30 dec 2010

If my intention with this pic a day thing was to have a little visual diary of my December 2010 then I should really be posting a photo of our medicine shelf. Yes, we have a dedicated shelf in our kitchen which we've started calling The Medicine Shelf due to how much meds it's stored over the course of the year.

If my intention was to try and grasp just one moment from each day for one month at the end of this fleeting year, then I should be posting a photo of myself on the couch, reading a magazine, while the Child watches endless David Attenborough, the Baby works out the mechanics of various noisy toys and the Husband takes his turn to nap, before we pass the Baton of Responsibility, re-up our antibiotics and swop horizontal positions for an hour or so.

I'm not really sure what my intention was, although I've enjoyed it thoroughly, and I haven't taken any photos today (scintillating as the subject matter on offer was), so gasp I'm not going to post one.

And to further confirm my problem with completing things, I may not post one tomorrow either.

Husband and I have strep throat, and antibiotics. The girls are so far germ-free and will soon be climbing the walls. It's not as bleak as it sounds, but it's not very fucking cheery either.

I think I'm done with you 2010.
Good.Bye.

28 & 29 dec 2010

A lovely day with friends yesterday ended abruptly with the onset of a sore throat, by nightfall aching limbs, sore eyes, the chills.

Why it should be surprising that 2010, the year of the sick, should end on a similar note I'm not sure. Hopefully this lurgy will not see the new year in with us.

Pics from last year December. One year ago when there was only one.

Back to bed I go.

27 dec 2010

One last Christmas present,
~ a few hours childcare from my parents
~ a bike ride round the Peninsula with my babe
~ an exquisite seafood lunch
~ a reminder that I live in a beautiful place, and am loved by beautiful people.

26 dec 2010

Hot. Hot. Hot.
Splash in the pool.
Gammon for lunch.
Nap.
Stollen for tea.
Take dog for a run.
Gammon for supper.

25 dec 2010

And the reveal ...
Badly focused. Just like me right now. Yaaaaaaawwwwwwn.

Burp.

Goodnight.

24 dec 2010

The official story is we have to take this box to my SIL's tomorrow, that it contains 'work stuff' for her. But I can tell by the look in her 3 and a half year old eye that this isn't holding water ... I daren't gift-wrap it, then we'd be discovered for sure ....

Merry Christmas!

23 dec 2010

Some of my youngest brother's mates are joining us tomorrow evening, Christmas orphans coming to scavenge off our turkey carcass. They're lovely boys (and damn cute) so I've no problem with this at all.

In a rare burst of energy I've been baking up a storm so I put together these little gift boxes for them.

Smarties cookies (I have an addiction), knobbly meringues (wtf's up with that?), peppermint bark (made with humbugs instead of the still elusive candy canes) - from Lego of course - and root canal inducing fudge.

Candy for the eye candy.

22 dec 2010

Christmas is happening incrementally, one evening at a time ...

21 dec 2010

He's been wearing glasses for as long as I've known him. He got his first pair when he was 11. Today we got him new eyes for Christmas.
And his first ever pair of sunglasses.

20 dec 2010

3 years and 6 months old today.

She wanted to wear green to 'match' the forest. And blue to 'match' the sky. And her 'watch' (this time the inverted comma's are mine) so we'd know when it was time to go home.
The flavour of yoghurt was incidental.

My baby.

19 dec 2010

I bought the kit at IKEA last year, surprisingly it still tasted really good. We had a naughty giggle at the name - a Pepparkakshus, or directly translated into Afrikaans, a Pepper Shit House.

18 dec 2010

I have a new phone.
This is my first post written and posted from it. Photo taken on phone. Uploaded on phone.

I have a new phone.
It's fucking cool. It's the 'anti-iPhone', an Android. It has ground-breaking Swype technology.

I have a new phone.
It's the business.
Just wish I had some business to do on it.

I have a new phone.
I also have a sore finger.
Touch screen takes some getting used to.

