My Girl

Because I know there are some people out there who are really hanging out for some Mayana pics…. (Mum!!! Alexie!!!)

Here she is, my beautiful toddler!

“Tah-daah!!” Mayana was very proud of herself today for getting my shoes and socks on. All by herself.

Today we spent the afternoon at a local park, where we rode on a miniature railway. Mayana was beside herself with excitement, and was very grown up when she handed her ticket over to “the man”.

Boo & Lock-Lock stood at the fence and took photos as we rode past. Mayana waved and blew kisses.
 

When it was time to get off, she very politely waited near the train driver, because she wanted to say thank you. She just melts hearts wherever she goes, this girl.

After the train ride, we took advantage of the half-price tickets on the ferry tour on the River. We were the only ones on the boat! Mayana loved it, and we all enjoyed getting to know our new town a little more.

  Isn’t she gorgeous! She’s growing up so quickly, and looking more and more like a big girl, and less and less like my baby every day. How I love her!

Virtual Tour

I love our new house. It has always been a dream of ours to live in a Queenslander, and I love that our dream has come to fruition!

So here’s a little peak inside our beautiful new home.

This is one side of our lovely sunroom. It’s so bright and lovely with windows everywhere. We have turned the end of it into our dining room, although we mostly eat outside these days.

This is the front side of our sunroom. And if you came to stay with us, you would sleep on that cute new sofa-bed.

If you sit on the sofa-bed, you look through this cute window. I like this little feature.. the left-over now internal window from when the sunroom was once a veranda.

This is our wonderful kitchen. At our old house, we had the smallest kitchen of all time. We could barely both be in there at the same time. You could almost have a party in this kitchen! The only thing it’s missing is a pantry (weird huh?), but use that cabinet on the left as our pantry and it works wonderfully.

Oh bench space, how I love you! We also have a fantastic new gas stove & oven. Another favourite feature.

This is Mayana’s little play corner. In the days pre-sunroom, this was the main entrance into the house, and still has the original front door. The archway there opens into our lounge room. Also, notice our cute little stain-glass window there?  
This is our lounge room. It is air-conditioned and has a ceiling fan, which is blissful. It also has two super-cute built in bookshelves, which have come in super handy because we got rid of our old, dodgy op-shop book cases when we moved. While I’m here, I’d like to point out our new 42” TV (my husband’s pride & joy), and my new favourite piece of furniture, our TV cabinet. We had to update, because our old TV cabinet was a corner unit, and our new lounge has no corners! We have kept it though, because it is beautiful and special and my Pop made it. It will live in the office with our old TV, and I will kick my husband out there when I want to watch things he doesn’t. Haha.

One of the things I love about this house is all the little features everywhere. Like the gorgeous architraves over all the doors and doorways. 

This is Mayana’s room. As you can see, it’s still a bit of a work-in-progress. We are still coming up with some storage solutions, and I think we need to have a bit more of a play with the furniture arrangement. She is, however, extremely proud of her room and drags every visitor straight in there to have a look at her ‘Big Girl Room’.

This is our beautiful bedroom. It is about two-and-a-half times bigger than our old room. It also has a gorgeous bay window with window seat. It’s so bright and airy, we’re very happy with it. Our window seat is one of Mayana’s favourite places to play, and she can often be found there having tea parties with her toys.

This is our deck. We have added a canopy, as it had no shade – and we use it a lot more now… almost every meal. Mayana plays out here in her little wading pool at least once a day. Now that it is shaded, and has a means to keep out the mozzies, it is a lovely extra ‘room’ for our home.
  

And our yard! It is unbelievably huge. It’s a great place to wear Mayana out, and it wears Pete out too, when he has to mow it once a fortnight or so. According to the local council, it is large enough for us to have 16 budgies and no more than 6 chooks. There is already even a built-in aviary for the budgies. Like I said in a previous post, Pete has plans ready to build his chicken coop this week, and we’re all looking forward to the eggs! Pete also has grand plans for a vegie patch. He and Mayana spend a lot of time out here, and why not!

Our house also has a study craft room (teehee), but it is in no state to be plastered all over the internet just now! I’ll keep you posted once it’s more organised.

We also have a large area under the house, which Pete has adopted as a man cave. There’s lots of room for storage, and a lounge room, and a place to keep our car. But what space is left is housing his new gym, his boxing bag, and his barbeque. Like my craft room, I think the man cave is still a work in progress.

So there you go! I hope you enjoyed my little tour of our lovely new home.

So there you go, a whirlwind tour of our beautiful home.

More of Us

Don't forget my 365 project! I've been going pretty well with keeping it up-to-date, and there are lots of updates of our gorgeous Mayana-Berry for you to enjoy :)

Also, my awesome husband has started a new blog on tumblr: Dad Domestic. He's going to keep it updated with photos and stories about our little Berry and the adventures they have together.

So go, enjoy!

I have been...

* A very slack blogger. Again. But I do have good reasons. It's because I have been....

* Super busy with work. My job is great, but 68 kids is a lot to keep track of! I'm making friends there, and fitting in well. The days just fly by which on the one hand makes me feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do, but on the other, means that delicious weekends with my two favourites are always only just around the corner.

