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10 good things. (inspired by a little bird) :
1. I have managed to cross so many things off my to-do list, that right now I am sitting on the internet, sipping tea, without feelings of guilt or underlying stress. Ahhh :)
2. I can hear cheerful birds outside
3. The cup of tea I'm sipping was brought to me by my thoughtful man
4. My baby is sleeping (right now at least)
5. My Dad and his family stayed over last night, and the big Christmassy roast dinner we made was really yummy
6. The sun just came out after a rainy morning
7. That there are still so many of the little tiny fruit cakes, that my mother in law baked, still left over waiting for me to eat
8. While our back yard has been irreversibly changed, our front yard is looking nicer and nicer
9. I love Christmas time
10. There are presents :)
Merry Christmas. Hope you enjoy laughing with your families, and eating food in ways you shouldn't normally. .xx.
Today I found a feather from one of the three cute chubby tawny owls that have been hanging out in our gorgeously giant tree.
Last week Mr You discovered a nest cradling baby birds in our gorgeously giant tree.
Normally this would delight me. But right now it mortifies me. Why?
Because tomorrow we have to have our beloved gorgeous giant tree cut down. Sob.
One recent stormy night, a quarter of our tree tore off and fell to the ground. It completely crushed our fence, all but one of the other trees in our yard, and our brand new (built by a gardener only 3 days earlier) garden bed with lovely little stone wall, as it stretched across our yard and half way across the neighbours. Unlucky as this sounds, we were all very lucky that it fell where and when it did. A little this way or the other and it could have crushed our studio, or Millipede's bedroom, or had it been during the day it could have crushed the neighbours children.
We consulted lots of specialists, hoping desperately they would tell us all the tree needed was a little lop and it would be fine. But each and every one took one look at the tree and all said it is too dangerous to stay... at all.
This, the tree that (along with our studio) was the reason I fell in love with this house. The tree that everyone comments is beautiful. The tree that shades our yard in Summer, turns red in Autumn, becomes a sculpture in Winter, and feeds the bees in Spring. The tree that I had imagined we'd have Millipede's birthday parties underneath, hang his swing from, build a tree house in, and encourage him to climb.
The tree we buried Millipede's bellybutton stump under as a spiritual gesture on his 6 month birthday.
I have cried again and again that we have to lose our beautiful tree. That we are the ones who have to have to end it's long long life. That losing a tree isn't like when you lose a car, and are able to replace it with an even better one. That you can't put a tree out to pasture, letting it live out the rest of its days in a lovely field somewhere.
I really am in agony thinking about it. I don't think I can be here when it happens. I'm sure I will hear it moan and weep. How do you say goodbye to something so proud?
One of Santa's elves has let me in on a little secret...
Santa is bringing Millipede THIS for Christmas!!!
Camilla Engman cot sheet.
A bit of a splurge really, but one that will certainly help to ease my pain of having to get up to the little one with the shouty-mouth 5 times a night. How thoughtful of Santa! ;D
Screen Print by VWorkshop on Etsy.
YIKES, I really have dropped off the face of the internet haven't I? I have so so many months of Millipede catch-ups to do, and months and months of general life news to. But right now I am tired.
So so so so very tired.
Millipede has reached a plethora of "stages" seemingly simultaneously; teething, crawling, separation anxiety, and an apparent 9 month sleep regression stage. At least I'm using all those as reasoning for his horrendous nights at the moment. And when I say horrendous I mean I can no longer form whole words, let alone sentences.
Luckily during the daytime he is the cutest, most gorgeous, adorable thing on the face of the planet. It's a survival mechanism. A very very clever one ;)
But check this for a *can't think of a good word, insert one here, with your own well functioning brains*... during the night he will wake if my clothing brushes softly against a wall, and just every hour anyway, but today he slept through the smoke alarm going off right outside his bedroom door! TWICE!!!!!!!
The strangest thing just happened to me.
A little backstory first though...
People would describe Mr You as a collected, calm, generally co-ordinated "got it together" kind of guy. Though sometimes, once in a very very blue moon, something, well, strange happens.
The first time it happened was waaaay back in the very beginning. We had been good friends at uni for a year and a half before we became a couple. I count the first time we kissed as when we crossed over into couple-dom, and it was during this first night...
