Every girl needs a good lippy to match her outfit

Alisa is going overseas for 9 weeks in mid December so we took it upon ourselves to enjoy a family weekend away with her in Lorne. Mum also came with us so there has been lots of fun and frivolity that AJ has had to endure/enjoy.

Sienna has so far thought it is the coolest thing to have Nonna and Aunty Lise around 24/7 as she has been kissed, cuddled, played with, laughed at and attention overloaded since we arrived.

Highlights of today include:
- Sienna's first introduction to lipstick by Aunty Lise. She was so good and stayed very still while lashings of dusty pink were being applied to her baby lips.

- Soaking up the sea air and feeling myself take a breath and relax my shoulders for the first time in a while...

- Dinner at The Cumberland to celebrate Mum's retirement next Thursday (Sienna slept peacefully in her pram soon after we got there!)

- After dinner drinks in our apartment reminiscing about childhood antics while sharing a cock-sucking cowboy with my mum. The cocktail.

Simple pleasures

A basil plant is growing happily in the garden bay window I am lucky enough to have in my kitchen. I walk passed it every day and today I stopped and enjoyed the pretty flower it was adorned with. Simple. Beautiful. Worth taking a moment to appreciate.

Bubble baby

Sienna's cousins in Perth refer to her as the "bubble baby" after this bath photo I sent to them when she was about 4 months old. In a recent attempt to send them an updated photo I used her bath time to play with the bubbles and pile them on Sienna's head and face to get as many bubbles on her as I could.

Luckily Sienna finds this funny and enjoys the process of positioning the bubbles and then taking photos. After putting them on her and watching them fall from her face I discovered she looked a bit like Santa. Finding this hilarious I continued to snap away...it wasn't until I reviewed the pics that I discovered that as the bubbles moved she looked a little less like the fat man in the red suit and more like the clothed man that the US president is hunting for...Osama. Oops!

Below are some of the pics. In one she looks like a little bearded elf...

Things on benches

If you take a look around my house at the moment you'll see copious amounts of bits and pieces piled on our bench tops. While AJ will attest to my tendency for messiness (not by normal standards, but apparently so for the more "retentive" of us), I am not usually keen on filling all available bench space with junk.

At the moment, this is our life. The "junk" on the benches is not really junk, it's just stuff that used to be on the floor that I have put on a bench until I can work out a new home for such items as bathroom bins, toilet brushes and holders, pot plants, ornaments, books etc, etc, etc.

Needless to say, Sienna is thriving and zooming around the house at a frightening pace. I am thinking of putting a bell on her because last week when I left her happily playing amongst my shoes in the wardrobe I went to put on my make-up (2m from where she was). As I concentrated on the important task of applying mascara I noticed that the sound of shoes being moved had subsided and a different, unidentified noise had replaced it...and it had moved to the en suite. I walked into the en suite for find our little love playing happily on the floor with the toilet brush. Argh!!!! She had swanned straight passed me and I didn't even hear her.

So at the moment it's things on benches until I find new places to put them.

8 teeth

We have officially cut our 8th tooth! I say "we" because although Sienna does all the cutting of teeth...I do all of the consoling and night waking with her so it's as much of an achievement that I survived these 8 teeth as it is for her that she produced them.

It is difficult to get a good shot of her mouth open so I usually use bath time for close up head shots because she happily sits in the one spot and smiles alot. As you can see I also had a bit of fun with her face washer...I made her look like Maria the nun in the Sound of Music. Sienna thought it was fun too for about 1 minute. After that she promptly took it off.

Introducing Felix

In the 6 months that I've been blogging about our family I have neglected to mention one of our members...introducing Felix the cat. Not original but I love the name Felix and AJ would never agree to letting one of our future children have the name so our cat was blessed with it.

I guess neglecting to mention him thus far is a fairly accurate metaphor for his life of late. Since the introduction of Sienna he has been quite unpredictable and crabby so I think he picks up on my anxious energy when he's around her and keeps away. Having said that, we have made every effort to include him in our recently extended family - especially AJ. And I think as the months pass he's forgiving us for having a human child and finding his place on our laps again and allowing us both to enjoy a pat as we pass eachother.

