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Home & Family, Ottobre

.Harvey: 4 months.

 
Here’s Mr Harvey. Another month older.
Reaching 4 months resulted in some bad sleeping from the boy. (Sleeping – or not sleeping – always seems to be the hot topic of conversation with babies, doesn’t it?!) We got things better in the night time, down to two feeds a night now and he is going to bed around 7:30pm at the same time as the other kids which is great but day naps have been terrible. He started cat napping for only 30-40 minutes at a time in the day. It was driving me absolutely crazy because he would wake up grumpy so obviously wasn’t ready to wake up yet but I could never get him back to sleep again. When he started being really bad, we were about to have a lot of disruptions to routine – school holidays, visitors and our trip to Sydney so I didn’t bother trying to make any changes until this week when things have been more normal for us. We’ve made some big improvements this week, I can usually rock him back to sleep when he wakes up and he will go back to sleep for another hour or so. Fingers crossed we can keep it up for the next few weeks and retrain him to have longer naps again…I know the hard yards now will be worth it in the long run! Can’t wait for the day he is having two big naps and I can start getting some work done again!

Harvey has rolled over a couple of times this week from his back to his tummy. He does it without realising though, usually when he is reaching for something but I have a feeling he is going to be on the move sooner than we want!

 

 And of course, he is wearing one of his little Mama-made outfits again. You can read more about this one here. I’m thinking any little nephews that are born into the family in the future are going to have a whole wardrobe of lovely clothes to wear – Harvey grows so quickly that everything I’ve made for him still looks brand new!

 
 
 
October 18, 2013
Home & Family

.Sydney in an instagram.

We are just finishing our school holidays here in Tassie, it has been action packed and actually flown by so quickly. A couple of months ago I thought I’d check out flights to Sydney for the holidays and see if there were any good specials going. Must have been my lucky day because I got some great deals and booked for the kids and I to spend a week with Aunty Carli.
I was a bit nervous to fly with three kids + a baby on my own but they were such troopers and made it really easy. Harvey discovered the in flight magazine on the way over and spent the whole trip ripping out the pages and scrunching them up!
I had nothing on the agenda for the trip, we were happy to just hang out and let the kids have a good play with their cousins. It was nice to get out of routine and not worry about the day to day happenings that come with running a home.
While we were away, Oscar celebrated his 8th birthday. Granny made him a very creative solar system (his favourite topic at the moment) cake that we all enjoyed at family dinner. Jaron wasn’t going to come to Sydney with us, but ended up booking flights at the last minute to come for a few days because he didn’t want to miss out on Oscar’s birthday. He doesn’t like it when we leave him – I couldn’t think of anything better than a few days on my own at home without the kids!
 
On Oscar’s birthday Carli had organised tickets for us to go and visit the International Navy Fleet review in the city. We had such a fun afternoon and evening together exploring the ships, sailing the harbour on a ferry and enjoying a yummy dinner and dessert together. I still can’t believe Oscar is 8! We have his baptism to get ready for next week now.
While Jaron was with us, we snuck off to the temple together while Grandad and Granny looked after the kids. So refreshing and uplifting.

 

The weather was just perfect, we’ve been having constant rain, wind and cold at home and Sydney was the complete opposite with beautiful sunny days – even reaching 39 degrees on our last day! It was so nice to get a burst of heat that will hopefully see us through to the end of the yucky weather that we are having at home. It was hard for baby Harvey to sleep though – he only knows full-length suits and warm swaddling to get to sleep so was a ball of sweat most of the time!
 
The kids playing “hose limbo” with Carli which turned into a massive water fight and lots of wet, squealing children!
 

Mum and Dad have been on a cruise through the Pacific Islands and came home on our last day. They returned tanned and well rested, and bearing gifts for the grandchildren. Lil and Michaela spent the afternoon watching YouTube videos of hula dances and had a show ready for us that evening.

We managed to squeeze in a swim on our last day too, it was so hot and super windy and the kids didn’t hesitate jumping into the water to cool off. I even squealed my way in (the water was cold!) and ducked under to cool off!! It’s been way too long since I last went swimming.

 
Our flight home wasn’t quite as smooth sailing as we had to get up at 4:30am to make it to the airport (yep, cheap flights usually mean dodgy times!). The kids were great considering they were woken in the middle of the night but didn’t travel as happily. I didn’t feel very happy about having to get up so early either so we were all grumpy together! Thanks for having us Aunty Carli and the gang – especially in the middle of a super busy time for you guys, we love you!
October 12, 2013
Home & Family, Ottobre

.Harvey: 3 months.

 
 

Harvey turned 3 months last week! We are definitley out of newborn stage now, staying awake for longer periods of time and much more interaction.

 
 

When he is super happy (usually after a big sleep) Harvey has the cutest little conversations with us. Lots of coo-ing with his husky voice. I can’t get enough of it!

