Happy Birthday baby girl :)

This time one year ago, Greg and I would have been bonding for the first time (after a rather crazy delivery in the car!) with our beautiful baby daughter. We had so very much hoped and prayed for a little girl, and God answered that prayer with our beautiful little Lani Faith.

It's hard to believe that it was all a year ago now. I still remember it so vividly, remember the beautiful little thing she was, and then I think about the last year, and how fast it has gone - my baby has grown up in a blur!

Here's how she's grown in the last 12 months:

Happy Birthday my beautiful baby girl :):) Love you forever. xxx

OMGoodness

My baby girl turns ONE tomorrow... how the heck did that happen!!!???

Cute Nappy up for grabs :)

If you've got a little girl, or a friend or family member with a little girl, and you've been thinking about using modern cloth nappies, I have this gorgeously soft pink minky All-in-Two in a size Medium for sale on the Patooties blog.

Normally I make my nappies to order, so there's usually a bit of a turn-around time, but if this one takes your fancy, you can have it now! For more details, check out the PATOOTIES blog.

Bye bye salicylates

Greg and I have been looking into the salicylate intolerance a little more over the last day or so. It seems a lot of the symptoms that both he and Eli show - fatique, echzema, headaches and often sleeplessness in babies (getting up at 4.30am!) - can be attributed to an intolerance of an overdose of salicylates in the diet. As its an intolerance, it doesn't mean we have to eliminate them all together, which I'm really releived about, so we're going to focus on one 'list' at a time and note differences etc. This week, we say goodbye to all the foods on the very high list - mainly a lot of fruits, but also juice, cordial and a couple of vegies that are usually in our diet. So we'll just have to get a bit more creative with some meals and snacks I buy.

No more:
Vegetables - capsicum & tomatoes (both of which I actually use a lot of in my cooking)
Fruit - grapes, sultanas (and other dried fruits), oranges, pineapple, rockmelon & strawberries
Other - mueesli bars, savoury chips/snacks, cordial, fruit juice (other than pear), honey, jams & commercial sauces/gravy.
And there's a lot of spices/herbs I've just realised are on it, so dinners are going to be hard!!

Will still appreciate any recipes or tips from anyone (Lus, Lu?) also on low-salicylate diets.

Hope you're having a lovely Sunday xx

P.S. Jumping on Lusi's bandwagon with the thankfulness
5 things I'm thankful for today:
1. the Internet and the wealth of information I can find on it
2. That in my weakness GOD is my strength - I can do this.
3. A lovely winter day
4. A fantastic, and healthy lunch date with friends :)
5. Coffee. :):)

Scrappy Bargains

Attention Scrappers!!!

My SoF buddy Cass has just started a new blog site where she'll be selling lots of scrapbooking goodies (and sometimes non-scrapping stuff too)... lots of packs, embelishments, and for a fantastic price!

So add www.scrappybargains.blogspot.com to your bloglines.

Failsafe??

Greg never seems to be 100%. He's always tired, always has migraines and has a constant dermatitis/eczema on his hands. As a child he had an intolerance to salicylates, but apparently he grew out of it. I'm not entirely convinced of this, as I'm just concerned that the fact that none of these symptoms ever seem to clear/go away. Increasingly I've been thinking it might be the salicylates again.

I haven't done a lot of research into it, but from what I have done, well to be honest, it just stresses the hell out of me. At the moment, I'm doing Weight Watchers, and having to cook low-fat foods, and the thought of having to take out pretty much all the things we eat a lot of (a huge overhaul!!), well its almost too much for my poor stressed-out little brain to handle.

BUT, I don't want my husband always in pain,tired etc etc. Something needs to be done.

I think I really need to try the FAILSAFE diet, but by golly, its going to take a lot of prayers for me to be in a place where I feel I can.

I trust that God has led me to this for a reason, but I just don't think I have the strength to do it. My life is so full and so crazy and I'm stressed-out/emotional/over it so many times during the week already, can I really do this too!!???

So I'm asking for your prayers, and for those of you doing the FAILSAFE with your families, please email me and tell me about your situation, how you've managed it, and I would love some recipes and food ideas too... I really don't know where to start!!

Our Family Shoot, and other stuff...