* Enjoying my afternoons with my girl and evenings with my man.

* Creating a very cute crocheted granny-square blanket for our new sofa-bed. I have to make 95 squares for this rug, and I'm up to 33. I love crocheting, and it's nice to still have that little creative outlet - but I'm really missing my sewing and can't wait until our office/my craft room is unpacked quickly and I can get creating again.

* Having wonderful weekends, making precious memories. I treasure the full days with my family, so much more now that I'm working full time. We do fun things, like go out for breakfast, explore our new town, watch Wiggles, and play. It's the best.

We have also been finishing unpacking, and settling in to our beautiful new home. Peter and Mayana are very much enjoying our epic back yard. They've planning a chicken coop, and we're building it tomorrow. Mayana is so looking forward to getting her chooks, and collecting their eggies!

So yes, we are alive, and happy in our new life. Just in case you were wondering.

Making Her Eat

Our Mayana Berry is quite a petite little girl. She’s two, and not yet 9.5kgs. The biggest clothes she wears are a size 0, and on Friday, she wore a 0000 pair of pants!

After all those stressful months before she was one, where doctors tried to tell me she had failure to thrive, and she had to have tests and I had to weigh her nappies and make her eat… Well, I have made my peace with all of that. I know she didn’t have failure to thrive, and I know she will always be a small person.

But… I can still be a little paranoid, when she goes for days where she just picks at food, and there no bigger numbers on the scales even when it’s a month between weigh-ins. You know things are getting bad when she even turns down hot chips or cake.

Peter and I are always trying to come up with new ideas to make food a little bit more exciting to entice her to eat more. From bribery to making faces on crackers… we’ll try anything if it means that girl will eat!!

This was our most recent trick, and let me just say, it was a huge success.

We had pasta, frozen peas (which she calls ‘green ice-cream’, and loves), a bickie, grapes, frozen berries, and a couple of mini m&ms (which were gone by the time I turned the camera on). She ate everything except for a couple of peas which had defrosted and gone mushy. I was so proud.

Pete and I have been coming up with lots of different ideas of things to put in the muffin papers, to keep things different and exciting. If you have an awesome idea or something that your toddler loves, please let me in on the secret!!!

 

And now, just because it was so cute and I can’t not share… This morning,  Mayana got up before us. We thought she was just playing in her room, which she was, but when we got up, we found that she had also been busy in the kitchen. My very clever two year old had gotten the bowls and cups out of the cupboard and set the table for breakfast! Bless. 

And because it’s been a few weeks since you’ve had a photo of my little honey:

Look how grown-up she’s looking!!! And tuckered out after a big walk to the markets with Papa. Look at those yummy little legs!!!

*Sigh*. Cutest. Toddler. Ever.

Our New Life

I do apologise for being absent. Life has been crazy, busy… but it’s going great!

We are (mostly) settled into our new home, and I am (kind of) settled into my new job.

We found a gorgeous Queenslander to live in… it feels like a mansion after the tiny unit we’ve been living in for five years. It has three massive bedrooms, a lovely big air-conditioned lounge room and a wrap-around sunroom. The kitchen is huge, with loads of bench space, and I love cooking in it. Our bedroom is HUGE and has a gorgeous bay window with a box window seat. The back yard is enormous… it’s literally hard to see the back fence from the deck. Mayana is going to love playing in it, and we are planning on getting some laying hens. Peter, however, is not so thrilled at the prospect of mowing it all!! Once it’s all completely unpacked and looking beautiful, I’ll take you on a photo tour.

My job is fantastic. I’m working with a really awesome team of people, who are making me feel so welcome and being so patient with me as I learn. The work itself is so different to what I would have imagined myself doing, but I am enjoying it. I’m looking forward to getting some classroom teaching time as well though, which should happen in the next few weeks!

We are enjoying our new town, and starting to figure out where everything is. Our house is only a 25 minute walk to the centre of town, and we’ve been enjoying evening strolls looking at all the beautiful Queenslanders and familiarising ourselves with the town. We walk up to a park near the local theatre, where Mayana has a few goes on the slippery-dip before we walk home. She’s such a creature of habit, that as soon as she eats her last mouthful of dinner she proclaims, “walk time!!”, and we have to go! She certainly keeps us honest.

On Thursday nights, we’re starting a tradition of heading to a nearby beach-town, and indulging in fish and chips on the beach for dinner. Okay, so we’ve only done it twice so far, but so long as it’s not raining, our plan is to do it every week. Mayana LOVES it last week, and asks to go almost every day. She splashes in the ocean, runs (like, really rungs – I' never knew such little legs could move so fast!!), and collects shells. We’ve had to buy a big glass jar for her to keep her shells in, and I’m sure she’ll add to it each week.

Things are good here, I think we’ll be happy. We’re very much enjoying having our own space again and are starting to feel settled already.

We don’t have internet yet, but I can connect my computer to the ‘net through my phone, so I’ll try to get on for some more regular updates!

Hope everyone out there in blogland is going well!