Chinese Steamboat.

My lovely husby had a birthday last week. He’s now 27. But as he likes to say, “you’re only as old as the woman you feel”. Ha.

He had two birthday dinners, one with his family and one with mine. Lucky boy.

With my family, he requested a fun and interesting meal which we saw on Better Homes & Gardens a few weeks ago (one of my husby’s favourite shows), and which he has been wanting to eat ever since. Chinese Steamboat. Click the link for the recipe. Seriously do it, you’ll love it.

It was awesome fun. You make this delicious broth, and cut up a million vegies and bits of meat.

We had a pretty good range, including these awesome varieties of mushroom…

I didn’t really want to eat them, it was so pretty!!

Then you put your choice of food into a little basket, and cook it in the simmering broth.

Oh so delicious, and oh so healthy! Plus the fact that we’re all sitting around talking, laughing, eating and drinking together for a few hours … what’s not to love!!

Seriously. Try it!

…

Time to Party

My little sister turns 21 today. Hard to believe that at my 21st, 2 years ago, I had been married for 2.5 years, and was a few weeks off conceiving our little Mayana-Berry! Weiiiirrrd.

Bethanie is now 6 months off becoming a married woman herself!

We celebrated her birthday with dinner out with friends and family on Saturday night – black and white theme. It was lots of fun, and the birthday girl was very spoilt, and everyone had a lovely time.

Here are some snaps!

The birthday girl

 Michelle & I

 Two of my favourite ladies in the world… My Mum and my Nana

 My littlest sister, Alexie + Mama

 Birthday Girl + Cake + Balloons

 Brother, sisters, brother-in-law to be, me, and my delicious husband!

 My family. Oh I love them all!!!

Us. (Please take note of my gorgeous new boots. Which so deserve their own post. Stay tuned.)

Mousey Business

Mice give me the creeps. Rats are way worse. We’ve had rats in our roof a few times over the years, and I always send Pete up into the ceiling to murder them with little green pellets because the sound of them shuffling in the ceiling when I’m trying to sleep is akin to Chinese water torture to me. But I digress. We have been without rats for quite some time now.

However, it seems that mice are another story. Unfortunately. *shudder*. Apparently they’re all over the place in our town at the moment. Probably trying to get out of the freezing cold weather. I half don’t blame them, I just want them to find someone else’s house to defrost in!

About a week ago, I saw a little brown flash out of the corner of my eye. I may have let out a little girly squeal – enough to get the attention of my dearest husband in any case. After some time of setting up little decoys and traps, he eventually caught the little blighter. But what then? Being the gentle, humane being that he is, he decided on relocation. Big mistake.

Not two days later, there was the familiar flash of brown… this time across my lounge room floor. Argh! Pete attempted a chase, but the little bugger was just far too fast for us. (And by us I mean him, as if I would get that close to a creepy little rodent). We set traps, but he was a crafty little thing. Every morning we’d find a cheeseless mouse trap with a scattering of little mousey pellets but no mousey body.

And then, on Saturday, Pete spotted him running down the hallway. He witnessed the mouse flattening himself to squeeze beneath the toilet door, and he knew he had it! No escape route in there! Next thing I hear an awful squealing (it was the mouse, not Pete), and Peter comes around the corner, triumphantly brandishing the flailing rodent. It was sooo teeny-tiny, and scared.

“What am I going to do with it now!??” asked Pete.
“I don’t know, you can’t just kill it, right?” says I.

Of course he couldn’t just kill it. My husband is not the type just to squish the life out of a poor helpless mousey with his own bare hands. So what did he do? He opened the back door, and absolutely pegged the poor thing over the back fence. I can just imagine it flying through the air, arms and legs and tail flailing, crying out, “Mice aren’t meant to flyyyyyyyyyyy!”.

So maybe it did die. I’m not sure. I kind of hope it did, because I don’t want it back in my house seeking revenge. And I hope he didn’t invite any of his friends here. I want my mousey days to be over!

Movie World

Our piece of excitement over the long weekend (thanks Queen!) was a trip down to the ever exciting Movie World!

Waiting in the carpark for everyone else to arrive.

My sister had collected a stack of half price entry vouchers, so the 9 of us + some family friends made good use of them.

It was loads of fun. And Opa & Kami wanted to be Mayana hogs, which suited us just fine, as it meant we still got to go on the rides!

