sprang up from a seed within pile of fruit and vegie scraps we'd dumped in a pile in the back corner of our garden two years ago. according to my botany-trained friend, it has good branch formation and has sprung up in a surprising way.

take care,
em

our weekend continued...

here is missy's fathers' day gift to husband, which "she" made at child care:



and here are some pants that i made for missy, which i finally finished embellishing with the stripy ribbons this weekend. i attached the contrasting cuffs after i had sewn the pants together, and my attempts at sewing a straight line while using all my strength to not sew the front and back of the legs together failed dismally (as in the line is not straight, though the legs were not sewn together.) so the stripy ribbon disguises the wonky stitches, but i also think it just looks awesome, so i'm happy the pants have turned out this way:



take care,
em