Almost 19 months

So I've never really done any Matilda updates or records as we've gone along through the past 19 months and the other day I realised that we are already starting to forget little things that she used to do. So this is my little girl at 19 months.

She is a little cheeky and so very stubborn.  In the last month or so we've started to have little temper tantrums when something doesn't go her way, we're thinking we may have hit the 'terrible twos' a little early but who knows.

She is a major attention seeker and will do anything for a laugh or a clap.  And if you don't clap when she wants you to (which is normally her dad) she will stand in front of you and say your name over and over until you give in and clap.

She loves shoes and books and Yo Gabba Gabba. Her favourite books are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, any of the Spot books and Ten Little Finger and Ten Little Toes (but this one has to be read by Pa).  She also loves Dora and sometimes she thinks that she is actually Dora, she will call herself Dora when she sees herself in the mirror sometimes, what is with that?

She is obsessed with babies (anyone from about age 2 and under) and her babies (all her dolls) have to go to bed with her and in the car with her.  About a week ago when we went to the shops she had to pack her bag full of random items and that had to come along, the bag packing thing has continued ever since then.

She has absolutely no fear, especially of the water and will run straight into a pool or the surf and get knocked over by waves, think it's hilarious and do it all over again.  We find this scary.

She is speaking quite a lot now, I think she probably says about 30 words and she sings (kind of) Twinkle Twinkle and Row, Row, Row your Boat.  If you can count saying 2,2,2,4,8,9 counting then she can count too :)

She loves Charlie (our dog) but I am not sure the feeling is mutual.  She desperately tries to get Charlie to play with her - chasing her around the house and trying to drag her over to wherever she wants.  While Charlie is very patient with all this and lets Matilda do it she will escape from her clutches at the very first opportunity.

She eats pretty well, most of the time.  Loves vegemite sandwiches, watermelon and chocolate, she also really likes curries.

She likes to dance - turning around in circles and getting down on her hands and knees and then sticking one foot up in the air, I have no idea where she got this move from.

She only has 6 teeth, hopefully the others will turn up one day. 

And when she's in the mood she can give really great squeezy hugs.

Well so much for that.

Posting every day?  Yeah right.

But to be honest, I had a few very boring days and had nothing exciting to write about.

And then we had a catering job to do, which I thought was going to be easy/quick but everything ended up taking me longer than expected and I had a major last minute panic.

And then there was a couple of days at the cafe.

And then today, a bit of time to breath again. Make some muffins for my mothers group and sit down and have coffee and relax for awhile.

I have also been working away at night time on Matilda's quilt which I seriously need to finish before bean number 2 comes along (in only 12 weeks now, eek!). Why on earth did I decide that hand-quilting a pattern over then entire quilt would be a good idea? And now that I have done one for Matilda that way is it bad if I machine quilt for baby number 2?

...

I got nothing at all done today, such a blah day.

We had swimming lessons this morning, and then came home and Matilda slept for almost 3 hours!! 3 hours! That never ever happens.  But did I take advantage of it and get heaps of stuff crossed off my list of things to do? Nope.  I did nothing.

I have no idea why, but I just couldn't get my act together.  Everything seemed too hard/boring and I was so unmotivated.

Even this afternoon when Matilda and I sat out on the verandah with a nice cool breeze to have a cup of tea and flick through the new Donna Hay magazine, I still couldn't get motivated. 

But I think I've cracked it tonight.  Thought up a couple of new projects to work on, got excited again about finishing Matilda's never ending patchwork quilt and even got a little enthused about the paperwork stuff I need to get through.    Hopefully tomorrow the enthusiasm will continue.

I think the key for me may be to break down my massive to do list into a few jobs for each day.  Jobs I know that I will actually have a good chance of actually getting done by the end of the day.  We'll see how it goes.

Today was all about chocolate

Making chocolate brownie this morning for mothers groups.

And in the afternoon, chocolate birthday cake.

What a good way to spend a Thursday.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I read this book for my book club.

I didn't like it, along with about half the other members of my book club.  But the remaining half really did enjoy it, so I guess it's one of those books.

There is a lot of Spanish in it which isn't translated (and G kinda speaks Spanish) and that kind of annoyed me cause I couldn't work out what they were talking about.  There are also massive footnotes in it which I didn't read and sometimes took up more of the page then the actual story and that annoyed me too.  I don't like things in books that take me out of the story and both of these things did.  The people who did like the book read the footnotes and they enjoyed the book more because of what was in them, so maybe I've missed out but I am not interested enough to go back and find out.

Having said all of that, there were some story lines in this book, particularly the stories of the women in the family (it's a kind of family history saga from a family of an American family from the Dominican Republic) that I did find interesting and I would rather have read a book just about them.   I didn't really like the story about Oscar.

3 years later

So, at the end of this month we are out of the cafe business.  Our lease came up and after much discussion we decided not to renew our lease, we have sold up and come February 28 I will be a full time stay at home mum.

So this month is crazy busy trying to finish everything up - paperwork, accounts and all that kind of fun stuff.   We are planning on continuing to do a small amount of catering so there's the paperwork for that too.

It's a weird feeling to be finishing, after dreaming about trying to run a cafe for sooo long.   I wouldn't say that we achieved everything we set out to do in the beginning but it has definitely been a fantastic experience and we have learned so much from it.  I am not sure if I would do it again, if I did there are a few things that I would definitely do differently and only once my family was a little more grown up.  You never know what the future will hold :)

I think most of all we will miss all our 'regulars', I have so many people's 'usual' order in my head I wonder if I'll get that brain space back.  We met some great people in the shop that we would never have met if we hadn't of done it.

With one little toddler and another bubba to be here soon though I am looking forward to the extra bit of time at home, I seriously wonder how people run a small business with a small family at the same time.  There is no way I would have been able to do this at all if it wasn't with my mum. 

So that's my busy start to 2010, I have no idea what I'll be doing 12 months from now and it's not feeling like a bad place to be.

Craft nights are back...

As of tonight, yay!

And, all inspired from this post, I had decided to make some pompoms to make a garland for Matilda's 'big girl' bedroom. 

They didn't really go so well (some worse than others, seriously - check out that coral coloured one in the background).  We did have a lot of laughs though, and chocolate mousse mm mmm.

I think I'm going to try making them with a cardboard loop, or maybe those clover pom pom machines if I can ever find one (my local Spotlight didn't have them). How do you get nice full pompoms?

Ok I'm ready now...

For 2010 to begin properly.

January still feels too much like holidays so I don't think the year should be allowed to start until February.  But now holidays are over, we are slowly getting back into things and it feels like life is about to start properly again.

Even all our holiday season birthdays are over.  I made this little superhero cape in the last couple of weeks for the last little ones birthday for awhile.

2010 is going to be a big year for us and it's going to start with a busy February. 

I am looking forward to working out a new little routine for the year, especially since my baby is now such a big girl.  At least to get us through til May when we'll have to learn everything over again.

So to start the year off properly I'm going to do a post a day again in February.  I don't think I've ever quite made it the whole way through a month but I know I've been close before.  This might be the one!  Anyone with me?