A Little Froggy Friend

We have a gorgeous little creature who has taken up residence in our kitchen.

He spends most of his time hanging out on the windowsill, but he has made himself even more at home than that lately. The other night, Peter and I were in bed, just about asleep when we heard a *CRASH**BANG* coming from the kitchen. Heart racing, Pete went to investigate, and found our little buddy hopping up the wall. He had knocked a few things (plastic thankfully) off the top of our kitchen cabinet!

Luckily for him, he’s pretty cute, and I’m kind of partial to frogs, so we haven’t evicted him at this point. If he starts leaving behind any little unpleasant surprises though, we will possibly rethink our decision!

Welcome to the Family!

As I mentioned in my last post, Mayana has been amazing this week.

She filled up her ‘sticker’ chart, and earned herself the privilege of going shopping for some new pet fish.

So Pete and Mayana headed off to the fish shop this morning, and Mayana chose 4 Mollies, and one Bristle-Nose “Sucker” fish. They set up the fish tank in her bedroom, and I had a very excited Mayana this afternoon, who dragged me to her bedroom the moment I stepped foot in the door to see her new fishies.

After much deliberation, she has finally come up with names for her five fish.

From top to bottom, meet Teddy, Kami & Tess.

The little speckled fella on the left is Marble; Kami kept swimming into every photo I took!

And here’s the whole gang. The Bristle Nose, who likes to hang out behind the filter, is named Dorothy. Mayana tells me that her job is to keep the tank clean.

We’ve decided to make feeding the fish part of her bedtime routine, and she is most excited at the prospect of feeding them for the first time tonight!

A Peek At My Week

Can you believe that we are three days away from the end of February? The weeks are just flying by aren’t they? I guess that’s one of the perks of being so busy at work. I’m so looking forward to holidays and then maternity leave.. and those couple of weeks of relaxation (or here’s hoping!) between then and popping out a baby!

This week has been a vast improvement on the last. I feel like I have my little girl back. In fact she has been just delightful this week, and more than made up for her week of monster-dom. We started using a fantastic magnetic sticker chart that I got from my favourite store, Aldi. We are working on four things: Dry Bed (she is so there with this, we’ve only had one accident in the three weeks since we ditched the nappies); Eating Dinner; Having a Tidy Room before going to bed each night, and making Good Choices. She has earned her sticker for each of these things fair and square every day this week.

I’m not joking when I say it’s like having a different kid in the house. Not even one fight over dinner, and an empty plate every night. The deal was that when she filled up this chart, we were going to buy her some pet fish (this has been discussed ever since we moved to this house, and we decided it would be good to put a bit of purpose behind it). We were expecting that to take at least a couple of weeks, but it looks like Papa and Maysi will be going fish shopping tomorrow!

Peter is feeling much more settled at work this week. He’s really putting together a great program, and loving seeing the kids learning. He started doing the alphabet this week, and is going to work on one letter each week. Mayana LOVED it, and has been talking about and pointing out ‘Annie Apple’ all week. She has become very interested in writing her name, and I spent half of the week writing ‘Mayana’ in dots for her to trace. She is also coming out with some fantastic drawings, that have very elaborate stories behind them. When she’s done drawing, she comes up and asks me to write the story down. I’ll have to share some of these in a later post. She is growing up so quickly, and she’s just so flipping clever, I’m finding it hard to keep up!

We’re still trying to get into the swing of both of us working… and getting both of us to work on time with the three of us fed and lunches made is difficult some days. I have a feeling that we’ll get a handle on it about the same time as I stop working.

Yesterday we drove 1.5 hours to a town that has some real shops. Including my favourite, Spotlight. I was super self-controlled and managed to only spend $37 there, which is so impressive. Seriously though, it was fun to have a day together, just the three of us, enjoying each other’s company and treating ourselves to a few fun things.

This weekend, we hit the 30 week mark in my pregnancy. I’m getting to the fun stage where I’m super exhausted, but ironically can’t sleep because it’s uncomfortable to sleep on my side and I can’t actually breath when I lay on my back. The stairs at work get a little harder every day, and I’m definitely losing lung capacity. I felt him have the hiccups for the first time this week, and Peter and I spent about half an hour the other night watching my belly jump around in response to Peter’s pokes. He’s certainly very active in there, and I’m SO EXCITED about meeting him!

