Tuesday 29 May 2012

(Day 179) Awwww



I had my post all figured out for today... and then I saw the most gorgeous sight ever

Layla perched in her bumbo, dressed up in her suit, listening to a show put on by Daddy

Just for her

And as I tried to take that perfect photo

I got a more gorgeous one

...my bubba who had spied her Mummy, dropped everything else, arms outstretched

It is both sad and wonderful that I am at a point in my life where I know that this absolute love and devotion to your Mama, when the whole universe revolves around how close I am to her, and whether she can reach me quickly enough, is all too fleeting

Every minute that she is so in love with me, the way that I am with her, is more incredible than words can describe

Monday 28 May 2012

(Day 178) Eating everything!!!





You know when your eating addiction has gone a little too far when you are trying to chomp on table legs...

Wednesday 23 May 2012

(Day 173) Play group photo essay









Dear Layla

I always thought that play group was really a Mummy activity in disguised 

...an excuse to get together with other Mama's, change out of your baby-spewed on clothes, and talk

...to other adults!

But today I realised that there is a bit more to this play group thing.

 For the first time, you were incredibly excited when I opened the play group door and you saw that there was a room full of babies! To my surprise you started squealing and lurching out of my arms, so happy to see all of your little friends! (even if you hadn't met a lot of them yet)

You spent a good two hours pseudo-crawling (not quite a crawl, but a kind of half-crawl,half-roll, half-pull thing that gets you around) and swimming while stranded on your belly (a sight to behold as your belly is stuck on the floor but your arms and legs are flailing out, kicking and wading in mid-air as you excitedly watch the toddlers run, and try to run too!). 

You also spend a good amount of time sucking other baby's legs and arms, and grabbing at their eyes!

Oh dear

...which was followed by a long sleep with your bestie

Maybe play group is a Mummy activity in disguise!

Friday 18 May 2012

(Day 168) Nonna couture



It is a rare week when you are not seen out on a lunch and coffee date with your Nonna's 

...sporting the latest in Nonna couture after your Nonnina ('little Nonna') has spent the day sewing you something beautiful and unique

Here you are modelling Nonnina's latest creation - straight from designer to supermodel!


Wednesday 16 May 2012

(Day 167) Raised by a village






Today was but food for my daydreams again 

If you are not yet familiar with my fantasies of checking-out of city living and moving to a remote island, raising hippy, free-range children and generally spending most of my days doing exactly this, then this is my ultimate dream

Long hours spent at the beach, just.doing.nothing

Well, not nothing technically - the boutique version of nothing. 

Laying in the sun

Swimming

Exploring rocks and crabs and all of the wonderful things that live in hidden places near beaches

Watching grown children run and squeal and follow peculiar-looking blue crabs over boulders that lead to the sea. Running free range and raised by a village.

The soundtrack to this dream sounds a little bit like this

It is funny the dreams that children bring along with them when they enter this world... 

(Day 166) Where the wild things are




Dear Layla

Today was a day where it was absolutely impossible to choose just one photo of you, so I am going to need to write at least three blogs to capture all of the cute that I managed to trap inside my camera in the last 12 hours!

Oh how you have changed, and are growing into the wildest little thing before our very eyes

You now wake up in the morning with little mewing sounds, like a tiny kitten trying to get attention from the mama cat - 'mew mew mew' from your cot, or (most often) in my ear, in bed right next to me, dummy freshly spat, wriggling around and looking for your morning milk!

You have learnt how to grab (and deftly swipe!) things from all sorts of places, catching everybody by surprise as you knock over the vase full of flowers that your big sister Aidan bought me (with her very first pay cheque) for Mother's Day, or send somebody's drink flying clean across the table

You grunt when you want something that is just out of your reach, and you wriggle and squirm, and perform a sort of pre-army crawl across the floor - which involves a whole lot of rolling and twisting movements but not a whole lot of actual crawling - to get what you want

You have taken to high-pitched squealing to get what you want, and will squeal loudly and incessantly until the object of your desire either relents and comes running for you (usually in the form of one of your slaves, otherwise known as 'mama', 'dada' or one of your siblings) or you go lurching toward it!

You have quite taken to Sam's dark coffee brown hair, which is quite a few shades darker to everybody else's in the house, and take great delight in grabbing at it with both hands, twisting it into your fingers and munching on it with savage delight as your brother screams and protests, then lets you do it all over again

You are wild alright

Perfectly, wonderfully, wild child

Which is why this costume is perfect for you today <3 

Tuesday 15 May 2012

(Day 165) Guest Blog for Gregarious Peach

Today was a little hard on the blogging front, with two little people at home sick, and all of the adventures that go along with that! and I also spent my otherwise allotted 'blogging time' writing a little guest post for the incredibly inspiring Gregarious Peach

So I thought that I might cheat a little and share that blog today! (with the addition of more photo's - just to be particularly self-indulgent!)



