I know

With the girls are sharing a room, Markus and I take turns reading them their bedtime stories each night.  Tonight is Markus's night.  Their bedroom is directly over the kitchen, so I can hear his soothing voice through the ceiling as he reads them to sleep...and I know our girls have the best father in the world.

Manic Monday

I awoke to the sound of something shattering.

The 4th shattered item in a week.

The carved ostrich egg Kurt had given us.

A sad accident. Buddhist non-attachment is hard when sentiment is strong.

Wildness this morning that nothing could touch.

I cooked waffles, reheated pancakes, baked chocolate cupcakes for the afternoon

And then I ate my own breakfast.

As I sat down, I realized the crazy had somehow stopped, and I enjoyed two girls coloring and singing side, happy and settled at last.

And now it is 8am.

Singer and dancer

Intermission

Sorry for the delay between posts. Jetlag hit us in a big way around here, which surprised us given that it was only a 4-hour difference. We've all been rather sluggish and tired. Luckily, we were able to enjoy some extra family time at home before the girls went back to school and Markus went back to work on Wednesday.

Ellie is now in Middle Primary, the next age group at school. Montessori schools have mixed-age classrooms, so she has moved up to the (roughly) 6-9 year olds. She is THRILLED! She asked every day of our vacation if we were going home tomorrow. When we asked why, she invariably said that when we went home, she'd go back to school and when she went back to school, she'd be in middle primary, and she couldn't wait to be in middle primary!

Stephanie is now set to attend every day in the Junior Primary classroom she used to share with Ellie. Ellie is so good at soothing her (so sweet!) that it was a wonderful gift for Stephanie to be able to start last term with Ellie in the same class. I have my reservations about her attending every day now (she still starts objecting in a big way not long after waking up in the morning), but we're going to give it a good go and reevaluate in another month or so.

The school day for 3 year olds at our school is from 8:30 to 1:30 five days a week, but I think that's a big ask for a new 3. We started Stephanie out for two hours, three days a week. We decided to up that to four days a week by the end of last term. Now, I upped it again to three hours, and her teacher wants all five days. As much as Stephanie objects at home (and I'm talking about tears and fuss from 6am), she does beautifully when she gets into the classroom. She loves to work, she makes herself right at home, and she seems to be friends with every child in the class. On her first day back, her teacher told me she wished for the first time that she had a video camera in the class just to show me how well Stephanie does. Two of my mom friends from the same class have done observations for their own children last term, and they too have reported back that Stephanie is happy as a clam in there. Whew. She's always happy when I pick her up and she has yet to be waiting by the door for my return, so I think we're good to go.

Both girls were exhausted from their first day of routine yesterday. Ellie, thrilled though she was about middle primary, started crying as soon as we got to the car about any little thing. I had brought the wrong snack. The wind blew her hair. The sun was too bright! WAH! Poor girl! She was soooo tired. Stephanie didn't do any crying when I picked her up earlier. She was happy and chatty. We came home, played, ate lunch, danced, puzzled, dressed up, and got back into the car to fetch Ellie. I gave her some crackers to snack on and I heard enthusiastic CRUNCH CRUNCH CRrrr... She was out like a light before we'd even left the driveway (cracker dangling from her lower lip). Tee-hee.

We call this "burning the fumes"

This is what pre-bedtime mayhem can look like:

What's cookin'

This weekend, Ellie and I attended two birthday parties for her classmates, one on each day. Baby Stephanie was not invited, and she just couldn't understand why. Both times we left, she was very distressed and cried quite a bit at the injustice of it all. By party number two, I felt terrible and offered to make it up to her by baking a cake that afternoon and hosting a birthday party for her and Ellie's babies, Zuzu, Heidi, and Lolo. This was received with great rejoicing, and peace was restored to the universe. Markus caught this little video of us baking the cake together with The Precious:

Soup for Zoe

Yesterday was the first day of Ellie's winter holidays from school. Today, she will start a music workshop with the school's music teacher, Robyn, that will last for a few hours each day until Friday. Ellie is thrilled about this workshop, but yesterday, that gap Monday with no friends to visit after a wonderful weekend with Papa home...it had potential to go very pear-shaped. Fortunately, it didn't! In the morning, we made our first visit to the Fremantle Maritime Museum (nicely done!). Stephanie was tired so we only lasted about an hour, but it was worth it (kids' entry was free!). After Stephanie's nap, the girls played well in the backyard together. There was a lot of the requisite trampoline time, but closer to dinnertime, it was time to cook!

While all my hard work cooking and preparing foods for my family goes underappreciated by our resident CEO, it clearly does not go unnoticed. I snuck outside with the camera to take a few sneak-shots (they typically stop whatever they are doing when they see the camera), but this time, they didn't notice me at all. I got a bit more bold and took some shots with the camera in full view, and still they worked on. Ellie started explaining to me the detailed process involved in soup preparation, and I flipped to movie mode after about a minute.

Meanwhile at King's Park...

Watch the little one towards the very end.