Mayana and Opa waiting to be let into Shrek 4D

Mayana coped really well – despite only having one 25 minute nap all day. She was very intrigued by all the people and colours. She enjoyed the Shrek 4D experience, and went on the train twice, and the carousel, met some loony-tunes, and was blown away by the awesome new stunt show (I mean, who wouldn’t be!?).

All of us had a great day, and many warm and fuzzy memories were made. It’s great to do wonderful things like that every now and again.

I’ll leave you with some more happy snaps of our happy day…    My lil bro Jordan with his buddy Daffy.

  Mayana giving kisses.

The awesome stunt show!

The whole crazy bunch of us!

Park!

Saturday was a gorgeous day. Crisp and clear. The sun was shining, the sky was brilliant blue, and Mayana was stir-crazy. So we hit the park. Mayana loves wide open spaces, and loves to run, and chase ‘teet teets’ (birds). And the sunlight was perfect for wonderful photos… so prepare yourself!

Seems Mayana has gotten over her phobia of crunchy leaves. There was a time when the mere sighting of a dried out leaf was enough to have her climbing up me in sheer terror. But no more apparently. Mayana had the best time ever in this big pile of gorgeous crunchy leaves.

My darlingest husband has also uploaded a video, which you can view here.

Enjoy!

Little Legs…

Okay so instead of the usual Mayana’s Week post, I’m going to do a couple of posts for the big highlights of the last week. Because otherwise my computer will have a major heart attack trying to upload too many photos. So here goes…

On Tuesday, we decided to take our precious girl for a fun day at a play centre.

She loved it. She has been there before, but she wasn’t quite the climber she is today. It was much better value this time. She climbed her little heart out. She was on the big kids play gym, up so high that her poor Mama’s heart was way up in her throat. Especially when she went down the incredibly tall slippery-dip all by herself!

She played and she played, stopping only for a short break to down a cupcake, and then played some more. She clean wore herself out. And slept for 4 hours when we got home! (that’s just one of the perks of such play centres).

So. Photos: What kid doesn’t love a ball-pit??

In the mini-ball-pit with her little buddy Olivia.

  On the big slippery-dip. It was hard to get a good shot of this, she was moving too fast, and the lighting wasn’t so great. But she was VERY brave :)

And this is after she got home. She has an obsession with hats at the moment, and will come in and out of her bedroom 10 times a day with a different hat on each time. And the vest… she’s in love with it. She calls it “Bubbles” and if she sees it she must wear it.

Argh she’s so darn cute!!!

Accomplishment

I’m pretty excited about this!

Last night I finally finished my very first crocheted throw rug. It’s from a pattern from the crochet magazine my hubby bought me for my birthday (see he only has himself to blame for my crafty addictions!). It’s so cool, and I’m so happy with it! It fits perfectly across the back of our 3-seater couch, and it looks great there too. I’ll admit it’s not exactly made for snuggling, but it’s sure pretty to look at!

So without any further ado… here it is: my most recent masterpiece…

Isn’t it gorgeous!?

Mayana Fix

Because I know your Sunday night/ Monday morning just wouldn’t be the same without it! Here are a few of my favourite shots from this week…

This child of mine has been a poser since the moment she was born. The middle shot shows this new little look she has going. You ask her to do a cute smile, and this is what she does. Well, it is kind of cute!!

She’s nothing if not a trendsetter!

Or a crazy cave-man-type chick!

It’s been quite cold this week. Mayana is so adorable all rugged up!

Little Miss has discovered the art of the hissy fit. She doesn’t get her own way, and she pulls out the tears, becomes very tragic, and slowly drops to the floor, head on the ground and wails. It’s very unattractive. And it makes us giggle. But sometimes she just gets herself so worked up that she can’t snap out of it. We’ve discovered that the swing is the perfect cure. 

Mayana has recently discovered my old doll, Ebony. I’ve had Ebony since I was Mayana’s age, but it seems Mayana has adopted her. I think she plays more of a buddy role with her rather than Mama + Baby. She shares her morning tea and lunch with Ebony, and has to have an extra sippy cup for her. But mostly they just like to hang out together, especially when it’s Playschool time!

Hope you enjoyed that!!

Health Update

Listeners who are listening may be wondering how my little bean is going.

The answer is: she’s going really well.

We never did catch that wee, but we did take her back to our own doctor on Thursday. The conclusion of the visit was that it’s unlikely to be a UTI. But there are a couple of other things that need looking at.  And thus we embarked on Operation Poo-Catch.

