The Here and Now

I've learned over these last few weeks that, mysteriously, having a child in 'school' (Kindy) all of a sudden makes great demands on your time. I didn't think it was quite this full-on but oddly enough, having to get Emma to Kindy (all of five times a fortnight) has made life so much busier. It's an interesting phenomenon. It's helpful to me though, you see, I LOVE sleep (Yes, I too think of Proverbs 6 when I say that "How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.") But, I digress (and repent!) so getting up early enough to keep ahead of these two kidlets has been the next learning curve for me! But the children seem to be loving this next stage of our lives.

I have certainly enjoyed Williams company without his sister around. (Is that OK to say in the public forum?!)

Today we did some gardening and afterwards had a moment to recuperate on the kitchen floor. I asked him to smile and in typical fashion he rather refused for a time. He absolutely LOVES to kid around.

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 There's a shopping centre near Kindy which provides (for a ridiculous fee) the hire of these shopping trolleys. He adores having time to 'drive' the car. I can't successfully have the children BOTH in the presence of the car trolley, as you can imagine. Thankfully, although William is learning to speak amazingly well, he can't quite tell Emma that he used the car trolley without her. Give it a few weeks though and our secrets will be all exposed to her!

The big girl turned 4 in February. She had a "Playschool" themed party, hence the Jemima cake. My friend, Delia was a wonderful help in making this cake - I had my wrist in a brace (long story, still to be fully experienced in order to be told) so I needed her to do lots of icing-rolling for me! In the end the cake looked wonderful and we had a very pleased 4 year old. Despite the rain that was threatening our afternoon at the park!

We went to Emma's favourite 'Piggy Restaurant" for dinner. It was fun to celebrate her birthday as a family. We are so blessed.

These two love watering the flowers we planted when Granny G visited. Emma is able to turn the tap on, but she made a grave mistake a week ago when she allowed her little brother to hold the other end . . . . incase you're confused, it resulted in her running away screaming "NO WILLIAM, DON'T WATER ME!" Hee Hee.

So here's something interesting . . . . my son . . .on a motorbike . . .

 . . .that belongs to his father.

My neighbour said "what did you let him do!?!?!?" to which I replied "I didn't!" My official line is that I said "I'd rather you didn't but it's your choice"

All that to say, he now rides a motorbike. He looks very intimidating in his bikie gear! But he loves it.

MY TURN!

"My turn!" or "William's turn!" must be the two most common phrases out of our 2 year olds mouth lately. He clicks the little seat belt on his booster chair at the dinner table, he takes his own shoes off, gets into the bathtub by himself, rides his scooter and his bike, vacuums his own bedroom . . .all by himself. Mostly, I'm hovering over him cringing and waiting to see how much blood may result from his "I-can-do-it-by-myself" mentality. We had one trip to the Dr after bath time as he slipped and cut his lip. Thankfully it was superficial (side note, the face is overloaded with blood vessels so there's always more blood when kids cut their faces even with only a little damage . . .good to know!)

He is much more independent than his big sister, but he is also very giving with cuddles and willingly allows me to baby him a fair bit. Which I am totally fine with - especially if he's our last child (we still haven't decided).

Emma pulled out her violin the other day and of course in a heart beat, buddy began his 'my turn' chant and this is the result . . .

 LOVING his turn on the violin

 And of course the little Miss can't be ignored. She cracks me up.

Too Much Too Soon!

Well, here it is. Emma's first day of Kindy was on Thursday. I can't believe she's old enough to not be at home with me all the time now!

She was a natural! It wasn't a full day and I was allowed to stay as long as needed to settle her in (which was actually much shorter than I had hoped for).

She painted a stunning picture which now has pride of place on our bedroom wall.

It was an extremely stressful day . . .for me. I cried. She didn't.

Thankfully we have her enrolled in a Christian Kindergarten and I asked the teacher (before we enrolled her) how does Christianity influence their school and her example was that a child had asked where rainbows come from and she taught through the story of Noah.

I'm pleased that she has that influence around her, but honestly I'm still slightly terrified that she is growing up so quickly. . .

Ages and Stages

I noticed with Emma at the age of 2 that she went through a stage of saying "SMILE" when we had a camera in her face (which of course was, and still is, frequent).

Well, our next two year old does exactly the same thing. And as a boy he has a shorter attention span than that of a newt.

We were at a playground and I found a lovely angle to grab a few shots with my camera phone.

I attempted to catch a sweet photo of the boy smiling as he was climbing ritualistically on the playground equipment, up the ladder down the other ladder (much like a Tasmanian Devil as it happens...)

 Below you can see he is forming an "s" of the word 'smile'

Again, word forming. It looks like an 'o' but with an Aussie accent it is in fact the "i" in 'smile' (pronounced "smoile")

Of course the almost four year old knows exactly how it's done.

