Favourite things - family time

Assuming I figure how to schedule this post properly, by the time you read this I'll be touching down at Sydney airport, ready to spend a long weekend with my parents at their home in the Blue Mountains. It is amazing how much you have to pack for just three nights away when you have a little baby. Especially when the little baby is just learning to eat. I could fill an entire suitcase with just the flannels and wipes needed to keep Madeleine from painting the walls, the carpet, herself and anyone else within a 10-metre radius with whatever she is eating, in one meal.

But it's worth it. I love living in Melbourne, and feel really happy and settled here. But I do feel isolated from time to time (ok often) without my family here. Especially now that I have little Madeleine in my life, and I want her to grow up knowing them. So today is dedicated to family. I hope you get to enjoy something of yours this weekend, too.

1. Family photo shoots

Family photo shoots instead of family portraits: this seems to be happening more and more. It's certainly something I'd prefer when it comes to recording our time with Madeleine. Loved this one on Happiness Is.

2. Unknown, unmet family friends

I've been reading Katie's blog Pencil Box for a while now, and I just get lost in the her lovely, dreamy photography and little moments from her family life. She doesn't know I exist, but I still feel a kind of sisterly connection with her. She has a new little baby girl about the same age as Madeleine, and an older son who lives with them part time, as Em does with us. The love in their little, blended family is beautiful, and inspiring.

3. A wooden block family

So so cute, right? There's a tutorial on the Etsy blog, here.

4. Fortune cupcakes

Take a look at this little video tutorial from Oh Joy! on how to hide fortune-cookie-esque messages inside cupcakes. If I didn't have to leave the house at 5am, I would bake these and bring them as gifts to my family. One day when they next come to visit me, I think I'll do it for them. Imagine how lovely they would be at family get-togethers, like birthdays or anniversaries.

5. The Crawley family

How could I not mention them? Like the rest of the world, I am in love with this family and their humour and their melodrama and their incredible stately home and their fabulous fashions. I'm so annoyed because I tried to avoid the spoilers but of course I know what is to happen on this Sunday's episode, and of course I know what happens in the Christmas special and let me just say: Not. Happy. Jan. But not unhappy enough to stop watching, of course. Not while Maggie Smith remains to rule the clan.

Lately, on my iPhone

1. a gentle butterfly // a trio of cuteness // that curly-haired girl2. macarons! // dogs outside the butcher shop // a note discovered in my pocket 3. gifts from Target // Madeleine meets Aunty Steph // postcard + homesickness 4. walk around town // toddler humour // belly-laugh with baby

Reading

Right now, I am enjoying my first proper morning off in months, with nowhere to go and no appointments to keep. So I am not going to blog today. Instead, I am going spend some time reading while Madeleine plays. Hurrah! Have a wonderful weekend! (Image source)

Home renovation for toddlers

The day will come, all too soon I fear, when Madeleine will want to move into her own place. To ease the pain of separation that day is guaranteed to bring (to me), I may invest in real estate on her behalf to ensure she continues live nearby. Very nearby. In the family room, in fact. And the real estate will be of wonderfully-affordable cardboard construction.

Brand new Aussie company Tinyfolk makes creative and rather beautiful little indoor cubby houses and puppet theatres out of responsibly sourced, PEFC certified, and 100 percent recyclable cardboard. They come flat-packed so you can build them yourself (with not an allen key in sight), and the version called the "white playhouse" practically begs the kids to scribble and paint and glue glitter all over it.

Theatrical set designer and mum Genevieve Dugard heads up the company. "We love thoughtful products that create a space for children to make their own decisions, that encourage open-ended play," she says on her blog.

I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing Madeleine become Lady of the Manor, decorating her little home just like the utterly adorable toddlers in these photographs.

All images used with kind permission from Tinyfolk.

First Christmas

By popular demand (mostly from Aunty Bev) I present: Madeleine's first Christmas. When we woke up in the morning, Santa had been.

Baby M dressed up in a Christmas tutu and elf hat and gamboled on the fluffy rug. She seemed, already, to know that this was to be an especially fun day.* With Nan and Pa far away in Sydney, we all blessed the invention of Skype (after we got it to work, that is).

Later, while Madeleine napped... champagne brunch with friends, outside in the courtyard, where the sun made the rosemary fragrant and the olive tree had started to bear fruit. We sat around a table laden with fresh croissants, cherries, berries (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries), yoghurt, honey, and mixed-berry muffins still warm from the oven.

Christmas crackers snapped, silly hats on heads, appalling jokes on tongues.

A trip to the airport to pick up big sister Em. A journey to Bendigo to visit Mr B's family. A stop-off at the hotel for Em to open her presents and Madeleine to eat the paper.

At Nanna's house, a veritable present frenzy with all Madeleine's cousins, which ended in three-year-old Mia dancing and throwing paper over her head like a game in a pile of autumn leaves. All of this I failed to photograph because I was on the floor holding onto Madeleine while she played in her own paper storm.

I will leave you with Nanna and almost all of her grand-children, the little ones yelling "ME-RRRRRY CHRISTMAS!" just for you.

(Yes, I know that was a LOT. I'm not great at editing or curating when it comes to pictures of my family).

*Side effect: at the conclusion of Christmas and the couple of similar days that followed, Madeleine decided that sleep was for dummies and pledged never to do it again. AAAARGH. To be continued.