Oh and also we went to the park.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Update: I didn't like the tiny pic when I posted this via the Blogger-droid App, wasn't sure if it was a reflection of the quality of photo or the App, now that I've come back to the post online I've been able to enlarge the pic enough to see the razor wire on the wall behind the kiddie-park down the road. Now that's more realistic.

17 dec 2010

It really was the Year of the Girl Child.

Teagan, Natasha, Layla, Stella, Wren, Desiree, Eva, Zoe, Faith, Isla, Leah, Olerato, Cate, Emma ... all of these I know of personally, another 5 I know from friends of friends.
Sure there was a handful of boys, but nearly 20 girls. That's a lot of ladies.

And a lot of babies.

All of whom are, or will soon be, as busy as this.

And that's a lot of energy right there.

16 dec 2010

This is a photo to remind us that when looking for a new house (maybe 2011 will be the year ...), we'll need:

~ a garage
~ a workshop
~ a store room
~ a bar

Oh and a garden. And a room for Stella. And a studio for me. And some additional off-street parking.
And less crap projects!

15 dec 2010

I ran into an old friend today. A friend from old times. A good friend? Hard to say, those old times seem in retrospect to have been so good, the people who shared them may have become gilded in my memories.

Suffice to say we were friends back when we all looked something like this ...

I know his warm and crinkly eyes so well, but am so far removed from the thoughts behind them now.
Old times. Good times.

14 dec 2010

It's going to be really shit, and I don't like to as she's such a mild-mannered happy little thing, but we're going to have to do some sleep-training soon. I can't feel like this for much longer.

13 dec 2010

Summertime ... and the south-easter's blowing ...

All. Day. And. Every. Day.

During the day our massive palm tree sounds like a old-timey wooden sailing ship. All creaky, the rigging swaying and clapping in the breeze.
At night it sounds like breathing. Creak and sway, creak and sway. Inhale, exhale, breathe.

12 dec 2010

Colour me Sunday.

Her idea. Her compositions. Her art direction. I just took the mediocre photos.

(we were still working on the rules here - hence the blue pillow)

11 dec 2010

Humans rock.

To evolve, in a scant 9 months, from a small pink blob of mewling incomprehension, to a crawling, standing, bouncing, dancing being. A person, who can smile and laugh, recognise her name, make accompanying noises when a dog barks, feed herself grains of rice with tiny pincer fingers and show extreme dissatisfaction when the world conspires against her (i.e. Mum moves the scissors).

She rocks.

10 dec 2010

A 4pm glass of wine on a lawn with friends and snacks sure takes the edge off suicide hour.

9 dec 2010

Book Club. I never really got it. Women in movies/Oprah/magazines getting choked up talking about their book clubs.

But I do now.

The company, the food, the wine and the books, oh the books. Sanity restored, once a month. Book club.

8 dec 2010

First day of school holidays, traditionally the day we put up the Christmas tree. Well, it's a tradition now, circa December 2010. It's great that Frieda's old enough for us to create rituals around family events, holidays and birthdays.

This is a work in progress.

As with everything we had a bull terrier assisting us.

Also,
~ I may have lived in Africa all my life, and only once experienced a real European Christmas, but I still find it weird putting up Christmas decorations in 30 degree heat, drinking lemonade instead of egg-nog.
~ I'm slowly learning to let go and give Frieda free reign on things like putting up decorations, icing cakes, wrapping presents. I resist the urge to tweak, improve, correct.
~ I still love love love this Tin Town tree. A dear gift from a dear friend.

7 dec 2010 (like, for serious this time)

Back to the vet.

Another injection, a round of antibiotics, swabbed down with antiseptic and a manicure.

I thought she deserved an illicit drink from the kitchen tap. It's not usually allowed but she loves it so.
Dear old mog.

(and fyi, the jar in the background holds not some rehydrating shiitakes, a stool sample or chestnut puree, but some coins I've been disinfecting for Frieda's endless game of Shop Lady).

7 dec 2010 (oops!*)

It's pretty busy over here. (*ja, that busy slash sleep-deprived. 6 dec. 6 dec!)

