And so begins 2008

I mentioned in my last post that things would be changing around here. A new year, a new start, etc, etc. I often waver back and forth on whether or not to publish photos of my kids on the internet. Recently I've decided I don't like the idea, so over the next few days I'll be taking their pictures down. If you still want to see cute photos of my little family, you can join me over at Flickr. From now on though, this blog will be less about my family, and more of my ponderings about life. This may mean posting will be even more sporadic than usual (is that possible?). I have thought about the idea of a monthly mailing list, where I can still update people on my cute kid stories, and send out photos. If anyone is interested in such a thing please email me (greenjellysnakes at gmail dot com).

For now though, I'd like to tell you about a couple of projects I'm embarking on this year. I've decided to take a photo of myself every day in 2008. That will be 366 photos by the end of this (leap) year! Pictured above is my day two photo. Every now and then, I'll post one of my self portraits here. If you want to keep up with all of them, I'll be posting them in a set at Flickr. I'm also planning to take pictures of Papa Bear and each of the kids every day this year. Again, these will all be in sets on Flickr, though you will need to be one of my contacts there to be able to see them.

It's late here, and I'm ready for bed, but I wanted to update anyone who may still be reading my blog as to what my plans are. Check back soon for a new look to the blog, and maybe another portrait or two.

Gearing up for 2008

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was busy, but full of family, fun and good food. I really enjoyed seeing four stockings on the wall this year, and though he didn't understand it all, Mr Dimples. seemed to enjoy his first Christmas.

As is usual at this time of year, we are dreaming and planning ready for 2008. There will be some big changes around here, both in our home life, and on my little corner of the blogworld here. More about that tomorrow though. Happy New Year!

The best laid plans...

The past 3 days of advent activities haven't quite gone to plan.

Day three - "Let's pack a picnic dinner and eat down at the waterfront". Yes, we ate a picnic dinner. Technically we had water frontage, but not the type I had planned. Due to some rather heavy rain and storms, which has been pretty constant these past few days, we ate our picnic dinner on the lounge room floor, while listening to and watching the rain outside.

Despite being washed out, our picnic dinner was quite enjoyable. Peachfuzz especially seemed to like the novelty of eating dinner on a rug on the living room floor.

Day four saw us reading our "Can You See What I See - Night Before Christmas" book. This is one of my favourite holiday traditions. I bought this book two Christmases ago, on sale at a local book store for about $8. Given that it had just been released, I think that was a pretty good deal! I love having it as a "coffee table book" each December, for family and friends to pick up and browse when they have a minute or two. It's a gorgeous book full of picture puzzles, with lists of things to search for in each picture.

Because I love having this book out and ready to curl up with whenever the mood strikes, I had to make this one of our earliest advent activities. I didn't want to get it out until after we had a chance to sit and search together as a family. There is a little man who is featured in every picture throughout the book. We spent about 10 minutes with Peachfuzz, finding him on every page. After she was in bed, Papa Bear and I got about halfway through searching for the list of things on the first page, before we were both so tired we had to call it a night. But the book is out now, and we are enjoying looking for a rabbit here, or an elf there, whenever we get a spare few minutes.

Today's activity was supposed to be to make Christmas cards for our family. I had some grand ideas involving paint and handprints, but as so often happens with small children, our day didn't go quite to plan, and said craft project was never completed. We did have fun making the beginnings of a reindeer painting with Peachfuzz's handprints. I'll post pictures of it tomorrow, after we finish it off.

Other than advent activities, I have been busy with a bit of Christmas crafting. I signed up for a Holiday Traditions Exchange, and I have been madly trying to make my handmade decoration to send to my swap partner, which is due out next Monday - eek! It's nothing too fancy, but I've been enjoying putting this little package together, and can't wait to share photos next week after I've sent it. As soon as this package is ready to go, I'll be moving on to a Christmas stocking for Mr. Dimples, followed by a dozen or so little components of various gifts for the kids and a few other people. Life is never dull!

