Happy 18th birthday to our sweet niece and cousin, Isabelle.
This was the night of Frith’s PhD graduation ceremony, July 2016. It pretty much summed him up as a human – he made sure his best mates were with him for the duration, he ate good food and drank a little too much, offended his siblings, but brought it home with some serious dancing with our nieces at the end. He may not have always been classy, but he was all class.
And our kids still love this song. It’s a Dadda song.
Oh boy…
I can’t even really give you much context, other than I was recording Jules almost falling asleep while mum feeds him, and Quinn came out with this corker. It’s very hard to discipline your 5-year-old about swearing when you can’t stop laughing.
By the way, the word mum was looking for was osmosis…
I wasn’t actually going to have a birthday party for Chance’s Rocky friends this year. We will be in Cairns for his birthday weekend so we will have a cake for him up there, and he had a party last year so I didn’t feel the need. Plus with our going away BBQ as well as Jules’ baptism and the fact that we’re moving in a month, I just didn’t think I’d have the energy.
But then this happened.
He hand made 30 invitations, all different types of vehicles, over a few days. This is just a sample. I helped with a bit of the cutting out but he drew everything himself. How could I possibly say no?! It was so lovely seeing him come up with the ideas and then just having that confidence to draw it.
Making sure he included all of his class mates.
So it’s happening. We’ll do the same thing as last year – a cake in the park after school. Nice and simple.
10 things I say to Darby every faaaaarrrrrking day
1. Where did you get that?
2. Don’t touch people with your feet (i.e. stop kicking me!)
3. What’s in your mouth?
4. Don’t put things in your mouth that aren’t food
5. Freeze!
6. Put that down
7. You sit down for two minutes
8. Get down from there
9. That’s not yours
10. How many times do I have to tell you!?…..
Looking after him can be an absolute roller coaster of emotions. But jeez I just love him to bits.
With his “telescoach”
Any guesses what these three things have in common? If you’re a mum, you know that these three things are hard to come by and when they are presented to you, especially all at once, they are to be cherished. Maybe even taken full advantage of.
I have had these things gifted to me by or dear friend Jess for pretty much 48 hours and boy did I take full advantage. Mainly with unpacking, washing, resting to try and get over this chest cold, but also a spot of solo shopping and coffee drinking thrown in for good measure. There is still lots to do but I’m definitely feeling enough on top of things that I’m not going to bed thinking of a million things I need to do.
Thanks Jess. I truly hope you understand how helpful you have been for our little family xxx
10 things to keep you in the loop
1. Darby’s cake – I actually considered not making him an actual birthday cake (I made cupcakes for him to take to kindy) but then I realised that I was setting him up for “third child forgotton-about syndrome” (it’s a thing) so I consulted the cake bible and came up with this:
Which was a blend of these two:
And he liked it 🙂
2. Chance finished prep with not one case of headlice! (But wouldn’t let me get a photo of his last day 🙁 )
3. Bought a Christmas tree and got a free frog
4. Decorated said Christmas tree
5. Posted Christmas cards (that’s a third of the total bundle)
6. I’m sure it’s been done before but I came up with a way of sending pikelets with jam on them to Prep without making a mess with jam on top! Winner! You could even add cream but I wasn’t sure of the refrigeration situation once it got there.
7. We need a bigger bathtub. Actually we just need a new bathroom…
8. We got stuck in a cow jam on the way to picking up the Christmas tree. There was a large herd of cattle being moved from one paddock to another, and the cows were spread across about 500m of a stretch of road. Chance’s comment: “We’re going to be stuck in this cow jam for ages!”
9. Speaking of Chance, he wanted to write Christmas cards to all of his classmates. And he did. All 25 of them plus 2 teachers. I gave him the class photo so he could tick the kids off (putting Lego figures on them) as he went. He even remembered the 2 kids who had joined his class after the photo was taken. I was very impressed by his persistence!
10. My accidental/incidental fringe thanks to the regrowth following my postpartum hair loss after Darby. I’d never noticed it with the other kids as I’ve always had short hair but it’s rather obvious this time around!
Of course it’s not limited to my fringe area. Some days this is just how I roll:
Talk about fly-aways!
So that’s all for now folks! That pretty much gets you up to date with our goings-on. And now that the Christmas cards have been sent, I can get back to all the things I’ve been neglecting over the last 5 weeks while they’ve been taking up my evenings!
Random edition
1. The house has been lifted!
Before
After
It’s a bit hard to tell but it went up by almost a meter! It was pretty awesome watching them jack it up. They are now making the holes for the posts and will put the front landing and stairs on for us to be back in by mid next week.