Husband's got some DIY on the go.

Frieda's making more gift tags than gifts we're likely to give. Ever.

Stella's working damn hard on pushing out some more teeth.

And I'm stuck into a few crafty Christmas projects, which makes me happy.

(Hey, anyone up north feel like sending me some red & white candy canes with which to make peppermint bark? No problem if they get crushed in transit ...
I'll return the favour with some cute African Christmas decorations. Hmmmm?)

5 dec 2010

Sunday was not as idyllic as this picture makes it out to be.

 

But the forest, the forest is always idyllic, and for a while there was peace.

4 dec 2010

Sucks that we didn't get our weekend away, but on the upside: I got all our Christmas shopping done this morning.

I'm starting to get the holiday spirit.

3 dec 2010

I slept in Frieda's room. Stella in mine. Frieda on the couch.
Lego in her basket in the kitchen.
A cat curled up next to my laptop, another passed out on Tigger in the playroom.

A sleeping body in every room of the house. 14.44 on a Friday afternoon. A rare occurrence.

We were supposed to go away for the weekend, but she's not well. We'll hunker down at home instead.

2 dec 2010

My mother's house.

So much time spent here this year. Resting my bulk in the shade of the garden through the dog days of last summer. Napping with my newborn while she played with Frieda. Gaining clarity and support from endless chats with both my parents on the stoep. Delicious meals, ridiculous games, some tears, lots of laughs. Lots and lots of breast-feeding.
And now stolen moments off by myself, to run some errands, get a haircut, have a coffee. Both girls as entertained and enamoured with their grandparents as I am.

1 dec 2010

This is my life. Taking stock. Giving thanks. Stopping and pondering.

Call it what you will, at the end of a crazy year which has moved far, far too fast for my liking, a year in which I feel like I've done so little while confident that I've achieved so much, a year in which I feel I've not touched base with myself properly but yet have learnt so much about my own capabilities, a year which has just ... happened, one crazy day tumbling after another.
At the end of this crazy year I want to take stock, give thanks, stop and ponder. Even if it's only for a second.

And what better place to start than this?

Shew.

pillow talk

I spend so much time in bed these days, but so little of it sleeping.

Last night I kept Stella in bed with us after her first wake-up (on the dot 2 hours after she'd gone to sleep). I'm not a fan of co-sleeping with anyone other than a) my husband, b) my cat or c) a very small newborn (or d) George Clooney, but that goes without saying right?), but I thought it worth a shot to see whether she slept any better.
Exactly 1 hour and 55 minutes later she started twitch, rouse, stretch and ... mewl.
Sigh.

Also, dear insomnia. Please fuck off. What makes you think it's okay to haunt a woman driven nearly demented by lack of sleep as it is?
Thanks.

One night recently Husband came to bed after me. I didn't stir. But when I next woke with Stella I brushed his arm with mine as I got out of bed and my heart stopped. His arm under the warm duvet was ice cold. I nearly puked from fright.
Turns out just before bed he'd been out at the pool, wrestling with the filtration system, up to his shoulder in the icy water. He'd obviously fallen asleep minutes before I'd woken up and I was not, thank god, lying next to his handsome corpse.

The best thing about breast-feeding? The reading. As long as I'm able to hold it with one hand (Kingsolver's Lacuna is going to have to wait a while), I'm feedin' and readin', readin' and feedin'.

The song playing on continuous loop through my head in the mornings:
Tears for Fears - Mad World

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had

You gotta wonder right?

And finally, a short list of Consumables Enabling me to Survive this Trying Time:
- white chocolate, especially if its got Smarties innit
- coke, or sadly Tab, as satisfying in its black fizziness but failing dismally in its distinct lack of sugar and caffeine
- coleslaw - maybe it's the crunch, maybe it's the mayo, but its working for me
- an effervescent energy booster at 3pm sharp - a minute later and we're all crying by 5
- water, water, water, water
Numbers 1, 2 and 5 often get consumed in bed. Coleslaw not so much and if I were able to be in bed at 3pm I wouldn't need the f*king energy booster would I?