Gingerbread

"Today we will decorate gingerbread with our extended family". That's what our advent card read for the day. Our gingerbread house making tradition started way back in 2003, when I spent an entire day (literally) baking and decorating the house all on my own. Christmas 2004 saw us decorating a collapsed gingerbread house with Damien and Miranda. We skipped two years, and now here we are in 2007. We decided to invite our families over to decorate gingerbread with us.

Papa Bear and I spent much of last night, and most of the early afternoon today, cutting and baking gingerbread. Each person was given a gingerbread man and their initial to decorate as they wished.

We invited anybody who wanted to contribute, to help decorate the house. The white chocolate roof tiles are care of my dad, M & M filled chimney by Papa Bear's brother, windows by my sister and door by me.

Sadly, just as in 2004, the softness of the gingerbread and the weight of the chocolate collapsed the house. Peachfuzz seemed rather distressed about the whole thing. It still tasted good though!

I'm pretty sure today's activity was a success, despite it being a lot of work. After everyone left, Papa Bear said "That was really good babe, we should definitely do this every year!"

Christmas Traditions

Two Christmases ago, we started a new family tradition. I made an "Activity Advent Calendar", with a different family activity for each day in December leading up to Christmas. It was my "quick and easy" version, because I made it at 4pm on December 1st, after seeing some similar ideas on a couple of the blogs I frequent. Last year we were overseas for Christmas, so we didn't do the advent calendar. But this year, it's back! Over the next 24 days, I'll be sharing a little about each of the activities we are enjoying as a family.

Each day, the activity card is taken down, and Papa Bear reads the card to the rest of us (I'm the only one who already knows each activity). There is also some sort of gift or treat that corresponds with the activity. Today's was "Let's have a tree decorating party" and each of the kids received a new ornament. Another of our traditions is to buy each child a new ornament every Christmas. On your very first Christmas, you get a photo ornament, which is what Mr. Dimples received today. We chose a little girl sitting on a music note for Peachfuzz, because she loves to sing, and spends most of her day requesting to sing songs together.

To make it a real party, I turned on the Christmas music, and prepared some tasty Christmas treats to snack on while we decorated. We had chocolate covered strawberries, white christmas, shortbread and strawberry "champagne" (Maison). I was very excited to use my Spode Christmas plate (far right), which our friends Norm and Mary gave me when we were with them last December.

The kids both hung their new ornaments on the tree, with a little help from Papa Bear and I.

A few decorations later, and it was done!

Mr. Dimples didn't do much other than look cute, but we think he did a pretty good job of that!

It's been awhile

So much has happened since my last post, I don’t really know where to start. I’ve been thinking about this post for days, wondering what I would write, how I would start over with this blog thing. I’ve been contemplating why exactly it is that I keep a blog in the first place. Originally it was to keep in touch with family and friends in far away places. Sometimes it was a way to record the cute things my kids say and do.

I’m not really sure right now, what exactly it is I want from this blog. But I do know I want to be real. I want to remember everything. Not just the picture perfect, sweet moments, though there are plenty. I want to remember the not-so-great moments too. I want my kids to be able to read this one day, when they have their own little ones, and know that what they are going through is normal. I want them to know it’s okay to have days where you wish you could have an hour or two with nobody touching you. That at 15 weeks postpartum it’s okay that you still haven’t got the nap thing figured out yet. That sometimes it’s just fine to spend the whole day “surviving” and buy takeaway for dinner and let the washing pile up. It’s okay when you’re so tired you can’t keep your eyes open, to pop in a Disney movie and have a cat nap on the couch. I want them to know that there will be days where they blow it. Days when they yell and rage and then feel like the worst parent in the world. Days they will sit down and cry while cuddling a little one in their lap who will gently wipe away the tears.

So much time has passed. There have been good days and bad. I thought for awhile that I wasn’t coping well with mothering two small children. Looking in from the outside, it might look like I have it all together, but I really don’t. And you know what? That’s okay! Thankfully now, the good days are far outweighing the bad. We still have bad moments, but we cuddle and move on, praying to do better next time.