...I was working on a Photoshop piece for uni, way back before Photoshop even had layers (yes folks, I'm getting a little long in the tooth). Mr You had his own computer at home at the time, and being skilled and generous as he was, he invited me to come over to borrow his computer to finish off my work.
It was during this evening (before the kissing started) that the first "strange event" occurred.
I was sitting at his computer, he was crossing the room towards me, he said something I swiveled in the office chair to face him as he spoke, he tripped on the corner of the rug and head-butted me with his big noggen on his way down. I broke his fall and was almost concussed in the process.
I tried really hard to not cry infront of him, he blushed bright crimson, and after the shock and awe of it all wore off we laughed, hard! We still laugh at that.
Somehow we ended up kissing that night. Perhaps he thought he needed to give me a concussion for that to occur?
Flash forward another year... Now we're a couple. I'm hanging out with him in his funny little uni-student-share-house-bedroom, it's morning and we're getting ready to go out for the day. He pops the top off his deodorant bottle, flips the bottle high in the air intending for it to spin, him catch it, and then apply it to his manly-pits all in one smooth impressive move. What actually happened was as he flipped it high in the air he lost control, it spun and hit me square in the head. Again, pain, but eventually, and to this day, many tears of laughter!
Getting the pattern here?
So just now, baby is finally having a day sleep (HALAY-JULIA), I'm sitting here quietly at the kitchen table replying to emails, Mr You comes in from his office an we have a quiet whispered chat as he makes himself a cup of tea. All seems safe and well, right? Wrong!
What happens next is the single strangest thing, I'm still baffled and laughing...
He comes up behind me and gives me a little kiss on the back of my neck, goes picks up his full cup of tea, pauses, walks back towards me purposefully, is half way through saying "hang on", then POURS THE CUP OF TEA DOWN MY BACK!!!!
I can only assume the rest of his sentence was going to be "Hang on, you'd do well to taste more tea-like".
I'm in tears of laughter typing this now. I still can not explain to you WHY this happened, or what his original intention was. All I know is that one minute I was safe, the next I'M COVERED FROM EARHOLE TO BUM-CRACK IN HOT TEA!!!
We both yelped, jumped, queried, exclaimed, wiped and laughed... all in hushed don't-wake-the-baby tones.
Thankfully Mr You drinks his tea very milky or I could have suffered a nasty scold and be left trying to explain the whole soggy incident to Family Protection.
Oi, if I was more on top of that illusive notion that is time, I would have told you all about the grand opening of a gorgeous new shop who will be selling my wares.
Little Papercup is a new shop/gallery space, run by the incredible illustrator that is Jo Dyer. I was tickled pink when she invited me to be involved.
Anyhoo, the shop opened just yesterday, and now it's alive and kickin'!!!
If you're in or near Newcastle, stop in for a cuppa one crafternoon!
Shop 18/19 Market Square Terrace Level, Hunter Street Mall, Newcastle, Australia 2300.
Hours: Tues - Fri, 11:00am to 5:00pm. And Sat, 10:00am to 2:00pm.
If you're not near by, you can always be facebook friends anyway :)
I've returned from our month away, (we've been in Sydney) all keen and eager to get back onboard the home renovation train. We don't really have the skills, time, or money to do anything major at the moment, so I'm directing my ambitions to smaller corners.
Our front door has bad yellow 1970's glass panels in it, but it's otherwise a pretty nice door. So I'm thinking of replacing the 6 yellow glass panels. Mr You was thinking of normal clear frosted glass. I, on the other hand, am thinking colours. Mr You said I'd need to sell the idea to him, so here goes...
Image sources: Historic House Parts, Wallpaper for Windows, DIY Designs, Mama's Happy, and ezl.com. Thank-you.
I love the colour blue, but I'm putting my foot down. Enough already!
Trying to dress a baby boy I've come to learn how uninspired baby clothing can be. I mean practically everything is pale blue (despite all the amazing shades blue has to offer), and for a boy it's a choice of stripes or traffic (cars, trucks, planes, trains...), it's like a smoggy old peak hour out there!
What about red, grey, green, orange, purple, yellow, brown, maroon, aqua? Or even some variations of blue?
So this article on Etsy really caught my attention...
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As reported by Jeanne Maglaty for Smithsonian:
In June 1918, an article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department advised, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Through the following decades, several department stores, including Filene's, Halle's and Marshall Field, recommended that boys be dressed in pink.