Lordy I can't wait for the day I'll read this post and laugh.

more dog bum

It's not a new joke - laughing at abbreviations for 'assorted' goods. It's not a new joke but it's still a funny one.

Especially with reference to this hook* we bought to put up in the bathroom for our hairdryer.

*dontcha just hate it when people import truckloads of stuff from IKEA to sell in IKEA-less countries? I mean, that was so my idea ....

Of course, Frieda insists its an elephant.

this time in november

We have this place we go, I've mentioned it before.

We usually go for my Mum's birthday weekend in March. This year we went in Feb due to an expected arrival in March.
Despite so much having happened since then I still find it weird how little I recall of that weekend in February. I know I was enormous. I remember I napped a lot. I know I took a packed hospital bag with me just in case we did a mad dash back to town. But other than that I'm hazy.

So I was really pleased when my parents took the house for the week last week and invited the girls and I to join them.
We ate. We napped. We enjoyed having Stella there (ex-utero) for the first time. The girls spent quality time with their beloved grandparents and in the evenings I got to hang out with my Mum & Dad, just the 3 of us.
A rare and special occurence.

It's a funny old house. We're a funny old family. A good fit.

2/10 things I lovetohate that you do

These boots. Can we talk about them?

These reinforced steel-plated biker boots exclusively designed to protect your toes.

Can we talk about my toes? And the semi-permanent damage done to them by falling over these boots countless times?

Can we talk about putting these goddamn boots AWAY? Like, in a CUPBOARD?

Thanks babe.

hola chicas

Don't you just love Blogger's Stats thingiemajingie?

This is what a mention on Design*Sponge does for one's blog traffic:

That's a whole lot of nobody.

I like me a graph.

like sand through the hourglass

Friday afternoon.
Cabin fever.

I haul the girls across town following a lead on Husband's Christmas present.

I pack light, it's a short trip. A couple of nappies and some wipes.

There's a sign on the shop door. Back in 5 minutes. No problem, we'll pop across the road to the shopping centre, buy some milk for home, come back in 5 minutes.

I get Stella out her car seat. Big smile. Big stink. Evidently a big frikkin' problem that I didn't pack a change of clothes.
I'm doing what I can to clean her up, wedged on the front seat with limited wipes when ....
Mum, I need a wee.
Right.

With Stella in a clean nappy, stained vest, wrapped in my sling pouch, we negotiate our way across a busy road and into the mall.
Dash to the loo. Crisis averted.

There's a Pick 'n Pay in the centre, with a small clothing department. We go shopping for Stella, change her in the fitting room, pick up some milk on our way to the till.
The queue's 5 people deep when ...
Mum, I need a poo. Badly.
I look down into the eyes of desperation.
Right.

We can't abandon the queue 'cos Stella's wearing the produce. You got to hang in there baby, can you hang in there?
The eyes are watering but she keeps it together.
Dash to the loo. Crisis averted.

Where's the milk?!
Back to the store where luckily they kept it for us.

Aaaaaand back to the first shop.
We get the gift. I've got the giggles and can see Frieda doesn't quite get the joke.
Unlock the car.
Arghhhhhhhhh. Hot car. Stinky nappy.

These are the days of our lives.

oh my

I quickly have to blog this so that any new visitors here aren't assaulted with all manner of expletives describing my lack of sleep recently.

MY SOFA MADE IT ONTO Design*Sponge!!

That, plus a semi-decent night's sleep and I think it's shaping up to be a Good Friday.

Thank you Heather and Kate!

have I mentioned how tired I am? have I?

Seriously. So. Fucking. Tired.

Stella will be 8 months old this month. Which means for 4 months I've been sleeping really, really badly. According to some crack pediatrician I saw at some point babies often do a radical sleep pattern adjustment at around 16 weeks.

Frieda went from multiple wake-ups to sleeping blissfully through the night at approximately 14 weeks.

