18th June 2009
Today Lily turns three.
Already! Blink and you’ll miss it, as they say.
She’s the kid with the wild, unkempt hair, the mismatched socks, the too short pants, the three week old temporary tattoo, the temper tantrums that makes her pass out (seriously), the blues harp, the collection of gravel, the love of monsters, the endless poo jokes.
But she’s also the kid with the sweetest smile, the gentlest kisses, the most infectious laughter, the well loved dolls, an eagerness to help make dinner, who already tells long, involved stories about adventures which are yet to happen, the one who calls me Muvva and Phil Farva as a kind of joke, the one who sleeps all night, and then who snuggles in beside me every morning for a sleepy cuddle, the one who likes to jump and hop and dance, the kid who plays peacefully for hours on end and listens patiently and devotedly when her sister reads her stories.
I used to call her my love blob when she was a baby because she was so easy to love. She still is – but now with added extra bits.
Happy birthday Lil!
27th April 2009
Phil is making tuna pasta for dinner (woo!) and I am about to take on a chicken casserole ready for tomorrow night. Amelia is sitting at the kitchen table sewing tiny socks for a doll. Lily, on the other hand, has opened up some imaginary hill-billy cook book and found a recipe for Squirrel Stew – add four small squirrels and a plastic mandarin and simmer. Mmm.
26th November 2008
That house is getting bigger and bigger. I know it’s not going to last, but I quite like the way the structure fills with the early evening sun and glows yellow, spilling fragments of light into our house in new and odd places.
And all is quiet tonight – which is amazing because it’s Lily’s first night in her new BIG bed and it’s a very big event.
That’s the bed! The mystery object from last week. I found a cheap bed frame on ebay, found a place just up the road that powder coats stuff ($90!) and voila! Not quite the Cath Kidston beauty but it makes me happy and it was thrifty and Lily loves her NEW BIG RED BED. The quilt is a very old one from my childhood which I think is one of my Grandma’s very first pieces. It’s pretty loud, but sadly getting pretty faded in parts and is a nice stand in until I finish my bazillion other projects and make Lil a new quilt. Maybe it will just stay that way.
She looks so tiny in that bed. I tried to take a photo of her in it while Phil read her bedtime stories, but in every single photo she is a complete blur of movement - she was tucking herself in, rearranging her pillows, moving her blanky into a better position, finding that her pillow was slipping etc etc.
And don’t forget those rabbits on auction!
20th October 2008
We finally moved Lily’s great big chunky change table out of her room today and over to the nursery of a soon-to-be-born baby who will be living just a few streets away. It’s left a great big lovely gap which was quickly filled by a dollhouse that was looking for a home and suddenly lots of inspired play. I love how a room rearrange can bring on squeals of delight, spontaneous dancing and some friendly, sisterly pre-dinner play time.
Do you remember Lily’s room? It’s looking much nicer these days. Next project is to find a new “big” bed ready for Lily to vacate her cot so that we can hand that on too. I am having fantasies about a vintage style wrought iron bed painted red (a la Cath Kidston – c 2006) – but that might have to be moderated somewhat. White would do just fine.
Over the last few months we’ve been throwing around the idea of moving house – ideally we’d like something a little closer to school so the girls can eventually walk, something with a bit more light, something dream-house-like. But of course, now it looks like the wrong time to be moving house on a whim so now instead it’s Operation Nest… After three and a half years it’s time to turn this house into OUR house and stop whinging about its quirks of which it has many and embrace them fully. Quirks are cool. Stay tuned.
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Children’s Rooms Copenhagen – new title from Paumes. Mmm nice.
20th September 2008
My first ever quilt! I thought I would do a show and tell – because I so very rarely finish anything of this magnitude (and it’s only a crib quilt!).
Actually, it’s been finished for quite a while now – but I hadn’t taken the time to photograph it. On Thursday both tikes spent a large amount of the day snuggled on the couch under their quilts so I got a chance to snap it in use.
This quilt couldn’t have got any simpler in design but I really like square quilts. That being said, I am sure if I mastered those tricky corners I would really like triangular quilts (looking at Fiona’s beauty – who couldn’t?).
