Friday, February 24, 2012

Thursdays

Life is so much easier with only one child!! Thursdays are now Katy and mummy days while Ella is at preschool. Yesterday after peeling an unhappy Ella off my leg at preschool, Katy and I rode to Jamison to meet up with 2 work colleagues and their 4 children. We drank coffee and chatted in between chasing children, wiping tears and visiting the toilet!

Baby Isobel and big brother Mica were also enjoying morning tea with their mum and nana before heading off to kinda gym at the Y. After a quick hello to them, Katy and I to rode onto the markets. Not much food to buy with Andy away in the US so after loading up, it was time to venture home. Katy enjoying the ride drifted off for a 15 min power nap.

Back at home, while I unpacked the shopping, Katy played beds with her rabbits! We completed a puzzled, did some drawing before baking banana bread and then it was time to collect Ella from school.


Ella was much happier at the end of the day and I was informed the morning tears were short lived! As we left preschool we bumped into Eleanor and together we all rode home.

Now I have discovered that there is a large amount of time to fill in between leaving pre school and dinner. Luckily for us, our next door neighbour Sofia came over to play, with the girls eventually making crowns together.



Saturday, February 18, 2012

Thanks Nana

Dear Nana

We had fun today dressing up as Junior Chefs. With Mum's help we baked chocolate cookies. What's more we both even liked the finished product!!

Hopefully you will visit soon and do some baking with us!

Love
Ella and Katy
xxxx

New Creations

Last week was busy..

Firstly another attempt at making skirts. Found a tutorial online with the
pattern based on the girl's height. I made Ella's skirt first and after sewing it all together it was massive! The length was ok
but the width was horribly wrong. Ella has a waist of 57cm, the pattern used 1.6cm around the waist and even though it was suppose to be gathered I don't think you could physically gather that much material. So back to the unpicking table and I decided on doubling Ella's waist measurement would make a good amount of gather for a twirly skirt and yes it did! As for the excess material? Well I sewed a few sides together and made a little bag!

Katy's skirt was much easier with my learning lesson on the first one. It was a pity that I forgot to change the hem measurement from inches to centimetres and didn't realise until I'd sewed it mostly on.



Next new item was...

The completion of stage 1 of our front porch conversion. The old frosted never used door was removed and replaced with a double glazed timber sliding door. As a result we had to rearrange the lounge room so that we can actually use the door. Finishing touches on the door are currently being debated - whether to stain/varnish or paint the timber frame. Also have to organise a security screen so we can leave the door open on hot summer nights not that we've had any of those this summer!

Stage 2 of the porch conversion is building a front deck. We are waiting for the call to say the recycled blackbutt timber boards are ready so we can arrange for the steel frame to be installed. Hopefully this will all coincide with my Dad visiting and Andy returning back from Salt Lake City at the end of Feb/beginning of March.




Saturday, February 11, 2012

First Day


Thursday saw Ella head off to preschool at the local school! She joined Max (Walter) and Carla (a friend from childcare) in the class, known as the Waratahs, attending preschool on Thursday and Fridays. After doing a few puzzles with Ella, we left her to it. Katy and I headed down to Jamison to meet up with our neighbour, Sofia and her mum for a play and coffee.
We picked up Ella at lunchtime and inquired about her first day to which she replied 'ok.' I'm sure that's the same answer I gave to my parents at the end of most school days too!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

BIg Girls

Accomplishments recently from our girls include Ella acquiring a bigger bike from cousin Mia. This now means I definitely can't go out with the Katy in the pram while Ella is riding as I can't keep up with the speed demon! Katy has also begun the process of experimenting with the balance bike - walking astride and wobbling as she like to call it. A little more practice perhaps on Thursdays when Ella is at preschool will help with her confidence. Actually we are off to meet Ella's new teacher tomorrow with preschool starting on Thursday.

Meanwhile Katy well and truly has her toilet training down pat. She has very few accidents although one plop (Katy's word for poo) escaped tonight when she couldn't get the steps on the toilet in time!!

On Call Saga

On-call involves being within 40min of John James private hospital from 5.30pm Friday evening until 8.30am Monday morning. Now I'd been convinced that it was an extremely easy way of earning $120 for doing nothing...my fellow colleagues had assured me in the last 18 months there were only 4 call outs. All of these were on a sunday mid morning scanning patients for deep vein thrombosis. If you did get called out it was a minimum of 3hrs double time. I bit the bullet and volunteered myself to be included in the roster for on-call.

So a few weekends ago my turn came up. Now Andy still wanted to go on the long run which was fine as long as he got a lift (leaving me with the car) and took his phone on the run so if I was called in, I'd pick him up on the way.

By Sunday I'd completely forgotten I was on call. Andy went off for his long run and while I was reading books to the girls in bed at 8.30am (trying to avoid getting up) my mobile went off!! Low and behold it was one of the obstetric doctors wanting to organise a scan. After a few dramas between my doctor and the obstetric doctor, the scan was finally confirmed, the stopwatch started ticking and panic instantly set in.

Neither myself or the girls were dressed or had had any breakfast. After calling Andy, I dressed myself, threw some clothes in a bag, grabbed a couple of bananas and jumped into the car. Halfway to Hackett where the long run starts I realised the petrol light was on so pulled into a service station only to realise it was closed! Found another which was rather busy but decided it was better to be a few minutes late than not arrive at all. Eventually got to Andy, who had cut his long run short.

Rather than get in the car Andy wanted me to leave the girls with him...and as I was way too stressed to complain, I bundled them and the bag out of the car. Drove off only to realise 100m down the street I'd forgotten my swipe card (to get into our building) was in the bag. Quick u-turn and I was finally on the way to the hospital arriving 50mins after the initial call out.

Managed to switch off the security alarm, register the patient (both things I've never done before), turn on the machines and catch my breath before the patient arrived. The patient turned out to be a colleague who is 22ish weeks pregnant with pain on her right side and the obstetric doctor wanted to rule out appendicitis. Thankfully the scan was all normal and baby fine.

I called Andy to see what he was up to. Turns out after dressing the girls, he walked to the local cafe where they had coffee, fruit toast and milkshakes for breakfast with the rest of the running gang! After that they began the 1.5km walk to Susie's house where we were originally going for lunch. I finally caught up with them about 300m from Susie's house.

Luckily the rest of the day wasn't quite so eventful as the morning and next time I'm on call I'll be a little more prepared!



Thursday, February 2, 2012

Dear Mrs Librarian

Did you know I am really great at using scissors? Especially now that I use every spare minute of the day to cut things into little pieces. While mum was out running the other morning and dad was still sleeping I decided to cut some knots out of my hair. Dad wasn't too impressed when he discovered the clump of hair on the study floor but I thought I'd done a great job. Mum was even less impressed (I'm not sure if it was with me or Dad) when she got home from running and took me straight into the bathroom to even me up! Luckily I have such curly hair so Mum's hairdressing didn't need to be too perfect (unlike Ella who had to go to the hairdresser!)

Anyway after that effort, Mum and Dad told me I was only allowed to use my scissors to cut paper. So today I was happily cutting away at my multi coloured paper that had some writing and drawing on it. I hadn't done too much when Mum came over to check out what I was doing. Then she got really mad - I mean I couldn't understand why as I was doing my best cutting and had chopped up three pages into lots of pieces. Mum sat me down and gave me another 'what you are allowed to cut using scissors' talk. Now I know that I'm not allowed to cut hair or books.

I am really sorry that I have broken your book. Mum said she would talk to you to about getting it fixed. I hope you will still let me borrow books from your library as I really like reading.

Love Katy
xxx