Welcome Back to Zombieland March 1, 2012
Posted by graciek in Evie, Sol, WTF?.add a comment
Urggh. Sol’s sleeping patterns are totally non-existent. Before we holidayed in England over Christmas my lovely little baby boy was sleeping through the night (7.30pm-5am) and it was bliss!! Since we came back he’s been all over the place with night feeds and it’s frankly getting exhausting. Each day I feel like a total zombie and some days I feel I can barely function (other than ensuring neither kid is killing themself I can’t seem to get anything done). Last night was particularly bad, it went something like this…
23:00 Go to sleep
23:45 Hungry Hippo wakes up for feed
01:00 Little Miss Wriggly, Boney Elbows appears in my bed
01:30 Hungry Hippo wakes for more food
02:00 Evie starts snoring and is cue for me to return her to her own bed
02:30 Just about starting to drift off into deep sleep when the damn water hammer starts making a racket… why on earth is the autowatering system turning on in the garden. Fumble about in the dark, in the driving rain, in my PJs trying to flick spigot to the off position
03:00 Finally back to sleep
05:00 Hungry Hippo AGAIN!!
06:30 Evie awake – GAME OVER FOR SLEEP
Looking at all that it makes me wonder when’s it actually MY turn to sleep 
boo hoo
Out of the Mouths of Babes February 15, 2012
Posted by graciek in Evie.add a comment
Tonight we had our first alfresco BBQ dinner in the garden (boy, Sydney’s summer this year has been a total washout). As we sat down to eat and serving onto plates a little voice pipes up “let’s say prayers”! I was rather surprised as we usually have to tell her to wait and be quiet for grace. Our little Evie again surprised us with her abilities. She said she would say grace (first time ever)! She said with no prompting “father, thank you for our yummy dinner… and thank you for our lovely things. amen!”. Oh I was so proud, she a. can make up her own prayers and b. say it so sincerely and mean it. I was so excited for her, and of course my parents are here on hols so they were proud as punch too. They didn’t realise she’d never said grace herself before and asked her where she learnt it. She replied “Jesus gave me a gift”. Wow I was totally taken aback! How does a 3 year old know about gifts of intercession???? Jesus, thank you for our gift of Evie and we rejoice that she is beginning her own relationship with you. Thank you for her gifts and help us to guide her in your plans for her.
My Wonderful Girl is Growing Up February 6, 2012
Posted by graciek in Evie.add a comment
My ball of energy, 3.5yr old daughter, Evie is growing up so fast. She starts preschool on Thursday. She’s ever so excited about all the fun stuff she’ll be doing. I have told her she must do 4 things….
1. Be polite and courteous to others (teachers and other kids)
2. Listen to the teacher
3. Try your best
4. Have FUN!!!
I’m positive that she will have a ball! She will be into everything, and as evidenced at the induction morning, she’ll be trying to answer all teacher’s questions. I know every parent believes their child to be advanced, but I really do think she is academically ahead (and I’m no Tiger Mum, believe me… when other mums say their kid only watches 1/2 hr of TV a day, I think to myself, mine has watched that and we haven’t even had breakfast yet). She’s got a massive vocabulary and is verbose about everything (trying to get a word in edgeways is hard), she knows her alphabet (capitals and small letters), she knows numbers up to 20 (and a few sporadic ones over that), she can spell and write her own name, she knows colours, she can do sums with numbers up to 5, and she can read a few words. Naturally I am proud of her achievements, and amazed that she has absorbed everything she sees and does like a sponge. It almost seems unbounding her learning. As a new chapter of her life begins I wonder what amazing things she will surprise us with next 
Latest Library Books February 3, 2012
Posted by graciek in Books, Evie.add a comment
Gosh I’ve been forgetting to update my blog for so long! Here’s the latest list of books from the library. I do suspect that we may have borrowed one of then before as it seems so familiar (esp the hippo eatin cake, but then there are a whole series of those so maybe that’s why).
Scrummy! By Leigh Hodgkinson
The Wrong Book. By Nick Bland
We’re Off to Look for Aliens. By Colin McNaughton
There’s a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake. By Hazel Edwards
The Gruffalo’s Child. By Julia Donaldson
Creative Songwriting – 3 Year Old Freestylin’ ;) January 20, 2012
Posted by graciek in Evie, Music.add a comment
Our Evie is 3.5 and it seems nearly every day she does something clever I hadn’t expected. This last couple of days she’s been singing Marry You by Bruno Mars (it’s so damn catchy). Today she sat at the kitchen table, armed with her Disney Princess ruler and colouring books singing nonchalantly….
“it’s a beautiful day,
I’ve got nothing to do,
Hey baby,
I think I want to measure you.
Don’t say no no no no no,
Just say yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah,
I’m really gonna measure you!”
So funny. I love her little creative mind. Even when she’s not trying it’s funny!
Off to the Library Again October 17, 2011
Posted by graciek in Books, Evie.add a comment
Another 3 weeks have flown by (wow Sol is already 1 month old). We got these books from the library…
1. Muddled-Up Farm by Mike Dumbleton
2. Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman
3. Shoe Baby by Joyce Dunbar
4. Slinky Malinki’s Christmas Crackers by Lynley Dodd
5. Don’t Tell Lies, Lucy!” a cautionary tale by Phil Roxbee Cox
Latest Library Books September 6, 2011
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Evie’s latest selection of library books….