Six months

Sunday, 16 December 2012 You and me, Madeleine. We are a silly, crazy team, are we not? We can have the BEST of times with your Dad (even when eating at crazy Vegas-esque food-court-y pub bistros made to look like Greek marketplaces, complete with Doric columns, statues of David, mini temples and painted blue-sky ceilings).

When I pull a funny face, oh how you laugh! When you do a pop-off I say, "What was THAT?" and you burrow your face into my neck with the cheekiest grin.

I say, "Camera's rolling... and... ACTION," and you shake your head back and forth in your favourite dance move, which we call 'The Stevie Wonder'.

Sometimes I lie on the play-mat beside you, on my back, and no matter where you are on the mat and even though you can't yet crawl, you manage to roll and wiggle your way over to me. If I'm not watching out for it, the first sign of your presence is the sloppy embrace of your open-mouthed kiss on my nose.

You like it when I read to you, and you don't much mind which book I choose. Sometimes, you say "Oooh, ooh, ahh ahh" to pretend you are reading, too.

Before you drop off to sleep, you lie in your cot and have little conversations with yourself. Often, you make yourself laugh.

When you are tired, you put one hand in your mouth and then the other on top of it to stop the first one escaping.

You like watching Sesame Street and Mike the Knight but not Playschool or Mouk.

You have discovered how to fake-cough and, when I copy you, you think it is HILARIOUS.

After I feed you, you like to sit up on my knees. Softly, you reach out and explore my mouth and nose, eyes and chin. You love to put my face in your hands.

My heart is already completely in your hands.

Happy six month birthday, my dearest love.

Gloriously lost

Sometimes you don't realise how desperately you need a weekend outside of the city until the ocean air is in your lungs, dense forest canopy shades your face, and your mobile phone is useless. We are just back from three days of hiking in the bushland surrounding the Great Ocean Road as part of a group that's raising funds to support cancer patients.

Madeleine absolutely loved it, singing lustily from her carrier as we hiked our way through the trees, and laughing every time anyone talked to her or squeezed her chubby cheeks (which happened quite often).

She kept on laughing while we trekked through rainforests, up mountains, along clifftop paths and over sand dunes. She laughed when we got back to our cabin in the bush wayyyyy past her bedtime, and laughed at the very suggestion of going to sleep while the sun was still up. She laughed even more when I gave in and took her down to have dinner with the rest of the group.

We all sat together around long tables on a wide verandah, drinking wine and eating cheese and making our own pizzas in an outdoor oven. In the darkening sky, koalas growled and kookaburras chuckled. Without warning, a big, blustery, summer storm broke overhead, sending down sheets of rain and at some point, while thunder rolled and lightening split open the sky, Madeleine finally fell asleep in my arms.

Later I put her down in a travel cot beside our bed, a gift from Baby Bjorn, and she slept beautifully all night. Slept like a baby, in fact. She barely moved until I woke her up for her next feed.

I'm so thankful to Baby Bjorn, because the cot was fantastic. You just pull it out of the case and it bounces into place: you don't need a physics degree to put it together. It was small enough to fit in our tiny cabin room, but big enough for Madeleine to keep using it as she grows. The sides are at a kind of pyramid angle, making it super sturdy and safe, something very important to me because when she HASN'T been hiking all day, Madeleine thrashes and bumps around in her sleep like a washing machine full of towels. Plus there's mesh all around which means my baby gets all the airflow she needs, and I can see her through the sides, but she still feels snug and secure.

I also used the travel cot as a playpen for her during the day when we weren't hiking, putting it out on the verandah in the late afternoon sun to give Madeleine somewhere safe to roll around and play with her toys and show off how good she is at tummy time nowadays (really good).

How was your weekend, dear friend? Have you had a chance to get out of town lately?

* This post was sponsored by Baby Bjorn and Digital Parents Collective. Thanks so much for your support you guys. We couldn't have left home without you!

Kissing cousins

Oh these guys. A trip to Bendigo is an all-in love-fest for Madeleine, the utterly adored littlest cousin of 12 (lucky Nanna). They fight over who gets to hold her, kiss her the most often, ride next to her in the car. All the way to our picnic in Rosalind Park, Livvy informed me of Madeleine's superiority over the rest of the world.

"Madeleine is the prettiest of all the cousins."

"Madeleine is prettier than that rose."

"Madeleine is prettier than you are. HA HA HA."

Also, I'm linking up with "Point & Shoot" on Sunny + Scout for the first time. It's about time I joined in the fun.

Pumpernickel

This is a day for staying indoors. For cinnamon toast and tea. For snuggling under blankets and reading books and tickling plump baby-feet.

This morning I said, "Ok, just half an hour," to my already TV-loving couch potato baby. In case you were wondering, the Word of the Day on Sesame Street is Pumpernickel.

Later, we will read some more Dr Seuss. We will play raspberries. We will kiss. We will make each other laugh. Probably, we will both stay in our track pants all day.

These moments

Slow morning ahead of a busy day. Cold air creeps into the room from underneath the back door so we turn the heater on. Ruby is chasing butterflies in the courtyard, Oliver snoozing on the couch.

Music fills the room: Mumford & Sons doing a rather poignant cover of The Boxer that makes me want to cry and dance and sing "lai la lai" all at the same time.

I lie on my belly on the floor beside the still pyjama-clad Madeleine, kicking my sock-feet in the air like I'm ten again. I'm reading blogs. Madeleine's hand as she reaches out to explore the side of my face smells like the spring air in heaven.

So I roll over and kiss her and we take a series of selfies, as girls do.