Maglaty describes the turning point as the women's liberation movement in the mid-1960s. Young women gravitated toward gender neutral clothing to rebel against the subservient role of women dictated by society. But by the mid-1980s, gendered clothing returned in a big way...
..."All of a sudden it wasn’t just a blue overall; it was a blue overall with a teddy bear holding a football."
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Fascinating!
(Remind me to do a show-and-tell of all the teddy bear reassignment surgeries I've done too).
To be honest, the challenge of finding clothes for Millipede that are a little more unique is kind of thrilling me at the moment. So when friends gifted us these I was nearly beside myself!
Alpaca jumper sent from Bolivia from friends currently traveling around the world. Apparently made by a woman who's been doing it for over 20 years.
And these gorgeous pants; "coffee bean" fabric hand printed, and pants designed and handmade by my friend who runs Hyde Clothing.
This month things got easier. Life with Millipede became all sorts of fun.
Now he's entertainable! We've always read books and sung him songs, but now he smiles to let you know he's enjoying it. I took him shopping for a new toy, waving a selection in front of him one by one, and there was a clear winner (a suspicious looking stick-shaped red elephant, we like to call Saveloy), he selected it by himself, with nothing more than a giant smile.
I marvel that life with Millipede has changed; as a newborn his default setting was crying (to be fed, sleep, pain), but suddenly it has shifted so dramatically that his default setting (for want of a better phrase) is smiley. And it's made a huge difference. Now we know he's having fun too!
That's not all that's changed. For some ungodknown reason I've started referring to myself in the third person as "mummy". Why does this happen?!
I sing everything as though I'm in a musical. We have songs for everything; walking around the house, getting dressed, his beautiful face, his nicknames, even pushing poo's through!!!
And when I'm not narrating our day through song, I find myself singing adult songs with the word 'baby' in them.
It's a strange and wonderful life, this life with our boy...
Our boy who receives compliments about his blue eyes, and who's eyelashes are often likened to Mr Snuffleupagus's.
Our boy who talks and talks. Obviously he doesn't understand language yet, thinking when we're speaking to each other it's merely a sequence of random sounds rather than words. And in this understanding he joins in with great gusto. When we return home from a day out he "retells" his day to Mr You with such conviction.
He has started repeating sounds, saying what sounds like "How good", to which we have many replies; very good thanks, super, not so good right now... and I overheard Mr You reply "over the moon" the other day. :)
He drools alot, spends much of his day battling between grabbing at his knees and feet (both new discoveries), or stuffing his whole fists in his mouth. He pokes his tongue out a little when concentrating, and makes a quiet num-num-num noise, like a little engine, when he's feeding.
MAN, we though he was cute before, but now... well quite frankly the cuteness is rediculous!
And of all his expressions, we often wonder if it's bad that the one we find cutest, the one that cracks us up and makes us melt the most is this one:
The one with the big bottom lip, that threatens imminent tears.
But perhaps my favourite thing about this month is that when I pick you up now, you wrap your little arms around me.
[Note: Millipede will be four months tomorrow, I didn't get around to doing a post for three months, but I keep notes as the month goes by in hope. This is what I had for month 3. Must have been feeling reeeeeaaaaally good. You'll see what I mean, if you can see past all the syrupiness that is ;) ].
- I never used to be into babies. Not a baby kind of girl. But now... well now I'm a total convert. I see a baby and I almost want to squeal.
- I was chatting to Millipede, telling him this time last year he wasn't part of us yet, and I actually got a bit teary thinking of life with him not in it.
- When I was pregnant, my biggest wonder was who it was living down there inside me. If I knew it was Millipede I know I would have been so much more excited!
- Where do babies come from? I think, before they are born, they are the light that makes the stars shine. And there they wait, twinkling away until their parents (and conditions) are ready for them. Some stars are much further away, and their journey takes much longer to arrive than others. (This is the type of thought that usually marks the conception of an illustration. But alas, time is no longer all mine to do as I please).
See what I mean?
Baby convert.
I'VE GOT IT BAD!
Terrible even....
[I apologise to everyone reading my blog these days, hoping to see illustrations, or even read something of a different topic. Unfortunately, or perhaps it's to be expected, but right now I am doing nothing I can report about that does not revolve around the baby. I had NO intention of this space becoming a "mummy blog", but I DO want to document all I can for myself and for Millipede. One day I hope to be able to talk about other things again. In the meantime I'm trying not to miss a single second.]
