Sunday Verri Sunday

Sundays are a bittersweet day for me. On the one hand I get to spend the day with my family doing family things... but on the other hand it's the last day of the weekend and therefore Luke will be back at work the next day. However, while we didn't do anything profound, today was a lovely day, with lots of laughter.

This morning we took Delilah through her first ever car wash. I always found this experience a bit scary when I was little, so I was interested to see what Delilah's response would be. She loved it of course, she spent the entire time grinning and delightedly exclaiming over the water running over our car.

This afternoon I snapped a couple of quick pics in our bedroom sfter Miss D's afternoon nap. I never know what kind of mood Miss D will wake up in so it can be quite an interesting time of day, often I have to cuddle her for an hour as she slowly wakes up. As you can imagine this is becoming increasingly difficult now that I have two to contend with. Today Miss D woke up very happily and wanted nothing more than to cuddle an kiss her little sister. I snapped a few quick pics. I particularly love the one where Delilah has her arms wrapped around Miss M's head, as this is her prefered method of holding poor Mackenzie. I am always amazed at how well she puts up with her big sisters rough handling!

I decided on Zucchini slice and salad for dinner tonight. I've never made it before, but my sister Tatum makes an awesome one and I've been meaning to try it out. I went to http://www.taste.com.au/ for the recipe nad I was stoked with how it turned out. Though I did have to cook it for twice as long as the recipe called for, but that's probably because I made a double batch.

Very yummy.

Lastly, we recently stopped putting Lilah in sleeping bags at night time, and consequently have been tucking her PJ top into her pants so her belly doesn't get cold during the night. Luke usually does this by pulling her pants up around her armpits grandpa style. Tonight Luke sent Delilah running out to me dressed in her PJ's this particular way with the message of "I funky Mummy!" Unfortunately funk came out like a slightly different but much ruder word therefore the entire combo caused much hilarity. Luke snapped a quick pic, love the special face she is pulling for the camera.

Dinner in the Park and the Feeding Frenzy

I love the weekends, mostly because Luke is home and we get to do things as a family. I've been trying to make a point lately of doing one special thing together each weekend so that we haven't let the two days pass by in a blur of cleaning, grocery shopping and chores, therefore today Luke suggested we have an early picnic dinner in the park. So we did just that. We packed yummy foods like stuffed olives, marinated mushrooms, dip and fruit salad and headed to the Boundry Road park. It was a really beautiful late afternoon and Delilah truely loved it. She spent the time alternating between playing on the equipment, sucking dip of grissini sticks and scarfing down fruit salad. Luke is putting our now exhausted toddler to sleep as I write this.


Time for a Mackenzie update! The Devine Miss M is now 10.5 weeks old and I suspect she is just reaching another wonder week because she has spent the entire day feeding and needing to be cuddled! However I am very happy to oblige, although this is certainly easier to manage with Luke home, so we may be in for an interesting week. Normally Miss M spends a significant part of the day napping but she has also been awake most of the day today, giving us plenty of happy smiles and baby babble.


I took this pic last week before we headed off to the market. She is truely delightful:)

Terrible twos?

Miss D is a feisty little thing at the best of times, but lately I am finding that she has stepped it up a notch. I think this is my welcome to being a mum of an almost two year old....

This afternoon we met the cronies and the mini cronies at the park. Apart from a bit of ball stealing, Miss D was her delightful self... but when it came time to go home the monster was unleashed and didn't disappear for a good hour.

I suspect all mums go through times where they doubt that they are doing the right thing for their child, and the oldest is always going to be such a mystery because every stage is completely foreign to a parent the first time round. However, I feel like now is one of those times where it is necessary to get it right because what we do now as parents is going to set the guidelines for the future, and also give us the best chance of having a happy child. The question is how do we get it right? The only thing I know for sure is that I love her to bits but we've probably got a very bumpy, exciting, dangerous and mysterious road ahead:)

Delilahisms

This morning when I went in to get Delilah out of her cot I was greeted with " Hi Mummy! Mummy I noisy!" and it got me thinking about all of Delilah's current little phrases and quirks. so here is a snapshot of Delilah at the moment (22 months):

• Delilah constantly speaks in the first person. Most sentences begin with "Yiyah" For example if she wants to do some thing herself: "Yiyah do it!" or if you have just described something or someone a certain way, like say "Mackenzie is beautiful" she will pipe up with "Yiyah bootiful!".
• Her favourite games to play are "Sleep" and "Catch". "Sleep" involves putting her teddies or whoever is nearby to bed (along with herself) in our bed and saying "Shhh I Seeping!". "Catch" entails Miss D running full pelt at either myself or Luke and grabbing us around the legs yelling "CATCH!".
• She loves singing Twinkle Twinkle, Baa Baa Black sheep (Baa Baa Sheep!) and Open shut them.
• Dancing is one of her favourite pass times.
• Playschool and the Wiggles overrule everything else in her life.
• Luke and I often have to add olives to her dinner to get her to eat.
• She constantly asks me for Isaac, closely followed by Cassie, Grace and Amy her mini-cronie friends. This is a testament to how much time we spend with them:)
• She loves her baby sister so much. Mackenzie gets more kisses from Delilah than anyone else and she is constantly bringing her things she thinks will help the situation, like toys and wraps. If Mackenzie cries Delilah usually insists that a cuddle will help crying, "knee knee, cuddle" and pointing to her lap. However she does sometimes tell Miss M to "ssshhhh!" especially if Playschool is on.
• She loves any kind of water... particularly water she can get into.

