Goodbye Prep!

Well, Alaina has made it through her first year of school. I'm pretty sure her parents survived as well. I'm already sick of hearing that she wants to do something fun and exciting every second of every day. But, the mundane home life has already brought longings of returning to school. I am so thankful she's starting to enjoy it enough to want to go back, even for brief moments.

Now, bring on summer holidays! Tonight we are headed to the Ward Christmas party. It's a pool party! How fun is that? A Christmas pool party. I know, it does your head in at first. But, after spending two hours vacuuming the chapel in this humidity, I am so ready to hop in the pool!

It's summer in Australia...

How She's Grown

And now, after sitting on the bookshelf for a year, she's decided she can't stand the thing, and she's done with that particular torture.

Ten Months

She just keeps getting bigger, more gorgeous, more fun and more stinker!

It's hard to get a get picture because she'd rather be doing this:

Or this:

Six Months

Yummy

Elissa has been enjoying solid foods. She likes to try new things, but doesn't get through very much at a time. Most feeding sessions end in me losing a round of tug of war over the spoon.

Catching up

How to cheer this boy up when he got left at home the other day? Make him a car of course.

It's hard to get a clear picture of such a high-performance machine. It's also rare to find such a fast vehicle that still has the safety feature of "beep beep" when it reverses.

Features like this are sure to make any driver happy.


And these features of our home are sure to make any parent (or grandparent) happy forever:

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

We visited Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary while Alaina was on school holidays. Thanks Gram and Grampa! We had so much fun watching the koalas, seeing the wombats, naming the birds, and going to the dog/sheep shearing show.




I find the dog show so cool and Lincoln loves all the "sheeps" he applauds every little thing the dog does. Alaina was fascinated with the sheep shearing, imagining what it would be like to wear that big wool coat around.

My favourite part of this trip was that we happened upon the wombats at feeding time. One of them was so sleepy the handlers could hardly wake him up to eat. Like his nick-name-sake. Linc feel asleep in the car on the way home and simply would not wake up for dinner. Wombats are sweet, stocky, cute, sleepy, and strong, including mine.


By the end of the day some of us were ready to go home...
But really, we had a wonderful time. And look forward to going back several times this year.

Five Months

A bit late as usual, but here's how this girl is growing:


She loves to bury her head when she is being shy.
We are all enjoying how much fun it is to play with Elissa and can't believe how quickly she is growing.

Sick day

We have our fist official sick day. Alaina had a fever last night and a little this morning, I was suspecting a tummy bug that Harmonie's had, but it hasn't turned into much. She's been feeling fine most of the day and would rather be at school for the exciting event of mixing red and blue playdough for purple week. It looks like she'll be back tomorrow.

Her teacher told me yesterday how much Alaina has changed since she started school. She started off quite bossy, then lonely when none of the children wanted to play with her. So, she's learned a lot more flexibility and is getting along great. I love walking out of the school grounds and hearing all of the other little Preps calling "bye Alaina!"

The Best Bits

I don't have any exciting pictures to share, but I've decided that's a lame reason not to blog. What's been going on around here has been just getting by while trying to increase my milk supply. Some days seem to be better than others and we're not making a great deal of progress, but I bought a pump and that has helped a lot when Elissa is just to cranky about the slow trickle I have to offer. But, it does take a lot of time. I have developed an enormous respect for women who pump while working or other reasons. It's a big job, and formula is way too easy.

Hence, I'm feeling like I get nothing done, and still can't feed my baby. So, instead of thinking about what I can't do, I'm going to illustrate what I have done this week.

Monday: I swept and mopped the floor! That's a huge job and requires everything being picked up off the floor (or maybe some of it thrown on couches). But the best bits of Monday were: "riding" around on a toy horse, wearing a floppy pink hat (the driver has to wear the floppy pink hat) while a little boy held onto the seat of my pants and made my hoof noises as we ran around the half-mopped floor. The second moment I have been waiting most of my life for. I was making dinner and Alaina hopped in the brown chair, grabbed a lego "remote control" and said "Mummy, pretend you is a cooking show and I'm watching you." I put on the performance of my life! Pumpkin was never so exciting! Meatballs, never looked so tasty! But, my television career was short lived when she "clicked" me off, but not before Lincoln got to debut in a commercial break. The last highlight was expressing 2 oz that night quite easily. I think it's getting easier when I do it at the same time.

Tuesday: Went shopping and got some great deals on some meat. Unloaded the dishwasher and none of the dishes had powder left on them! (I switched brands) and got Alaina home with dry panties (that's as far as we got, but it's better than having to wash her seat cover) 2 of the three fell asleep in the car on the way home from getting Orvon. (That's a plus for me, but maybe a minus for Orvon because Lincoln wouldn't eat his dinner and got him up early). And I expressed 2 and a half oz. Yea!

Wednesday: I blogged! And Linc and I watched some guys using some sort of construction equipment in a nearby lot. Boy, the things I never knew I should study before becoming a Mum to a boy. I had far too few answers there. Aside from running a million errands and getting Laina and Daddy off, we haven't done much. Oh but I did express 2 oz. this morning. Maybe I'll go fold some laundry in the next hour before we have to go back to school. Maybe.

Instead

That 4 month picture was a bit late. Instead of posing for a photo shoot, Elissa has been coughing, sneezing, and being fairly miserable, looking more like this for the most part. Now, it seems my milk supply is quite low, so every murmur I hear from her is met with sitting on the couch, having a drink and watching the recorded Olympics. She seems to be doing better since I identified the problem and has had some formula which she likes, but hasn't had to have too much. Really, it's working out pretty well. But she can't avoid those 4 month needles forever.

Oh yeah, and I cut my hair.

Four Months!

My fans have been waiting to see my pictures, Mummy!
Thanks for the cute dress, Grandma!

Laughing Lissa

I left my heart on School Rd

Today was super exciting and a little bit difficult. Alaina headed off to school with a big smile and a little bit of concern. She felt a little bit shy when we got there, but she met some new friends and started playing with dolls and dress-ups and decided it wasn't such a bad place to stay. She finishes early this week to help her ease into it, which is good since the predicted high for today is 36! (and there's no air conditioning at school)
She's such a big girl, she even got to hold Elissa standing up! And she insisted we take a picture of all three of them since she promised Gram we would.
Here she has a vitamin in her mouth and the sun in her eyes (which might explain Lincoln's expression) but she really was super excited about the day. Her first words to me this morning were "Mummy, today is my first day of school!" and she's started referring to herself as "school girl"

It has been a lot quieter here today. No fighting, which is an enormous relief. Alaina is a lot of fun to have around, but also a lot of work sometimes. I'm sure she is going to love going to school and having so many friends to play with. I'm just wondering if my heart can manage being stretched that kilometre or so every day.