Family

Our little family has grown and we cannot be happier. We are incredibly in love with Reed.

Beginnings

Term 1 has started and with it Siena is finally back in a routine. After several months in Italy and the holidays, this is a very welcome development. Mondays Siena and I try to see our mother's group- usually at the North Sydney playgroup, Tuesdays are for farm visits, zoo and catching up with friends, Wednesdays Siena goes to her Waldorf-Steiner playgroup (where we made lovely bread bags this week), Thursdays she goes to "Rhythm Factory"- which is mostly gymnastics and some dancing and counting and Fridays she has started the Mosman Dance Academy. Seeing the utter joy when she donned her ballerina outfit today and as the other little ballerinas arrived was...well...utter joy. The Mosman Dance Academy is in the Gunner's Barracks at the George's Heights right on the Sydney Harbour, so Siena wasn't the only one enjoying herself. I too enjoyed taking the half an hour to have a cuppa and start (and almost finish) a little beanie for the soon-to-come addition, while I waited for the class to get out. She of course had to show her whole performance of the "Goldilocks and Three Bears" to daddy this afternoon.

This is the you-seriously-going-to-take-more-pcitures-of-me-mom-face?

End of an era

Siena turning three happened to coincide with the school holidays, which usually means end of many pre-school activities and programs and overcrowded museums and zoos. But this time, for Siena, the term break was not just a break from weekly activities, but an end of several of them.

Montessori (for under 3s) has been a big part of our rhythm- it signaled the beginning of our week and it was really the only thing we had as an official schedule, since Siena is home-schooled at this point (or should I rather simply say "she doesn't go to preschool or daycare". Saying that she is "home-schooled" seems wrong since it is not a result of a decision, but rather a lack of a decision). Anyway, I got surprisingly sad during her last class. It was saying goodbye to my daughter's first 'school,' first 'teacher;' it was one of the first things we did when we moved to Sydney...and it was now over. Siena loved it, and so did we- in part because it helped shape Siena into this independent, focused little human- that we deeply enjoy.

Awesomeness that is Siena turns three

Lots of love and lots of cheese.

Ballet, popcorn and friendship

Siena and her friend Tilly have been going to ballet classes last few months. It seems that seeing each other before and after ballet (while wearing ballet outfits) is really the highlight of their ballet classes- so instead of a post featuring their "concert," this post is about...well...popcorn and dinosaurs- because after all aren't all thing in life ultimately about popcorn, dinosaurs and popcorn dinosaurs (which is what the girls are pretending to be at the end of the video).

Rainy, sick days

 It's been raining here in Sydney for over a week. In addition, our little one was sick for most of that week- so our days all turned into one long, dark and rainy day. To kill the time and keep Siena happy we did all sorts of crafty/fun projects and they kept both her and us entertained. We cooked, baked gingerbread cookies, decorated them with an odd green (the only food coloring I had) brown sugar (the only sugar I had) icing, we made a tent out of some old Ikea sheets, and an Ikea chalkboard (yup, chalkboard) and I spent time doing some free-lance crocheting of pants. The crochet pants are just like all of my crocheting- no rules, just pure chaos- but she likes them and I like them so woopty-doo!

our little chef

the make-shift tent from Ikea chalkboard

Door to tent curtesy of another one of mommy's crazy ruleless crocheting projects

Crochet pants (the little white thing is supposed to be a flower)

No rainy day would be complete without a tea party (I discovered liquid chalk a week ago and have gone a tad bit psycho with it)

Siena's bestie

kisses

hugs

a book



jumping



and a little rest

A summer's day











Siena loves, what she calls, 'my beach'...going somedays (including today) both in the mornings and in the afternoons. She also deeply enjoys punctuating the beach experience with the fish and chips experience.



Happiness.

 

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

This sentence from Anna Karenina is most often quoted to somehow capture the loneliness of being unhappy, our inability to understand other's pain. In contrast, it is assumed that one can easily understand and empathise with happiness of others...and that in some sense might be true. But there is nothing boring about happiness; nothing mundane about it.

Another Summer...

Siena back in Narrabri

Siena loves her kangaroos...

...it is the simple things...

Photos curtesy of talented Ms. Nicholle DeMoss

like bubbles

that truly

are enough...