SO MANY CLOTHES

So I have spent the better part of my morning going through all of my baby girls clothes. Yes, I have been pretty good up to this point, and regularly pack away what she has grown out of.  But this exercise is mainly done so i know what things she needs, and to make my life easier at the shops.  Today though was all about being ruthless! Only keeping what I actually loved and what I would use again if we are blessed with another little princess down the track.  What a job! I have managed to keep 3 medium space bags full of ones and cutie outfits, all in all most likely hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of clothes. which really made me think a few times that we better have girl next time round, not just because I loved all these outfits, but because it's a huge amount of money to have spent on clothes that really don't get a lot of wear . Then again I'm sure if we have end up with a boy down the track, there will be a beautiful little girl I could find to pass them down too.

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street??

Melbourne had some very special visitors last week....Elmo and the gang from sesame street!  it was a very exciting time for me, as i love love love the theatre and was so thrilled to be able to introduce this love to my baby girl. yes i know that 1 is a very early start but i just really could not resist it when tickets went on sale a few months ago.  of course by the time that the 'elmos world tour' concert came around, nooshie had hit the age where she is scared of absolutely everything. this stage literally hit the week prior to the concert ...perfect timing!
the morning arrived and because nooshie, bless her, is such a great sleeper I had to wake her up at 7:30am (at least an hour early) which did not go down well at all. we then had a mad rush to have brekkie, get ready, and jump in the car by 8:15am! we arrived to a buzzing princess theatre with excited babies, toddlers, kids, parents and grandmas everywhere! nooshie instantly started pointing at all the kids and squealing, it was delightful to watch just how much she was enjoying the atmosphere.  

giving Elmo a bit of love before the show

Elmo's World Tour begins

we went and took our seats, nooshie instantly started bopping along to the music playing and hugging her new elmo doll, the lights went down, the crowd started to cheer, nooshies lip dropped and the tears started to flow. a bit of cuddle and comfort from mumma and she settled down, then the worst possible thing happened.... cookie monster spoke. all hell broke loose, screaming, trying to climb up and over both me and husbandito, while still clinging onto my top.  once again we managed to claim her down enough for her to almost enjoy abby cadabby and big bird. intermission started and nooshie's mood picked right up and she was bopping to the music and pointing at all the kids again...at this point i started to feel bad that we were only half way through the show and and she was going to have to injure seeing the cookie monster again.  
well the second half went a lot better, she was very interested in what was happing on the stage and almost cracked a smile! she only needed a little cuddle here and there when cookie monster would get a little loud. 

Mumma, Nooshie & Elmo

needing a cuddle from daddy

so all in all it was a fun experience for our family, nooshie slept the whole way home and had a big afternoon nap too. she didn't seem to have any cookie monster nightmares, and although she reaches out to hold my hand when he come on the tv, she doesn't seem to be traumatised by seeing these life sized monsters signing and dancing.  and i just can't wait to take her to show again next year!   

watching intently 

Nooshies 1st birthday cake for our day at the Zoo

So anyone would think that i really really love making and decorating cakes, and i guess that i have enjoyed the experience.  but i have only done it mainly because i don't like to do things by halves.  so when i decided that we were going to have a day at the zoo to celebrate nooshies actual 1st birthday...i knew that i was going to have to do a zoo cake.  I jumped on google and found a giraffe in the shape of a 1...perfect, so here is my attempt at this cake!

i'm a little on the lazy side when it comes to actually making the cake.  don't get my wrong, i know how to make a cake from scratch, but i absolutely love the betty crocker cake mixes and it's just a tad easier.  i think because you use oil in this mix, it keeps the cake extra moist so you know that it won't be all dry the next day when your all ready to eat it. 

i used 2 packs of the cake mix and baked 2 cakes in a rectangle tin, so i could make the cake nice and high.  
once the cakes were cooled and the tops cut off to create a nice even flat top, i used a thin layer of chocolate icing (the frosting from the packet) and some raspberry jam to glue the cakes together. I used raspberry jam simply because its a favourite of mine and personally think it goes beautifully together with chocolate!
i was prepared and the day before the cake making took place and i measured and cut out a paper stencil in the shape of a 1.  i have found that the cake really needs to be fully cooled when cutting out shapes, it is firmer and holds together much better.
using the frosting i covered the whole cake with icing and then again with the raspberry jam, this acts as a glue so the fondant i'm going use sticks nicely to the cake.  this was the first time i used jam over the icing and i loved it! the jam acted as a fantastic filler, and made the cake finish look extra smooth!

