Christmas Ideas

I have already started to think about Christmas

Currently I am loving the Janrod French Grocery and French Patisserie.

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Sick babies

No-one likes seeing their baby sick

but I do love all the cuddles I get when she is sick!

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Plop!

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Smash It

For Eliza's birthday invites I knew I wanted to do a cake smash. I had a whole board on Pinterest dedicated to them.

Eventually I picked out my cake design, an outfit for Eliza, and organised a photographer to take the photos.

I was thrilled with the end results, and received many lovely comments about the invites.
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Eliza's Second First Birthday

confused much? Yeah me too.

So with the first birthday being a write off, it was lucky her party was planned for the very next day.

I scoured pintrest for many many months, collecting ideas on what I wanted in a birthday party. In the end I decided I wanted finger food, a pink and orange theme, and a bunny cake.

Must have a bunny cake.

Eliza woke up in a good mood (as in not screaming, its always a good mood if she isn't screaming), and we were able to open some presents.

It is very lucky for me (who doesn't do pretty baking) that my sister in law is a magician when it comes to decorating cakes, and offered to whip something up for me. I can not describe how thrilled I was when she walked in with this creation! The woman is a magician I tell you!

(See the food in the background - finger food. Another tick)

The girl was spoilt rotten, she is very lucky to have some wonderful friends and family who love her almost as much as her mummy and daddy.

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Eliza's Turns One. Twice.

Nothing ever goes to plan in our world. Eliza's birthday was not an exception to this.

The poor dear was sent home from daycare the day before her birthday, as she had a mid-level fever and was miserable. By the time I got to her she was into the high end of fever, and whimpering. A quick dose of panadol gave some relief, but not enough to warrant going to daycare the next day.

The daycare I send her to is a lovely place, a place where the staff are lovely, caring and go out of their way to make each child feel special. When it's a child's birthday they have a party in the room, and give a card and have cake, however Eliza had to postpone her party due to staying home with Daddy.

I had arranged to work half a day on Friday, with the plan of getting the grocery shopping done, dealing with the bank for settlement, and spending some quality family time with Eliza.

Instead I quickly did the grocery shopping, picked up the husband and Eliza, flew to the bank to sign contracts (a whole other saga) and we spent our quality time sitting in the doctors surgery with a miserable child. Diagnosis: fever, ear infection, throat infection and quite possibly a school sore on her mouth.

Not the plan we had for her birthday.

By the time we left the surgery and got home it was dinner time, where we endured the nightly battle of eating, and the girl was in bed by 6.30pm. She didn't even get to open her presents from us :(

First birthdays are meant to be memorable. Eliza's will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

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Birthday Cakes

As a testiment to how busy I am these days, I haven't been able to sit down and write about planning Eliza's birthday party, something I have been planning for months (and pre-planning for years!).

So, as I have a few spare minutes, I am going to share with you some of my favourite cakes, courtesy of the Pinterest.

Source: hello-naomi.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

Source: google.com via April on Pinterest

Source: bing.com via April on Pinterest

Source: hello-naomi.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

Source: karaspartyideas.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

As for what we have ended up with? Well you will just have to wait and see... Pin It

Photo Wall - Finished

I finally finished Eliza's wall. Just in time to move out!

I couldn't think of what I wanted to put in the frames, it originally was going to be fabric, but it didn't look right. I happened to buy wrapping paper for a few presents, and bam! It hit me, and thats what went in the frames.

I quite like it.
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Feeding Time

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Just because...

I am in love with this photo

Photography: Cinarto Photography
Tutu: Whimsy Pie
Cake: lovingly made by me!
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Eliza - 9 Months

It's been a while since I did this, I kinda forgot for a few months. Opps, bad mummy!

Weight: 8.4kg

Height: 71.5cm

Feeding: Everyone we meet is amazed at your eating. You eat like a champion. Even Nanny Jan was shocked when she saw you eat a roast dinner like it was nothing unusual - I think she was even impressed! 

