Love, bubs and life on our little farm

Miss Elka turned three today - it was a much nicer day then the day I spent three years ago!

She seems to have decided that three is the beginning of being "grown up". She wanders out the kitchen this morning claiming that she is now big and can open the fridge (apparently it would seem opening the fridge is the measure of being grown up). She pulled and strained at the door and then admitted defeat. Guess she didn't get too big overnight after all!

She opened her presents with great delight - a Cars scooter (she adores Cars, such a tomboy), a toy guitar, a cash register and a fairy dress. She was too excited to eat breakfast and after a late morning where we stayed home and she played with her presents, I bundled her in the car with a birthday cake she helped cook to share at daycare. I picked her up this afternoon and much to her delight we went to IKEA to pick up a lovely new cabinet for our new lounge room (for the new TV for those that follow my inane life! Possible pics to come) and she got to have dinner there before finishing her day with a chocolate cake at home with us. In a three year olds books I think it was a winning day.

I am so proud of her turning three - it feels like a real transition. She is a little girl now, not a chubby toddler. She is tricky, savvy and I can no longer get away wtih anything as she pulls you up and knows when I am trying to get away with something. She has hit the endless questions stage and I have already copped a number of the sterotypical difficult questions (ie where did I come from and so on). She has learnt her first joke - Why did the chicken cross the road, and gets the concept which is fun.

She is starting to develop girly habits - she now has a CD player in her room and loves to put it on the radio and listen to songs. She is learning the words of songs on the radio and asks for certain songs to be turned up in the car. She is into fashion, she compliments you on particular outfits or accessories and insists on picking out her clothes which can take forever..

She can write her name to some recognisable degree and is learning to read - she can read all letters and is starting to get simple words. Her pictures are starting to look something like things rather than just scribbles and she has taught herself to count to forty (!) as I discovered the other day.

I have taught her to recite our address and she knows all our full names. She can pick out a police car or policeman and knows to go to them if she is lost or something is wrong. I think I will next teach her our phone number and then how to use our phone. Those sorts of skills come in handy when you live on property. I often worry about the girls when Jase is on one of his many interstate trips and I am home alone with them - if I was to be knocked out by one of the horses etc it could be a long time before someone would check on us as our neighbours are so far away.

She is startign to get more responsible and wants to help more with Bronte. She will stop Bronte from wandering off too far at the shops and gives her food and drink or fetches Bronte's comforter without being asked if Bronte is crying.

She takes forever to get to sleep at night if she has a nap at daycare - she hasnt had a day sleep for me at home since she turned two! She has started asking me if she can have friends from dayare around for visits or if she can go to their places. And we have visitors coming next week and she wants the little girl to sleep in her room.

I love watching her become a real little person and am constantly amused by her quirks and outlooks. I am also endlessly frustrated by her button pushing and egocentric attitude (I know this is an age thing but gosh it can be tiring!). But in so many ways its so hard to believe it has only been three years, I feel like I have known her forever but in others, I am incredulous at how the time has flown and my baby is looking all grown up!

But one thing I know for sure that this is going to be an interesting year!

...to shop! The sales are incredible. Clearly the spending down turn here in Australia is worrying the shops and they are doing what they can to get us back in there.

Well it worked on me anyway. I needed some retail therapy and sad as it is, Spech's sale did bring in some pretty decent cash.

So... first on the list - I spoiled myself with my dream jumping saddle, expensive but I got a great price (thank you ebay!) and its a forever saddle.


Then Jase got his dream set-up, that I have been promising him for years for our new lounge room that has been sitting empty with just a leather lounge begging to be snuggled on - a bigger plasma than our current one complete with blu-ray and surround sound. I am fairly convinced that all the cords and speakers are going to far too tempting for the little ones but Jase is optimistic that his parents retreat lounge room is feasible. We are about to find out! I am also less than impressed that the surround sound is on the other side of my bedroom wall where the bed is - since he is planning on watching Formula 1 at 3am tonight, this may rapidly become an issue ;)

Next up - we upgraded our saucepans, something that desperately needed to be done, since our most handy sized saucepan was minus its handle and a bit of extreme cooking to handle. We scored a lovely $500 set for $100, happy days!