It took a few days – turns out even though Mayana produces a number two after breakfast every day without fail, things shut down when she sits on a potty. So yeah, obviously not ready for toilet-training just yet. On Saturday, she sat on the potty in front of cartoons for nearly an hour – even had her breakfast on there – and nothing. Within 30 seconds of being back in her nappy, she produced. Let me just say the whole experience has given me a new respect for my sister-in-law, who is the type of medical scientist who examines such samples.

I guess we’ll find out all the answers sometime this week.

In the meantime, my doctor suggested to take her off lactose for a while, and surprisingly it seems to have worked. No runny poos or yucky nappies or vomity nights since the day she started on lactose-free milk and yoghurt. The only issue is the cheese. See my little Berry is somewhat of a cheese monster. And I’m pretty sure they don’t make lactose free cheese.

Good news is, if its the thing my doctor thinks it is, she’ll only have to stay lactose free for around a month or so.

So it’s all looking pretty good at the moment – now we just have to catch a wee, and clear up this cough and runny nose!

Reigning Again

Once again, I may officially be named the Reigning Queen of Procrastination. And here is the crown I've chosen this time...

Pretty, no?

I’m ‘working’ on this integrated unit assignment, full of such weird education-ese acronyms such as RPL, HOTS, KLA’s, EL’s, WOW’s, QSA, K&U’s, B/MI, SOSE, H&PE and many more. And yes, I do know what they all stand for.

What I’m finding particularly funny is the amount of people from my class ‘working’ on the same assignment who are currently hanging out on facebook. Including me, obviously, otherwise how would I know they are there.

I am getting there with this assignment. It’s not particularly hard, just scary because it’s worth 50% of the grade for this course – and it’s double grade-point course! So that’s big.

Something that’s definitely in my favour is that I have the gift of the gab, in a big way. So when I actually switch over to a window that’s actually holding an element of my assignment (there are four elements), I can quite quickly pull out some reasonably quality work, and a fairly short space of time. But then, inevitably, my cursor finds its way back to that Facebook tab, for just a leeedle more procrastination. Problem is, people are boring today – not providing me with enough status updates to keep up with my constant flicking.

Hence the blog post.

Aaaaah the joys.

Alright, flicking windows again now! Hope your day isn’t as boring as mine…

Later gaze…

Motherhood is So Not Glamorous

Especially at 3am, when you’re not snuggled in your warm bed with your husband, but up in the freezing cold cleaning up a vomit-and-and-poo-covered toddler, while the husband is cleaning up her vomit-covered bed.

Or after the fifth time you’ve washed her hair and you tentatively sniff only to find that yes, it still smells like vomit.

Or when you’re just about to finally jump back into bed when you realise that your pyjamas now also smell like vomit. Yuck.

Definitely not glamorous.

And those poor little bewildered eyes looking up at you asking what on earth is going on – well they’re enough to make you want to join right in and cry along too.

Yes, we have a sickly toddler at the moment. Well, sickly but not. It’s hard to explain. We have had three such nights over the last two weeks. One vomit, a couple of really gross nappies, then she’s right as rain. It’s always at night, and she’s always back to her normal bouncing self by morning.  But we still can’t send her to daycare, because they’re not allowed to go if they’ve vomited within the last 24 hours. It’s infuriating!

The first two times, she didn’t even cry when she was sick overnight, so we were just greeted in the morning by a crusty-vomit covered child and bed. Ewww. At least last night we could clean her up straight away. But still, ewwww.

The worst thing was last night that after we’d finished cleaning everything up, my brain was so wired and zinging, that I couldn’t get back to sleep until about an hour and a half before I had to be awake again.

And Pete had to take another day off uni, and once again she is being very inconvenient by being sick the week we have an assignment due. How rude.

Seriously though, we are taking her to the doctor this afternoon. It’s just not a normal thing for a child to be doing. I have a sneaking suspicion that we might be looking at another urinary tract infection. Half of me is hoping it is so, and half not. If it is, at least we’ll have an answer and a reasonably easy and painless way of fixing it, but it will also mean that we’ll most likely have to take her for one of those scans where they inject some weird dye into her first – because she’s had a few quite close together. And that would suck.  I am however 99.9% sure that it’s NOT just some gastro bug.

Either way, I hope we get some answers when we go in this afternoon!

Now…. back to this assignment!

 

Ps. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still the absolute best thing in the world!