Family Weekend Away

Happy Birthday Aunty Kate!

For Christmas, Janet, Kate, and Darren gave the rest of the family a weekend away together - what fun! So in early Feb, we went to Peppers Resort at Salt (yes, those are not made up locations/names) for a wonderful weekend together. As it happened, that was the weekend of Kate's birthday, so were able to spend the whole weekend celebrating together!

Aunty Janet picked up some American-style cupcakes from Poppy's Cakes at Emporium. Yum!

Cuddles with Mama while eating yummy cupcakes.

Mama and Dada had a room to themselves - Matilda stayed in the same apartment as Grandma, Grandad, and Aunty Janet. Aunty Janet and M were roomies for the weekend - luckily Aunty Janet is an early bird!

Mama and Dada's room had a lovely big bathroom with a big spa bath. When M spotted Mama having a bath on Sat afternoon, she decided to join in the fun. It was very deep water though - M could only just sit in the bath without being covered up. She did NOT like the spa jets.

After a big day of swimming, no nap, and lots of fun, Matilda fell asleep while we were out for dinner on Aunty Kate's birthday. Grandma's sweet singing in her ear helped, too, I suspect.

Lots of willing arms to cuddle our sleeping girl.

I want to keep swimming! Why are you taking a photo and not swimming with me?! More swimming!

Storybook pages

So since about January, I've been working on a Storybook for Matilda from our trip to Europe last year. I finished it on Thursday night, uploaded it to Creative Memories in Sydney, and it arrived on Monday! I was so surprised at how quickly it arrived. Yay! Here are some of the pages I did:

Last page

January pics

(Yes, I realise it's almost the end of Feb!!)

New Year's day. It isn't just Mama's shoes that get stolen,but also Daddy's joggers. And what else to accompany joggers but fairy wings? And, did you notice, super large shoes also provide a handy butt seat. ;)

Having too much fun running around GG's unit. Always guaranteed that Matilda will clean the fly screens naturally while we're there (by pressing herself up against them).

Lunch and a swim at Damien and Emma's (yay!! they're in Aus now, and even walking distance from us, we don't have to fly for 24+ hours to see them anymore!!). It rained while we were in the pool, and afterwards, Matilda had to dry the back deck. I'm still trying to figure out why she will clean what she does, and blissfully ignores other messes ... I suspect I'll have this motherly dilemma for the next 20 years or so?!

GG Caroline got these shoes for M, I think for her first birthday. They're the funky kind that help kids learn about laces, zips, buttons. Well, our shoe girl had to wear them one day, which made pedalling the trike a wee bit interesting. And please don't look too closely at the dirty deck - we've still got water restrictions. Really, it's nothing to do with laziness AT ALL.

Fruit

Matilda's favourite fruit at the moment is:

Strawb-ba-berries

She's been saying strawberries this way for some time, at least since December. It's ridiculouly cute.

Some other favourite fruits right now:

• Blueberries
• Apple
• Orange (stealing Daddy's)
• Mango (stealing Daddy's)
• Watermelon (stealing Daddy's)
• Cherries - pits and all
• Fruit-flavoured yoghurt ;)
• Grapes

Veges seem to work better when disguised still ...

The energizer bunny hits the wall

After a very full day celebrating Aunty Kate's birthday. BR hits the wall during dinner. Pass the salt. Pass the sleeping 2 yr old.

Transport 2.0

For Matilda's first birthday, back in Oct '07, I hoped that she wouldn't get only "girly" presents. Sure, I'll dress her in pink 70% of the time, and even though I lurrrved my Barbies, I figured my girl also needs some non-girly things to play with. So when her Unca Cam asked what he could get her, I said a Tonka Truck. He really didn't want to, he wanted to get her a dress or something more girly, but I insisted that she should have a Tonka truck.

