fifteen

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!

making australia happy

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.

two months

(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

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!

a bit behind the eight ball, but just as rewarding

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.

- - - - -

* NieNie, for those of you who don't know, is Stephanie Nielson. A great blogger, plane crash survivor, and inspiring mother.

welcome party

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.

one month

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.

<
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 ;)