So another week down…. half way through the school term!

How was your week? I’d love to hear all about it

Okay To Wake

This morning, for about the third morning in a row, we heard a certain Maysi-bird up and about well before 6am. It’s these early hours of the morning when her Papa and I are both asleep that she tends to get herself into serious mischief. Like the time when she spilt black paint all over her Making Room floor, pyjama top and toy dog. She knows she’s not allowed to touch her paint without us! Argh!

I got out of bed, walked her back to her room and told her it was not waking up time yet. She informed me that she had looked out of her window and the sky was blue and the sun was awake. Drat stupid summer!

As I rolled back into bed, I mumbled to Pete about an alarm clock I had seen forever ago that turns green when it’s okay to get out of bed, and how much I wish I could find one for Mayana.

A little later, when it was a little after 6am and actually time to wake up, I did a quick Google search on my phone, and discovered that this clock is called an ‘Ok to Wake’ clock, and is made by an American company. Every stockist I found online was based in the States, and didn’t ship internationally. Sad. But then, I did one last Google search, and discovered that Aldi is advertising the Ok to Wake clock for $29.95 in their special buys catalogue that started TODAY! No. Freaking. Way. Right?  I couldn’t believe it!

Seriously, I’ve seen this thing once before, and the day that it pops into my mind happens to be the same day that it features in an Aldi catalogue. Unreal.

So needless to say, straight after school today I was off to Aldi to buy myself one of these babies:

I spent the afternoon telling Mayana that tomorrow when she wakes up, instead of looking out of her window she needs to look at her new and awesome clock. If it is green (the light makes most of what is white in the picture turn green) then she can get out of bed and come to Mama and Papa. If it is still white, she needs to close her eyes and go back to sleep.

Tomorrow will be the test… I have high hopes.

Thanks Aldi!

A Peek at My Week

This week has flown by, in a blur of trying to get into the swing of being a family with two working parents. It’s insane, and I’m so glad we don’t have to sustain this crazy life for an extended period of time.

I ironed for the first time in probably a year, that was pretty exciting. It took us a while to figure out where we had put the iron when we moved. Remind me not to buy clothes that require ironing, I’d forgotten how much I dislike it! I blame my pleated school uniform that I had to iron multiple times a week *shudder*.

I also had my glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes. I bought a new book on my Kindle the night before in anticipation of a guaranteed hour of uninterrupted reading time. Then I left my Kindle at home and was stuck with trashy magazines that were over a year old. I think I’ll get the results of it at my midwife appointment on Tuesday this week, fingers crossed it’s good news!

I also gave Zumba my second shot. I tried (emphasis on the tried, I’m so glad I don’t have to watch myself attempting to Zumba!) to incorporate a few of the more ‘advanced’ moves, and if my struggle to walk without wincing the next day was anything to go by, I think I may have overdone it just a touch. It’s lots of fun though, and I’ll definitely be back next week.

I finished my first special thing for our new baby, a crocheted top. I love it, and have gotten more clucky than ever imagining our baby boy wearing it. Maybe it will be his special ‘coming home from hospital’ outfit.

The photo of Mayana with the open mouth and tears in her eyes was probably my funniest moment of the week. She had been in the kitchen and snuck a huge mouthful of flour. I’m not sure what she thought it was, but it definitely didn’t live up to her expectations. She came running to us crying that it was yucky. There was so much in there that her mouth was practically glued together and it was making her gag. Of course, I made her hold on till I could take a photo before I would let Peter go and help her clean up and rinse out her mouth, because I’m mean like that and that moment needed to be captured. It was so so funny.

This weekend we bought a new purple rug for our lounge room, which I’m totally loving, and built a dollhouse with Mayana out of mostly cereal boxes and toilet paper rolls. It’s so cool, and Mayana loves it. Our next project is to build an actual wooden dollhouse, and Mayana is so excited.