Recently, M's re-discovered the truck, and is enjoying it in daily life. These pics are from the other day:

M wakes up before us most mornings, as you do at 2 with your aged thirty-something parents, and now that she's happily getting herself out of bed, comes into our room with an armful of toys (currently: flopsy bunny, baby, Dora, and Emma her multilingual English-German speaking doll I got in Philly) and presents them to me. Once she even decided her Dad might wake up and respond to her, and gave them to him. Oh, and she brings her water bottle, too, for the long walk between bedrooms. ;)
A couple of weeks ago, her tonka truck ended up in the formal living room outside our bedroom (aka The Great Dumping Ground and Used Twice a Year room). One morning, after the usual footsteps up the hall, I heard a gentle whooshing sound. Matilda had her butt in the truck, and was shuffling herself along by her feet. I've had a few mornings where I've had to watch where I put my feet as I swing out of bed, in case I mistakenly put one in the truck and go for a nasty slide!

So, Unca Cam, M is LOVING her truck. She may not be using it in exactly the way it's intended to be used, but hey, it works for her.

Happy New Year 08--09!

NYE is Grandad's birthday, so after knocking off work and daycare early (yes, M's Mum and Dad worked through Christmas and New Year, except for the public holidays, pretty much), we went to visit him and say:

Happy Birthday!

We had a lovely afternoon tea, M took some photos with Aunty Janet's digi camera, and we got to see all the family.
We then went to B&L's house for their annual NYE party, and we spent the night there.

Some ANTM-esque "fierce" modelling from the kids of their new outfits from Singapore

JR loves it, he and B spend the night making cocktails, mocktails, litetails for all the friends and family, and generally sampling any leftovers. ;) The kids all tear around and have a great time dancing and playing all over the place. NYE was pretty hot, so after we arrived at B&L's, we hopped in the pool with the kids. I am a terrible Mum, and when I bundled up all the swimming gear, I didn't remember M's ear plugs and headband to keep them in. This means no head under water and you have to be careful with splashing around her. Yeah, tell that to K (4), D (5), and R (7)!! And to M for that matter, who LOVES swimming, and asks at least once a day if we can go back to B&L's house and go swimming. So L & I mocked up a makeshift ear plug situation that kinda worked for about one minute at a time, involving K's hair bands and some aeroplane-style noise ear plugs.

Now a nice photo

After a bit, the party started and M had a GREAT time. It was too hot to stay inside, so most everyone (except our wonderful bartenders) sat outside on the verandah. Although it wasn't as hot as the year that B & JR ended up in the spa at 2am with a blender full of mango margaritas!
Last NYE M stayed up until 9:45. After a few late nights when she's been up til about 10 or so, we figured our little party animal would be up until midnight, and she was!! I got her to bed around 12:30ish, and that went well until she decided to start the year with an early morning and woke up VERY cranky at 5:30. She went back to sleep before 7, but not without wanting to wake the rest of the house and trying to get K, D, and R awake and playing with her. Sigh. She is such a social, interested, on-the-go child. I'm not sure how we'd ever cope after dealing with M with a child who would clings to our legs and wouldn't leave us alone.

It may not look it, but M is practically comatose in these pics. She loved the sparklers and kept going back for more

Matilda's third Christmas

We had planned a rather busy day, but one in which Matilda would see all of her grandparents (all 6 of 'em) in the one day. We'd already seen Gramps and Gran Lylia on the night of the 23rd for Matilda to get her pressie (too big to bring to Christmas lunch @ Great Uncle Scott's).
Here she is at her very cool new table and chairs, just her own beight for drawing (on herself), painting (on herself), and other creative activities.
Then on Christmas Eve, we decided against the 3:30pm Hurry to Bethlehem family service at the Cathedral and instead went to St Marks's for the 7pm family service. A risky move after a late night, but we wanted to be within our community and our church friends at Christmas. Also, 7pm (ish) is M's bed time, so we weren't sure how she'd behave. She went very well, tried to sing the hymns/carols along with us, talked about Santa all through the gospel reading, but then redeemed herself by telling the children's and youth minister that tomorrow was "Baby Jesus Happy Birthday". ;)

