growth and stuff

muffins to energise everyone moving our friends
into our (meaning ours and theirs) new place tomorrow
(full of dairy and wheat and sugary goodness!)

tomato (singular) and beans and basil from our garden
(sadly our tomatoes will be at their best
right as we move to our new place - murphy strikes again)

and today is little sister's 9 month birthday!

she's grown in confidence, charm, agility and dexterity,
and developed a fascination with technology this past month.

our controlled crying experiment produced
a week of full night's sleep
but she has regressed and i have weakened
and since we jet off to darwin tomorrow,
and move into our new house soon after we return,
i'm not sure when we'll get a chance to fix things properly.
oh well. it was a nice week!

p.s. just about to unplug our modem to move it to the new house,
so apologies if i don't make it back here for a little while.

a prayer for lent

painting by big sister, yesterday

the season of lent begins next wednesday
and i wanted to share with you a prayer i composed
which we will say each night at the dinner table:

God, please prepare our hearts this Lent

To remember Jesus, whom you sent:

Jesus, who died upon the cross

To take our sins and pay our cost;

Jesus, who lay, our lifeless king

Apart from you, close us to bring;

Jesus, who rose in victory

So sin and death have no hold on me,

And with you forever we will be. Amen.

happy valentines day!

we've been busy this past week
getting ready to move house!

we call our new place, "the big house"
because it's 4 times the size of our current place.
we're going to be sharing it with some friends of ours -
another family, in a very similar stage of life to us,
with whom we look forward to working together
to love the people in our lives in a more effective way
than we can alone.

this morning we made 6 origami hearts -
one for each year that husband and i have been married -
adorned with the words "i love you,"
as a little celebration of valentine's day.

origami heart tutorial from here.

happy wednesday!

making birthday cards
bouncing balloons
happy wednesday afternoon!

want a smile? just dance!

little sister is proving to be
a much more intense personality than big sister.
but if you want her to smile,
you've just got to dance!

playing

look who's discovered the piano!

saturday sweetness

this morning we feasted
on banana pancakes with rice malt syrup
(a fructose-free honey alternative available at supermarkets):

:: ingredients ::
2 bananas
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon

:: whizz together in a blender ::
:: cook in a frying pan like any other pancake ::
:: the mixture is fairly thin ::
:: we made 9 decent-sized pancakes from this batter ::

recipe originally from bridging foods

(note: this recipe is fructose-avoider-friendly
if you don't eat any other fruit for the day)

this is a picture of big sister (in the white dress)
with her friend k (in the purple dress)
outside at night-time with a dinosaur.
little sister is one of the stars.

while sisters sleep

while little sister slept,
big sister and i planted broccoli seeds
in newspaper pots.

while big sister slept,
little sister played with big sister's bike,
which will become hers soon enough.

while my girls rarely sleep at the same time,
i don't really mind,
because it's nice to have a little companion,
and to spend time alone with each one.

candlemas

candlemas: february 2nd
40 days after christmas
the halfway point between solstice and equinox
remembering jesus' presentation at the temple
the story of anna and simeon
proclaiming jesus as the light of the world

we ate dinner by candlelight and prayed:

candle, burn with golden fire
in the darkest night;
Jesus, help me follow you;
make my whole world bright.

and

Jesus, you are the light of the world.
may we live our lives as you taught,
so that your light will shine through us
in all we think and say and do.
amen.

toddler tuesday

"look mum! it's a 'raffe! and a zebra!"
big sister enjoyed a safari bus tour
with the singing and dancing bus driver
on toddler tuesday at werribee open range zoo