The last photo on my collage this week is my new favourite photo. Mayana looked so gorgeous ready for church this morning that I told her I wanted to take a picture. I pulled out my phone and she pulled out this pose. It makes me smile every time I look at it.

I love that girl so much!

When being a mum is tough

We have had some struggles this week.

The day after I wrote my post about Mayana’s kindy lunches and how happy I was that they seemed to be working well, it all went downhill. For a few days in a row, more and more food came home in her lunchbox, then we started having fights every breakfast and dinner time. We basically had to force-feed her dinner for about three nights in a row, and then we had one day where she ate no breakfast, no Kindy food and no dinner, aside from the one mouthful she held in her mouth for almost half an hour before finally swallowing. That night ended in many many tears… from both of us.

I know in my head that she won’t starve herself… I know all of those arguments. But, I also know that for her entire three years of life, pretty much every person I have ever met has commented about how small she is. I know how crap it was to be told she had ‘Failure to Thrive’ when she was a baby, and that if she contracted any kind of significant illness, her size would mean that she possibly wouldn’t survive it. I remember weighing nappies, and weekly disappointing weigh-ins and fortnightly urine tests. And those memories kind of come flooding back when we go through phases like this, and make me a bit crazy and paranoid.

Of course, the day after I lost the plot about her lack of eating, she ate an entire bowl of bircher muesli for breakfast, came home with an empty lunchbox and had seconds at dinner… leaving me feeling like a complete idiot.

She has also been a little trying in other ways these past few weeks… just frustrating little things and bad behaviours that are made more frustrating by the fact that she knows better. ‘Listening Ears’ and ‘Good Choices’ are the buzz words in our house at the moment. I have no doubt that it is not coincidence that her behaviour has changed so drastically at the same time as she’s started going to Kindy practically full-time. It’s definitely not an ideal situation, and I’m really glad that we only have to do it for a few more weeks.

The Kindy days are huge, and added to that is the fact that she is in her Papa’s Kindy room, and has to share him with 20+ other kids, when he’s been all hers for the past 12 months. A friend of mine suggested that the food thing might be more of a control issue – in that it is one thing that at the moment she can control amidst all this change in her life. I’m inclined to think this might be the case.

It’s been an interesting week trying to sort through all of this in my head. This process for me I think has been made much harder with my pregnancy-hormone-charged emotions, and I also think that is making my fuse that much shorter and wearing my patience with her thin far more quickly than it should.  Mayana is an absolute delight, and even at her worst she’s really never a naughty kid. It’s tricky finding a balance between where to give her a bit of leeway, understanding that she is just trying to process how much her life has changed in the past few weeks, and not wanting to let her get away with too much and create bad habits. I just adore her so much, and on our bad days, when I know that I’ve snapped at her too much, my heart hurts so bad when I go in at night to kiss her while she’s sleeping. She’s so gorgeous and smart and brave and I am so blessed to be her Mama and I want to be the Mama that she deserves.

I love being a Mum, and most days I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job. But this week has definitely been tough.

Weekends Now

{image credit}

So apparently weekends work differently when you have two people working. We’ve never had the both of us working before, in our entire marriage. Crazy huh?

Now we do. And this is what weekends look like now.

The husband is outside, ‘mowing’ the lawn. With a whipper-snipper. Because we don’t have a mower, and our brother-in-law’s mower that we usually borrow is broken. Mowing the lawn with a whipper-snipper is a strange thing to do, especially when you have a big yard like ours. It doesn’t make it very short, or very neat. But it does make it less knee-height, and that is a good thing. I think we should pay someone to come and do it properly. Or I don’t know, buy a mower or something. But I’ll let him have this little bit of manliness for this weekend.

I am inside. Doing *ahem* the housework. Truly. I’ve started anyway, I just got distracted by my blog. I promise I’ll have my jobs done before the whipper-mowing is done.

Mayana is in her bedroom, ‘tidying up’. Which roughly works like this: Mayana walks into her bedroom with every intention of cleaning up. As she puts away her puzzle, she notices the wooden people set that she got for her birthday. “Ooh, I love playing with that,” she thinks. She pulls it off the shelf and starts to set up the wooden cafe and playground, with the hundred tiny pieces. “Hmm, they need more shops,” she thinks. Out comes the Duplo, and before she knows it her room a city for the tiny wooden people. And a bigger mess than when she started ‘tidying up’. At least she is not under my feet.