For what I hope will be the last time for the next 15 years, I was the first awake in the house AGAIN on Christmas day. After two late nights, M still wasn't awake at 7:30, and we had a champagne brekky at Grandma and Grandad's house to get to (and lunch and dinner with other family members), so I snuggled into her and woke her up. M was far more concerned with giving Daddy kuggles (cuddles) and putting her shoes on, she didn't even notice the presents under the tree until after waking her Daddy. We opened some presents, got dressed and ready for the day, and went to Grandma and Grandads for brekky. Yum, of course! Fresh stone fruit and yoghurt followed by Eggs Benedict, and then some lovely pastries from Belle Epoque for morning tea. And some champagne for the adults, because after the flood, there seems little point in keeping "good" things such as 1996 Dom Perignon (thank you Duty Free shops), and much more point in sharing them with our loved ones or using them and appreciating them.

That HUGE bottle JR is holding is FULL of bubble liquid! With a chocolate smell ... Matilda decided that bubbles were WAY more interesting than eggs benedict (her loss).

We then went to Great Scott's for lunch. This is his house:
It's a former Methodist church, now deconsecrated. It's a pretty cool place for Christmas lunch! We caught up with Aunty Petie, Uncle Cam, and Aunty Jenny before they had to go to their Mum's for lunch.

Fairy wings from Aunty Jenny!
Super funky dress from Aunty Petie
Play Doh (to eat) from Unca Cam!
M rocking her cute chin cupping look
The mob
(M's Mummy didn't get the note from her sisters to wear a nice big loose summer dress)

After lunch, M explored Great Scott's crib. She found his exercise equipment:
After a lovely lunch, we went the next suburb over to MorMor's house. Mumma, Daddy, and M all tried to have sleeps. Well, Mumma tried, M was too excited to pretend to try, and Daddy did have a sleep. Grandad Eric and Uncle Al arrived, and we all had fun opening pressies and then had a yummo dinner.
All weary from a big day, we left MorMor's some time after 9pm (yes, M went all day with NO sleep, the little party animal). What a great, family-filled Christmas.

Merry Christmas

This was meant to be a Christmas letter post, to atone for not sending out any Christmas cards. But it's now 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve, and we'd better get to bed before Santa arrives and finds us awake! ;) According to Norad, he's in PNG at the moment, so mustn't be much longer before arriving on the East Coast of Aus.


This awesome pic was taken by Madeleine. We're still choosing which ones to get printed, but this was a cracker! :) As always, JR looks like he's talking, but the important person looks cute.

We wish all of our friends and family, both near and far, a very blessed, holy, and merry Christmas season, and a joyous and prosperous New Year.

With love,
John, Kirsty, and Matilda

Santa is a Kidnapper (apparently)

We've always thought Matilda would be a talker, and as her vocab continues to develop, we're seeing plenty of signs of her future potential (and suspect ear plugs will be our future).

Last weekend, M could not stop saying:

Santa coming, picking up Tilda.

She said it over and over, again and again. She told everyone at daycare on Monday how Santa was coming to pick her up, and by Tuesday it morphed into Santa and Mummy coming to pick up Tilda. It seems in M's mind right now, Santa picks up the children, not sure if it's the naughty ones or the good ones, rather than dropping off presents. And I'm not sure how I got involved in the children taking (JR has a theory about M confusing the "I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus" song ... but I don't think M even knows it!).

But, M knows Santa is coming ... we really ought to get out the not-too-badly-flooded Fisher Price Nativity set for her to play with, because that'll just innately teach her the real Christmas story, right? ;)

Except I think baby Jesus is still in the car. Oops.