I also hit Witchery - their loyalty card had a deal where spend $100 and they take $50 off. Done. I got a great knitted cream vest, a cute blue buttoned skirt and a staple white long sleeved top, with their current sales, it was $250 of full priced clothes for $50.

Metacilus had a great sale so I got a lovely plum coloured long sleeved top for 70% off. And at Portmans I got a lovely high waisted black work skirt which will look so cute with my lace blouses tucked in to it. And Jase got some great shoes, including a $140 pair for $40..

And I am still yet to get to Myer - I still have some gift vouchers to spend so I will be making the most of the sales!

Anyone else had some good bargains?

After a long hard decision that has been well over a year in the making. I put my main competition horse up for sale. I was so reluctant, I barely advertised, just listing him on a free horse sales website. Well, after a surprising amount of calls, I found him the perfect new owner. With a stringent vet check today, it is all official and he leaves tomorrow.

My chest hurts just thinking about it. I have taken him from a off the track race horse frightened of jumps and dressage arenas to a beautiful competition horse that is now jumping 1 metre jumps and doing beautiful dressage. Everyone that tried him commented on how lovely he is to ride. I feel very proud of our hard work together and how muscled and fit he is.

Unfortunately, the intense care he has needed for his bad hoof has just taken up too much of my precious little time and I just couldn't justify committing so much effort to him. The family that are taking him on are well aware of his requirements for care and are willing to look past it for the beautiful ridden horse that he is.

This is far from the end for me - I still have another horse, our gentle giant Samson. I will now concentrate on getting him trained, just as I did Spech. I fear his personality is not quite as easygoing but it will be an enjoyable challenge none the less. In 9 months or so I will make a decision on whether to keep Sam or sell him on and start again with a new horse.

An exciting and rewarding sport/hobby. But oh tomorrow is going to be hard. Stripping him of his rugs and halter for their gear to go on him, loading him onto a foreign float and watching him drive away. It is like giving someone your five year old pet dog - it does not come easily or naturally.

Good bye my beautiful boy. Never forgotten xo

Miss B turned 1 a few days ago. I can't believe that we are done with all things baby (but we most definitely are!) and that I have survived a year of juggling two under three. This time last year we were starting to demolish the side of the house to extend it whilst caring for a teeny newborn and a stroppy two year old. Some lovely memories but I can pretty safely say that I don't desire to revisit the tiredness, lack of space and privacy and sheer demands on my patience that that time brought me.

So it was a real celebration to see my littlest one turn one. She is really coming out of her shell - loves to laugh manically as she trucks around the house with her walkers, loves to copy Elka in every way- colouring, noises, sitting on their little matching lounges and carrying around dolls or pushing strollers. She is a brilliant sleeper - 1-3 decent day sleeps a day plus a good 12 hours at night, she never cries when put down in the cot and smiles or nods when you ask her if she wants a sleep. She is also a great eater - a huge appetite and will eat most things. She loves corn cobs, carrots, all fruit and cream cheese on bread. Her favorite treat foods are hot chips and chocolate cake. She has dropped her day formula bottles and is having a sippy cup of milk instead.

Despite her hearing loss, her speech is developing well, she is learning to say hello and miaow and words like that. She is also a very good mimic of sounds which her speech pathologist is very keen on. She understands a lot of questions now and responds with emphatic nods or head shakes, which is very handy. She loves Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and will hum along and wave her fingers when we sing it. She wears her hearing aids most days thanks to the special caps and bands that we have bought for the purpose, if she doesn't have the caps on, the hearing aids are pulled to pieces within two minutes.

She has two bottom teeth and two on the top - however the two upper teeth are both on the same side of her mouth - we call it her hill billy teeth and its pretty cute!

She has a very cute habit of loving to lay her head down on anything soft. So she will crawl over to it and lay her head down - she sometimes does it to my slipper on my foot!

She has been taking steps since she was 10 months old but has lacked the confidence to really walk (I suspect this has something to do wiht our hard tiled floors and a certain older sister who seems to specialise in knocking poor Bronte down). However, she has been getting braver and today she has taken off - walking at least 5 metres at once without holding on to anything! I am not a soppy type of Mum but watching her proudly wobble off on her little adventures has made me teary tonight.