There has been talk of going to the beach this afternoon (if Mayana has a tidy room… do you like my sneaky bribery tactics?). Because apparently we’ve turned into one of those families who goes to the beach every weekend, even though I’m so not a beach person. At least our beach has no waves. It does still have sand though.  I will conceded however that it does feel nice to bob along weightless in the water when you’re 29 weeks pregnant (yes, really.. 29 weeks!!). Even if our piece of ocean is never more than about half a meter deep (okay maybe a little more than half a meter. Let’s just say I can always reach the bottom. And I’m pretty short).

So yes, I’m missing the days of the stay-at-home-husband who magically did all the washing and made the floors sparkle (literally, he really loves the floors in this house), and the way the dishwasher used to magically be full of clean dishes (our dishwasher isn’t permanently connected, and I totally don’t know how to connect it to the taps to make it work). *Sigh* he really is a wonderful husband.

Anyway. Enough procrastination. We have people coming over for lunch tomorrow, so there’s some real motivation to have our home looking all sparkly and fancy.

Wish me luck!

Kindy Lunches

The kindy lunch. It’s a tricky one. I don’t know about you, but my toddler and food can be a hard thing. It’s not that she’s a fussy eater, she likes most foods. It’s just that sometimes she just doesn’t want to eat, and eating-time can become a long, drawn out and somewhat painful process. We can also be a bit paranoid about her food intake because of the crappy time we went through with her weight and size in her first year of life.

Kindy also has lots of rules about food… no nut-related products, not too much processed food if you can help it, easy on the sugar. Which in general is how we try to feed Mayana anyway (aside from the nuts, she loves peanut butter, almonds and macadamia nuts in particular), but at home it’s just easier to gauge what is going to actually be eaten on a particular day. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t kowtow to Mayana’s every food-related whim, but I do think that it helps when she gets to choose or even help us to make the food she is going to eat. The daycare centre Mayana used to go to in Toowoomba provided all meals (delicious, home-made type meals, cooked on site…) so it never really factored for us before. Unfortunately we are not so lucky with the Daycare centres here.

So, I have tried really hard to approach this Kindy lunch box thing in a creative way, still incorporating an element of choice and variety, and maintaining a healthy standard. If you follow me on Instagram (I’m @zoeyjoyful if you’re interested), you will have seen some of my #kindylunch photos, and I have been wanting to share some of them here on my blog.

I have previously been inspired by ‘Muffin Tin Mom’, and found that offering small amounts of lots of different kinds of foods was quite successful. Obviously I couldn’t send a muffin tin to Kindy with Mayana, so I had to get a bit creative. I bought myself a bunch of small, round Sistema ‘klipit’ containers, on sale at Woolies for 64c each. Six of them fit perfectly in our large Sistema lunchbox. The three of us have been having lots of fun thinking of interesting combinations of food to put in them, and Mayana has already got a number of firm favourites that she requests most days.

Here is a sample of what Mayana has been eating at Kindy lately:

star-shaped vegemite sandwiches | peaches | yoghurt | grapes | cherry tomatoes | cheese

dates, apricots + raisins | banana chips | sausages (from dinner) | yoghurt | boiled egg (from our chooks, super exciting apparently) | cherry tomatoes

dates, apricots, craisins + banana chips | lychees + grapes | cucumber + tomatoes | yoghurt | carrot + hummus | cheese + vegemite wraps.

As you can see, cherry tomatoes are a firm favourite, and usually the first to go. Fruit and dried fruits are also requested almost daily (I can’t get over how much Mayana loves dried apricots and dates!). Peter and I have been keeping a list on the fridge of ideas, which we add to whenever we think of something. I’m really hoping the novelty doesn’t wear off with this, because I have been having a lot of fun thinking of ideas and making these lunches each night. It’s been challenging too, trying to incorporate as much fresh foods as I can, and not including anything that has come out of a packet. I have been very pleasantly surprised almost daily at how little of her food is coming home, and it makes me happy to know that all that she is eating is healthy and doing her good.