We love our furry son and are even getting used to the copious amounts of scratches that appear weekly on our chocolate brown leather couches. Ah cats...

There's a party on the hill...

Mother’s group celebrated our babies first birthdays at the Warrandyte bakery. We decided to celebrate mid way between the kids birthday’s so today we bundled them up against the cold and arrived with a gift each to share with one other friend (kris-kringle style). The idea was to buy a coffee and have some birthday cake. That was until my Martha Stewart excitement took over and I had visions of a tablecloth, candles and lemon-raspberry muffins for the mums to enjoy.

Turns out one of the other mums, Kellie, had a similar idea and bought cup & saucer treats, fairy bread and party hats too. So it was like a real party…except that Sienna was tired and drawn from having suffered a fever earlier in the week. As in Monday to Wednesday. As in it was reasonably low this morning so I assumed it had all passed and bought her along to the party so she wouldn’t miss out on it.

Not the most nurturing decision I could have made. Poor thing had a higher temp and was not looking well when we got home 2 hours later. Tsk Tsk to me…

Irreplaceable moments

There are many moments that mothers endure day to day. If it's not their refusal to eat (proceeded by the pushing away of an overloaded spoon that sends mashed vegies flying everywhere), it's the whingeing while we hurriedly prepare their meal kicking ourselves for having sat down to have a cup of tea during their nap instead of getting ready for the late afternoon rush of dinner, bath and bed.

But luckily for us there are a couple of gems in our day that we wait for...or that I wait for. It's the moment that I walk into Sienna's room after her sleep and she sees me and smiles. She's refreshed, happy to be alive and excited to see her mummy. It's priceless, it's beautiful and it's a God send in a demanding day of giving. And it's all the reward I need...I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Fun in the sun

Today we enjoyed a day out with Kellie & Callum. Kellie picked us up around 9am and we put our car seat in her car, popped Sienna in and drove down to the peninsula. We enjoyed lunch at Kellie's mum's house and the kids had a good time crawling around and getting into mischief. After lunch it was into their bathers and down to Frankston beach.

What a beautiful beach it is. The water was all aquas and greens and crystal clear. Sienna watched Callum crawl around playing in the water while she shivered away in the shallow water due to a persistent cool wind. After moving her to a warmer location she enjoyed herself putting fistfuls of sand into her mouth and watching the water roll in.

When she got too cold I rugged Sienna up and she cuddled with me on the shore until she was warm enough to play again...without her cold wet shorts on. Love that little bottom!

Thank you Kellie and Callum for a lovely day.

Off and racing

While the rest of you were caught up watching the race that stops a nation, AJ and I were caught up in a race of our own. A race to see who could get the camera first to witness our very own little philly crawl for the first time!

Once she got the hang of it she was moving around...and around...and around. It was gorgeous to watch and even more satisfying to see that Sienna hadn't realised that she could move far beyond the play mat that she has been on for the past 10 months. So she'd just circle it and move back and forth on it.

I'm sure that will all change shortly...

Racing carnival...getting into the spirit of it

During a visit to Aunty Lise's house for afternoon tea we were treated to this delightful spectacle as they walked through the door after several minutes in Alisa's bedroom...Sienna all gussied up for the races. We were so impressed that she managed to keep her fascinator on long enough for us to take these hurried pics. I think she probably liked all the attention. Who doesn't?

Finger Food

Sienna has been getting increasingly interested in feeding herself...so today I put her need to grow and develop above my preference for a clean baby during meal times and gave her a piece of pear to destroy.

She absolutely loved the opportunity to play with her food, squish it in her hands, pat it on the tray, run it through her hair and every now and then put some in her mouth. As it was getting to be a very sticky exercise, I swapped the pear for grated cheese and the fun continued...and I've been finding pear and cheese in all the secret places of the high chair that only exist to hide stale food.

Play time with cousins

While Aunty Sue was off enjoying a well deserved massage and pedicure, we got to play with Sienna's cousins Dylan (3) and Mia (12 days older than Sienna). Although Mia was upset that her mum had left (took her about 45 mins to realise) we all enjoyed spending time together.