I did lots of hand quilting on this thing – in retrospect, I think it’s too much. But I wanted to get that wrinkly vintage look.
And does it ever get used? Not really – Lily prefers her light, cheap Ikea doona. What can ya do. It’s good for those sick days on the couch. Next I have the hand quilting to do on Amelia’s quilt which will take me about 14 years, at least.
9th September 2008
I’ve been getting super jealous of Pip and her photo shoot. It sounds like a dream come true. This afternoon I finally finished my small group of five rabbit/mice things and thought I might do a little photo shoot trial run ready for the next sunny day. I asked Lily if she’d hold on to one of the girls hoping that it would give potential buyers some kind of idea of how big the toys are – but despite being hugely enthusiastic she really didn’t quite understand what we were trying to achieve. We had lots of intense movement; head shaking, rabbit shaking, dancing around… A zakka photo shoot this was not.
This one is called “Mummy, rabbit attack camera”:
Less blury photos to come in the next few days.
4th September 2008
The kids are beginning to wake up earlier again – that’s the draw back to lighter, brighter, fresher mornings full of bird song, it’s the grating cry of “DAD! DAD! DAD! HOP ME UP!”. We have to remember to go to bed earlier and not spend stupid amounts of time looking at celebrity blogs. It’s a little like watching bad television – you get too tired to actually get up and turn it off and go to bed, so you just sit there in a sleepy stupor. Oh! Frances Bean Cobain is turning 16!! How did that happen? click. Oh wow, Suri’s blanky is so much nicer than Lily’s – every time I see it I think “why did Lily have to fall in love with the hot pink polyester sleeping bag?” etc. I need more sleep.
27th August 2008
There was a little Mr Mom moment in the kitchen this morning. I came out in the kitchen to find Phil cleaning Lily up after her breakfast with the vacuum cleaner! He looked at me and said “What?? This is highly effective!”.
The funniest bit was Lily telling my Mum later in the day all about it, and Mum turned to me and said “Did she just say daddy cleaned her breakfast out of her sleeve with the vacuum cleaner?”, Umm, yes she did.
** Portrait of Phil by me and Lily.
20th August 2008
I have been completely lost in my aforementioned 80s journals these last few days and looky! I found Johnny Depp’s autograph glued in one, I thought it was gone forever! I have, over the years, occasionally wondered if I had perhaps made the whole thing up and just come to believe it. Thank goodness for the evidence. Having been thinking about all that stuff again, I was momentarily amused to hear the Eurythmics playing over the shopping centre loud speakers this morning as I stacked boxes of crackers into my shopping trolley. A song from the very same tour I mentioned on Sunday.
As we continued to scoot around the mall, Lily said hello to approximately 25 people. She says, very loudly, “HELLO MAN!” (or GIRL) and then if they say hello back, she says “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” and if they don’t respond to her, she shouts at me “WHAT’S THAT MAN DOING?”. It gets kind of tiresome, as I politely smile and hurry away. The worst bit is when she can’t work out whether it’s a MAN or a GIRL so she’ll say – “HELLO MAN GIRL!”. As you can imagine, I pretend I didn’t hear what was undeniably clear, even in 2 year old dialect and I hurry away too fast (and with a very red face) to smile politely at those people.
But apart from Lily saying hello to strangers, I did it myself today. I have been enjoying Victoria’s blog lately since she left a kindly comment on my blog last week. She’s a local girl – from my very suburb. She makes dolls, has two little girls, grows vegetable… so I emailed her lately to say a hello and to warn her that I may spring out and say a hello in person if I ever see her at the local shops. The idea that it might actually happen seemed remote enough to entertain, even for a shy person like me. But today – there she was! I did that momentary thing of thinking “am I really going to say hello??” and then finding that before I made an actual, rational decision I had already turned back and stopped her and asked her if she was indeed Victoria — And it was! It was a very nice coincidence. Lily is fortunately too young to be embarrassed by such things – but give her 10 years or so and she’ll be groaning (that ubiquitous teenage chant) “Muuuuum! You are soooo embarrassing!”
and I will promptly remind her of her “HELLO MAN GIRL!” days.