What do you put in your kid’s Kindy lunches? And have you got any exciting ‘muffin tin’ ideas to share??

Calendar + Weather Chart {Free Printable}

I have been having such fun making some resources for Peter to use in his Pre-Prep room. I posted a photo of this calendar and weather chart that I made on Instagram and Twitter, and sparked some interest. So, I have decided to share it here on my blog, for free!
You can access the four-page full-colour PDF file via Google Docs using THIS LINK.
Here’s a preview of what you’ll be downloading:
We laminated the two charts, and cut out the day-names and weather descriptions and laminated them too. Mr. Peter (as his students call him) uses the Calendar and Weather Chart each morning. They sing the ‘Days of the Week song’ to the tune of ‘The Adaams Family’:
There’s Sunday then there’s Monday
There’s Tuesday then there’s Wednesday
There’s Thurday then there’s Friday
And then there’s Saturday
Days of the week (click click)
Days of the week (click click)
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week (click click)
Once they’ve sung the song, they choose the appropriate day name for today, yesterday and tomorrow, then they look outside and have a chat about the weather and choose the appropriate descriptions for the day and stick them to the charts. It’s a lovely little routing for them, and Pete says they all enjoy it.
I hope you will too!
I’d love to hear how you use it and if your kids like it.
Enjoy!
[All clipart is straight from Microsoft Clipart, and fonts were a mixture of downloaded and some that we made ourselves using this great app on our iPad!]

A Peek At My Week

This week has been incredibly fast-paced for the Friend Family, as we try and settle into our new routine being a Double-Income-One-Kid family.

Yes, Peter has started his new job! After a few days trying to find his feet (he was meant to be kind of eased into the job with someone helping him in his room, but for a number of reasons this didn’t happen and he was on his own from day one!) he is starting to get into the swing of things. He has brilliant ideas and plans for his kids, and I’m loving seeing him passionate and excited. I’ve also had fun helping him design and make some resources for his room. I love doing creative things like that and don’t get to do them so much in my role as a Distance Education teacher. The only real hurdle we have left to overcome is to find another qualified and fully registered teacher, hopefully in a local Kindy, who can mentor Pete so he can meet the requirements to get his full Qld Teachers Registration in the next twelve months!

It has been interesting for both Pete and Mayana that she is in his Kindy room. They are both having to adjust to the idea of not being solely each other’s, and Mayana has been acting out a little this week as she finds her feet. It seemed by the end of the week that she was starting to go back to being her lovely self, so it will be interesting to see how she goes this week. It’s a huge adjustment for her going to long days of practically full-time kindy, and considering that I think she hasn’t done too badly at all.

Mayana had her first dance class this week, and despite the fact that I got my times mixed up and she only actually got to do the last 10 minutes of the lesson (she didn’t notice this at all by the way), she had an absolute ball. It was literally one of the cutest things I have ever seen in my life. For starters she is at least 30cm shorter than everyone else in her class (even though she is the same age as half of them), and the look of pure concentration on her face as she tried to copy everything her teacher does was almost too much for me to take. I wish it wasn’t weird to take photos of her with other people’s kids so I could share it with you! She has had fun showing everyone she knows all of the things that Miss Desiree taught her. It will be interesting to see how much she picks up in an actual half hour lesson this week, and I’m already looking forward to seeing her in her concert at the end of the year!

We took a whirlwind day-trip to Kenilworth on the weekend, where we met up with my parents. Opa had promised to take Mayana on an ice-cream date if she could make good choices and have listening ears (our buzz words of the week) at Kindy for Papa on Thurday, and we thought it would be good to follow that through in a timely manner. It was an awesomely fun day, if a little exhausting!

For me it’s the same-old same-old, busy busy busy at work trying to keep my head above water, and eternally grateful that the bosses started my replacement off now and not a few weeks before I left. I honestly wouldn’t have survived without her these past few weeks- it has been such a blessing to have her there! Plus we get along famously and I have very much enjoyed her company. It’s fun having new staff in our office!