next i got needing with the fondant. I added some yellow food dye to make a creamy colour. after needing needing needing, i then rolled it out on the the bench covered in icing sugar so it didn't stick, then popped it over the cake. 

i dyed the left over fondant dark brown, rolled it and cut out some nice giraffe splotches to stick all over the cake. added a liquorice eye, fashioned some ears out of the fondant and secured them into place with some tooth picks.  i also added a little maine out of the brown fondant. and wella...i had myself a number one giraffe!

and it was delish!

she's almost 1

with my baby girls first birthday coming up in a few weeks, i thought it might be nice to reflect on the journey we had to get Lala to this point...it was a long road and not an easy one at all...and I'm sure i will shed a few tears while writing this one! so here goes....


can i even have a baby?

Husband & I around the time we found out I had PCOS

lets go back to 2009 ....after years and years of being on countless different pills, i decided it was time to have a break as i felt that my hormones where going crazy and needed to calm right down. 80 plus days passed before i had a period, and as most women know, this is not normal, so off to the doctors i went.  i heard the usual speech of 'you have been on the pill a long time, you just need to give your body time'...blah blah blah...i had another 80 day cycle and then another 80 day cycle. at this point i was sick of it, and wanted answers, this time i wasn't going to except the 'your body needs time' line.  i seemed to have a lot of the symptoms for Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (pcos), such as acne, excess hair growth, and the irregular periods, but as i'm not at all over weight the doctor was not convince at all.  in my heart i already knew i had it, i think that why i pushed so hard to have the tests done.  my stubborn nature paid off and the doctor finally agreed to do some blood tests and have an ultrasound to rule out pcos out.  and just as i suspected it was confirmed that i do have pcos. i remember sitting in the doctors balling my eyes out, and being told that if i wanted to have kids i really needed to start trying as soon as possible, as there was a 90% chance that i'd need to go down the ivf track. the throught of ivf and all the hormones you have to go on while doing it scared me, and at 27 i felt i still had plenty of time to try alternatives to help me conceive.

pins and needles
a few months came and went without me doing anything pro-active. i think i was so caught up in being diagnosed with pcos and feeling that i needed to do something about having a baby, that i really didnt know what to do!  then in november 2009, while walking down to get my lunch on my lunch break, i walked past a sign that i've walked past a million times, it simply read 'acupuncture'. bells went off and i thought 'why not...why not just ask about it'. so thats exactly what i did, and a week later i had my first appointment with my beloved acupuncturist! i could write blog after blog after blog on how much i love acupuncture, but i'll keep it short for now and just say, that with a combination of diet, chinese herbs and needling we got my cycle down from 80 plus days to 42 days. this meaning that we had double the amount of times i would ovulate and therefore doubling my chances of falling pregnant.

positive tests
we gave acupuncture a good 3 months of getting my body into shape before we started 'trying'. and it all seemed to work straight away, because by february 2010 we had a positive test result! i couldn't quite believe that we had been so lucky! i went and saw a doctor and got a referral to an obstetrician that was recommend to me and that worked out of the hospital i wanted to have the baby in.  my gp also suggested that i have a dating scan done because of the erratic nature of my cycles.  how exciting, i would get to have an early scan, see a little heartbeat and find out exactly when i would be due. well a heartbeat we didn't see, and although the sonographer was trying his hardest to stay positive, i think we all knew that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be. i spent the next 2 weeks doing blood tests in which we watched my hcg (hormone produced when pregnant) level rise and rise, giving us all hope. i had days of being really positive and then days of feeling that this pregnancy was wrong and wishing it all to be over so we could start over again.  then came the time to have another scan, by this stage most of my pregnancy symptoms had stopped and i felt like this was just a formally. the scan confirmed that i had had a blighted ovum pregnancy, in which a sac and placenta forms but a baby doesn't. this explained why my hcg level was going up as the placenta is what produces this hormone. it was now early april and because i didn't naturally loose the pregnancy i was booked in to have a small procedure. it was a weird feeling, i don't know if it was because the shock of it all had worn off, or because i had also just lost my 4 year old Maltese terror tragically the week before, but i wasn't an emotionally mess about it, sure i was fine about it, but i didn't fall apart.  its funny that i often still feel guilty about how i was more emotionally distort over my dog than this pregnancy.