1. Parsley Rabbit’s Book about Books by Frances Watts & David Legge – this is a great book as it is about how to read books!! It also has lots of interactivity with all the flaps and things to lift
2. The Great Rescue Race by Raymond McGrath – a book about a little boy who has left his favourite toy on the bus and the adventures to return it to him
3. Jasper McFlea Will Not Eat His Tea by Lee Fox & Mitch Vane – I was hoping this would help us in our quest to get Evie to eat her dinners better… naughty Jasper won’t eat his meals and gets sick.
4. Wibbly Wobbly Street by Trudie Trewin & Cheryl Orsini – the town planners want to straighten out Wibbly Wobbly Street as it doesn’t conform (and neither do its inhabitants)
5. The Peace Book by Todd Parr – Evie thinks this is the Mummy Book (I think because it has the same illustrator). This book is very bright and eye catching, and also blissfully short for a quick bedtime story
Next Trip To Library August 17, 2011
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Time for another set of books for little miss Evie. Here’s what she picked this time.
1. Little Brothers Are by Beth Norling – Evie picked this one as she said Joey is her little brother.
2. Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan – A story about a bunny and a frog that are good friends who fall out, then make up again. It’s not really in sentences, but more rhyming onomatopoeia words.
3. Schnitzel von Krumm’s Basketwork by Lynley Dodd – Eagle eyed kids will remember Schnitzel von Krumm (with his very low tum), the daschund friend of Hairy Maclairy. This is his story, and what happens when he gets a new dog basket. It never ceases to amaze me just how many Hairy Maclairy/Slinky Malinky sequels there are – and how we love them in our house. The rhythm of the poetry is spot on and they are a joy to read.
4. Hey Hippopotamus, Do Babies Eat Cake Too? by Hazel Edwards – This must be a series of books about hippopotami (is that the correct plural?) that live on the roof and eat cake. This one is all about the new baby in the house.
5. The Deep End by Rebecca Patterson – Just what happens to the kids that can swim to the deep end? Written from the perspective of a beginner’s level swimmer. It’s funny to think that maybe there is a secret portal just hiding away for the best swimmers to find.
Who Pressed the Red Button? August 7, 2011
Posted by graciek in Evie, Musings.add a comment
I totally and utterly lost my rag this morning at Evie. I don’t know if it’s just her being trying and in her “3s” or whether it’s the pregnancy hormones, or being the size of a whale, or the throat infection and coughing every 20mins all night long…. but lately I have had an extremely short fuse.
Hubby went to church and left Evie at home with me. I didn’t go to church because I was coughing everywhere and if I passed it on to the rest of the congregation that’d prob be the final nail in their coffins!! On Friday afternoon/evening hubby was looking after Evie and he realised that if he let Evie into the spare bedroom she would sit and watch the TV in there…. aka he then just got on with whatever it was he was doing before whilst claiming Evie is OK. I fell asleep (finally) just before hubby went to church and he didn’t wake me. Cue 15 mins later… I wake up and can hear the TV on in the spare room. She’s not usually allowed to go in there as we have various bags and boxes of all sorts of stuff stored in there (and my hospital bag ready for when I go into labour in the next 4 weeks). I get up and everything… EVERYTHING has been emptied out all over the room. She has found a black ink pen from somewhere to tattoo everything in sight and also (bizarrely) a roll of sellotape which is sticking to everything too. I asked her numerous times to switch off the TV – her response is to empty out the bin in there, turn it upside down to reach the TV but then open and tip out a whole load more bags that were on the drawers!!! I went absolutely ape!!! I was so upset I had to put her in her bedroom and go cry in my own bedroom (not before noticing the nursery door is also open and that has been ransacked too). I’m so stressed I can feel my heart pounding away and my ears begin to ring!! It’s so hard sometimes to remember that even if she’s acting like a child – I have to remember to be the adult, when all I want to do is lie on the floor bawling having a tantrum too. In the end after having a little paddy/time out of my own I got up and tidied up. There’s nothing Evie hates more in the world than being ignored. So I tidied up all the things whilst ignoring her taunts from her bedroom. Finally when I’d finished tidying I went to her bedroom gate and she said sorry (rather than “no, you go to your bedroom” or “no more TV for you” – yes she is a proper little madam that gives you backchat).
Here’s a bit of helpful reading I’ve gleaned off the internet about 5 ways to handle parent anger. Reading it afterwards I can see that so many things are right. I’m more angry at myself for letting her get to me. I totally flipped out over somethings that were really quite small and weren’t hurting anyone. No-one has gained anything from the outburst but a bitter taste!! I think there’s probably 1 more way and that is to pray for God to help me to control my anger and learn to forgive quicker.
34 Week Scan (and library again) July 27, 2011
Posted by graciek in Books, Evie, Life in General, Pregnancy.add a comment
Had my 34 week scan today to check on growth and whether my Amniotic Fluid Index (AFI) has gone down. Last time at 30 weeks it was 24.6cm and before that at 26 weeks it was 26cm. This time all the growth and structures are again looking fine, but still have 24.5cm AFI. This is on the hospital’s borderline for polyhydramnios. It’s a little bit worrying as the fluid levels haven’t gone down, but thankfully at the same time they’ve not gone up either. With Evie pregnancy I had 21cm at 28 weeks, then it had gone down to 16cm at 32 weeks and no longer an issue. I hope at my next scan in 3 weeks time that the fluid will start to tail off – apparently 34 weeks is the peak of fluid.
Went to the library on the way back too. We got 5 books this time…
1. Too Busy Marco by Roz Chast
2. I Do Not Eat the Colour Green by Lynne Rickards
3. The Mummy Book by Todd Parr
4. Tell Me One Thin, Dad by Tom Pow
5. Except If by Jim Averbeck
