March 2012

Isabella completed 'Jellyfish' level.

Fringe about to be cut.

And after. Beautiful Sammy!

Haircut for Josh too.

Hamish has started to cruise around and the playpen had to come out.

Wobbly steps with the help of Daddy.

March brought changes with it. Sammy decided to get a fringe which really suits her and looks beautiful! Josh likes his hair super short and wants to banish those curls. Hamish has begun to cruise around and we've had to lock him away in the playpen. Luckily he doesn't mind being in there and Isabella will sometimes sneak in there with him which means that I can get dinner ready without him in the kitchen.

Sammy and Josh eating while Bella and Hamish play .

Iron cleaner in my eye.

Harry Potter Exhibition at the Power House Museum.

Signe on the right back home in Denmark.

We've taken the kids out for treats and Hamish has had a few wobbly steps with the help of Daddy. All the kids have been having swimming lessons and Isabella has gone up a swimming level. She was so proud of herself and so were we! March saw me getting organised for going back to work and a period of nesting. It also saw me having to go to hospital when I got iron cleaner in my eye. My eye got a blister on it and I needed to have my eye flushed with saline at the hospital for an hour. Grateful that my eye was okay. A very sore and scary experience. Note to self: Don't wipe your hands on a cloth with iron cleaner on it and then wipe your eye!! We went and saw the 'Harry Potter' exhibition. Very cool!

Isabella and Tom at school.

Sore knees, elbows and head. Awww!

We decided to use an au pair and found a wonderful young girl called Signe and although she didn't quite match our dates we decided to go with her anyway. The beginning of a long distance Australian/Danish friendship.

Hamish in the playpen at Bella's school.

Tom and Isabella at the school disco.

Isabella and her friend at the disco.

Ballet class.

Isabella had many new experiences at school in March. She got to dress up and parade around the school with her best friend, Tom and go to her first school disco. She also got to find out about how the playground works and got knocked over by some big kids who were running and doing the wrong thing. Poor Isabella got knocked for six and managed to graze her knees, elbows and head. I got a telephone call to come and pick her up and we went home and had ice and cuddles. My poor baby. She started ballet this term and is unsure about whether she likes it or not yet. We were good parents and went along to the Kindergarten clean up at Isabella's school, on a weekend with the whole family. We took the playpen and let Hamish hang in there while we raked up leaves, cleaned drains and picked up sticks. It ended with a lovely BBQ and a chance to chat to other parents.

Our introduction to Au Pairs

Holidays are almost upon us and the entertaining will need to begin. So before I even start thinking about that I guess I need to look at what has happened over the last 4 months!!

I guess the first thing to see is the completion of the office into bedroom make-over. The kids are already discussing who is going to have the extra bedroom when our time of au pairs comes to an end! I think that Bella is keen to live downstairs in Sarah/Signe's room. We'll see...

Bella standing next to Sarah's bed.

Queen bed, chest of drawers, bedside tables, lamps, mirror.

A small desk, CD player and now a TV and DVD player.

The bedroom has a queen size bed, two bedside tables, new lamps (not in the photos), a chest of drawers, shelves (not photographed), a wardrobe (not photographed) a small desk, chair and lamp, a cd and dvd player and TV. I think it is quite warm and inviting and hopefully both Sarah and Signe have felt that it is 'home'. Signe did say that the bed was very comfortable which is a good thing!

We've had two au pairs, both lovely girls who have loved my family like their own. It's made life so much easier to deal with knowing that Hamish is happy and well looked after. What is an au pair and where on Earth do you find one you ask? Well we went to aupairworld and put up our own little profile and then began the searching. What a funny way to find an au pair, but what a rewarding experience it's been for our family!! The older two kids have both seen that young people can travel the world after finishing school and NOT settle down quickly and have babies. I hope that they learn a little about how the world works, learn to live with people that are from different cultures and have an understanding that we are not so different from each other. Hopefully there will be lots of other lessons that they learn along the way.

Playing playdoh with Bella.

First we had Sarah stay for four months. A pretty young girl from Canada who taught us what it was to be an au pair and how to live with someone in your house that is there to help out with the kids. A steep learning curve if ever there was one. We all survived though and hopefully will continue to keep in touch!!

This is the first photo we had of Sarah on the left.

We took her to Canberra, Cockatoo Island and the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Biennale. We went to the park, out to restaurants, visiting my family, grocery shopping, joined the local library and opened a bank account and I took her to my school to see the ducklings that were hatching. I even took her along to a teachers strike day in the city. I'm sure a very strange thing to see!

A picnic at Putney Park.

Meeting ducklings at my school.

We really enjoyed having her and were sad to see her go. It really seemed that after 4 months of having Sarah around she was really an integral part of the family and it was very strange to see her go. Even more so since Sarah and Signe had a week where they were both in our house. I wonder how they will both remember the time that they had with us when they have families of their own one day. I imagine when their children are twenty somethings that these funny stories of staying with an Australian family will come out!

Next will be the story of Signe...

School Holidays have begun

I can't believe that so much time has passed so quickly since I last posted...

A new fringe on my gorgeous daughter.

Brotherly love. Awww!

A trip to the beach.

How can Josh's foot be so much bigger than mine?

Eating at one of Isabella's school assemblies.

Isabella with a reading award.

Hamish with his Dad. Gorgeous boys!

My Dad, Mum and sister with Sammy.

Some of the boy cousins. Missing Henry.

All the cousins and Hamish with his cake. Happy Birthday!