In the few months since our little miracle, Layla-Rae, was born, almost a whole 10 years after her older brothers and sisters, I have been in awe of our other three children and how they were once little babies, and are now closer to adulthood than they are to infancy.

Whereas we once had a house full of three little barefooted hippy children, running around in tie-dyed cloth nappies, painting the walls with their mummy's water colours and attempting to make pancake mix on the hardwood floor (while mama was in coma-like sleep after caring for three under-four's all day!), our weekends are now full of first dates, sleep overs and violin rehearsals. 



Whereas we once had a lounge full of toys strewn all over the floor, finger paintings so copious that they had crept from being only on the fridge to decorating all of our walls, and furniture that sagged close to the floor from one too many 'monkey's jumping on the bed', our lounge was now littered with musical instruments, dirty football boots and school bags stuffed with homework and school newsletters. 


And as I have nursed Layla and watched my big babies growing up before my very eyes, something has shifted inside of me. 


Whereas my days pre-Layla had been filled with working and studying 18 hours a day to create 'a better life' for our children and their future, as an 'older' (non-teenage) mother I appreciate how fleeting childhood is, and desperately want for time to slow down just a little. Even though I have just finished my degree and everybody keeps asking me "when I will be returning back to work" my first priority is taking this time to be with all of my four children




...just so that we can have time to talk a little more






...appreciate each other a little more






..have a few more days filled with giggles and paint on the walls, trampling sand all through the house and dribbling ice cream on the kitchen floor







...and a few less days filled with work and study, traffic lights and homework





At the moment I am not so concerned with routines, schedules, baby milestones or weekly weigh-ins. But I am absolutely obsessed with afternoons on the beach, and whole days spent at the park.



... swimming until sundown 





... kidnapping my children from school for long weekends when they should be doing 'more important' things such as studying or finishing a chemistry assignment


I dream of running away to an island, home-schooling our children, and spending 90% of our day kayaking near the reef or writing messages in the sand.

Because I know that one day Layla's days will be filled with classrooms, homework, first dates and dirty football boots, and there is plenty of time for that...




                                                      but that time is not today

Sunday 13 May 2012

(Day 163) First mother's day




This is my first mother's day as a mother of four children 

Never in any of my plans for the future did I foresee that I could be blessed enough to have three amazing daughters and a wonderful son, though sometimes life surprises you by giving you everything that you never knew you always wanted!

I have had many and varied accomplishments in my life; playing guitar and singing in front of thousands of people, running and magazine and interviewing famous musicians, graduating university and being invited to undertake a phd, running businesses...and the list goes on

But at the end of my life, I doubt that any of that is going to be what I remember

I know that when I look back on my life, the things that I will be most proud of are the family that I somehow managed to build with my husband

and being a mother to the most amazing children that a parent could ever hope for

Friday 11 May 2012

(Day 161) Pained


Today you had a terrible belly ache all day 

which meant spending many, many hours trying to get to this end point!

finally asleep...

I am thinking this means that your love affair with food was short and brief (48 hours is not so bad as far as short love affairs go), and may need to be re-established at a later date 

which of course, means that you are going to want to be reunited with solid food more desperately than ever!

and I am going to have to go to extra lengths to keep anything that looks even vaguely edible out of your sight (and grasp!) 

oh why must we always want for things that we cannot have?!

Thursday 10 May 2012

(Day 160) The love of our life







Today you are 5 months and 8 days old - and you are the love of our life

Of course I am not just talking about Mummy and Daddy, who have the privilege of growing four beautiful people, but our whole family, who just live and breathe the wonder of you, the girl you are becoming and the little miracle that you are in our house

I often hear mothers who say "oh I have thought about having another baby many times but I just never knew how the kids would go or if our family would cope" and I know that those things were always in the back of our minds when we decided to have a fourth baby.

After almost 10 years of no babies in our house, we had cemented our positions in the family. We had our industrious, outgoing, creative and responsible older child. We had our wonderfully soft, gentle, artistic and empathic 'middle child' (though we were very conscious of the middle child tag, and tried to give our second child as much attention as our youngest). And we had our baby (even though he wasn't a baby anymore), who was cheeky, irrepressibly energetic, also artistic, and very set in his position at the bub of our family. 