Stella's gone from a really good newborn sleeper to wake-every-3h-horrendo-baby at yup, about 16 weeks.

I know I've gone on about this before. Forgive me for getting a bit obsessive. I mean, it's just sleep right. Not essential for our physical, emotional and mental well-being or anything.

So two things have happened since the last time I had a bitch.

First, Stella decided waking up every 3 hours was so passe. My Mum has a theory that just when you can't bear something a moment longer, it changes. This has mostly proved true. Like now, when a week ago Stella started waking every two hours. Short wake-ups granted but every. two. hours. (I talk in single word sentences a lot these days).
4 or 5 nights of this and I was about ready to die. It's like my nights are made up of a (short) series of afternoon naps, never sinking into that deep sleep supposedly so imperative to your physical, emotional and ... etc etc etc ...

Then the second thing.
Stella got a horrible chesty flemmy coarse and painful cough.
And stopped sleeping all together.
(Ok not altogether, that would be exaggerating. She sleeps if strapped to my chest with me in an upright position. Very comfortable position for me. No really.)

It's been 2 nights.

My thoughts are as clumsy and sluggish as my writing. My humour is as dark as this post is almost-unpublishable for it's incredible boringness. My brain is as vacant as, well, a vacant thing.

The worst part about this brand of sleep-deprivation is there's no one to blame. Not the neighbour with the faulty car alarm. Not the cow waitress who clearly brought you a regular coffee and not the decaf you ordered. Not the big sister who gave the baby the cough in the first place.
And not Stella. She's not a small pink nobody anymore, she's my small girl, my daughter, my nearly-8 month old friend, and she's suffering.
And that hurts more than my dessicated eyeballs.

Chest-monkey just coughed herself awake.

This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass.

1/10 things I lovetohate that you do

For how many years has the dude been opening packets of wet wipes of various shapes and sizes?

His said he was 'holding a baby'. Since when has that been an excuse not to be able to multi-task?

wild life

Visiting game parks is really so very cool.

You drive through the gates, impressively arrayed with giant wooden spikes and topped with electric wires, and immediately your instincts narrow and hone.
An honest-to-god dangerous predator could be lurking behind every bush. To alight from your vehicle could mean certain death. Your eyes re-calibrate, searching the landscape for the slightest movement, any faint change in colour or shape which could reveal one of the beasts listed on your park guide.
Lion! Elephant! Rhino!

And then, hey - dung beetles! Monster black armoured bugs rolling huge balls of poo down the middle of the road. They stop and stare aggressively at the Jeep, some of them marching over as if they've hit the giant poo jackpot.
And, wow - black-backed jackels! Scuttling round an open field, flipping over rocks and licking up the creepy-crawlies underneath. Yipping to each other and scanning the horizons with narrow foxy eyes.
And, look, look - warthogs! How incredibly weird are they? Digging up plants to get to the roots, standing on their fore-knees to lazily munch grass.
And, omg - yellow miercats! A breeding pair, foraging, scuttling around, no doubt close to an underground burrow.

In nature, as in life, it's easy to be seduced by the headli(o)ners, the big names, the big 5. But the sight of these smaller animals and insects (and so many more - ostrich, blue crane, falcons, monkeys, kudu) up close and personal, viewed through a windscreen, if that, and not on a flat screen, is incredible.

And the anticipation of possibly spotting a big guy any moment just adds to the adventure.

On our first morning there, we were hanging out at a water hole, idly watching ellies mooching around on the hills around us. We knew they'd get thirsty soon enough and were happy to wait for them (patience is a game-viewing virtue).

