Fire fighter for a day

Last week Naz organised a day for Piper and her cousins to visit his fire station in Melbourne and play fire fighters for the morning.
I have to say I was blown away by the effort Naz and his colleagues put in to the morning. It was an awesome insight into their jobs and life at the station.
There are no words to describe how much the kids loved their adventure at the fire station.

A catch-up in pictures

We watched Uncle Simon jumped from a plane

Just a speck in the sky

Cousins

Friends

Happy New Year

We are still home in Australia enjoying some downtime as a family of four before I head back to work in the not too distant future. Although not all of us are relaxing in the sun (on the rare occasions it shows up... bloody Victorian weather), Naz is still working this month at the fire brigade and is spending a lot of time travelling between the beach house and work.

We enjoyed a fabulous Christmas and New Year with family - lots of kids, food, drinks, laughs and the usual interesting moments.

Our Internet access has been very intermittent but I will try and put up a few more posts this week of our time in Australia.

Cousins

A little more Frankie

I have a few pics to post and catch-up on the past couple of weeks. We arrived in Australia 10 days ago and have since been enjoying introducing Frankie to our family and friends, a crazy Christmas and settling into our beach house - home for the next month!

Below are some pics I took on the 12th December, Frankie at 5 weeks and a comparison of Piper at the same age.

Piper - 5 weeks old

It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas...

On the 1st December Santa sent Piper an early present. When she woke she found this Elf and storybook on her chair.

Santa has sent Max the Elf to live with us and report if Piper and Frankie are naughty or nice. Every night he flies back to the North Pole to report to Santa, Piper can also tell Max any wishes she has and he passes them onto Santa. Every morning Piper has to find Max and we put him back on his shelf for the day. 

Unfortunately it turns out our Max is a rather cheeky and mischievous Elf and has turned our house upside down over the past week. Below are the antics of Max over the past 10 days.

1. Max destroys the nursery     2. Toilet papered the staircase     3. After a couple of late nights Max took a nap

4. Connect 4 fun and games                              5. Max stole chocolates from her advent calendar... this caused tears

Piper decided to take control on night 6 and trapped Max under the laundry basket before she went to bed.... unfortunately Max's magic was too strong and he escaped and trapped all of the toys from her bed..... oops Max made Piper cry again!

7. Green milk anyone??     8. Piper's bear decided enough was enough     9. Scooter fun with Baby Molly

(P.S. I have had lots of queries as to where Max came from - in Australia PotteryBarn Kids are the stockists, in the UAE I purchased direct from the USA via souq.com)

Pasta and Paint

Do you use Pinterest? I have a love/hate relationship with it. 
I enjoy using it to pin ideas for shopping, house stuff, clothing etc but I loathe those pinners who seem to have all the time in the world to craft with their children all day, bake, sew all their children's clothes from scratch and then apparently still have time to cook a perfectly proportioned and well balanced dinner and pin that too! I secretly think they are full of crap and designed to make us working parents feel even more guilty than we already do half the time!

Just in case you have no idea what Pinterest and my above rant is all about - Pinterest is a virtual online pin board where  you can collate all the pictures and links you see across the internet in one place. A very handy tool or a good source of frustration and at times a brilliant time eater - depends on how you want to look at it.

Anyhoo, I have what I like to call my guilty working Mums pin board of all the projects I would like to do with Piper if I ever found the time, and my maternity leave seemed like just the time to have some fun and try some of these ideas out.

Below is the result of Piper and I spending the afternoon painting pasta and making necklaces.

I would like to say this rocked Piper's world and we had an amazing time - but we didn't. She couldn't of cared less, it took far too long for the paint to dry, she lost interest in painting the pasta after about 5 pieces but wanted the end result necklace, so I painted most of the pasta and thread the necklaces myself.

A Month of Frankie

Can you believe it has been a month since our little Frankie arrived?

I can't. It confusingly feels like a month has gone in the blink of an eye yet at the same time it has been one of the longest months of my life.

It's hard to imagine life before Frankie, she has slotted into out little family like she was always here. Piper is an amazing big sister, her patience with Frankie is impressive (except for when Frankie screams in the car - then Piper blocks her ears and lets it be known she is not happy). We are experiencing the usual hurdles of introducing a new sibling, but mostly our little family is happy and rolling with the changes.

Frankie is healthy and growing fast, and although she looks identical to Piper as a baby there is one big difference, Frankie is our chubby bubby. She has fat rolls layering all 4 limbs and so many chins I have stopped counting!
I have had some ups and downs since Frankie's birth, unfortunately there were some complications both during and after that have caused us a bit of stress and worry but we are almost over it all now and moving on.

A round-up of our month:

1. Most number of clothing changes I have needed in one day = 4
2. Number of times Frankie has poohed or peed on her Dad in one day = 4
3. Number of public throw-ups large enough to require an immediate return home = 3
4. Number of new grey hairs Naz has acquired = 4876 (he does the Richard Gere look well)
5. Return visits to American Hospital for Mumma = too bloody many to count
6. Ambulance rides back to hospital = 1 (Mumma not Frankie luckily)
7. 4 year old sister tantrums = 15
8. Maximum hours of uninterrupted sleep Naz and I have had in the past month = 4.5 hours
9. Packets of late night Tim Tams eaten = 22
10. Smiles in this house = 1,000

Ahoy there!

With all the change of welcoming a new family member and then a few medical issues since Frankie and I returned home from hospital, this weekend we decided to dedicate some time to Piper.

On Friday (jammed in between feeds and with Naz sitting outside just in case the boobs were needed) I took Piper for some girly fun and we both relaxed with a pedicure at our local salon.
Then today Naz organised the most elaborate and amazing treasure hunt for her. She is very much into pirates and treasure at the moment and got right into it.
Earlier Naz snuck out and with chalk marked out his crosses and skulls and buried treasure throughout our community - the park, the pool area and around the lake walk. This was all coordinated with a map and instructions he had prepared for her.
Her haul of treasure was a new set of glitter pens once she had located each individual pen!

Back pack organised and ready to go

Frankie slept as usual - and yes she is wearing a beanie in Dubai! Winter has arrived and we had a strangely cold and wet weekend