And then there was Layla...and the world shifted a little

Our eldest became a little less teenager-ish (anybody with a teenager will know what I mean!). She learnt how to deal with a little baby spew on her clothes, and also learnt how to put somebody else's needs before her own. Our middle child now took on the position of big sister to two siblings, which meant that she has become even more nurturing, though has had to adjust to her little brother now taking on a more mature role of a 'big brother'. And our baby, who had always been treated as a baby, suddenly transformed into a little man. Somewhere between his statement of 'I don't want to hold it (Layla!)' at hospital, and changing his first wet nappy, our baby boy became a big brother...and so there was room for a new baby of the family.

It is hard to quantify just how much our world has changed since we became a family of 6, though for the 5 of us, who have been our own little family unit for so long, the world has definitely shifted, and for all of us, she has become another love of our life.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

(Day 159) Starting solids (for real!)


I have been diligently attempting to keep you from solid food for the last few months, in an effort to follow the new guidelines that babies should consume nothing but breast milk for the first 6 months of their life.

This is all completely alien to me - in the last 10 years between this bub and the last, every 'parenting rule' in the imaginary book has changed. With my first baby, a long 14 years ago, we started solids at 2 months old, in the form of rice cereal which was added to the formula bottle *yes, gasp! formula*

Formula, which is now known as devil-food-that-may-possibly-inflict-eternal-harm-on-your-baby was then touted as a perfectly healthy breast milk supplement/ replacement, and was actively offered as an equal alternative to breast milk all throughout my first pregnancy. This was true to the point that there was a whole kitchen in the maternity hospital that was dedicated to formula feeding, including; bottle warming/ sterilising equipment, fridges to keep formula in, bottles and bottle washing equipment, and formula that was offered to babies in the absence of breast (for example, when Mum was sleeping or resting in the other room). 

By the time my second and third bubs came along, breast feeding was encouraged but formula was still an acceptable replacement, and babies were fed solids at about 3-4 months old. I think that this is the era when baby food jars began labelling their foods 'from 4+ months' or 'from 6+ months' as they don't seem to have caught up with the recommendation that four month old babies shouldn't eat solid foods. 

Which brings me to the next point of interest

...if babies are not meant to eat solid food, then this is apparently news to Layla!

As hard and long as I have tried to keep her from eating solid food (and offered her copious amounts of breast milk), Layla has tried equally as hard to eat solid food!

Her admirable attempts include; whinging at every dinner time and squealing/ salivating every time that somebody puts something near their mouth, developing ninja-baby skills in swiping food out of her unsuspecting brother and sister's hands, lunging at cups of water on the dinner table and sending them flying across the room in an attempt to eat the glass, and making chewing movements with her mouth every time that she looks at something even resembling food.

Today I didn't just fumble in my resolve to not feed her solid food (otherwise known as sneaking her a teaspoon of something yummy here or there) but I entirely caved in, after offering Layla a rusk and witnessing her literally chew and devour half of the rusk in about two seconds flat! 

I think it is official - the baby is definitely ready for solid foods!

Tuesday 8 May 2012

(Day 158) Changing friendship





There are certain points in a friendship that change it indefinitely

though apparently trying to pull each other's hair out is not one of them :-) 

Friday 4 May 2012

(Day 154) Babysitting your bestie




Today we baby-sat your bestie for the very first time! a 5 month old and a 6 month old in the same house with only one pair of mummy arms was an adventure - picture tandem holding, tandem feeding, tandem crying and tandem sleeping! It is a shame that nobody has invented a two-baby sling (one for the front and one for the back perhaps?) yet, however you absolutely adored Soph's walker, and made the most of her wonderful toy, tippy-toeing all over the place and running rings around your Mumma!

Particularly funny moments were had when you were both swinging from the roof (in your jolly jumping harnesses of course), Soph hanging dramatically, staring at the ground and trying to talk to her feet. You with your arms outstretched theatrically, and your feet in a ballerina pose, lightly pirouetting around the place, making soft, high-pitched squealing noises (obviously very proud of yourself!). 

Other fun times were had when Soph decided to puke all over the floor and start painting the floor with it while I was breast-feeding you

then when I put you in your jolly jumper so that I could clean Sophie up, you puked all over the floor and started making little spew-patterns with your feet (what was I thinking?!!!)

and as soon as I had cleaned both of you up, and Soph was nicely settled in her walker while I fed you again, your bestie let out a wonderfully mischievous giggle as she promptly filled her nappy! 

Ahh fun times!