And it paid off. Soon a large family group, mums and babies, adolescents, a big tusky male bringing up the rear, came trundling down the hill towards us. Stella woke up, we started getting cameras ready and then something happened which we'd not anticipated at all.
Frieda freaked out.
She climbed from the front seat over to the back, then over again to the way back, trying to hide behind the stuff stowed back there. 'I want to go home, let's go home now. Drive Daddy, drive away!'
In all our excitement and Friedawilllovethis-ness we'd not stopped to think that elephants are f*cking big and maybe, in real life, just outside the car, a little freakin' scary. Poor poppet.
I took her on my lap and talked her round, pointing out the babies, and the mums with their big milk filled boobs (so like a human's), we laughed at the naughty big sisters, jostling and bumping each other, and chatted about the Dad, coming up behind and making sure they all behaved.
Soon she calmed down and then just loved them. As we knew she would.

They're very big.

And a little scary.

Ahem.

But what's not to love?

We miss them.

channelling martha

... with a distinctly Molly's-life twist.

On Friday we ...

 ... sent Frieda off to school in a home-made jack o' lantern costume ('Just like Lola's Mum'), complete with hand-sewn stalk & leaves.
The meltdown was because she didn't want to wear the !#&* stalk ...

... later she had a yoghurt ice-lolly, ingeniously made (by moi) by freezing a plastic spoon in a small pot of yoghurt.

Seconds later she dropped it on the cat and declared it 'too hairy'.

... later still I took the girls for a run/roll around at Kirstenbosch Gardens.

We had a great time but a chill wind came up and this morning they're inevitably both snotty ....

... we ended our day baking Smarties cookies for my brother's birthday.

Very yummy but we left them out unsupervised and the dang cat made off with a couple of them.

Kids 'n cats, looming snot, meltdowns and furry popsicles, yummy cookies and arts 'n crafts; it may not be exactly Martha-esque but it was a fun Friday none-the-less.

yet another one about camping

We're happy campers. I've said this before once or twice.

And just back from a fabulous little camping trip - our first in over a year (bit of a record for us) and our first with Stella - I've a couple more thoughts ...

~ how is it that the loudest voice in the campsite, or at least the one that carries the clearest, is always the most boring?
This is not when you overhear a revelatory explanation of Derrida, a fascinating political theory or a hilarious anecdote. No, the voice that wafts across to your fireplace is money down bitching about the state of SA sports. Or who should have won a recent reality chef contest. Or rehashing boring previous holiday stories, exactly how many kilometres were traveled between one boring destination and another, how many boring meals were eaten and at what price.
Also, you quickly realise the correlation between how many glasses of wine The Voice has had and how boring it becomes. By the 3rd evening you can almost set your watch by it.
If you were wearing one.

~ this is of course only a problem when you're staying in one of those camping spots where the sites seem to be right on top of each other, just the merest hedge - if you're lucky - separating you from your neighbours. At Addo this last week this is as tastefully done as possible, but none-the-less you are likely to learn far more about your neighbours then you may have chosen to. As no doubt they did about us.
'Are you going to give Stella some boob now Mum?'

~ when you go somewhere like Addo, out of season, mid week, you find all your fellow campers are retirees, living the dream wandering round the country in their camper vans - replete with satellite dishes, fold-out dish-washing racks, homemade curtains and high tech camping chairs. We were surrounded by these and I was imagining their hearts sinking as we pulled up with two kiddies live-wired on the back seat.
But of course this combination of olds and smalls worked surprisingly well. The oldies missed their grandkids and smiled indulgently at our girls. And they kept the same hours - early to bed and early to rise. No loud music keeping our kids awake, and no need to hush the children's excited early morning shenanigans.

~ when camping one can often expect strange night time adventures ... Pre-babies Husband and I once lay tense and awake in our tent for long minutes convinced someone wearing flip-flops was creeping around our campsite. Eventually we shone our torch beam out, only to catch the small glinting eyes of a tiny little hopper mouse.
On arriving at Addo I taught Frieda to read the different signs for the Men's and Ladies toilets. We were later to rue the pedanticness of a 3 year old when Husband carried her off to the loo at 1am only to return unsuccessful, even half-asleep she wouldn't let him take her into the Men's, and he didn't want to go into the Ladies for fear of encountering a weak-bladdered Granny. We had to stifle our giggles in the silent dark.
But my favourite nocturnal adventure of this recent trip happened to Husband on the night he spent camping alone on his drive up. The place he stayed at had two horses roaming around the campsite. They were friendly and seemingly inconcerned by him. In the night however he woke to a really strange and undecipherable noise. He could tell the horses were distressed, but what was that clanking?
One of the horses, overcome with curiousity, had become entangled in his camping chair and was getting more and more freaked out, eventually running wildly around the campsite, whinnying and tossing its head. Husband was just wandering what(tf) to do when the horse shook itself free, leaving the chair unscathed in a muddy heap, nothing damaged but equine pride.