And that, my friends, is pretty much our week in a nutshell. I myself cannot believe that it is a week since I was sitting her writing last week’s post! The days are just flying by, and here we are practically in the middle of February already!

Tell me about your week!

Zoey x

{Baby Two} 28 Weeks

 

A week into the third trimester… can you even believe it? In not too many more weeks I will be on maternity leave, and then before we know it we’ll be meeting the newest member of our family.  It’s all just flying by too fast to really process it properly!

I’m starting to reconsider our decision not to do the antenatal classes again. A part of me feels like I need to do them to help me refocus and prepare myself for giving birth again. While I had a good experience last time (in as much as you can call labour a ‘good experience’) there are some things I know I would like to do differently this time. Like trying to be more active, and I don’t know, maybe it would be good to actually wear some clothes this time?

At the end of the day I know that everything will be okay, and I’ve still got time to prepare myself, but I just want to make sure I’m in the right headspace when the time comes, and I’m definitely not there yet! Maybe I should check a few books out from the library or something.

Other than that, things are going well. I’ve had two physio appointments in the last few weeks, and learned a few things about how to adjust my posture, and been given a couple of exercises I have to do each day and it has made a huge difference. I still have my ouchie days, like after I spent an hour squatting and scrubbing the crayon off the walls that Mayana was ‘practising her letters on’… But for the most part, I’m definitely noticing a difference. My lovely husband also brought one of our ergonomic office chairs from home to work for me, and not being on the dodgy chair I was using there has also meant a significant drop in my pain levels!

Baby Two and I did Zumba this week. It is hard! I like to think that my baby-bump contributed to my awkwardness levels, but I’m not silly enough to think that I wouldn’t look pretty ridiculous trying to Zumba pregnant or not! I felt good for it though, and I’ll probably give it another go this week. The baby slept through the whole class, but spent plenty of time practicing his Zumba moves later in the evening!

This week will see me doing my glucose test for gestational diabetes, which I somehow have to squeeze into my already very busy week without missing too much work! I’m kind of looking forward to an uninterrupted hour of reading time, but not so much to the drink or the needles.

There isn’t really too much more to say… this pregnancy has been pretty uneventful so far, and I think that’s always a good thing as far as pregnancies go! Next weekend we have big plans for starting on the baby’s room, and I’ve been looking online for all kinds of elephant-themed things for inspiration. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, and I’m looking forward to getting creative in there!

Less than twelve weeks to go, I’m getting so excited!

A Peek at My Week

This week has been a huge and exciting and very happy one for the Friend family!

We’ve had plenty of adventures this week… visits with friends, a trip to the beach, we built a dress-up box, played, hung out in Pete’s awesome hammock. Mayana has enjoyed her second day at Kindy, where she wowed her teachers with her ability to write and name so many letters. But this week has been a very special week, with some very big news…

Last Sunday night, Peter and I were feeling a little down-in-the-dumps. It was really dawning on us how little time we really had before I go on maternity leave and become basically income-less. Peter has been applying for jobs like a mad-man, but despite a few interviews, no offers had come his way. So Sunday night, Peter was checking out the internet for the eleventy-billionth time when a Kindy Teacher position caught his eye. At the kindy that is practically across our back fence!

On Monday morning he gathered his resume and all the bits and pieces that go with it, and stopped by to drop it off. He hadn’t even gotten home when his phone rang. It was the director asking if he would like to come in for an interview on Tuesday, at 10am. The next morning, at 10.09am, Peter called me at work with the amazing and awesome news that HE HAS A JOB!!!!! He basically had walked in, been given an overview of the position, and told that if he wants it, it’s all his.

God is so good. Mayana is able to go to ‘Papa’s Kindy’ on the days that she isn’t at her normal kindy (at least until I’m on maternity leave), and we get a discounted rate for her fees because Pete will be working there. The whole hassle of having to get another car is now a non-issue, because Pete will only need to walk about 200m to get to work. It’s amazing to look back at how stressed we were when we had to unexpectedly move house last year, but now we know that in God’s bigger picture, this house would be perfect for the situation in which we now find ourselves. Pete starts his new job tomorrow, and will be working 34 hours a week over Tuesday-Friday. We feel like such a weight has been lifted from our shoulders, and are once again a living testimony of how God provides. 