Blessings in the afternoon

Yes, the morning was challenging. I think the most interesting moment was when Ellie pulled out a long strip of toilet paper, wiped her bum and then re-rolled it all (with wiped part somewhere in the middle). But the afternoon brought this...






...and my heart is full of peace and joy and love for these wonderful little people and all their glorious crazy.
I am so blessed.

"Wanna show you somethin'!"

**TMI ALERT for the first sentence**
This afternoon, I actually used the toilet alone. I should have known. Stephanie came running into the bathroom, full of excitement, announcing, "Wanna show you somethin'!" She was bursting! I followed and found this:


She was so proud.



Fortunately, she had used a regular pencil. I dug out the big eraser and started clean-up, only to feel her drawing on my back with a large piece of outdoor chalk. Hmm. Time for Plan B!
Ellie and I taped up a long stretch of brown paper on the wall outside, and then we all worked on a mural. The girls had a brilliant time with it, and it kept their attention for at least half an hour (very impressive at that point in the afternoon).

Reading and singing

My first full week back was Ellie's last week of school for the year. To call it intense would be an understatement and somewhat inaccurate besides; instead, it would best be described in Aussie terms: it has been "full on". I am very behind on blog posting, so I offer this joyful snippet as a placeholder while I gather my thoughts.



Ellie is looking at a farm animal book and singing "Old MacDonald".
Baby Stephanie tells us, "I read" before joining Ellie in finishing the chorus.
Best wishes for a lovely start to your week.

First puddle walk

Despite all the rain we've had, it doesn't tend to build up much due to the accompanying wind and decent drainage in our neighborhood. This has left our big puddle fan (Ellie) disappointed on many an occasion. Baby Stephanie didn't know what she had been missing, until this weekend when we opted to go for a walk in light rain, when it suddenly gave way to brilliant sunshine and fresh puddles in the road. Ellie was in with gusto, but baby Stephanie was reluctant at first, not really seeing the point. As is increasingly the case, she started mimicking Ellie, and then she really got into the action, sitting down a few times to splash with her hands in the muddy water and cutting our walk short so we could take them home and give them a warm bath.


Cute little girly raincoats and happy splashers!

Sneaky

This afternoon, Ellie requested we bake cookies together. She chose peanut butter cookies, and after the first batch was in the oven, we remembered to add chocolate chips to the rest of the dough. As soon as the first batch was cool enough, baby Stephanie happily wandered around the backyard munching on a cookie, but Ellie was determined to wait for one with chocolate chips. Or so she said.
When the girls wandered outside, I went into the laundry room to transfer a load of clothes to the dryer. I looked out the window just as Ellie coaxed the cookie out of baby Stephanie's little fist and took a huge bite. "Ellie! I saw that!" PITUEY! She spat that bite out before starting to chew and began looking around wildly to see where I was while trying to stuff the stolen bite and the remaining cookie back into a bewildered Stephanie's hands.
I wish I had caught that on camera!

Morning portrait session

Just to prove the point I was making in the insomnia post (about needing to sleep, not needing to clean), we were awakened this morning by a persistent voice chanting "Mama!" repeatedly like a little baby birdie, only this voice was coming via the baby monitor and it did not belong to baby Stephanie. Ellie had bypassed us completely (her room is across the hall from ours), trekked to Stephanie's room, climbed into the crib with her (sleeping) sister, and woke everyone up. Hooray! This has been a recurring theme of late. Poor baby Stephanie. She gets this "what did I do to you?" expression on her tired little face, but she's up until naptime strikes a couple of hours later. Dragging as we all were (well, all of us except Ellie, who was energized enough for 10 people), Markus suggested we head to the beach for a portrait session and then go out to breakfast at a cafe we like there. Great idea!

I have been wanting to take pictures of the girls wearing gorgeous Christmas dresses. I missed it pre-Christmas because the summertime just didn't make me feel the season. Still, I like to send a picture with our thank you cards, so we decided to try post-Christmas Christmas portraits. Also, the girls received darling non-holiday matching dresses as a Christmas gift from Mary, so we wanted pictures in those as well. The morning light was beautiful, the temperature was heaven, the wind was light, so off we went!

It started all right. Ellie was feeling lovely in her silk gown.


Baby Stephanie got her Vogue on.


Actually, the ear rub is a sign she's very tired (remember she got an unexpected wake up call this morning). Though she tries to humor me, she's not particularly up to a photo shoot...


Okay, time to speed things up! A quick wardrobe change and a new round of photos:


Or maybe not.
Thank goodness for digital cameras! I managed to snap 40 pictures in less than 3 minutes, and I think we actually have a useable one in the bunch. I won't post it here. It's a special thank you that some special people will be receiving in the mail, hopefully in the next couple of weeks (hey, I need mailing time from Australia, okay?).

Sisters at tea (narrated by baby Stephanie)

Can you believe the service around here? S-L-O-W.


What am I missing?


Testing my other options...



Oh, I'll just do it myself.


At last!