She has been such a different bub to Elka - much fussier, quicker to cry, far shyer and content to watch more than do but very rewarding with her beautiful smile and wicked sense of humour. She certainly has kept me on my toes - being so different meant that even being a second bub, we still had a lot to learn!

I am looking forward to getting to meet more of this intriguing personality as it develops even more in the next year!

Happy Birthday Miss B xo

As promised here are some pics from the girls shared Teddy Bear Picnic 1st and 3rd Birthday Party.

I complicated things terribly by deciding to take the horse to a cross-country event on the same day as the party, getting home less than 2 hours before the guests arrived. But in my defence, it is the best horse event held all year and is only an annual event, so I couldnt bare to miss it! I also spent the days before floating my parents horses interstate up to our farm to mind them whilst my parents are overseas for 2 months. So it was a busy time.. but we got the baking done, I got up early to decorate the cakes and Jase was fantastic at following my mental plan of the layout of the backyard to set up.

It went as perfectly as an event with 16 toddlers and a few babies can ever be! And my girls had a great time and were thoroughly spoiled. I felt blessed to have such wonderful friends and family and that I was literally able to have my cake and eat it too by indulging in my hobby of horse competitions and getting to throw a great party also.

And here are the photos :)

Am still here.. just. By the time I get to the computer and start work of an evening, I have a heap of uni marking to do and things to sort so my eyes start to feel like they are bleeding and I lose the urge to blog..

But will attempt to return with a lovely update on my little girls combined Birthday party - how on earth is my bub a one year old this week!

The tough get a cleaner!

Well at least in this house ;)

Our weekly cleaner starts tomorrow and I can't wait! Working a long day at work and coming home to a sparkly clean house on hump day sounds good to me.

Plus its the girls combined bday party this weekend, so its one less thing on my list to do, perfect.

Uurrgh does anyone else feel like they are tag team parenting? I would love some couple friends that are both working professionals to relate to, instead most of my friends are either not that fussed about career building or at home with the kids. Furthermore most of them have family living close by, whereas our closest family is two hours away. So sometime I feel like we face different challenges as a family to oters around us...

Our main week-to-week dilemma is the large amount of out of standard work hours work commitments we both have. Between work dinners, cocktail parties, work trips interstate, lecturing, late nights in the lab and videoconferences a lot of evenings are taken up. So we find ourselves literally doing that stereotypical diary matching where we stand and barter off dates where one or the other has to mind the kids while the other one is away. Often, this turns into scenarios where one of us flies in from interstate in time for the other to pack their suitcase and fly out. Hence, why we have called it tag team parenting. We are currently debating dates in September, that is how quickly things fill up. Life feels a little crazy some days.

Not to mention when the tag teaming rolls over into the weekend so that we can get all the farm work done too. If I hadn't had a cuddle with jase on the lounge last night to watch a rare DVD together, I would have felt like I hadnt seen my husband at all this weekend.

Life is only going to get crazier in the next few weeks unfortunately as we double the numbers of animals on our farm by taking in my parents horses, cats and potentially chickens while they are overseas for two months. Needless to say, I am eagerly looking forward to a lovely family holiday we have booked for ourselves for September - no tag teaming as we will all be there together :)

We have lived here 4.5 years and in that time, we have always meant to just head West and explore. Funnily enough, rather than doing it when we were a childfree couple, we end up loading the two kids under three into the car and doing it now.

So with picnic bags packed and layers of warm clothes, we headed West... and loved every minute. From enjoying the huge dams, rolling hills and paddocks of crops to climbing the Border Ranges and stopping at the very top to bushwalk and "enjoy" a picnic at a lovely spot that unfortunately was 12 degrees (I was the only one freezing as per usual!). We soaked up a true country town - where pretty much everything was shut being a Sunday, eating lunch in a cafe where service was slow and steady and the people at the neighbouring tables chatted to us, walking the streets whilst Elka licked an ice-cream cone bought for the genuine 1980's price of $1.50.