Truthfully I could go on and on, she has so many special quirks, that all add up to make her our Delilah. Such a special girl with such a kind heart. Love her to bits.

Pizza, Tantrums and Good Friends

It has been a great weekend bar Miss D's many Saturday afternoon toddler tantrums which occured due to her refusal to have an afternoon sleep. This is something that thankfully doesn't happen too often but is certainly not an awful lot of fun.

On Saturday morning Luke's parents came over for a working bee. I love it when they do this! Luke and his dad have a blitz on a half finished project (this weekend it was working on getting a gate up on our half finished front fence) and Luke's Mum entertains Delilah leaving me to do whatever needs doing (in this case cleaning and attending to Miss M). As I say the day did turn a bit pear-shaped but we managed to redeem it by giving Miss D an early dinner and getting her to bed before I cooked our dinner and we watched Spiderman. I made the intended flatbread pizzas:

Yummo! Flat bread base topped with spicy Pepperoni, cherry tomatoes, marinated mushrooms, garlic olives, fresh basil and feta cheese! Oh and washed down with some of Lukes' infamous Ginger beer:-)

Sunday has been a really lovely day. Luke went off on a man date (lol!) this morning (hopefully the first of many). He went to the Marion carboot sale with Ryan ( and Miss D) while I had a small sleep in with Miss M. Then Ryan, Lynn and Cassie joined us for a breakfast of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup (one of my most favourite breakfasts!). Delilah and Cassie crack me up and frustrate me simulataniously when they play together. They either spend the whole time fighting or the whole time playing and giggling or a mix of the two. Today was a mix of the two. Luke snapped a couple of quick pics of them during a happy moment in our bedroom. They are Playing "Sleep" as current favourite of both of theirs:-)

At midday Miss M and I met my friend from school days Fiona for a coffee at The Edge, Jetty road Brighton (awesome coffee and food!). I LOVE catching up with Fi, she and I never run out of things to say to one another, and the time just flys when we are together, it's always been this way, no matter how long or short it is between catch ups. Miss M spent the entire time blissfully asleep in my lap (suprise, suprise!).

I also got to go for a run along the beach both afternoons, which is something that I love doing. I am working at slowly rebuilding my strength and distance, though I think it is going to take some time, my knees don't seem to be as young as they used to be lol!

I really needed a weekend like this, it couldn't have come at a better time, as I have been feeling quite flat lately and it has cheered me up no end:)

Market Day

On Thursdays and Fridays Miss D goes to daycare, so I have the day just with Mackenzie, to spend some time getting to know her. Today Mackenzie and I did one of my favourite things to do in Adelaide... we went to the central market, and better than that, we went with Lauren and Jess! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Tatum could have joined us, the trip was to buy groceries for her after all! But Lauren and Jess will be up visiting her this weekend and it'll be my turn to miss out. The marketing was just what I needed as I have been feeling pretty flat this week and it was nice to spend some time with my sisters in a place that I love. We started off with a mugaccino and some yummy turkish bread sandwiches from a favourite of ours. Beautiful Miss M spent all of this time happily napping in the pram.

When she woke up it was time for cuddles with her Aunties and she spent the rest of the time happily perched up on my shoulder while we hunted down our items.

I purchased some flat bread, marinated mushrooms and olives, cherry tomatoes basil and spicy pepperoni to make up some pizzas tomorrow night and some Thai style chicken sausages and baby fennel for barbecuing on Sunday. Lastly I bought Belgian chocolate crackles for Luke who has been asking me to make chocolate crackles for a while.... I keep making rockyroad instead. It was a really lovely afternoon, topped off with making Delilah's day by having not only me and Mackenzie pick her up, but two of her three favourite aunties as well.

Mother's Group

I love my Mothers Group and am constantly amazed that a random group of people thrown together can get along so well. It is safe to say that the last two years probably would have been alot harder, or at least very different if I had not gone to that first Child and Youth Health Mother's Group meeting. I refer to them as "the cronies" curtesy of Luke.