So we had plenty of mid-week celebrations, including when my awesome family drove 1.5 hours just to have a celebratory dinner for Peter and congratulate him in person. It was so lovely. I have loved seeing the grin on my husband’s face all week, I’m so proud of him!

In other Friend Family News, I have officially crossed over into the third trimester (insane!!!) and am still loving being pregnant… Especially now that I finally got to have a physio appointment and can walk semi-normally again. But I’ll do a proper pregnancy update later with more on that.

Mayana’s big news is that she has added yet another big-ticket item to her list of reasons why she is now officially a Big Girl: she has stopped wearing nappies to bed! I still haven’t gotten brave enough to not put a towel down underneath her every night, but so far (*touch wood*) we have had no whoopsies. She has told pretty much everyone she knows, “I’m a big girl now because I wore NO nappies, ONLY Noonies (her word for undies), and I had NO whoopsies!!!!” Sigh. My little girl is definitely growing up. And maybe one day I will be able to sleep deeply again without half listening out for her calling me or trying to go to the toilet on her own in the middle of the night. For now, she is doing a great job, and is excitedly working towards going shopping for a Justine Clarke CD, which she will earn with five stickers – one for each morning her bed is dry when she wakes up.

Another lovely week full of wonderful memories for our family.

If you want to play along, please do! And make sure you leave a link in my comments, because I’d love to see what you’ve been up to too!

I love my little family so much!

Weekend Project | Dress-Up Box

One of the things we had wanted to give to Mayana for her birthday was a dress-up box. However with our big Perth trip and busy holiday, we just didn’t have time to actually make it before her birthday. Well this weekend we finally got to it.

Peter and I were inspired by this design from the Ana White website, which is where we got the plans for Mayana’s play kitchen last year.  It’s a very simple design, and didn’t take my very handy husband long to knock together at all.

We purchased one sheet of ply from Bunnings for $17.50, and this was plenty to build the whole piece of furniture. Along with screws, dowel, two sample pots of paint (thank goodness we found it easier to choose and agree on colours this time!) and some new rollers for painting, the grand total came in at just less than $50.00.

I had planned to photo-document the process, but before I knew it, Peter was calling out to me that he was done!

He’s a pretty awesome fella, that husband of mine!

My job was the painting.  We chose a creamy butter yellow and a very pale apple green to paint with, and used the yellow for the outside and the green for the inside, the hanging rail, and the edges. They make a nice contrast, but are lovely and soft and not too in-your-face. I got the final coat on this afternoon, and in this heat it wasn’t too long before it was dry enough to bring up to Mayana’s room.

To finish it off, I’m on the hunt for some wooden letters to spell ‘Dress-Ups’, which I plan to cover with funky scrapbooking paper and glue to the front of the box. Later, we might think about adding a shelf above the hanging rail, with a few boxes to store hats, shoes, or any other miscellaneous dress-up items that might appear when we have more than one child dressing up!

We added a few adhesive hooks to the side to hang necklaces and headbands. The bottom of the box is a place for Dorothy Tails, masks, her Doctor’s Kit, and we’ll add other roll-playing props as we find them.

At the moment, our collection is fairly ‘fairy princess’ heavy, but as time goes on, I’m sure things will balance out a little. Her favourite dress-ups at Kindy so far have been a lady-beetle costume and a Fireman shirt.

Mayana is really into role-playing games at the moment, and I know that dressing up will really enrich those play-learning experiences for her. I’m really excited about this new little piece of furniture!

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Oh… and just as an aside: I have a very excited little girl because this week she is going to be starting dance classes! She’ll be doing them at the same dance school that my sister goes to, and is so excited that she’ll get to be in a concert ‘just like Boo!’. I found her this very cute ‘leotard’ (which is actually a pair of togs, but who could even tell!?) for $7.00 on clearance, and I think it will do very nicely as a dance outfit. Could it be any cuter? I mean, apart from when Mayana is in it of course…