Staying sane

We had been talking about taking a trip overseas this year (sans baby, thanks Mum!), a sort of final hurrah before we embark on Project Baby Number Two.  However, just before we booked our flights to Sweden we changed our minds. Our little man is a little over 14 months old now and dearly loved but since he still hasn’t mastered the art of sleeping through on a regular basis, we (my husband and me that is) are both feeling severely sleep deprived.  So we decided that going on a exhausting but fun whirlwind tour of a foreign country followed by the inevitable jetlag and the return of a clingy and still not sleeping through Baby Without Pity and then embarking on the whole pregnancy, sleep deprivation thing again, would not be a very sensible option.  Instead we are taking a very long, very boring (hopefully!) holiday in a rented house at a little seaside village (three weeks in total, one without the bubba, one with bubba and my parents, one with just us and bubba). The advantages include not having to leave the bambino for sixteen days but instead only a week, plus we’ll be able to go rescue my parents if there are any hassles. It’s also cheaper which means we can do a few of the renovations we wanted to do around the place – and take a little getaway like the one we went on last weekend.  We stayed overnight at a resort in Northern NSW and left the bubba with my parents, obstensibly as a trial run for next week.

It was lovely and our baby was perfect for his Nanna and Grandpa.

This year we’ve also started having weekly date nights, leaving the baby with his Aunty while we have dinner out somewhere, even if it’s just at a McCafe.  All in all these efforts have been worth it – I’m starting to see my husband as my best friend, partner and sex object again, not just as that competent but slightly annoying, part time co-worker in this job of Motherhood I’m doing.

We head off on holidays on Saturday, looking forward to sleeping in, eating breakfast in peace and some quality time with my man.

I love rainy weather…

especially after some awful heat

Rain drops dripping from the leaves outside…

Happy Australia Day

This year we had an actual Australia Day party (albeit a small one).

I decorated

dry bunya fronds/palms? and gum leaves

it's a stubby holder mobile!

and the three of us dressed in national costume,

me, my little first and seventh generation and everything in between bubba and my man

and on the menu was: barbequed sausages, pineapple, banana, onions and mushrooms, salad, damper, an antipasto plate with smoked salmon and kangaroo proscuitto, chips and dip, pavlova, lamingtons and icecream. Oh and plenty of Australian wine and beer.

We had lovely company and listened to a playlist of Aussie themed music.

Happy Australia Day! I’m so glad we’re so lucky to live in this wonderful country.

A Sunday morning feast

For a late breakfast this morning I baked some baby sugared cinnamon brioche. They took over 2 hours to make but when they were done they were very yummy.

We ate them jammed and buttered with hot chocolate and fruit. 

Treasures on the wall

We have some tiny treasures that mean a lot to us but seem wasted hidden away in boxes and drawers. So I framed them.

I bought plain wooden frames from Ikea and painted them a rich red oxide, mounted the treasures using double sided tape on white card and popped them on the wall.

I think they look very smart.

Activities for busy little people

I was just browsing the net looking for ideas for things to do with an active, nearly 14 month old who still puts things in his mouth, has a very short attention span and is obsessed with machines (dear lord we vacuumed today, oh the humanity).

I found this really great blog post and comments: http://talesfromthecrib.blogspot.com/2007/03/things-to-do-with-one-year-old.html

These instructions on how to make a wave bottle: http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/ocean-in-a-bottle.html

These ideas for places to go: http://hbwm.com/blogs/view/130

 And some more ideas here: http://aplaceofourown.org/boards/archive/index.php/t-59.html

Have made the wave bottle and am going to go set up a texture tray with different things from the pantry now. 