Yesterday Janine had the very inspired idea of letting Delilah, Grace, Cassie, Isaac and Amy (the "mini cronies") do some painting at her house. I brought along some small canvases so each of them would have something to take home. We sat them around a table and passed around the paint colours, watching gleefully as the first painted the canvas, then the surrounding paper, then themselves. I especially enjoyed that each of them felt the need to see what the paint tasted like. Here are some pics of what Miss D came up with:



After the kids were finished we stripped off their nappies and hosed them down (but not before lining them all up for a few nudie paint covered shots lol!) When we arrived home I noticed this delightful detail: Pink paint on the back of Miss M's head. I suspect she was secretly delighted to have been part of the painting session:

Vaccinations

Delilah is constantly suprising me. Today I took Miss D for her health check and chicken pox vaccination, braced and ready for some screaming. But no, brave Miss D sat and watched as the nurse administered the needle without flinching, let alone any crying afterward. I felt so proud of my big girl. She was rewarded with a completely redundant lolly pop for her efforts which she devoured with joy as she had never had one before. Her stats today were, however, totally as expected:

• Height: 93cm (totally and completely off the charts for a 22 month old!)
• Weight: 13.6Kg (only a little above average, she is a skinny little monkey!)

I had a chat with the doctor tgoday about the best way to approach discipline as Miss D is starting to become a little challenging, as goes with the age. I suspect, however, that most parents would have found it as hard as I did, this evening, to tell my little cherub off for her artful display of cheese squares she had stuck to the back door. I had to turn away because I was laughing yto hard and I didn't want her to see. Luke did manage to choke out "Delilah we don't stick cheese to the door, clean those up please!" between stiffled giggles. To her credit she did clean them up (and eat a couple) but then decided that the dogs would benifet more from the cheese and proceeded to poke it under the back door for the awaiting slobbery duo.

Ofcourse, being disapointed that I was laughing too hard (not to mention it was too inapropriate)to get a pic of Lilah's cheese art I uickly snapped a pic of the feeding frenzy. Delilah makes me laugh every day. She can be a naughty little monkey, but I love her to bits.

Finally here's a pic of the girls that Luke snapped this morning. He had his hand over the flash as usual but I love that both the girls are smiling.

Love my babies so much. xxx

Weekend

I feel like we have crammed a lot into two days this weekend and am now feeling knackered for the start of the week!

We began the weekend with breakfast at The Strand, Glenelg with Dad, Lyn and two of my four sisters Lauren and Jess (sadly no Tatum as she lives several hundred kilometers too far away to join us for breakfast with out some prior planning). For this I felt the need to dress miss M in a fancy pants country road outfit before she could out grow it. Then ofcourse a mini Photo shoot ensued. Here are a couple of my favourites:

She is so beautiful it blows me away. She has been smiling for almost a month now, and when she does her whole face lights up and she reminds me of my sister Tatum.

The afternoon was spent painting a tallboy that Luke bought for $10 and then sorting through the girls clothes. I am thrilled with how the tallboy turned out. I used large wooden letters from Lincraft that I painted for decoration and to help define who's draw is who's for the girls as they get older. The girls have a really bright and airy room so I like to keep the colous in there as bold as possible. I'm loving the magenta and poison green combo. Delilah decided she might help me sort through the clothes, but got distracted and decided that dressing herself up might be more fun. I love my beautiful toddler, she is at such an interesting age, wanting to be totally independant, but still needing help with every thing. I am constantly being told " Mummy I do it" closely followed by "Mummy help!" In this pic she was asking me to help put the black and white stripey sock on as a glove.

Today started with some chocolate chip cookie baking and a visit from Luke's parents and then Lauren and I went to the Papercraft Roadshow at the Wayville show grounds. Despite being adamant that I was not going to buy anything, ofcourse I bought some paper that I will probably do nothing with!

The afternoon was spent rearranging the girls room to a state that I am so happy with Luke laughed at me the 3rd time I said "I'm really happy with how the girls room turned out!"

I am now in my happy place with a bowl of ice cream:) Happy Valentines Day people! xxx

To Do List

I have just added a list to the left hand side of my blog, the 2010 To Do List. This is a list of the things I'd like to achieve this year. As I achieve them I will tick them off. They are not New Years resolutions, just physical things I feel I can achieve.

Sam

Day One

So who am I and why am I doing this? I am Sam. A mum of two who is seeing the days fly by and I want to record it before it all vanishes.



So who do we have?

• Me
• Luke (my husband)
• Delilah (22 Months)
• Mackenzie (8 weeks)

My plan here is to use my blog as a daily diary to capture all the moments that I may forget as time passes...

Today was Mackenzie's 8 week vacinations. 3 weeks ago I had a taste of how this may go as my poor baby girl had to hospitalised for two nights wih a respiritory tract infection. During her stay she was poked and proded with needles countless times and she took them all with minimal fuss. True to form Miss M did not disapoint, she cried for about 30 seconds and then promptly fell back to sleep! A totally different exerience to the one I had with Delilah, who cried for an hour after her first vacinations and still continues to do so with subsequent needles. I am taking Miss D for her chickenpox vaccinations this coming Monday so it will be very interesting to see if this situation has improved at all!

Mackenzie's Stats were:

• Weight 5.9Kg (she's a chubby bubby! I love it!)
• Height 60cm ( another tall one! Miss D is currently 92cm!)

That's it for now. I will try to update everyday... we'll see how long that lasts!