I think she was rather envious when she asked me "why are there so many photos of William?" To which I quickly responded "you are so clever that you know how to sit nicely for a photo, but he's still learning...blah blah blah." I think she bought it though.

Gardening with Granny G

Emma and William's South African Granny G is visiting us. We went away to the beach for a few days which was lovely (pics to come).

Here's a happy snap of some fun gardening Granny G and Emma have done together. (Now I feel the pressure to keep the plants alive after she leaves!!)

A Christmas Story

The more I tell and re-tell my kids about Christ and that He came to die the more I've found my heart joyful over the reality of God's plan of salvation.

I hope this video works for you...it's fabulous.

The Christmas Story from St Paul's on Vimeo.

A Birthday Greeting

It was my sweet sister-in-law's birthday recently and I thought I'd send her a quick, cute photo to wish her well . . .so we sent her this:

But these cute photos don't necessarily come easily...

(he's saying "SMI-ILE")

nonetheless, we wished her well . . .

Summer Rain

Some days I grab my phone just in time to snap a picture. Sometimes it works out well. Like today.

We had a sudden downpour and I asked Emma if she wanted to put on her rain coat and go out into the rain - I was surprised that she was so keen...until I realised she wanted to 'jump in muddy puddles' just like her ham heroine, Peppa Pig (a kids TV show . . .I advise you to google it, it's very funny).

It's Here!

You see this gorgeous boy?

This handsome, adventurous, naughty, cute, sweet, funny, mischievous, delightful, busy little boy?

 Well....he's two. Today.

And we could not be more pleased to have him in our lives.

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate." ~ Psalm 127:3-5

Happy Birthday William boy!

1

ONE..... (I'm excited!!)

2

~TWO....~

3

THREE...

4

FOUR...

Beauty and the Beast

(No, his hair hasn't grown back - this was taken in September)

Mornings in my room

Our kids come into our bed for snuggles in the morning. I love it.

Face Painting

Do you remember the chalkboard I posted about? Well, we use it for painting. Painting, is a supervised activity. I obviously wasn't present-of-mind when he painted on his face, but I was (or at least I thought I was) when he tried to eat the paint brush. Ahhhh, bless him. *sigh*

He said "Yuck" after eating it....

I claim that as a small positive that came out of this scenario.

Walking Up A Hill

We went to a friends birthday party today and at one point I captured this.

We have a Chalk Board!

It seems this was a brilliant purchase. (I was encouraged by a friend who said her 10 year old still uses theirs to teach the younger sibling when they play "teacher, teacher")

Given, these pictures were taken on the first day of purchase but the children use it almost every day.

 And I bought them painting smocks too. Being such a novelty at this point I haven't had any issues getting them to wear them while they paint.

 My little artists in the making!

Emma has been learning to read (slowly! but it's begun) and I sometimes play 'teacher, teacher' with her, writing words on the board for her to sound out. I wrote "see" the other day and she said it immediately and laughed saying "that's easy! It's 'see'!" I was impressed and happy.

Caught this on Twitter

I saw this reposted on Twitter today and was tremendously encouraged about being a mother. It's strange that being a Christian mother is hard enough - comparing ourselves to the next door neighbour who works full time and has children but it's almost beyond sense to compare ourselves to each other - something I'm completely guilty of - when we should be merely loving God, loving our husbands and loving our children.

This article is by Stephen Altrogge who is a pastor of a Sovereign Grace Church in the USA.

Here's the link:
http://www.theblazingcenter.com/2012/10/dear-moms-jesus-wants-you-to-chill-out.html

And here's the actual article (if you couldn't be bothered to click):

FACT: If your children can’t read by age four there is a 95% chance they will end up homeless and on drugs.

FACT: If your children eat any processed food there is an 85% chance they will contract a rare, most likely incurable disease, by age 12.

FACT: If  you’re not up at dawn reading the Bible to your children, you are most likely a pagan caught in the clutches of witchcraft.

FACT: If your children watch more than 10 minutes of television a day there is 75% chance they will end up in a violent street gang by age 17.

Obviously, the “facts” listed above are not true (at least, I don’t think they are). But, I’ve noticed that the Internet has made it much easier for people, and moms in particular, to compare themselves to each other. Now, just to be clear, this is not a post against “mom blogs”, or whatever they’re called. If you write a mom blog, that’s cool with me. This is a post to encourage the moms who tend to freak out and feel like complete failures when they read the mom blogs and mom Facebook posts.

Moms, Jesus wants you to chill out about being a mom. You don’t have to make homemade bread to be a faithful mom. You don’t have to sew you children’s clothing to be a faithful mom. You don’t have to coupon, buy all organic produce, keep a journal, scrapbook, plant a garden, or make your own babyfood to be a faithful mom. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but they’re also not in your biblical job description.

