Changes....

Some things have changed and are about to change around here....

1. I had to finish work at the end of August... I was having trouble keeping my blood sugar levels under control and the diabetes doctors said it's time for me to have a rest before the baby comes.... (it's not due until the first week of November) so that means I've got some time to nest, rest, organise and re-organise, and spend time with my kids and husband before one more is added to the family :-). But I must say... I am loving being at home.... it's what I have always wanted.... I just hope that we can make it work that I can permanently stay at home.

2. The down side of finishing so early is that I had to start my paid parental leave earlier..... which means it will run out A LOT sooner than I hoped (like when the baby is just over a month old) .... not sure what I'm going to do after that but I'm sure it'll work itself out.

3. My kids are growing WAY TOO FAST! The other day I looked at Little Miss and noticed that the top that she was wearing has suddenly become too short in the body as well as the sleeves..... I just got it for her 3 weeks ago! What is up with that?

4. The Lad is talking a lot more now.... he's like a little parrot, but he's so deliciously cute.... especially when he says his sister's name.

5. In  6 months time we will have a school girl! Where has the time gone?! But I am looking forward to all that stationery shopping, and book covering, and helping with homework.... what I am not looking forward to is making the school lunch!

6. Matthew got a new job! In I.T! Yay! He is now the new Junior Applications Analyst for RD1. I'm so proud of him! We're so happy - especially me! He has been doing some BIG BIG hours lately - he works so hard, and never complains and we really appreciate it, but it's not fair to be doing the hours that he has been. Anyway.... he will start his new job on the 1st of October.... so here's to some normal working hours for him, and yay for us being able to have dinner as a family, and having him home at night and on the weekends! the not so yay point though.... MAKING HIS LUNCH!

One thing about his job is.... he's now going to be paid monthly.... this is giving me nightmares already. I need help people...... how do we transition from a weekly budget to a monthly budget? especially when our funds are already very limited and short with me finishing work early?
Any tips or advice for living on a monthly budget would be GREATLY appreciated! We're starting fortnightly grocery shopping again so i'm hoping that will save us a little bit of money that we can put towards something else. Please help me!

Anyway that's about it for a little update from us. I'll keep you posted on how things go on the grocrey/budgeting topic.

:-)

First Cast

So we got our kids a trampoline for Christmas.... we taught Little Miss about the importance of closing the zip and being careful when getting on and off so she didn't hurt herself. (Parents of the year award) HAHA .... From then on she made a point of telling everyone else to close the zip and be careful when they were on it.... (we thought our advice had sunken in)... UNTIL... yesterday she didn't take her own advice and jumped right out through the open zip and onto her arm and now has a buckle fracture, so is sporting her very first cast.

She'll be wearing this cast for the next 10 days and then a fibre glass one - so she's busy thinking about what colour she would like to have!

(Talk about giving me a heart attack!)

Little Miss Independent

So..... Our Little Miss is growing up so quickly! Gone are the days when I can choose her clothes each day, help to dress her, put her shoes on, and do pretty much everything for her :-(
She now likes to choose her own clothes and dress herself - which I have no problem with really, just sometimes the clothing combinations can be a little bit questionable - we are trying to teach her about modesty e.g wearing tights or shorts under her skirts, as well as talking about appropriate clothes choices for the weather that day - oh the joys of being a parent.
I love that she is growing up and being independent, but it can drive me a little crazy at times.
To be honest I would really rather do everything for her so that it gets done faster, or its the way I want it etc, but who am I to deny her of learning to make her own choices, and to feel a sense of achievement in the things that she does. I'm an Early Childhood teacher - don't I encourage children to make their own choices and be independent every day? Why should it be any different at home?

So.... I have had to put aside all my OCD's about the way things are done and just 'go with it' - it was really hard in the beginning but now I see how proud she is of herself, even if it takes an extra 5 minutes and I have to clean up twice.
So here's how we 'go with it'....

Every night, Little Miss and I go through her drawers and choose her clothes for the next day.
I then put them at the end of her bed and in the morning she gets up and dresses herself.

Little Miss likes to spread her toast and sandwiches - at first we let her have the whole jar of jam and marjarine, but after all the double dipping and the huge amounts of spreads going onto the toast we re-evaluated, and now we just give her enough to spread her toast - she's happy with that and we're much happier knowing she hasn't licked the knife and put it back in for us to spread our toast with.

