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

from our weekend on the farm...

though we missed the brunt of victoria's wild weather, the saturday afternoon sky still turned the colour of rain:



missy loved seeing the cows from a distance (and clinged to husband's shoulder for dear life when up close):



take care,
em