pick yourself up and try again
6 weeks after my curette we had our beautiful wedding day, and by beautiful i mean torrential rain and howling winds hehe. only 2 weeks after our fabulous las vegas honeymoon we got to see those fantastic 2 lines again!  as you can imagine i was quite nervous about this pregnancy and didn't really allow myself to overly excited about it. on the day i was booked in to have my dating scan done, i had some spotting. trying my hardest not to go into a complete panic i spoke to my doctor who told me just to hold tight and see what happened at the scan. well what we saw was the most magically thing i have ever seen...i tiny little flash...a heartbeat! it wasn't until a week later that i got a call from my gp, as the scan had shown why i had the bleed. we had lost a twin, most likely an identical twin. with this news came a mixture of emotions, i was instantly sad, but within a minute was relieved that i wouldn't be completely thrown in the deep end by having twin, then i felt  really guilty that i could ever think like that. every so often i get a little teary when i look at lala and think there should have been 2 little angels sitting here.

growing a baby

20 week scan

growing a baby is hard work...it's exhausting!...i count myself to be one of the lucky ones, i managed to have no morning sickness through the first part of my pregnancy. everything was pretty smooth sailing up until our 20 week scan. at this scan we were told that the baby was a little bit smaller than they would have liked, so we would need a follow up scan in a months time. it was the same story at 24 and 28 weeks. then at 29 weeks i was diagnosed with gestational diabetes! this turned my world upside down, i went from working and being able to eat whenever and whatever i wanted to having to stop work so i could look after me and more importantly my baby.  i was put on a strict diet, having to only eat certain foods at certain times and regularly checking my blood sugar levels. eating and counting my carbs almost became an obsessions. at the start i would have to write everything i ate down so i could keep track. thankfully i was able to keep my blood sugar in the healthy range just through diet and i didn't to go on any insulin.  by 30 weeks i was having scans every 2 weeks, which i'm telling you was getting very expensive!

32 weeks

at 32 weeks a couple of days after i had some photos of my not so huge baby bump taken, we were told that it looked like my placenta was starting to fail, this was exactly what the sonographer had been looking and waiting for. i was sent straight off to the hospital to be monitored. my little fighters heartbeat was strong, so i was sent home, and put on bi-weekly monitoring sessions at my obstetricians  rooms. while my monitoring was going along really well, i was struggling to put on weight, which meant  i pretty much had to eat as much steak as possible! come 34 weeks i was very eager to have another scan and see how my placenta was traveling. well it was good news, it hadn't gotten any worse and because baby had been doing all the right things at my monitoring sessions, on thursday afternoon 2 days before i would be 35 weeks i was told that i could have next week off! the next day i spent most of the day telling anyone who would listen about how pregnant i felt, how uncomfortable i was, how my back hurt and how over it i was. i remember my mum saying to me that i was really waddling around. baby was still breach and i could have sworn that its head was jammed under my ribs! OUCH. this day was exhausting, i had never felt so uncomfortable in my life, so i went to bed nice and early. i woke at 11:59pm i thought the baby must have kicked my bladder and i needed to go to the toilet, as soon as i stood up, i felt a huge rush water....

we're having a premmie

6 mintues old

when my water broke a minute before i was officially 35 weeks, i wasn't full of excitement, it was more shear panic...it was too early, the baby was still way too small and breach which meant a c-section. we arrived at the hospital a little after 1am, i was put on a monitor and given a few shots of steroids (the most painful injections ever, but vital to help with lung development) and i was told to sit tight as the doctor wanted to hold off the delivery as long as possible so i could have more steroids.  between having contractions and texting my best friend i got no sleep at all! by 10am it became apparent that there was no way i was going to make the 24 hours that the doctor had hoped for.  i remember very clearly her turning to my husband and saying 'lets get this show on the road, we don't want a foot falling out'. then we got the talk that really made things real...we were told that the baby would be taken straight to the nicu or the special care nursery, would need help breathing, would have to have a feeding tube and we wouldn't be able to hold our baby.  i guess they have to prepare you for the worst, but its hard to stay clam after hearing all this.  with green day playing in the background, and little tugging with forceps (i was right her head was jammed under my ribs!) at 11:13am baby Lala had arrived weighing a tiny 1.7kg (3 pound 14 ounces) , the fantastic team in theatre got her breathing after 4 minutes and because all her vital signs when pretty good, i got a very quick cuddle and she was taken to special care.