Now the breakfast thing..... this is a different story - she puts HUGE amounts of rice bubbles or cornflakes in a bowl with about a litre of milk, so I'm trialling out a new idea....

at night I will put out a bowl with her choice of either rice bubbles or cornflakes, and a spoon, and....

enough milk in a little cup for her to pour over her cereal.
We'll see how this goes. Tomorrow is the first morning.

It only takes a couple of extra minutes to do these things, and the look on Little Miss' face tells me its all worth the extra time.

What things do you do to help your child's independence, or keep yourself from going insane?

Deeeeeeeelicious!

The Lad...

PLUS

Little Miss...

EQUALS

Deeeeeeeeelicious Children! I'm so lucky!

Church Craft....

So on Pinterest I saw this awesome idea of making puzzles from giant popsicle sticks.... 

Today I made some for Little Miss to have a go at during church...

not bad aye?
All I needed to buy was some giant popsicle sticks - thank you $2 shop!
All I did was get some pictures from our old church magazines, cut them up and mod podge them onto the sticks.
Voila - new puzzles! Who cares if they get trashed - they were so quick and easy to make, I think I may make some more. I was also thinking it would be cool to make some from op shopped children's books and give them away for homemade christmas gifts this year. :-)

The cutest thing EVER!

So my amazing clever Sister in Law made this gorgeous present for Little Miss for christmas... I am totally in love with this guy!

He is so adorable I can't stop looking at him! He has the cutest little white shirt, vest and the most gorgeous jacket, not to mention the adorable ribbon bow tie.... EVERYTHING about this guy is delicious!

Look at the back of this jacket....

Cute huh?
LOVE HIM!

Christmas is Coming!

Not long until christmas now.... our advent calendar jar is nearly filled with little boxes. I'm so excited!

This morning I dug out of my linen cupboard this Duvet cover I had on my bed when I was a little girl... Love it! Now it's on Little Miss' bed. :-)

Tonight I'm going to start on a little project for our baby boy... stay tuned.
We're on our first day of toilet training Little Miss... hopefully it will be goodbye nappies soon!

A Quiet Activity....

So the other day I was reading in the Little Treasures Magazine.... a little tip thing - one mother lets her daughter cut out food from the supermarket fliers, and glue them onto a trolley that she has drawn.... Today Little Miss and I made our version of the same thing as I thought it was a great idea for picture recognition and also for talking about good foods, treat foods etc.

Step 1:
Go through supermarket flier and cut out lots of pictures of different things...

Step 2:
Draw a trolley

Step 3:
Draw a shopping bag

Step 3 1/2:
Get excited all over again that you have your own laminator, and squeal with delight and clap your hands as you get it out of the cupboard

Step 4:
Laminate and cut out everything

Step 5:
Sellotape sides of the shopping bag together, and put the groceries in

Step 6:
Let the very excited little shopper now play with your awesome creation:

Step 7:
Clean up the mess from Step 1 while the Little Shopper observes you and refuses to help :-P

A mouthful....

I am eating a toffee pop mellowpuff collision..... I can't talk properly because I have the whole thing in my mouth! I'm just like my Daddy :-)

Outside fun

Playing outside with the little toy gun Mummy got from a work meeting. I have really good aim and I like to shoot people in the bottom! Cheeky!

A tricky dinner!

Tonight Mummy ate her stir fry with chopsticks - I wanted to have a go too..... It was very tricky but I did very well. I was saying.... "come on chicken" (even though it was beef) and growling at the chopsticks when they didn't work properly!

Dress Ups...

I like to dress up in all of Mummy's shoes.... today I chose her ugg boots! They come up really high!

Just me and daddy

I like to sit down and have talks with my Daddy. I love him lots!

Building

I built a house! I'm clever!

Little Miss Daisy

Today Nanny helped me make a daisy chain.... isn't it pretty?

Um.....

Little Miss decided to put on Nan's Bra tonight...... The End

Shopping...

At the warehouse they now have little trollies for children - they are so cute! Little Miss pushed one all the way around the shop..... trying to choose things she wanted and put them in the trolley! I had to go through it before I got to the checkout!

Jingle Bells.....

Little Miss came out of her bedroom tonight and said, "I got Jingle Bells on" She's so funny!

She has been dancing around the lounge singing Jingle Bells as the bells on her skirt jingle. :-)

Potato Heads

Loving these Potato Heads Little Miss made today :-)

Doctor Nanny

Getting seen to by Doctor Nanny :-)

Bless them in their PJ'S!