* Warning - long post with lots of pics, you might want to grab a cuppa :):)

Finally, I'm getting around to uploading the gorgeous family photos that we had taken by Katie Toland when we were in Melbourne on our holiday recently. I love love love these pics, thanks so much Katie!! I bought a big multi-frame for the loungeroom (well actually we had to buy two as Eli broke the glass in the first one, ggrrr... so much for it being cheap, it ended up costing $60 anyway!) to display them all, so now I just have to pick which ones to put where, and get them printed.

Here are some of my faves, be prepared, there's about 20 of them!

First, we took some in the studio...

Then we headed down to the beach...

Hasn't she done a beautiful job!! Can't wait to get these up around the house!!

In other news, I went and visited the new childcare centre where I'll be working on Monday. It's still being painted and out-fitted and such, but it looks great so far, its nice and big and spacious, and I can't wait to start and be a part of this great community centre and family ministry. We now have a start/opening date of 7th July - less than 3 weeks away now! So excited about it.

I can't believe my baby girl is going to be ONE next week!! Where did that time go?? I'm getting into 'party plan' mode now, there's lots to organise when you do a themed party, and well I have high expectations of myself too. In case I didn't mention it before, we're having a Teddy Bear's Picnic. So gotta start collecting ingredients for all the cute teddy-bear food I'm going to make, plus get some other things for some activities for the kids, loot bags, and decorations. Fun fun!!

Been busy as usual making nappies. Here's some I've been working on lately, you can see a few more pics of them if you want on the Patooties blog.

Looking forward to some seriously-needed Mummy time on Saturday!! Heading across town to scrap with a bunch of girls from Scrap of Faith. Greg's taking the day off work to look after the kids - woohoo!! I won't be staying all day though, as Greg's best mate and his little boy are having their b'day party in the afternoon, so we'll go there together.. a Wiggles party - so gotta get together some Wiggles-coloured shirts or costumes or something...

And finally, here's a couple of random pics from the last week or so...

Playing with playdough:

Then he fell asleep in his morning tea, so cute!!

Went for a nice family trip to a local park the other day.... was so good!! We took the boys' bikes too, and went for a long ride/walk.

Well, that's it for now, hope you made it to the end.... this post has taken me much of the morning (lots of photos take a while to upload!) so I better go and do something domestic.

God Bless xx

Elijah @ 2

Thought I better record some of the things about Eli @ 2 yrs old. (don't have time to write the letter, so dot-point will have to do!)

* Eli is wearing a size 2/size 3 clothes. He's really tall!!

* He goes to 'kindy' one day a week and now enjoys it thoroughly. He gets very excited to go to 'kinny' on Tuesdays.

* His favourite foods are sultanas (tarnies), yoghurt (wogik), fruit bars (bit bar), baked beans (bake beans) and he loves yummy treats like biscuits (bickies), milo (mino) and chocolates (kokik). Oh, and cordial (cor-yoo, which used to be cor-cor) and water (woka, which used to be just wok).

* He's getting fussy at dinnertime though. It took a few smacks for him to see we are serious about him eating. Now we are having to encourage him every little step of the way by saying 'Yay!' after every mouthful - but it works, mostly.

* He knows his colours VERY well, and can distinguish between them all. He knows blue (boo), green (geen), red (wed), yellow (arllow), black (back), white (white), pink (pik), purple (purpoo), orange (oyij), and brown (blem).

* He can nearly count to ten even! 'one, two, pee, bor, bise, kix, seden, ate, nine, den.' He can count to 4, then needs a little help for 5. He knows that 6 comes after 5, isn't too sure about 7, but knows that 8 comes after 7. And needs a bit of help to get to 10. Won't be too long and he'll be rattling it off no problems though. It wasn't even something I was really conscious about teaching him, but rather we just count things (and talk about colours) all the time.

* Oh my, he's going through the 'terrible twos' at the moment something shocking! He stirs up Jaidyn, he stirs up Lani. He jumps on them and wrestles them and hits Lani with random objects all the time. He's disobedient and oh-so strong-willed. He says 'no' to me all the time, and gets a smack at least once a day!

* We are going through a horrible sleeping cycle with him at the moment. He wakes up, without fail at about 4.30am every day. He comes down the hallway into our bed, and sometimes goes back to sleep, but mostly he just wiggles. We usually give in at about 5am and come out and watch a movie or try to play 'quietly'... I tell you what though, I'm almost at the end of my rope with it. He is then cranky and feral most of the morning (well, day!) because he really needed more sleep. He ready for his sleep again sometimes as early as 9.30am! NOT good. As he then won't have one in the afternoon and he's a right little monster all afternoon. If I can, I try to take him and Lani outside, or go out somewhere in the morning so I can delay his sleep, but then he'll often fall asleep in the car. So we're ALL out of whack, and now we have to really try to put a stop to this yucky habit.