 
 

He has also discovered his hands and is constantly chewing and sucking them, or pulling his bib up to his mouth and sucking that.

And still growing, growing, growing – chubbier and longer. He has grown out of most of his size 000 clothes now and is into 00. Which is kind of exciting because it means I got to get out all of the size 56cm clothes I sewed for him (expect lots of shot of him wearing them all over the next few weeks!). This little suit is an absolute fave – practical and cute. The zipper is a nice change from all of those snaps and I love the contrast cuffs. (You can read more about the suit here.)

 

 
 

I knew Harvey’s awesome night time sleeping was too good to be true! He got a cold a couple of weeks ago and started waking a lot at night time and has never gone back to his good routine of only waking once a night. It was a bit of a shock to the system, I think I felt more tired then than I did when he was a newborn! I’m trying to re-train him now though and not feed him every time he wakes up (it was every two hours for awhile). It’s tough when I’m half asleep and know that feeding him is the quick/easy fix, but hopefully in a week or two we can get things sorted out again!

 
 
 
 
 
 
On a positive sleeping note, he is starting to go to bed a bit earlier and is usually down for the night by 8:30pm, which means I’m starting to get a bit more time in the evening to myself again – although half the time I’m too tired to do anything productive and end up plonking myself on the couch!
 
 
And here’s the month-by-month comparison of the little man…
September 3, 2013
Home & Family

.Lil is six.

Our little miss turned six on the weekend. She is a delight and we thought it was time for her to have a special birthday party with some little friends from school. I told her that she could invite six people to her party, and she choose six of her friends but she is such a social butterfly and a couple of days before the party she asked me to go and talk to some of the kids in her class…the kids told me that Lil had asked them to ask me if they could come to the party too! Sneaky little thing! Talk about awkward moment but I somehow managed to weasel my way out of it without ending up with the whole class at our house on a Friday afternoon! She’s like that – always full of funny surprises!
 
I’m ever so grateful for all of the wonderful ideas I have pinned over time…it makes party planning so much easier especially with limited time and a new baby in the house.
We decided on a rainbow theme and used these great printable rainbow invitations. Aren’t they cool?
The cake was a rainbow too – really easy to make and all cut from a circle shaped buttercake. I had fun piping the colours of the rainbow – will definitley be getting out the piping bag more for cakes in the future now! It would have been such a pain to wash the piping bag between each colour, Mum came up with the great idea of using the piping bag tip in a little snaplock bag instead so there was no messy washing up – we even coloured the icing in the bag!

For decorations, I made our usual party banner and threaded balloons together to hang up across the dining area.

 

Lil had the best time at her party and was looking forward to it for so long – here she is blowing out her candles. She had trouble getting them all to blow out and got the giggles!

The party bags had some pretty Citrus Pop clips and a few lollies in them. The girls also got to take home a little paper doll dress up kit. They turned out really cute with little people and animals printed out on cardboard (free download here), a stick of glue and lots of fabric, ribbons, buttons, etc. to cut out and make clothes to stick onto them.

 
Lil’s actual birthday was on Saturday. When we told her we could do anything on her birthday she decided she just wanted to stay home and play with her presents! Which ended up being a good thing because Oscar was sick and it was freezing cold and poured down with rain all day so was nice to shelter at home for the day.
The birthday celebrations continued on until Sunday at family dinner with a big chocolate lolly cake to share. The lolly cake was a birthday tradition in our family as we got older and I can see why now – it is the easiest decorated cake to make and looks and tastes delicious!

Lil is at a really lovely stage at the moment. She has the best sense of humour and loves to have a laugh. She is starting to have more grown-up conversations which is really nice too. And she is a total ditz which always cracks us up! Love you six year old Lil!

 
August 6, 2013
Home & Family, Ottobre

.Harvey: 2 months.

It’s been 2 months since this little guy joined our family! …life is good. He fits in beautifully.

 

We are still all smitten by his luscious lips and chubby cheeks. And he continues to grow and change every day.

Harvey has the cutest little frown and looks around with a grumpy face when we are being too loud or invading his space! As much as he loves a cuddle, he also loves having time to kick on the floor without anyone touching him – I think I would too if I was the fourth kid!

 

He started out being a spewy baby and still is. I’ve had to make him lots more bibs because he was easily going through the ones he had in just one day! In the last couple of weeks he has started giving us big smiles and cooing and chatting away with us – Lil manages to get the best conversations out of him and he has even started to have a little giggle.

 
 
 
 
 

 Sleeping and feeding are still going really well. He generally feeds every 3 hours, but has a good 6-8 hour stretch of sleep during the night which I am REALLY appreciating! I’m not expecting it to last forever, so I’m making the most of it at the moment. 

 We love you Harvey Charles!

 
 

(I didn’t do a 1 month old blog post…but here are a few pics from his photoshoot:)

 
August 1, 2013