Some things we do:

•  He loves playing with water so I often fill up a container and give him some things to put in the water. Unless we go into the bathroom he eventually (ie after a few minutes) tips any containers out all over the patio – which is fine but not sustainable (I mean you can’t keep tipping buckets of water on an enclosed patio) -  still, it’s a great game for a hot day.
• Loves playing with billowy sheets, slows down folding up the washing but it’s a fun game

And oops he’s up, so that’s all I have time for! Off to show him the wave bottle

Small scale gardening

I think I must have been inspired by my sister-in-law-to-be – since we came back from our holidays I’ve felt an itchy green thumb. Yesterday and today my bubba and I embarked on some tiny gardening projects.

We repotted a new pot of basil and some of the sickly herbs that had been sharing a planter on our patio into these smaller individual kitchen window sill sized pots.

We bought this gorgeous hanging basket and flowerless jasmine but I seem to have lost the tag so don’t know it’s proper name!

 

And we repotted my poor old aloe vera in the old basil pot using the lovely soil from the herb planter (courtesy of my horse poo, compost using grandies).

I got my little man a small watering can and he’s enjoyed importantly ‘watering’ the plants with the empty can. 

And now my husband is on bubba duty so I’m enjoying my lovely new turkish apple tea in my lovely new tea cup.

Holiday reading

I actually got some reading done in the last few weeks:  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Maus by Art Spiegelman. Both were semi-related in that they dealt with totalitarian regimes – Atwood’s novel a speculative account of a totalitarian regime in America where women have been subjugated, and Spiegelman’s a graphic novel of his father’s personal story of surviving the Holocaust. Both were depressing but riveting and made me appreciate how very, very lucky we are here in Australia to have never been invaded (with the exception of the original owners of course), have our homes destroyed during war or to have a fascist or totalitarian regime.  They also made me aware of how important it is for people to protest immediately against unjust and unfair policies before it’s too late to protest about anything.  Spiegelman’s account gave me a renewed appreciation for the suffering of the Jews under the Nazis, and also a reminder of the historic oppression of these people in Europe culminating in the Holocaust. The scale and impact is so incredible it’s almost inconceivable, works like Spiegelman’s give a very human side of the story and allow those of us who weren’t even born then to relate.

I recently watched John Safran’s latest tv series,  Race Relations and Spiegelman’s story gave context to the questions he posed about people from different cultures intermarrying, Jews in particular.

Reading these books followed on after I read the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - another book dealing with the Second World War, this time in Guernsey. Firstly I hadn’t known Guernsey had been occupied by the Germans and secondly, what a terrible experience it had been. 

The book I’m reading at the moment is a departure from the oppression ouvre I seem to have been following  and is a non-fiction book Raising Boys by Stephen Biddulph. I’ve also cracked open a Kate Morton novel but the online book club I’m trying to participate in will be choosing a new book soon so I’ll probably move on to that.

Another year arrives…

We’re officially out of holiday mode today, we’re back from all our Christmas and New Year trips and the Christmas decorations are down. Husband is home from work for one more week but we’re looking at it as more of a planning, regrouping, preparing week before 2010 really kicks off.  It’s really an exciting time of the year, full of promise and good intentions.

Before we get too far into the new year however, here’s a brief round up of our Christmas break.

The babe and I went to my parents for a few days before Christmas and then on Christmas Eve with the husband to his family for a few days.

We had a lovely family time – aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and siblings, plus plenty of…

..different types of food…

different types of Christmas trees…

   

and plenty of outdoors time for our little man to enjoy:

And then we went to an island for New Years Eve…

great weather and location

     

good company (and champers)

and plenty of outdoors for a little person to go exploring

There was also plenty of swimming but I didn’t get any photos of that!

Now we’re home and I’m enjoying the rain outside.

Happy New Year!!

Decking the house…

…with handmade purties.

tealights in beribboned jars along the windowsill

 

handpainted (literally) bunting

paperchains

salt dough biscuits to hang from the lights and windows

 

 

and some left over to secret about the shelves and pile in a glass bowl

 

and our tiny little tree (just the right size to keep out of reach from a grabby-hands bubba), lit up next to a nativity advent picture

All set for Christmas