So I woke up yesterday in a great mood – the kids had let me sleep in until 7am, bliss. I love my Fridays at home, playing with the girls, taking them to storytime at the library, catching up with friends and generally recuperating from a busy week and preparing for family time on the weekend. I was feeling all maternal and fuzzy as I cuddled a snuggly pj clad Bronte as she drank her morning milk. I idly opened my email on the ipad and with a sinking heart noticed an email from the Chief Scientist of my laboratory. I get a lot of work emails on my days off and they are invariably because things are going wrong, or people need advice on techniques and results. Normally resulting in me trying to pacify two ratty kids as I desperately type technical answers or race outside to stand in the driveway where I can get mobile reception to talk.

So I scanned this email, collecting my inner strength to deal with the drama, particularly as I noted it was CC’ed to my boss’s boss. Imagine my delight when I realised it was a lovely email complimenting me on some interstate work that I had done for a hospital. My boss had been specifically approached at a conference by the Dr who requested the work and he wanted to compliment me to my boss about. So big pat on the back for me!

It left me with the strange feeling that I get – when my life as a mum and life as a career woman collide. The small things in both jobs that are so rewarding but so different in such direct comparison. Sometimes I do feel like two people, and the transition between my work and non-work days can be a bit bumpy.

So sometimes it is nice to feel like you are doing OK at both at the same time!

Its a funny day isn't it - alot of sadness for so many that have empty arms or long to have their Mum back.

I had some lovely moments - Jase asked Elka to give me a sleep-in and would you know it - it worked! I woke at 7am and realised that I hadn't had a little visitor at 6am like normal and instead she was lying in her room singing songs and waiting patiently for Jase to tell her to bring in the present that was hidden in her cupboard. I also woke to a beautiful card that Bronte had "made" at daycare by my bedside (Elka couldn't help herself and gave me hers days ago!). I was spoiled with beautiful flowers and a pamper package and taken for a perfect picnic at one of my favourite places, lying under the snow gums watching Elka play and Bronte explore.

I don't fit the mothers day sterotype very well though - I am not a fan of breakfast in bed and don't like cooked breakfasts. So Jase wrangled the kids whilst I had my bowl of cereal and got to drink my milo while it was still warm - that was treat enough! And then, all I wanted was to be left alone so I got to ride the horses, wash one horses skanky tail that has Queensland itch in it and take out my gloves and axe to weed the paddocks of fireweed and cut saplings down. Yes really - I love the peace in the paddocks with the kookaburras calling, the lorikeets darting around and searching for a glimpse of the wallabies in the underbrush. Hard to forget that I am a mother though, when everytime I got close to the house, there were little faces pressed up against the glass waving out at me desperately. Nice to be needed though isn't it!

My mothers day was cut short however, by Jase flying out for a work trip. Hate seeing him go away and miss out on the girls at the best of times but even harder to have him leave on a family day like that. So I finished the afternoon playing with the girls alone and cooking my own dinner before doing the dinner/bath/bed rush, cleaned the house, ironed and marked some uni assignments.

But compared to the pain and loss I have read on other blogs and people that have been in my thoughts today, I would not dare to complain. I got to read my little ones bedtime stories tonight, cuddle them and sneak back in the dark to tuck them in listening to their sweet breathing. Best gift for a mother ever.

xo

So I often get comments such as "I don't know how do you do it" and so on. By "it" I think people mean have a career I am passionate about as a Senior Infectious Disease Scientist in Public Health, have a husband with a demanding profession and also live on property, compete my horses and have two young kids.

I don't really have a clever response - I mean we all do what we choose to in life and I simply choose to do what I mentioned above. I do admittedly have a hard time being still or relaxing which helps me fit a fair bit into the day. I sat down on our main lounge setting today and I realised how strange it felt to sit on it during daylight hours - I just don't sit during the day and even Elka looked at me a little strangely!

My work days whiz by in a flash and I actually think I am often more tired on my days at home with the girls. I just love my job - I love the unexpected nature of what diseases are going to turn up in hospitals that day, what outbreaks need source tracking and the thrill (highs and lows) of running research projects and preparing grants and publications. It has gotten a lot more complicated as I have been made head of a laboratory which means I am now a manager of other scientists. I am still part time (with no backfill on my non-work days) and now I am managing full time staff - yep that makes me a little crazy busy at the best of times! I bring work home with me and try to clear out a lot of computer work on my "days off" (any stay at home mum will know that they are not real days off!).