Yesterday Mr You and I celebrated fifteen years together.
It was a chilly Winters night, and we reminisced escaping the cold on a tropical North Queensland holiday for our 5th anniversary. Then for our 10th we embraced the cold with a weekend away up the frosty Blue Mountains.
This year we were a little more restrained. We went out for our first dinner since having Millipede, and he was a champ, slept through the entire thing! I don't think he even realised he'd left the house. When we got up to leave at the end of our lovely meal, patrons around us exclaimed " Oh my gosh, there's a baby. I didn't even realise he was there." Heee.
Then to add to our pride, our little Millipede gave us a sleep in! 8 o'clock!!!! 8 o'clock PEOPLE!!!! That's 3 whole hours more than usual. B-lissful.
And of course, back to the man of this moment; Mr You. We love you :)
And my gift to him, to the man who loves wood so much he expressed it at our wedding...
This!
Happy indeed...
A little over an hour ago, whilst I was selecting a shopping trolley and assessing if Millipede had it in him to make it around the supermarket without losing it half way, I was given a bunch of flowers by a complete stranger!
A kind-faced woman approached me, and asked if she could give me the flowers she was holding.
I said yes.
She said, "Good, I would like you to have them."
I asked what the occasion was.
She told me she is doing a ten week course called Making Australia Happy, in which, among many other things, her homework is to give a gift to a complete stranger.
We chatted some more, I smiled and accepted the flowers, she complemented my baby, I gave her a hug.
Millipede smiled and did quiet little shrieks of joy throughout the whole time we shopped. Both of us swimming in the good vibes.
N i c e D a y.
(FORWARD: This post is from two and a half weeks ago, only now have I have a chance to finish posting it.)
Dearest Millipede,
This month you have really come alive. You are alert, strong and still growing at a surprising pace. You've started flashing the most infectious smiles which melt us, and now you even chat along with your cute new words; "ah-goo" and "ah-woooo" (just like a little wolf).
Your eyes are still that amazing dark blue colour, but this month you've started losing your thick dark hair. You now have anti-sideburns, but still lots of hair up on top, and, as a little boy at the shops pointed out the other day, "it all sticks up".
This month we worked out what was making your tummy so sore, so now you don't hurt so much. Phew! And you are still a very good eater, which was an excellent help during my two cases of mastitis this month. Not nice for either of us, but together we all pulled through.
You've started developing a love for things. You love books, we read them together every morning. I've told people this before, and they thought I was joking, but when Grandma came to stay the other week, she noticed the same thing. You do indeed love books.
You also love "Eyesy", your ChunkyChooky rattle. Eyesy gets a smile every time you have your nappy changed. He has such lovely big friendly contrasting eyes, and this very morning I witnessed you grab Eyesy for the very first time. Grabbing is a brand new skill!
Although, Eyesy needs to go into hiding during the night, otherwise if you catch so much as a glance at him, you're instantly wide awake and chatting away to him as though you've both got so much to catch up on.
You love when your Daddy plays guitar for you. Mostly though, you love pictures. You love love love looking at all the pictures on the walls. From a very young age you would crane your head around after a feed to fixate on the wall of pictures. Now you've started noticing the pictures in all the other rooms too, and as we walk through you flick your head about trying to see them all.
Today you were in a cranky mood, nothing was soothing you. So we packed you up and took you off to an annual art show in town. Pictures!!! More than you'd ever seen before! You became calm and mesmerized the whole time. We hope you hold onto this art-love as you grow. :)
 We've noticed you also enjoy being outside more than inside. You seem to get bored and cooped up if we spend all day inside at home. I find this so strange and curious for someone so new to the world.
You've grown to love bath time too; kicking your little legs like a frog, and tipping your head back into the water, swishing it from side to side making your soft hair float about like river moss. We can't wait to take you swimming.
Mind you, you hate being dressed, which un-does all the relaxation of bath time. You also have evolved to hate sleeping during the day. You outright refuse to do it, despite how tired and cranky you get. This has been a bit of a shock for me, and I struggle to find things to do with you all day long. Thankfully you are a champion night time sleeper, for which we are enormously grateful.
Keep it up little guy.
All my love .xx.
Mummy bloggers?... Right now can hardly believe there is such a thing.
Anyone who has a baby and manages to find any spare moments to blog (let alone craft), is an absolute magician in my opinion!