Your job description is as follows:

• Love God. This simply means finding some time during the day to meet with the Lord. It doesn’t have to be before all the kids are awake. It doesn’t have to be in the pre-dawn stillness. Your job is to love God. How you make that happen can look a million different ways.

• Love your husband (unless you’re a single mom, of course). Your second job is to love and serve your husband. Husbands are to do the same for their wives, but that’s for a different post. If your husband really likes homemade bread, maybe you could make it for him. But don’t make homemade bread simply because you see other moms posting pictures of their homemade bread on Facebook.

• Love your kids. Your calling as mom is to love your kids and teach them to follow the Lord. They don’t need to know Latin by age six. If they do, more power to you. But that’s a bonus, not part of the job description. Your job is simply to love your kids with all your exhausted heart, and to teach them to love Jesus. That’s a high calling. Don’t go throwing in other, extraneous things to make your life more difficult. If you want to teach your kids to sew, great. But don’t be crushed by guilt if your kids aren’t making stylish blazers by the age of 10.

Moms, Jesus want you to rest in him. He wants you to chill out. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Don’t compare yourself to other moms. Don’t try to be something God hasn’t called you to be. If the mom blogs are making you feel guilty, stop reading them. Be faithful to what he has truly called you to do, and know that he is pleased with you. When your kids are resting, don’t feel guilty about watching an episode of “Lost”, or whatever your favorite show may happen to be.

Love God, love your husband, love your kids. Keep it simple and chill out.

On not keeping up...

Life is marching ahead too swiftly! I suppose it's that 'mother-of-young-children' stage I've heard of for so many years. I remember sitting in conferences and hearing the speaker say "of course this may not happen if you have young children" or "this may look a little different if you're a mother of young children" and I always thought to myself (ignorantly and ungraciously!) 'what a cop-out'. Of course now that I am a mother of young children I have been swiftly set in my place. Here are some examples of my current life circumstances:
- Humming small people tunes. I said "I have Humpty Dumpty in my head" at the dinner table last night to which Emma responded with a laugh, saying "Mummy, I have a spider on my head". I tried to explain but from what I remember it simply ended in me telling her to keep eating dinner without my laughing too much.
- Limited adult interaction. So much so that I find myself chatting to any moving adult in a shopping centre/shopping centre car park/shop/playground...and yes, even the postie - we have a female postie with a Russian accent. I saw my neighbour the other day, she was merely out to check her mailbox and we found ourselves talking for a good while, with both of us repeating "I'm sure that my boy is finished with his nap and wants to get out of his cot now" followed by further talk on educational standards in our local kindergartens.
- Not sleeping through the night even though my children are no longer babies. William coughs, wakes, cries or loses his dummy/paci, wakes, cries, or bangs his head, wakes, cries and while settling him I hear Emma stirring and waking from a bad dream - in the last bad dream she cut her thumb...?
- Lack of sleep resulting in tiredness.
- Tiredness resulting in the 'tired-mum' look. Caught an unflattering glimpse of myself today when I pulled out my phone camera and it was pointing to me instead of the kids - quite the fright I did receive!
The culmination of it all is that I don't really blog that much . . . (and have what feels like frustratingly limited brain capacity). But I suppose that's a good thing (the not blogging, not the small brain thing) - if I did my children may not have as many cuddles in their lives.

Picture time!

William is now in a big boy bed.

He has fallen out once but I happened to be walking in to check on him and caught him.

He did however wake up with a bruise across his eyelid yesterday morning. It explained what went 'bump' in the night.

 Our big girl is learning to READ! She loves it, I love it and it makes for some sweet Emma/Mummy time each day. Her word list currently includes: man, can, pan, ran, bee, see, the, Sam, bat, cat, hat, mat and possibly more but I'm getting tired.

 This was taken on Father's Day in September we took an afternoon walk after church.

 Swimming lessons. She has had 4 lessons and her hair has been fully wet ONCE.... but she is becoming braver and putting her face in more which is promising. 

 We have a fun walk through the "jungle" on the way home and see all sorts of imaginary animals. It's really a lot of fun.

(Will still smiles with his eyes closed)

 Speaking of Will - he got a tat! well, let's just say daddy pulled out the permanent marker at dinner one night...and then had the privilege of bathing our children all by himself. ha.

Making masks one afternoon. They didn't last long, most of our crafts don't unless I hide them and really there's no point in that because they're often made so poorly that they'll fall apart on their own anyway, so I take  pictures. I think subliminally I take the photos to make myself feel like I'm a good mum because the paper crafts, as helpfully time consuming as they are, make a big mess to clean up and inevitably end in one child crying at a destroyed work of art. But at the end of the hour I know somewhere in there we had FUN. At the same time. I have a good life.