our little pocket rocket

lala's first booby feed

i don't think lala knew that she was a permmie, it seemed she didn't realise that she should have needed more help than she actually did. within hours of being born, she proved the doctors and nurses wrong and had a strong sucking reflex, and by day 3 she had started breastfeeding. her weight gain seemed steady at the start and it looked like we were going to be able to take her home after only a week in special care. we did have a minor set back with her weigh at the 7 day mark so she ended up having to stay in a few more day. all up lala was in the scn for 11 days, which is amazing for a bub so small,  and meant that we only had to leave her in hospital for 5 nights without me there. the first night i left her at the hospital was just dam right painful, as soon as i got to my bedroom i burst into tears, i had a huge feeling of emptiness and really felt that it wasn't fair that everyone else that was discharged from the hospital that day was at home cooing over there newborn.

taking our baby home

the process of getting up and going into the hospital everyday felt surreal, and almost like a job. we would get up at 6am to be in the hospital by 7:30am for lala first feed of the day, usually husbandito would then go off to work and pick me up at 6:30pm.  once we did get lala home we ran our house like a special care nursery for a good 3 weeks, limited visitors, tempter control 24/7, and excessive hand washing.  through this time we were so lucky to have great family support  at home, we were also very blessed to have the support of a fantastic maternal and child heath nurse, for the first 3 weeks at home she came to see us and would weigh lala at home twice a week. from then on she saw us weekly for the first 3 months and then every second week up until 9 months. we now have a happy and healthily baby, yes she is still small but she is defiantly our little pocket rocket!

 

Party People in the house....

sunday was party day in our house...woooooooo
and what better way to celebrate nooshies up coming 1st birthday than with a  sausage sizzle and ice-cream party!


saturday was filled with cake decorating, sorting lolly bags, and ice-cream making! we were so blessed to have my big sister come and help with lots of the pre-party prep. one job that she did an amazing job on was the chocolate ice-cream! 
heres how you can make some yummy yummy chocy ice-cream for yourself using your ice-cream maker!


3/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
pinch of salt
1    cup whole milk
2    cups thickened cream
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
step 1...whisk together the cocoa, both sugars and salt, add milk, using a hand mixer on low, beat to combine until cocoa, sugars and salt are dissolved. stir in the thickened cream and vanilla. cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
step 2...once chilled turn on your ice-cream maker and pour the mixture in...watch it turn into yummy ice-cream! 
step 3...ENJOY!


while this yummy treat was being made i was also in the kitchen creating a hot-air balloon cake! now i must admit me and the icing had a few disagreements mainly due to it being too hot. but we managed to kiss and make up in the end, and i think i managed to pull off a pretty good birthday cake.....
    

next on the list was the decorations....finally i got to put up my party bunting, and create my pom pom hot-air balloons!

party day started bright and early so husbandito could inflate the balloons! and i was really lucky and nooshie had a nice long morning nap and by 11am the party was starting!

the sun may not have made quite the appearance that we had hoped for, but it was warm enough for the kids to play with their bubbles outside and for everyone to enjoy their snags and ice-cream.

the birthday girl was a bit over whelmed with the amount of people and babies in her home, and i have had to deal with sore arms the past few days, from having to lug her around with me for the entire party....but i think when it came to present time she pepped up and enjoyed herself. 

after weeks of preparations, hours of party planning, sewing, baking, and ice-cream making it was all over in the blink of an eye. but worth it!!!!

Lala's Cake Smash

i've been busy busy busy this week. who knew that a 1st birthday party would be so time consuming?? 
its my own fault, as always, i have taken on too much and i'm not prepared to let people help me out too much.

i have to share with you just what has been keeping me so busy. yesterday to help celebrate little nooshie turning the ONE in a few weeks, we did a cake smash!  a cake smash is when you let your child go completely nuts over a brightly coloured and over the top decorated cake, quickly followed by a bath!

so here's what happened........

so messy and so much fun.....can't wait to have another baby so i will get to do this again! 

First night off!

So tomorrow night is a very very big night in our household!  ....Its going to be the first night I spend away from my baby girl since I bought her home.  i know it is not going to be anywhere near as heart braking  as it was having to leave my tiny little premmie babe in hospital for those agonising 11 days, but still, it's a big deal for me now. 
Where are we off to i hear you ask....we are have a great day/night planned. We are heading into the big smoke for a touch of shopping and night a grand hotel, oh yeah and for a WEDDING at the AQUARIUM! 
Right now I am so excited about having the night off mummy duties, but at the same time I'm worried that I'm going fret too much to be able to enjoy my time off! 
After all this is what i'll miss seeing....yes i know i see it every night but it still melts my heart every single time!