But a typical work day goes something like this

5.30am - our alarm goes off. Jase kindly feeds the chickens, ducks, cats and horses (taking my competition horse's night rug off). I rush into some clothes, make-up and hair - despite being a scientist in a secure lab in a lab coat, I believe strongly in looking professional, probably more so because I am young in comparison to the other managing level staff and want to remind them that I am worthy of respect.

6am - I wake the girls, pack their lunches, give them milk and then breakfast, whilst shoving mouthfuls of cereal in as I run past my bowl. With defiant optimism I make myself a herbal tea, which never has more than two sips taken from it. Defuse the toddler delay tactics, dress the kids, wrestle Bronte into her hearing aids, brush their teeth, do Elka's hair and hustle them out of the house, hastily trying to get a chance to give Jase a kiss goodbye.

7am - leave our farm. En route sing songs with the girls, play word games and hand Elka books to "read stories" to Bronte. I try to make the commute quality time with them since it so long.

7.45am - take the girls into daycare (I use a centre close to my work so I can get to them quickly if they are sick or anything). Spend 5 or so minutes with each of them settling them in.

8am - drive the 2 mins to work, play "Get Smart" swiping through no less than 4 different doors to get into my desk in the lab.

8am-4.30pm - rush around like a crazy fool doing my job which these days is a split between laboratory work, management duties and reporting results at a statewide and national level. Stressful, fun, challenging and some days I seriously weigh up if I can justify the time to swipe out two doors and walk the 6 minute round trip to get to the ladies toilets (and some days I can't, seriously, that was a killer when pregnant).

4.45pm - pick up the girls, chatting to the daycare staff about the happenings in the day.

5.30pm - arrive home, unload the girls and all related paraphernalia. Try to convince them that they can let me out of their sight for 5 minutes so that I can race outside to mix up the horses hard feed and rug them, lock the chickens up for the night, feed the ducks and collect eggs. Come inside and get screamed at simultaneously by starving cats and a Bronte wanting dinner.

6pm - try to feed Bronte something resembling a balanced meal whilst trying to cook dinner, feeling bad that unlike "good mothers" that have meals on the table by bloody 5.30pm, my toddler has to wait for dinner until late. Stare longingly into the dark looking for Jase's car lights. Somehow every single night manage to mistime cooking and the kids baths so that it is maximum stress for all and dinner invariably gets in someway burned/overcooked or cold.

7pm - try to eat food while still warm at the same time as putting Bronte down for sleep and convince a tired Elka that she needs to eat more than just the carrots, corn and broccoli off her plate (my weird child adores vegies - we have found ourselves saying things like "No eat a bite of chicken before you have more vegetables!")

7.30pm - books are read,Elka is tucked in and left to stay in her room, for either sleep or quiet play,we don't mind as long as she stays in there!

8pm+ - Kitchen is cleaned, house is tidied. Jase retires to the study to continue working, I use the laptop for emailing/facebooking before dragging out the exercise bike for a quick workout, finishing with some pilates. Cuddle up in bed to do some scientific reading and writing.

11pm - Jase finished and comes to bed and we finally have some time to chat and catch up, such nice time and muchly needed as much as it cuts into the precious sleep hours!

And repeat with the horrible alarm waking us in the dark of 5.30am...

Sometimes work cuts into the nights also - Jase tries to do one daycare pick up a week so I can stay late at work (and he can get a taste of the joys of getting home with two girls, feeding all the animals and trying to cook dinner/get kids to bed hehe). But he also tends to have work functions at night, teleconferences from either home or his city office or interstate trips which obviously changes the routine. I sometimes have a scientific talk/meeting at night or do some lecturing and I do go interstate for work conferences and training courses...

All this of course leaves me with the more "mum" duties to concentrate on on my two days off from work - we don;t do anything official like classes etc as I tend to like to be flexible for my horse specialist appointments and Bronte's medical/speech appointments that I book on those days but I do take the girls to the library storytime where I meet some mummy friends and go for coffee or morning tea afterwards.

