I love the yellow, love the Egg chair, LOVE that it is a rocker!
I have one of those Ikea Poang rockers which is great and super comfy but this would super style up Sienna's room. Actually I want to put it in the family room.
It is a pretty common virus
but a nasty one. It spreads like wildfire around nurseries and
playgroups. Luckily (strangely) my girl has not caught it from me,
despite being obsessed with kissing and sticking her fingers in my
mouth. My symptoms have included a sore throat, a nasty sinus like
headache and very attractive red blisters around my mouth, nose, fingers
and feet. I pity the poor kidlets who have this. Your hands and feet feel like they have been burnt.
Of course, this has been a week with
both sets of grandparents away and mr k finishing off the last week of
his course so I feel like I've been on the battle ground for a few
days.
Because we have been in quarantine, miss s and I have been
lurking around our neighbourhood, trying to avoid other kidlets and
people in general. We've been finding little deserted playgrounds so
miss s can have a good run around and I don't frighten people with my
plague like appearance. According to the health department, the virus
doesn't survive on play equipment or toys for very long so we have been
choosing our daily destinations with care.
This playground is at one of our local beaches. Less than 50 metres away is another set of play equipment, right next to a cafe. It was buzzing this morning but miss s and I got to play all by ourselves on this set. Check out that beach. No wind this morning and just beautiful.
Pulling funny faces for the camera... I think this is a mirror image of the face I pull to get a reaction from her.
Miss s had a great time running around in circles on the groyne.
Miss S particularly enjoyed examining the plants. The leaves were
beautiful shades of olive and dark green with beautiful mustard leaves
as well. I tried to take a picture but miss s wasn't having it.
We enjoyed our morning snack in the sunshine on the grass (the only way I could get a hat on her today)
Miss s loved the rocks and banging/ playing bongo drums/ smacking them but was kind of over the photo taking.
By request, we took photos of this seagull. Very hard to photograph as it was so white, almost surreal looking.
We walked up and down this slope about 20 times and then tried to pull off all our clothes and then walk up the slope again.
What she wore?
Indulge me
Sienna was rocking her saltwaters today. We got them from here. I may or may not have a matching pair
Top - Cotton on kids, ebay about $2 as we got them in a bundle (as new!!)
Skirt - Country road, 50c from garage sale (miss s particularly likes the pockets on each side, mum likes it as it is like new and saw it in the shops for about $50)
Leggings - hand me down from friend, no label
Hat - didn't have the energy to fight the battle today so she didn't wear it. I bought the most gorgeous hat from CR last season and paid full price...and she won't bloody wear it.
It is a bit tricky isn't it, commenting on blogs. I think the written word is so beautiful. It can conjure up the most beautiful images and help you imagine the most wonderful things. I even just like the look of text, both hand written and in type, both English and every other language (don't even get me started on some of those Japanese characters, so so poetic looking, like little miniature maps).
Sometimes though your words can fall flat, hurt or pierce without even meaning to or sometimes intentionally. Some bloggers write such personal words recounting love, sadness, happiness, loss and sometimes just a general whinge with a resolution of how they are going to deal with it. I feel privileged to read and know that I am better off for it. I cannot tell you how healing it was to read of other women's birth stories on their blogs after I had an unplanned caesarian birth. I felt a sense of connection and understood I was not alone in both my circumstances or feelings. That it was ok and actually pretty normal to feel the way I was. This was a beautiful gift that so many women gave to me. They did not know me or even know that I had read their story. In the head space I was in, I was often not able to comment or even leave thanks but I still think about them and tried to pay it back in telling my own story.
I'm thinking about this because I have seen some not so gentle responses to peoples' stories on their blogs lately. I'm not talking about the meanie rude ones, just the ones that are a little too brusque and a bit judgmental. I'm not at all Pollyanna (mr k would wholeheartedly agree here) but I do think that manners go a long way in not hurting people. If a blog post asks for advice and I think I have something to offer, I comment. I try to write with the understanding that I don't know the whole story (the background of the author that may make them particularly sensitive to what ever issue/ interaction they are writing about). If the blog author doesn't ask for advice and the post seems a bit whingy or is something I can't relate to, I don't comment.