2. We’ve been staying with our awesome neighbours for the duration. They have been very accommodating and I think they love having the kids around as they have grandchildren around the same age who they don’t get to see very often.
3. It’s raining today. Pouring in fact, and I really hope that doesn’t push things back anymore. And I can just see our backyard turning into a big muddy mess. This is the kids playing in the dirt last week. Such fun!
4. I’m recovering from gastro. I hate being sick when I’m not at home. Hopefully no one else gets it!!!!
5. Quinn has been completely out of sorts this week away from home. You can just see her trying to regain control of something; anything! Am trying to give her lots of opportunities to make her own choices during the day.
6. Darby continues to charm the pants off everyone. And he’s really talking up a storm. His latest phrase is “so clever”. He hears it a lot from his brother and sister.
7. Chance is turning into such a big lovely boy. He’s so wonderful with Darby and loves to teach him things. It’s completely cute.
8. I had a wedding last weekend and 3 more coming up in the next 3 weeks. I don’t think I’ll be looking to do too many next year. I just don’t seem to have the headspace for it at the moment. With the exception of family and friends who ask me, of course.
9. It’s times like these that I wish we lived closer to family. Our neighbours truly are some of the best people we’ve ever met and we are fortunate to have such wonderful support from them. But nothing beats your own family.
10. Three weeks tomorrow, we’ll be on our way down to the sunny coast for a holiday, staying with two other very special families who we met 8 years ago through Hubs’ medicine studies. This has been in planning since February this year and we really cannot wait. So. Excited.
I dare say my next 10 things on the 10th post will be full of photos from that trip.
I didn’t plan to do this, but today I found myself whipping out my camera (read: phone) to take photos of nothing in particular and it turned into a bit of a day in the life of a (somewhat bored) stay at home mum. Enjoy!
Hard to see here but I was trying to get a photo of what Quinn dressed herself in this morning – fairy dress from Aunty Heather, brown shorts and black boots.
Then off to the Sunday markets for some fresh fruit and veges. Chance has decided lately that he is camera shy. Unlike Darby.
After that it was back home and while Darby napped, we cracked on with a bit of Lego Technic.
Things went a bit pear shaped when Darby woke up and C & Q were acting up a bit. I retreated to my bed with my baby for some cuddles and chuckles and also had a bit of a pity cry. Then it was selfie time.
See the puffy eyes? And of course Chanbe & Quinndy wanted in on the action.
I may have allowed myself a small smirk at this point and tried to turn it around. Next up was lunch and more playing, after which Darby went down for his big sleep (lucky thing) and the kids wanted to do some painting. Why not, I thought!
Then Chance all of a sudden remembered that we still had to build a model aeroplane which he gets to do whenever he sleeps in his big boy bed all night long. Let me clarify – I get to make it and he gets to play with it. The instructions assume a lot more talent than I possess but I must say I’m getting better with each one! This was today’s creation:
Impressed? He was too. It was then time to clean up the Duplo that was scattered everywhere but we ended up just playing with it for an hour. And I decorated the kids toy boxes with the day’s artwork. From this:
To this!
In the mean time, you could find Quinn walking around with her brown shorts and no top on, (“just like Dadda”) messy hair, talking on “her” phone making big business deals.
And Darby was just, you know, TAKING HIS FIRST STEPS!!!!! I did get a video of it but it goes for 2 minutes and it’s not actually that good but it was SO EXCITING! He did it for Hubs as soon as he got home from work which was lovely too.
And this is pretty much what things look like around here once Hubs gets home:
And after they have had their fill of mango, they are clearly not interested in the lovely dinner I have prepared for yet another evening and I am left wondering “why do I bother???” But then I remind myself that they filled up on mangoes and not chocolate so I get over it.
And then it may be time for stories.
The best part of the day? Has to be what’s waiting for me once the kids are in bed, asleep:
No not that! It’s this! Our neighbour makes the most amazing cheesecakes and he dropped off some leftovers.
Oooh yeah. So incredible and so needed after another “normal” day for me. I’m in a bit of a new year funk at the moment that I’m trying to shift out of. Hoping I get around to doing a few big things on my list this week. I hope you enjoyed your day 🙂
10 things that get said around here every day
*busy juice ie fizzy juice is a mix of soda water and juice
I’m not a fast thinker. And when you add in some sleep depravation for good measure, a fast talker can be faced with this:
Or this:
I just find it really hard to keep up and to process what is being said so I can give a thoughtful reply.
I just had a builder here giving some quotes and ideas for our renovations and I seriously couldn’t keep up. I hope I gave him all the info he needed and that it was correct, otherwise we could be looking at a very different set of plans…