The sad thing is, in amongst all these moments that I initially wanted to forget, there were plenty of moments I wanted to remember too. Peachfuzz will never be newly 2 years old again. Mr. Dimples (formerly known as Little Man), will never be 3 months again. Things have been happening that I want to remember. Like the way Peachfuzz calls her latest favourite cereal “Bubble Rice”. The way she talks, sings to, cuddles and laughs with Mr. Dimples. The way she melts my heart when I’m in a bad mood and all out of the blue she says “I sorry mummy”. The way she grabs the back of my head and pulls me in close for a goodnight kiss. I want to remember how excited she gets when Daddy gets home from work every night. The joy she has in running barefoot through the backyard. The way she marvels over a snail, or an ant. I want to remember the first time I heard Mr. Dimples giggle, and how my heart soared at the sound. I want to remember that he was only 10 weeks old when he rolled over for the first time. The way he wakes up from a nap in the happiest mood, and gives me the biggest gummy smile when he sees me. That he laughs more when I say “hello” in a silly voice, than he does when I tickle him.

So where do I go from here? This blog may change on a daily basis. I will write whatever and whenever the inspiration takes me. I just want to remember the real me - the good, the bad and everything in between.

Kitchen adventures on a Saturday afternoon

We discovered a new fruit & veg shop we thought we'd try out. We did our weekly shop there this morning, and bought a couple of things in bulk. One was a large bag of green beans, which I decided to take home and freeze.

I figured I would just blanch and freeze them, but decided to google it, just in case there was anything important I was missing. This site told me I was right on the money, so I spent half an hour or so rinsing, trimming and cutting the beans. Peachfuzz came running in to me calling "Mummy, pwesent" and handed me two little pink flowers she had picked from the front yard, which I promptly tucked into my jumper.

After blanching the beans, Peachfuzz helped me put them in bags for freezing.

After a couple of good attempts, she decided that tongs were too hard to handle, and opted to use her hands instead.

This little exercise made me realise just how far removed I am from the production of my food. When I first opened the bag, I was surprised to see so many "imperfect" beans. Into the compost went those that had even the slightest blemish. As I went on, I started to be a bit more judicious, and cut out the bad bits, rather than throwing the whole bean for the sake of one spot. I started imagining how I would do it differently if I'd grown these beans. If each bean had been grown and picked by my own hand, I wouldn't be so hasty to toss them out for minor spots. I've become so accustomed to "perfect" supermarket fruit and vegies, that when I see the real thing, warts and all, it somehow doesn't seem right. And yet, the warts and all version is how it was intended to be, and has a taste so superior to the supermarket produce, that it's worth the warts. I'm going to have to get used to imperfect if I want to grow my own vegies. Imperfect, but delicious.

Happy Feet & Papa Love

happy feet

Why are my feet so happy? Because they're bare in the warm grass. Because my toenails are red. Because I had a wonderful pedicure, gifted to me for my birthday a few months back. Damien & Miranda gave me a voucher for a pedicure, which I finally redeemed on Friday. Mum wandered the shops with my babes for an hour while I had my feet pampered. It's amazing what a bit of nail polish can do for a mama's self-confidence! The only thing that would have made it better was if Miranda had have been sitting in the chair next to me getting her toes done too. Oh well, what can you do when friends live overseas?

papa love

Papa Bear and Little Man, sharing a special father-son moment. I love these guys!

Snippets

*Family nap time. My favourite time of the day. There's nothing quite like snuggling up in bed in the middle of the day, in between two gorgeous kiddos, and sleeping for two or three hours. It's even better on the weekends when Papa Bear joins us too.

*A couple of firsts for Little Man today. First real, honest-to-goodness, love-you-Mama smile. I was thrilled! And first shower too - they're so much easier than baths.

*A beautiful quote about motherhood, that makes me feel better about my less-than-perfect house. Relationships are so much more important than things! Miranda, you know I cried when I read this...
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Three weeks

I can't believe it's already been three weeks since we first met Little Man. The time has flown, and yet, it seems like he's always been part of our family. A very special part.