HO-LY!
One of the "advantages" of this new lifestyle is catching up on daytime TV (and midnight TV come to think of it) as I'm feeding baby Millipede.
A bonus last week was catching an episode of Oprah that featured none other than the amazing NieNie*. Actually I only caught the last 10 minutes, and have been searching online for it to see the rest, to no avail. (It actually aired in the US back in 2009, hence the title of this post).
There is THIS bit though...
SO great, especially for me right now; a fledgling mother.
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* NieNie, for those of you who don't know, is Stephanie Nielson. A great blogger, plane crash survivor, and inspiring mother.
The first time we took our Millipede into the backyard we were greeted by an adorable inquisitive koala. I've only ever seen a koala in the wild once before. That was about a year ago in a park, a long way away, very high in a tree. So THIS was very special.
The koala seemed as interested in us as we were of it. Then after some time of checking each other out, it lost interest, climbed down the tree, leaped onto another one, and was gone.
We couldn't have asked for a better introduction to the joys of the back yard.
A month! A whole month already... actually it's almost 5 weeks since we had our little boy. As days and nights make way for a new unit of time; 3 hourly blocks, weeks blend together, and in this new pattern, time has flown by.
In this short time our little boy has already grown so much, both in weight, length, and cheek plumpity (today they looked so big I swear they were resting on his shoulders). He is doing brilliantly. I spend lots of time gazing into his tiny little face, and touching his tiny little arms and legs and wishing for him to never grow. Part of me wants him to stay this tiny and cute forever more (the way his little arms only just reach to the top of his head when he stretches just kills me). But I know as each stage makes way for the next, I will feel the same way; partly wanting to freeze time, and partly dying to see what comes next.
For the time being I am loving his smallness. Alarmingly, when he's in his most docile, malleable state (just after a feed), I have an overwhelming urge to stick his floppy little body in a pumpkin, Anne Geddes style. I KNOW! I did warn you it was alarming! Before you know it I'll be displaying other worrying "mum" traits. They don't warn you about that in the books. Good God!
Despite having a short-list, it took us four days to decide on a name for him. In the meantime I found myself referring to him as various food types; my happy little vegemite, spud, happy potato, my little muffin man, egg with legs, and sleepy prawn (because of the adorable way his legs curled back up tight against his body when he got sleepy). Now he has a real name that doesn't make you hungry. And of course he needs a blog name too... I'd like to introduce you to our little Millipede.
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What else can I tell you? He has stacks of dark downy hair, very dark blue eyes, and makes a continual array of strange and curious noises.
Thank-you all for your kind comments of congratulations. I have, for the past month, been trying to get a chance to blog, I guess posts will be rare for a while until we adopt some sort of pattern here. But I do plan to continue... keep an eye out for atmospheric photos of a naked docile baby resting in a bowl of exotic fruits ;)
Boy!
Hello, Mr You here hacking into the pretty flossy matrix to let you all know our baby has arrived. Early and slowly but healthy.
He is pretty much the best thing we have ever seen.
Flossy is recovering and training well in hospital. She'll be home in a few days - not sure she will be back to this blog in a hurry as she is much in love [and servitude ;)] with jr.
So a massive high five to you all with a cross stitched felted pastry cigar on the side.
Recently I have been showered in generosity. Pure, sweet, kind, selfless, thoughtful generosity...
Penny from Pocket Carnival sent me (for our soon-to-be-new-baby) one of her adorable softies:
Lauren Carney sent me an ORIGINAL drawing:
And at the Finders Keepers markets I made some great cards swaps with Courtney Brims and Kareena Zerefos. Plus I managed to swap one of my prints for this lovely pair of birds by Beth-Emily:
Now we have our bedrooms painted, and all this gorgeous new stuff in them, it's all starting to feel really really homey. Thanks, so so very much. :)
At the end of this week I will be closing my shop down for a little while, in an effort to slow down and mentally prepare myself. Hoping to rest a bit too before the whole concept of rest and long sleeps become a thing of the past.
But as a send off, for these next few days I have stocked my shop to the brim with lots of brand new goodness. Get in quick while I'm still able to fit behind the steering wheel of the car and waddle my way to the post office. (I'm hoping to re-open the shop in a few months.)
There are wombat prints, pillowcases, cushion covers, and also 2 designs of whale library bags.
So go have a peep-see!
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