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!