My other concern for the evening is that she isn't going to notice that i'm not around and wont miss me...is that weird??  In saying that though i am really hoping she is nice and easy for my mum and just eats her tea and goes to bed without a fuss.
I guess we won't know until sunday morning when we come home, lets hope I'm not braking the door down at 6am! hahaha  

Party Planning

I am currently in the midst of planning my first ever kids birthday party!   ARRRHHH where do i start.............
Since my beautiful babe was born i've been looking forward to being able to throw her a beautiful 1st birthday celebration....well ok maybe i've been looking forward to this for a while longer than that. In my mind the theme of the party has changed 101 times, its gone from not really having a theme to being a mermaid theme, to a wot wots theme, back to a mermaid theme, to an under the sea theme and so on. till one night while trolling party supply websites i came across some simple and very cute 1st birthday invites...i fell in love with them and then the theme was set....
da da da daaaa HOT AIR BALLOONS!  yes random but its going to be so cute, well we hope so anyway.  So invites done.....whats next??? 
ahhh yes the cake....again while doing a bit of research on the web i stumbled across a cake that is exactly the image on the invites.....perfect!  i quickly got the number of a great cake lady from my sister and i felt that everything was coming together! Then my beautiful bestie had her little girls 2nd birthday party and made an AMAZING cake...and the pressure went on from my mum....'if bestie can do it, you can too, it's nicer to be able to say you did it yourself' this from the women who never made our birthday cakes! but the mummy guilt started to creep in...i chose to ignore it and still go ahead with ordering the cake to be made. until.... while doing the weekly supermarket shop i saw a small box of 'white icing' in the baking isle. for some reason i put it in the trolley and within the next couple of hours i found myself baking a cake and having a play around with the icing...this all of a sudden it turned into a trail run of the birthday cake. through-out this whole afternoon of baking and decorating i was still telling myself that i was just having a play around to see what it might look like, but i would still order the cake for the party. well once the cake was completed the pressure really come on from my mum, bestie, husbandito and my online angels (my mums group), i was hearing lots of 'don't pay for something you can do yourself'. well i've caved into peer pressure and now have all the supplies for the cake sitting in the pantry, waiting for me. my obsessive and perfectionist personality has totally taken over and i must admitted to having had a 'play around' with the icing decorations more than once since. this has also fuelled my online shopping addiction as i really really really needed to get new food colourings, and decorating tools!  
Let's not even get start on the actual party decorations! I've spent days sewing meters and meters of bunting, have a pile of balloons sitting in the cupboard and all sorts of other bits and bobs ready to go...which will be a whole other blog in it's self!
All in all i'm finding it to be a mix of me loving ever moment of it and that of mad crazy 'why the hell am i doing this to myself' stress.  
but we all know i love it.

Another day, another pool party

summer 2012 will most definitely be known as the summer of the 'pool party' with our little family!
a pool party at our house has 3 main ingredients:    
the small pink plastic 'little mermaid' pool, that Santa was kind enough to leave Noosh for christmas.

a nice big umbrella for shade
and watermelon!  

throw in some tunes coming from the iPod and we are all set for a fantastic day.  when we started having our daily (or at least when it is actually warm here) pool parties I wasn't so sure how Lala would go being forced to sit in a wading pool full of luke warm water...will she just sit there like a stunned mullet??...will she hate it, cry and throw a tantie??...Well she loves it, and the majority of the time the tantrum comes when its time to go inside for a nap. There is lots of splashing, and loads of dancing, as well as our healthy snack of watermelon. It's such a beautiful thing to watch my baby girl having so much  fun with the water and enjoying her first Australian summer. 

So our pool parties are nothing flash, but it's keeping us all happy, entertained and cool, and after all that's all I could hope for this summer!   

Needing our naps back

How is it, that just when you think you have figured out your babies routine, all hell brakes loose, everything you thought you knew gets thrown out the window and you are left wondering what happened?  This is what happen to us this week....We had finally gotten Lala to settle into actually having decent afternoon naps and for the first time in 11 months I actually had some free time in the afternoons. Then boom she spent three days crying, and not just crying but CRYING!!! Gaaaaaaaa......So it turns out we had a sick little possum on our hands, temperature and then a nice rash to follow. This was bitter-sweet, on one hand you NEVER want your baby to be sick, and me being the biggest hypochondriac i know really NEVER EVER wants her to be sick, but it means that once she is better she will happily go back to having her nice long afternoon sleeps! Right???
Well today she is still rashy, but proving my theory right, that the afternoon nap is back in vogue now she is feeling somewhat better...fingers crossed this last, it gives me much more time to bake and sew..things you will all soon learn i LOVE.