* He loves to play outside on the swing, trampoline and on his bikes. He loves following Jaidyn around catching bugs too. And he loves going for a walk sometimes in the afternoons too.

* He's really into the Wiggles right now. We have a few DVDs that he loves and he got some cool Wiggles clothes and toys for his b'day too. He knows all their names too.

* We watch a lot of movies - too many really (bad mummy). He loves watching his Wiggles DVDs, sometimes VegieTales too, but equally loves the movies too - his favourites this week are 'Cars' and 'Happy Feet'. He's over 'The Bee Movie' which was last month's favourite.

* He's developing a real love of books now. He goes to bed at night fairly well now - I usually read a story, and then he'll sit and 'read' for a while too before going to sleep (although sometimes him and Lani like to play silly-buggers from across the room, giggling at each other.). His favourite books this week are 'God made Puppies', 'Pop goes the Wiggles', 'Wiggly Friends', 'On the Farm' (complete with cool googly eyes) and 'Ben the Bee'. Sometimes he'll 'read' saying 'bla bla bla'.

* Him and Lani have started screaming randomly at each other. Fun. Its a big game really. When Lani screams, Eli says 'No keeming!!' (no screaming) but he screams it at her, so then she screams again, and back and forth we go. Who knows what the neighbours think... sigh...

* Blue, his beloved teddy bear, is no longer. We lost him somewhere, and I can't for the life of me work out where. We've looked all over the house, and called the shops we were at last time I remember seeing him... he's ok with it though ('boo gone') and I think the sentimentality of it gets to me more - I would have liked to have kept him :( Not sure I even have any pics of him :(

* He can pretty much say anything we ask him too. He just copies us. He actually said his full name 'Elijah' last night, but that's still a work in progress.

Some things he says:

* Wa-wake!! (wake up)

* No keeming! (no screaming)

* Un-no (I don't know)

* wahoo!! (so cute, says it when he's excited about something, like if we go outside to play)

* Li-Li opib (Li-Li open - he likes to open everything himself these days)

* Li-Li turn!

* boo-goos (boogas! lol)

... and I can't think of any others off the top of my head!!

Well, better go attend to the ferals that are running rampant all over the house... happy Sunday.

New things...

I've got some new things in the pipelines for Patooties... keeping me very busy.

Firstly, I decided to change blog hosts, so I can make it more like a website, with separate pages and albums and such that unfortunately, blogger just doesn't offer. So I'm going with Typepad now - I've only heard good reports about it really. The new blog is still a work in progress, but you can go and check it out if you like. Still have a few information, FAQ pages to add, but it's the general gist! Tell me what you think?? www.patooties.typepad.com

Second thing that is new for the business, is my new design One-Size-Fits-Most pocket nappy. After some trial and error and research, I think this new way is going to work much better... at least I hope so!!

Have been buying lots of yummy new fabrics too - I now have over 40 different fabrics to choose from!! I've been REALLY busy trying to keep up with all the orders I got with my introductory prices... still plodding through them, but still enjoying the process too. Am still amazed at how God has blessed this for me!

And another new thing - I'm going to be working part-time from the end of June!! As if I don't already have enough to do huh.... I'm really looking forward to this though! I'm going to be job-sharing as a group leader in a Christian (!!) childcare centre that the director from the centre I used to work in is building with her church. I'm really looking forward to being able to use christian resources and the Word of God to teach kids!! Awesome!! I'll just need lots of prayer for being able to balance it with the rest of life :) :)

Oh, and I need to also find time in there to plan a Teddy Bear's Picnic themed party for Lani's b'day party on 29 June. I want it to be great too, so will have to put some effort - and probably money - into it. If anyone has any cool ideas for a Teddy Bear's picnic for lots of adults and a whole mix of kids of all ages, please let me know!!

Oh, and I've also been doing Weight Watchers. I've lost 2.8kgs in the last 3 weeks, pretty happy with that!! I have a long way to go though, but am trying to take it all in smaller parts of a bigger picture.

Well, sorry to be short and sweet, but time is of the essense.

God bless all xxx