A play day with Liam.

So what have I been doing and what has been happening here...

I've been back at work 10 weeks and have not only survived but have really enjoyed myself in the process of remembering students names, routines, breaks and retraining my bladder to only go during recess and lunch! We decided to get an au pair instead of sending Hamish to day care or family day care as I was only going back to work three days and for us it seemed like a better idea for Hamish while he is so young. He got to stay in his own familiar surroundings, get one on one attention and stay away from sick snotty children. The older children give him enough germs to build up his immunity to bugs. We found a lovely young girl (23) from Canada using a website called Au-pair World who has now been living with us for 10 weeks. Sarah has settled into our home and is well loved by Hamish. (phew!) We've gotten into a routine that works for us and everyone seems happy. We finally got her a wardrobe and some hangers. (I kept forgetting to buy these. Whoops!)  I've finally weaned Hamish from his last feed (the night time one)  as of a week ago and of course he's just got a nasty cold. I've spent the last two weeks coming to terms with both weaning him and deciding that we're done with babies! A big step for us and a bit of a mourning period for me. No more babies growing inside my body, no more kicks, no more new baby smell, no more breast-feeding. BUT hopefully sooner rather than later, no more sleepless nights, eventually no more nappies, getting my body back, getting more time to spend together, watching the kids growing up and experiencing new things as parents of teenagers. So because I've now got my body back I've decided to join the local gym (where a friend goes already) and have done my first yoga and zumba class with a girlfriend and have had a lot of fun and quite a lot of laughs. Sore muscles this week! I've been drinking too much coffee because I can! No worry about eating the wrong sort of foods anymore and making Hamish get a sore belly or keeping him awake.


Hamish has now got a new bedtime routine that goes along with weaning him. I managed to feed him for 14 months. The same amount of time as I breast-fed Sammy. Josh got 12 months and Isabella the shortest with 11 months. It's getting easier each day to put him to bed as he gets used to the new bedtime cues. First he plays while I cook dinner. We eat dinner together and then he gets a bath and dressed in his pyjamas and his sleep sack, has warm milk, teeth are cleaned, wave goodnight to everyone and get lots of kisses, a story and then lights out. I lay him in his cot and pat him gently until he's almost asleep and then creep out. Tonight he lay down straight away without trying to get up and cried twice, I wiggled my hand gently against his back for a minute and he was asleep. Poor little boy was very tired tonight.


So far these holidays we've been to Cockatoo Island and saw art words from the Biennale which were amazing. The kids loved these and many of them were interactive. We also went to the drive-in and saw Brave. We ate over buttered popcorn, white chocolate, drank hot chocolate from a thermos and then drove home. The older two then got picked up by their dad for his engagement party. They'll stay there until the end of the week.


We got a call during the last week of term from one of Josh's teachers to tell us how well he'd done in his class. He got 100% for all his assessments for the year so far and is first in his year. We were and are so proud of him and let him choose a place to have a meal. He chose Ribs and Rumps and had a whole rack of ribs and then had room for dessert! He's a growing, eating machine at the moment!

Sammy turned 13 and enjoyed her 'Pamper' Party with some close friends. I think everyone had a wonderful time and felt really spoilt. Sammy and her friends had a chocolate fountain and went through 6 punnets of strawberries and 4 bananas, not to mention the cucumber sandwiches (high tea sandwiches - a big hit!) lollies, pop corn, mini cakes and cans of diet coke and champagne flutes (blue plastic ones) full of juice. They had nails painted, a pedicure and foot massage and a face mask. Kim (Sammy's step-mum) curled the girls hair while they were waiting.


Next week Sammy is getting braces and is so excited about it finally arriving. Her teeth are so overlapped and it will be good for her to have straight teeth that are easier to keep clean.


I will try and get this poor neglected blog up and happening again. I really do enjoy keeping a diary of my day to day goings on and it's a great way for me to keep all our families excursions, goings on, and just day to day life in one place. 

Office conversion for our au pair

Sending Hamish off to long day care has caused me more and more angst the closer I got to returning to work. Hamish is just so little still and not walking yet and leaving him in the care of strangers in a new environment was giving me sleepless nights. Somehow I got onto the conversation of getting an au pair with a friend and after quite a bit of research I decided that this was going to make returning to work easier.

Finding an au pair ended up being an interesting exercise. We found a perfect match very quickly except our dates didn't match. In the end I decided that we'd go with our first choice and then find someone else to fill in until Signe gets here. That was all fine and good except we couldn't find anyone willing to only do four months for a long time. Then along came Sarah. We were so grateful to find another good match for our family.

That was fine, but the next thing that was needed was to turn David's office into a bedroom. He had just moved his business out of our home and so we had the space for an au pair but not any furniture to make a bedroom. It was actually a lot of fun setting up a bedroom. Here are some photos that show the change. We still need to get a wardrobe, but it looks nice and Sarah said the bed was cosy. I think that means we've done well.

There's a small desk as soon as you come in the room with a little lamp. As you look around the room you can see a queen size bed with a mirror above it and the wreath I made and then two bedside tables with a lamp on the first table. We need to get another lamp at some stage. Under the window is a dresser with some empty green Ikea boxes. In the corner is a heater that you can't see and then some shelves and the door our of the room. Behind the desk I've now cleaned up David's record (LP) collection and we will put a TV there. Hopefully that will be put there tomorrow. We're hoping to find a small wardrobe that will fit into the corner of the room to the right of the window.