I also fit in the smaller farm jobs on these days but then the weekends are when we get the bigger stuff done - gardening in our large gardens, cleaning out chicken sheds, manure pick-up from the paddocks, fencing, sapling clearing and visiting the produce store to get feed. And we try to take the girls somewhere nice - even if it is just a big park visit or a picnic. I aim to get the horses exercised every weekend and I tend to only go to a horse event/competition every 4-6 weeks as they take up most of the weekend and leave me terribly tired for Mondays. We make sure we cook a nice dinner on Saturday "date" night and have a relaxing couple of glasses of wine. And we have at least one breakfast or lunch as a family out on our deck just soaking up the view. Sometimes its the little things that make all hecticness a little less crazy.

And that's "how we do it"

Feel free to do a post about your typical day,would love to see how others do it :)

well 13 of them I think it was in total... we used the long weekend to start restoring our nice wooden post and rail fences that had to be pulled down for the house extension. And by "we" I mean Jase did all the outside work, while I cared for the girls inside feeling like death warmed up with yet another chest infection.

Unlike a lot of people, our garden yards have to be fenced with fencing that is suitable for not only keeping little kids in and away from the dams but will also keep horses out.... so some of our yards are skirted with horse fencing that we finish with dog wire to contain the kids and also keep foxes out from getting into the chicken coop.

And unlike a lot of people, I wouldn't have anything else. I love post and rail fencing and watching my horses stand looking over the rails. Quaint and country - perfect!

And I love my hubby from the city for learning how to build it from scratch himself and make it so straight and nice. (I won't mention how much more there is to go!)

Its been quite a long time since I wrote an update on my girls.... so indulge me while I record just how fast my little ones are growing up! I am sure no one but me really wants to read this but I love revisting my old posts on them.

Elka
is almost done being a 2 year old - in under two months she will turn three. It has been a tough ride, she has been a tricky toddler, shocking all my Mummy friends with her ability to undermine punishment and complete resistance to being intimidated by authority. But she has (for now) passed through the tempest and we are enjoying the calm on the other side. This trickiness has been based in her sheer smarts - she is confident, well spoken (Bronte's speech pathologist was blown away by her use of language) and too smart for (my) her own good! She isn't a big tantrum thrower anymore (not that they were huge ones anyway) and tends to get over not getting her own way pretty quickly. We use 1,2,3 consequence for punishment generally as time out just doesn't work for her.

She can count to over twenty now, count backwards, read written arabic numbers 1-10 and much to our surprise can now answer basic arithrmetic such as 2+1. She can read the entire alphabet, recite it happily and can now write E and M and has just started writing her name very legibly. She can draw basic shapes and can identify all of them, she also understands colours and shades. Her colouring in has improved a lot in the last few months - she is very good at staying in/around the lines and goes to pains to make sure that she uses the "right" colours for things.

I love watching and being forced to join in with her pretend games - she loves being a "Mum that goes to work" or a "Doctor" or "Vet", she often loves to act out medical type appointments that we have been to, so we get a lot of ear specialist play acting. She will also demand to swap roles with us so that she can be Mum or Dad and we can be the whinging toddler - its a crack up as she turns back on us all the phrases we use on her. She tells long pretend tales, where she stands deadpan, gesticulating and rolling her eyes as she throws everything into it. She is also obsessed with making up her own songs, which although are great, are also infuriating as she demands that I sing along and changes the words every verse so I have no chance!

She is a lovely big sister - she cares for Bronte very well now. She actually often draws our attention to things that we haven't noticed, such as Bronte having a small piece of broken plastic in her mouth.

She has been toilet trained for about 8 months and is currently moving out of nappies at night now. She has worn undies to bed for about 5 nights now and is doing great. She is a great sleeper although has had a few nights where she calls out for a light to be on (we live rural and obviously have no street lights etc so the house is very dark at night). She dropped her day sleep just after she turned 2 (when Bronte was born - lucky me!) so now she only grabs a nap in the car if we are out and she just has quiet time in front of DVD in the middle of the day instead.

She is a good eater - loves vegetables especially brocolli and carrots. She adores pasta dishes and will eat sushi every day if she could. She always makes the sushi serving people laugh as she stands there asking for "nari rolls" (inari) and will destroy two of them and a full tuna roll for lunch quite happily.