Fun times. I like to camp. And we're so happy that our daughters seem to too.

how divine

So here I am, in the eye of the storm so to speak.

The last few days have been somewhat busy, busy packing and planning, lists and to-do's. You'd think we were staging a major expedition, not a mere 6 day holiday.
Something to do with doing all this packing and planning with two small people in tow perchance?

We packed until midnight last night (my absolute limit of endurance on the amount of sleep I get at the moment) and scooted around doing last minute things this morning.
Ridiculous things like deciding to swop the contents of two packing crates and 5 minutes later swopping them back. Necessary things like bubble-wrapping the base of our new sofa lest the cats wreck their revenge on being left behind. Nostalgic things like unearthing my late father-in-laws binoculars from under our floor (yeah, we've got storage down there) to take with us.

And then Husband, with a very excited doggie grinning on the front seat, drove off to start the adventure. And I? I took the road more travelled by and went inside to change a nappy, collect Frieda from school and spend the afternoon on the beach with my Mum.

But tomorrow the girls and I will have quite an adventure of our own. We're taking the bourgeois civilised route and flying to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, Where, if all goes according to plan, Husband, having booked excited grinning doggie into lux kennels, will be waiting with open arms at Arrivals, and we'll bundle into overloaded vehicle to spend a few days with the elephants (and assorted other wildly exciting animals) in Addo National Park.
Yes, my darlings, we're off on safari.

Toodle-loo!

material girl

Back in August I did a bit of work for Heather. In a fit of anti-capitalism we decided payment would be made in fabric.
I can't help feeling I scored here.

I give you ... the ratty little two seater we got off Husband's sister when we were first setting up house.

And now ...

 

This is fast becoming my favourite corner of our home.

 

here's the thing

The thing about sinus infections.
They lurk. They irk. They prey on your depleted resources, hide when anyone's looking and then ambush you when you least expect it. One day it's blocked ears, another it's a wheeze. You think it's all unrelated, but actually it's the same sinus infection. It's been here for weeks.

The thing about resilience.
The body is an awesome thing. It can truly adapt to almost anything. The problem is not the adaption, the problem is the transition.
One can learn to function on never sleeping for longer than 3 hours at a stretch. But then you get 3 good nights in a row. The body collapses, weirdly you've never been so tired, then it adjusts, and adapts. You feel amazing.
Then the sleeplessness starts again. And while your body clock resets itself you feel so very, very old, until again it becomes the norm. And you carry on.

The thing about holidays.
They take a lot of planning. The more exciting the trip, the more planning required.
And ours is exciting. And requiring a lot of planning.

The thing about 3 year old's.
They're wily unpredictable little blighters. And money down, when you decide at 3.30 on a Friday afternoon that you simply must take your throbbing sinuses to a doctor before the weekend and beg and plead until you get an appointment for 4pm but you've got both kids so you rush around getting ready to leave and ask your eldest to please, please go and find some shoes you will walk into her room 5 seconds later to find her stark naked.
'I want to be bare Mummy.'
Of course you do.

The thing about parenting two smalls.
It's so, so time-consuming.

The thing about blogging.
I miss it.

The thing about sleep deprivation.
It fucks you.

I swear this is not the only thing I do ...

... but sometimes it feels like its the only creative thing I do ...

Chocolate cupcakes. Coffee glaze icing. Strawberry hearts.

For a Baby Shower last weekend.

Kinda cute don't you think?