And the waters came

Last Thursday morning, JR and I were rudely awoken by what we thought was some stoopid person's car alarm going off. By the third sounding of the alarm, I stomped out of bed, went to the curtains to *see* the stoopid car and stoopid person with my very own 4am eyes. I looked out into our street, and noticed flashing. And water in the middle of the street. Gee, the drain's not dealing well with the rain tonight, I thought. The drain right out the front of our house ...
Something else weird occurred to me, and made me turn on some lights and look downstairs. And what I saw was brown, not the lovely terracotta tile brown, but tidal river silt mud brown. I woke up John, and our day started, at 4am, in PJs, police siren going off in the street, with a couple of inches of water throughout our downstairs. We went downstairs to look at the damage (luckily? the power was still on, and our lights were fine). Boxes, bookshelves, scrapbooking gear, photos, newspaper, hidden presents, piano ... all already wet. I pulled some scrapbooking stuff up onto tables and onto chairs, and resigned myself to rest being wet and gone. John looked at what was in the big room, including his piano. We came back upstairs and looked out at the street. We noticed neighbours on their verandahs, looking out at one another. What to do?? We also noticed people moving their cars -what a good idea! JR's Mustang is pretty low; so we moved the cars up to the next street, much higher than our house. I packed an evacuation bag for M, in case we had to send her off to .. somewhere ... grandparents, I suppose.
I suddenly thought that if the water got much higher my four power sort boxes (each with about 2400 photos in them) and however many completed albums were not going to be safe, so I started taking them to my car, ready to be evacuated with M if necessary. Somewhere in all of that, I texted a few family members who use their mobiles. We rang the SES or Emergency Services - we'd had no instructions from the police, and didn't know if we needed to evacuate. They had no instructions for us. What should we do??

The water got to about 4 bricks up, around 5 or so inches. At some point Mum arrived to help out. Sometime after 5/5:30, we could tell the water was going down. I got help from a neighbour to sweep the water out, together with JR and Mum. Some phone calls to Ann & Derwent, Dad read his SMS, and soon we had lots of helping hands to sweep, mop, wring, lay out, move, throw.
Dad brought a trailer. Two loads of now rubbish were taken to the dump. Brett decided to skip the cricket, and Lexie brought over some of their handy equipment (Brett's better stocked than Bunnings).
M slept until after 7. When she woke up, I skipped out on the clean up to focus on her. She was so excited to wake up to a house with MorMor, Grandma and Grandad in it! :)
Thank goodness for daycare, I took her in to the centre, got coffee for the troops on the way home, and joined back in with the cleaning effort. We cleaned all day. Again and again in some cases, the floor just not drying before we once again trudged dirty shoes across i. I got vicious with what I threw out; luckily my Dad looked through some of what he pulled out of the trailer at the dump ... my birth certificate and BA degree were in one of the folders I refused to look through, as I didn't want to agonise over every piece of wet paper.

Thursday night was promising another big storm, so we had to try to get what we could dry, and UP, but then also pack it away or inside before the next deluge. Thanks to our family and friends, we got it done, but on Thursday night I wasn't able to greet the pinging sound of the rain on our iron roof with my usual glee. We survived Thursday night's storm without any further flooding.
Friday and the rest of the weekend were filled with cleaning up (oh, and a work Christmas party Friday night, which did little to help *ahem* energy levels on Saturday!), but at a slower pace, and again, with friends and family helping. Brisbane was meant to get a BIG storm on Saturday night, which luckily did not eventuate.
At this stage, JR's piano is the biggest item that is a write-off. Strings got wet, and the piano tuner/repair man said the repair job would be equivalent to the worth of the piano, with an unpredictable result. We're waiting for the insurance assessor to inspect our house still. Oh, and the weirdest thing - we left the bottom of a big bookshelf/display case from my CM studio in the front yard on Saturday. It went missing. From inside the fence line.