She can put her own CD's on the CD player, change DVD's, take herself to the toilet, put on her own helmet and ride her big girl bike and can now swing on a swing by herself. She starts school 5 days a week next year (gulp!) - she is going to a private school that she had to take an interview to get into (testing the pen grip of a two year old - intimidating much?!) and despite being the youngest in her year due to her bday being in June she is more than ready (its pre-prep here in QLD,which will actually be referred to as kindergarten according to the new National curriculum). She CANT wait,wants to go now and even asked if she could have a school bag cake for her bday party hehe. I love all of this independence but also make sure that I don't forget that she is still little (as she reminded me the other day "I am only two, Mum!") and ensure she still gets cuddles in my lap and lots of kisses and giggles.


Bronte
has just turned 11 months and is well and truly on the move. She is taking steps - Jase and I were both there for her first step which was no mean feat as it was in the month that we were almost constantly interstate! She can walk holding just one of our hands. She loves to ride her Smart Trike and we can push for ages around the park paths with her holding on one handed (too cool for both hands apparently!). It does draw some attention as she is still so little but is determined to be just like her big sister on her bike.

Her speech is developing well despite her hearing loss. She says Mum,Dad, Bird,Brroom (for car noise) and is starting to mimic our words if we ask her to repeat things. The speech pathologist spends an hour with her every two weeks and is very pleased with her progress which is apparently perfect for a normal 11 month olds development, a real relief.

She is clapping and claps if other people do or if we sing a clapping song. She is also pointing and loves to point out her or your nose if asked too - very cute! She is also waving and blowing kisses.

What I am most pleased about currently is that she is nodding and shaking her head.. in context. I love it!! I loved this stage with Elka too - its their first real sophisticated communication. I can ask her if she wants water/food/a bike ride/nappy change/sleep and she will nod or shake her head. Bliss not having to play guess work with her.

She is so different to Elka at the same age - doesn't like books,in fact would prefer to slide around the floor on them than read them! Doesn't like swings (seriously what kid doesn;t like swings!) instead adores slippery slides. Really she just wants to be a three year old - she adores copying her older sister and is learning so much more than she would otherwise. She already holds textas or crayons and scribbles them on paper sitting next to Elka doing colouring (oh so cute!). Unfortunately her adoration results in endless frustration for Elka who cannot play any game or toy without Bronte being in the middle of it trying to join in!

Today she amazed me by taking pieces of bread from me that I was feeding to the ducks and started throwing them herself. Gosh they take it all in don't they and then all of a sudden it comes back out as clear comprehension!

She has been sick a lot this last month just like me and is on her third dose of antibiotics. The GP and I are extremely cautious with any nasal congestion as we don't want her ears to become infected and have any damage to the eardrums as poor Bronte does not need any further difficulties with hearing.

She is a big smoocher and gives cuddles on demand which melts my heart. However, she is pretty intense - she knows how to get her sister in trouble by "dobbing" with fake crying, is quite mummy clingy and very quiet and takes everything in and then gets very determined at trying to achieve what she wants. I do quake in my boots a little at what toddlerhood will bring us, particularly with the difficulty of hearing aids thrown in there.

But when they are both squishing me by climbing into my lap and my arms are so full, I wouldn't have it any other way!

So this is actually a stash of shopping from a few weeks ago. How good are the current deals in the shops!? I am trying so hard to not buy too much at the moment as we have made the decision to "live simpler" and try to stop being quite so much the yuppy consumers - its a slippery slope once you start earning good incomes and we are endeavouring to stay grounded and avoid complacency in our budgeting. There are some big costs to still to go on the farm - we have to finish landscaping,building fences and fixing up our driveway and carport area and we have plans for a big overseas trip in 2013 and also a second layer of deck with a pool still to build. So time to buckle down and concentrate on our big goals.

Ironically, it is quite easy to "live simply" when you have just bought a stash of great winter Portmans clothes (including some great biker jeans that I adore!), cute new shoes (including these fantastic new boots below which are cute and super comfy!) and you have just ordered yourself a gorgeous new designer handbag ;) so the test will come in the next few months when I am trying to resist new scarves, cuddly wrap cardigans and cute tweed skirts for work.


Wish me luck!