People need to vent. I suppose I try to treat their blog like their home. I've popped by and this is their space to do what they need to do. It is bad manners to pass judgement and to tell them of your thoughts if they haven't asked. Most people just want a bit of empathy and a bit of support. Blog spaces can be wonderful to unload all your secret thoughts. Whilst I'm not comfortable enough to do that, I do admire those that can. I see it a bravery, a type of "here I am, like me or not". I am too much of a scaredy cat about those sort of things because I don't like criticism. I'm interested in what other peoples approaches are to blog comments, not the big nasty ones but in terms of trying to choose a tone for your comments. Is it something you think about? Do you write and then self-edit your comments? Are you more blunt/ brusque in commenting than you would be if you were having a cup of tea with them in real life? Has anyone responded badly to your well-intentioned comment?
Miss s has always had to suffer several photographs taken of her on a weekly, if not daily basis. I usually find it quite hard to get a shot of her where I can actually see her face. Most of my shots of her tend to be either blurred or of her back unless I can get mr k behind me and try and grab her attention. Today my girl actually responded to my requests for a smile and stopped for .5 of a second, smiled and then went back to her work of making two wooden bunny rabbits kiss. I love her.
Life is good. Toddlers are more full on that little bubbies but they are so much more fun. miss s is a walking, talking, dancing machine. She has inherited my love of music but also my dancing style - poor love. She has a lot of energy and I find our evenings are a lot smoother if she has plenty of park time during the day. Seeing that I find it very interesting when others post their habitual day, I thought I'd write up the loveliness that makes up our days at the moment.*
Most days, unless I'm working, we get up around 7 and have some banana and then some cheese toast. Sienna has a bit of a play in her cot with some toys while I get myself cosied up for the day. Around 8am we are usually out of the house and walking to our fabbo local park. It has the most awesome play equipment, acres of green grass and a decent coffee outlet nearby. It also has a natural wetland with native black and canadian mountain ducks, coots, black swans, swamp hens and hundreds of sulphur crested cockatoos. miss s has a small snack whilst we are there and then we are back home at about 10. miss s goes down for a nap around 10.30 and sleeps anywhere from 1.5hrs to 3 hours. Absolute heaven given that she was the ultimate 40 min napper for most of last year. During this time, I do emails, read blogs, try to restrain myself from online shopping, commit to some form of housework/ cooking. When miss s wakes up, I have hers and my lunch ready and we eat it together at the table or she perches on my lap if she is feeling a bit snuggly. We then read some stories**, play with her current obsession play-dough, Sienna might have a play in her room whilst I finish up a few things and then we do our errands for the day, visit friends and try to fit in a walk to the local park (although the pram is not her favourite place to be anymore so the afternoon is usually car-rides everywhere). I try to be home by about 4pm so as to do a bit of a clean up and get dinner sorted. Sienna is usually pretty happy to play at my feet. mr k has been able to get home much earlier these days so we have a bit of a 'nanna' dinner at around 5.30-6pm and then Sienna gets the bath or shower with one of us, bedtime stories and her special night song and it is lights out by 6.30 - 7pm and mr k collects her from her room the next morning at around 7am.
Sienna was such an erratic napper for the first 12 months that my days were all over the place. I could never commit to being anywhere so I am really enjoying being able to plan to do something and actually do it. I spent hours in the car as she wouldn't transfer to her cot. I was also so knackered because she was feeding so much at night. For months she would sleep through the night and then I would have months of being up every 2.5 hours (and less!). Magically she has turned into a full night sleeper and goes down for her one nap without a peep***. A deeply empathetic "yay" is heard quite often around here.
*this of course doesn't include the parts of the day where miss s throws herself off the furniture, refuses to get off my hip or does such a poo-nami that I need to take a shower and complete change of clothes and any thought of going out of the house is way too difficult.
** we read about 20 books a day at the moment. I read somewhere (Happiest Toddler on the Block?) to 'feed the meter' which means every 30 mins to stop, get down to your child's level and read a book or do some sort of play for a couple of mins. Sienna loves it and it certainly buys me a lot of extra time when I am trying to complete a task.
*** I'm not completely sure but I think cutting out her just before bedtime breastfeed has enabled Sienna to dramatically improve her ability to self settle during the night. Actually I don't care if it is or isn't, I'm just thankful!
*edit - mr k just pointed out that I posted an image of his "plumbers". Is it bad that I 'm still not going to remove the image?