I particularly enjoyed watching Dylan interact with Sienna. He is so gentle and loving towards her. For a 3 year old boy who is often seen dashing around looking for his next adventure, his tenderness for Sienna and his sister took me off guard. I guess there's nothing like blood ties to bring out love for eachother.

I took a few hurried pics while they were playing...excuse the quality...enjoy the sentiment.

Nearly there...

Sienna is getting very close to crawling. She leans forward as far as she can until she falls onto her belly. She's not quite there but it won't be long now. Here she is trying to crawl while enjoying some time with me in the back garden...

She teeths...

I just knew it! After daring to post that Sienna has started to sleep through the night...she woke up 5 times last night with what I think (and hope) is teething pain. And so it is a dazed mum that sits at this computer to post. Sienna is a bubbly little soul today unaware of her impact on mummy and daddy last night. Gotta love her...

As an aside, Sienna is getting increasingly difficult to take pictures of. Most of the ones I took today feature a grizzly face with a hand outstretched for the camera. She wants to play with it, not have it shoved in her face and then taken away. As you will can see in this pic.

She Sleeps!

Since we have enjoyed the 6th night straight of Sienna sleeping through, I now feel able to post about it with some confidence. She sleeps through the night!!!!! Previous to this miracle we endured 6 nights of waking at 4am and crying until 6am...where I was nearly losing my mind. Sienna has now cottoned on that I am not feeding her at night and she must wait until morning...and she sleeps!

I am so happy with this that Sienna is now treated to a whole new mummy during the day. I'm back to reading books and singing and playing on the floor. The sleep deprived mummy is nowhere near as fun or happy. Even Mick who has been doing our bathroom renovations for the past 5 weeks has noticed the difference in me. Now I just need to retrain myself to sleep through the night. After 5 hours I wake up ready to start the day and it's still dark outside. Hopefully I'll be up to 8 hours sleep a night very soon...mmm 8 hours sleep.

Rockin' and a Rollin'

Today was the first day I have seen Sienna rock back and fourth on all fours and then proceed to make movements forward (like a new caterpillar learning to wriggle along). She has been pushing herself backwards around the floor for about 2 weeks, but today was real progress. She can move forward!

Now I'd better see about baby proofing the house...my beautiful stationary baby has given me quite a repreve until now.

Thank God for the Teletubbies

I'm not particularly proud of this but I have recently discovered the bliss of a quiet baby mesmorised by the television. Usually around 6pmish if Sienna is tired and grizzly and it's been a long day for me I'll put on the Teletubbies for her viewing pleasure.

Granted I only have one episode taped so we have seen the same one several times now. I can recite it verbatim but Sienna is still delighted by the footage of the spectacular peacock showing off it's vibrant feathers and LaLa & Po (yes I now know their names!) marching around the place.

I for one am grateful for the 20mins of silence in a day of constant chatter whilst meeting the ever changing needs of a 9 month old baby. Call it a cop out, call it what you will. I call it bliss...and so does Sienna.

Waving

After several weeks of greeting Sienna in the morning and after every sleep with "Hello" and a wave we were rewarded today with a baby version of hello and an arm that waved...and waved...and waved all day.

Its amazing how they can watch you for weeks and then just one day begin copying you. Luckily for us it's Sunday and AJ was there to enjoy her latest trick. Sienna has also taken to saying "heyo dadde" which we think is clearly "Hello Daddy". Our child is a genius!

9 months today!

Our little girl is growing up so fast. Nine months already. By this stage I would have expected Sienna to be crawling and sleeping through the night...but she's just not there yet. I'm totally fine with her not crawling yet (makes my life a little easier!) but I am keenly anticipating the day my beautiful girl sleeps through the night. As much as I enjoy spending time with her, the 3am catch-ups are wearing a bit thin for this sleep deprived mum.

At nine months AJ and I are getting to enjoy lots of smiles, giggles, blowing rasperries, talking away ("mum", "dada", "Goi, goi, goi" is a favourite but we're at a loss to know what she means) and occasionally surprising me with clapping hands (once) and waving hello (once). She also eats everything I put in front of her and the thing that makes my heart the happiest (only a mum could understand this) she poohs daily now!!!

We can't wait to see her develop over the next few months...when we'll be celebrating a 1st birthday.