After all this stress, worry, and cleaning (anyone will tell you it's not my favourite activity - I'd rather iron than clean!), we are still grateful:

• for our house still being habitable, and not needing to move out
• for losing mainly "things", and nothing too super precious (yes, we'll miss some of those things for some time, but things are not our life)
• for not having carpet anywhere, and lots of towels and terry nappies for mopping, cleaning, and wiping feet on
• for not losing our roof or having the massive Moreton Bay Fig from next door falling on our house
• for having wonderful friends and family who we can text/call in the wee hours of the morning and will take the day off work or not go to the cricket when they have a BOX organised, and borrow equipment from friends to help us out, and not want anything more than a hug in thanks (and yes, if my house ever floods again, I will call you, and call more of you, not just text like three people at 4:30am)
• for the stinky mud silty creek water not being in our house for that long (yeah, it still smells, but not as bad as if we still had stinky water in the house)
• for the conditions not being a repeat of the 1974 flood, because everything would have been under stinky water!

Flood pics

I can't be bothered fighting with blogger to get these pics in chronological order. Just wanted to get some up so you can see the damage we've had (and we are very blessed and thankful that unlike so many other Brisbane residents, we have a roof, we can still live in our house, our only power outage was due to JR turning off the mains). Will post more later.

Water mark on bricks in garage.
CM studio at front of house, after most water had flowed/been pushed out.

View of our clothesline and neighbour's yard

View of our back yard from the deck.

View of our front yard - fairly early on, about 4:30am

Driveway

Garage before we took the cars up to higher ground.

Other downstairs room, as we are surveying the water levels. Tip: paper/cardboard and water do not mix. ;)

Floor of CM studio room after we woke up.

First view of the water, internal stairs. Ahead is the garage, to the left is the room with the bookshelves and boxes, and to the right is my CM studio.

BIIIG Girl's Bed

At the beginning of the month, I finally rang my uncle (M's great-uncle Scott) and asked about picking up the bed he put aside for M when she was about two months old, when my cousin S was graduating to a bigger bed. Uncle Scott brought the bed over one Sunday afternoon, and he and JR quickly pulled the cot apart and assembled the bed. I had thought we should be good parents and try to transition M gently into the big bed, but one look at the cot, the bed, the chest of drawers, the change table and her 2mx2m room, and I realised it wasn't all going to fit in there.

So, another case where we threw the new situation at M and hoped she'd cope. And as we waved Scott and S goodbye at about 4:30 in the afternoon, another realisation hit me - we don't own any single bed sheets. Until the cot entered our house, we only ever had sheets for our bed. Oops! So I checked if Big W would be open, and got there quick smart. I picked up a set of sheets and mattress protector, and even managed to wash and dry them before M went to bed (a bit late). The sheets only just fit, but M was very excited to get into her big girl's bed. Thanks to the Kubies, we have a rail to protect her from rolling out - very essential with such a tall bed and mattress, and our polished wood floors. M is loving her new bed, and I had fun finding some sheets and a quilt cover on the weekend (but the actual quilt will probably wait until next Winter).

M needs a stool to get up into bed - seriously, the top of the mattress is perhaps one-two inches shorter than the top of Matilda's head! And so far, in the morning she hasn't figured out that she can get out of bed without our help. I wonder how long that will last?

Climbing up on the stool

I'm up!

The bed, complete with mossie net thingamajig

M's first night in the bed went quite well, except for the blood-curdling screaming at 2am. Since then, I don't think she's had a night where she hasn't woken at all, but hopefully we'll get back to our "routine" of her only waking up (and only waking Mumma up) every third night ... or so ...

Teething much?

The other night, we were the Worst Parents in The World, and didn't have a meal ready for Matilda by 6pm. Because when all adults get home at around 5:45, having M's dinner ready by 6 means it's bolognaise or risotto or something else made in bulk and parts of it frozen (note to self: perhaps that's why M doesn't respond well to fresh veges or meats??). JR fairly quickly put together some fried rice with chicken for our girl. Out came the frozen peas, which were left on the bench a little too long for our tall girl. This is what happened:
Between the fervent gnawing on frozen peas and the stinky nappies recently, perhaps a certain someone is getting her 2 year old molars?

Adding: Blogger's spellchecker didn't recognise bolognaise and suggested bologna instead. Didn't think bolognaise was so Aussie? (Calling it "bol" or "bog" perhaps is!!)