One equals Six and Three...

JJ is just one year old and she requires the same amount (if not more) work than my six year old and three year old combined.

She unpacks, clings, whines, toddles towards me with a big grin, plays games. She feels all consuming at the moment.

She is currently on my lap 'helping' me type!

Hence my quiet blog of late. There are just not enough hours in the day and there is only so much you can do one handed.

I don't seem to be able to find anything that keeps her attention. I know she is only one but am I missing something obvious that she could be doing?

Life is good but very contained to places were a one year old is happy, so mainly home.

A friends dad just told me that parenting becomes easier when all your children are 21 years old ...... only 20 years to go!

I am older than yesterday....

Many big things are happening in our household this long weekend..JJ is turning into a real toddler where waking becomes preferable to crawling, we are going away with my family to a lovely beach house, we are celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Easter bunny may stop by for the first time...and it is my birthday.

As I approach my birthday I have come to the realisation that I now seen as an 'old person'.

My sixteen year old cousin recently moved to Australia and I had dreams of us becoming bosom buddies, Anne of green gables style. But it has now dawned on my that in the eyes of a sixteen year old I am old. I am in the same league as her mother, not her peers. And if when I was sixteen I would have thought the same thing. In my mind I have only just left school but the reality if that school days are far behind and I a have moved into the 'soccer mum' stage of life.

While the years between me and a sixteen year old are not huge, what has happened in our lives is. I have found that as get older it is the experiences that I share with others that is what binds us rather than the digits we are. One of my closest friends is someone who, had we meet at school we would not have been friends, mainly because she is older than me. But having gone through our first parenting years together that gap in our ages does not seem to matter. I look up to her but that is to do with the person she is rather than the age she is (although maybe her extra years contributes to the strength of character I admire?).

Maybe this is why I don't get as excited about my own birthday as I use to. Age seems to become less relevant as I older. That is not to say I am not looking forward to spending the day with all my family and having a slice of birthday cake!!

From the mouths of babes....

Goofy to MiniMe - Why do grown ups get to go to bed later than kids?

MiniMe after a short pause - Because children get cranky.

Flying under the radar....

MiniMe talks and talks and I try and listen most of the time so she gets my attention.

JJ clings and whines and puts everything in her mouth so she gets a lot of my attention.

Goofy quietly muddles through the day quite content so she often misses out on her quota of attention, flying under my radar. Things right in front of my face or the things I am tripping over taking my attention instead.

Yesterday afternoon she was wailing from the cubby in the garden. I left my washing up and went to investigate thinking she must have hurt herself or that her big sister had taken over her toy. But it was just her, by herself, tears streaming down her face. The problem?

'No one is playing with me.'

Goofy had flown into the radar and set off the alarm bells. The washing up can wait.

Do you have a child who flys low? Are they the middle child? What strategies do you have?

Made it Monday...the blue dress

This top has been sometime in the making (for some reason blogger wants to put it on its side!).

Blue to match JJ's blue eyes.

It has come out a little wide and she will need to be walking to wear it but it was made with love and it was yet another learning experience in the crafty world. Tension squares are probably important.

In the life of MiniMe ....

A lot has been happening in the life of MiniMe.

She has flown through her first term of school.
She was under the impression that after the holidays she moved onto Year 1, school would just fly by then!

She has toddled into the world of reading and writing.

She has started soccer.
We found a team for her last minute and she played her first game on the weekend. I had told her that her Uncle had taken many years to score his first goal and so it might not happen in the first game. Not sure how long U2 wanted to wait to see a goal though! Thankfully she got one and all were very excited. She had a great time and seems to have football fever.

She has made new friends.
When I told her that she wouldn't know anyone at soccer, her response, 'That's OK Mummy, I will just make new friends like I did at school'!

She had her first school dance - a silver and white disco!
She boogied the late afternoon away!

She tried rock climbing and was a little monkey.

She had a birthday.

She has enjoyed life.

She has made us very proud.

Made it Monday...birthdays

Last week was MiniMe's birthday and we had a few friends over for afternoon tea on the day of her birthday. She is convinced that she has to celebrate her birthday on the actual day and can not be persuaded otherwise.

We had a 'royal' afternoon tea. She wanted it to be royal and not princess so that her cousin (a boy) could come.

I had made bunting for JJ's birthday and it made an appearance again.

 A friend had made these cute cupcake biscuits for her daughter and I thought they fit the afternoon tea theme well! Also impressed by my 3-tier cake plate that I found at Vinnie's for $5! Added a lovely touch.

MiniMe wanted a blue cake (this has become her favourite colour, 3 years ago everything had to be pink but now it is blue.) The flowers on top are not my creation. I was hunting for a tea cup a couple of hours before the party and came across a container that my Dad had given me a few months ago. In it was the flowers off my christening cake. At the time I wondered what I would do with it and was amazed when it perfectly fitted in the centre of the tiara (hair clips) circle. Something blue, something new and something borrowed!

I had lots of fun getting it all ready and am looking forward to more tea parties in the future! With three girls I am bound to have another!