Your favourite foods are chicken, avocado, zucchini, banana and pear. You weren't too keen on yoghurt for a few weeks, but have gone back to liking it. You eat three meals a day at the dinner table with Mummy and Daddy, and have a morning and afternoon snack of a biscuit now.

You discovered a fun game of dropping food over the edge of the highchair, but Daddy came up with an invention to stop it - he cut out cardboard boxes to make a shield. You quickly learnt and stopped dropping food, and are now back to being able to look around.

Sleeping: Since going to sleep school you have continued to improve. You still have a bad night every now and then, particularly if you aren't in your own cot, however most nights you only wake once at 10.30 for a bottle. Your day sleeps have become pretty consistent now, and you generally sleep for an hour and a half twice a day.

Personality: You continue to be cat like in your temperament. You can be happily playing by yourself in the lounge and then burst into tears, or you can be giving a cuddle and then pushing us away. You are generally a happy little girl though, who is willing to be cared for by anyone. 

Looks: You have finally started to have a growth spurt, and your 00 clothes are starting to fit properly. We are finding that many of your pants are getting short, but still fit in the waist, so you wear a lot of dresses currently. Your hair has lightened up, and is now a golden brown colour. It has grown so much, and is no longer a babies hairdo, but a toddlers.

Surprisingly, you have kept your blue eyes, we thought they would have changed colour to green like mummy and daddies, however they haven't. 

Activities: You have continued to enjoy Occasional Care on a Wednesday, though you do seem to be sooking when I pick you up each time. The girls promise me it only starts just as I walk though the gate. They say you like the musical toys and crawl around touching everything.

We started swimming lessons this month, and although you weren't keen at the start you seem to be enjoying it now. You are the youngest in the class by a few months, and although the other kids are more advanced, you do try. You have been in the pool with both Mummy and Daddy, and love to show off your skills in the bath.

You continue to crawl on your stomach, though you aren't far away from walking. You now pull yourself up onto anything that looks like it will stand still long enough, including the highchair, and will walk along the couch, counters, garden beds. You are getting braver and tend to only hang on with one or two fingers now.

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Name Posters

(Obviously the blanks aren't in the final printed version)

I had seen on Pinterest some different birth announcement posters and thought they were cool, however I never really found something like I had imagined in my head. I must have seen it once upon a time, but it never showed up when I was looking for it, so I decided to make my own.

It took me a few hours of fiddling in photoshop, but I got there in the end. It is by no means perfect, but it is unique, just like Eliza.

I had a coupon for Snapfish to do a poster, so I ordered it from there for the grand sum of $5. I had plans for a photo wall in Eliza's room and already had the frames from Ikea, so we were good to go.

I like it, and am happy with how it turned out. I have had a few friends comment on it, so I am guessing I am not the only one. What do you think?
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Uh-oh

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How I won the war. Sort of.

Eliza used to be a good sleeper. From around 10 weeks old she slept 12 hours a night with no wakings.

I was rapt, and couldn't belive how lucky I got. Sure, her day sleeps were crappy, relying on wrapping, white noise, music and a dummy just to get 40 minutes of silence, but I could hack that when I was getting 12 hours of peace of an evening.

Then she woke up one night at four months, and has woken at least once a night ever since. I am over it. So I went from having good sleeps at night and shit day sleeps, to just shit sleeps. She was cranky. I was cranky. Something had to change.

It started with the dummy. I read that sucking to sleep can mean it takes longer to go to sleep, as they are concentrating so hard on keeping the dummy in their mouth. The husband wanted to slowly take it away from her. I tried that for a day and decided it was too hard, so we went cold turkey. We had tried the reduction method previously and it seemed to confuse her, and she would turn into demon baby, so she would get it back. This time I hid them so that it was harder to give them back and give in again. The first sleep of the day was hell. The second slightly better. By the evening we had moved on.

Oddly, once we took away the dummy, we didn't need the white noise nearly as much. It now only is used in the car when driving and she won't settle. Whilst driving in peak hour Christmas traffic recently my mum said how it makes no difference. Eliza was screaming her little lungs out in the back seat with nothing we did helping. I turned on the music and within 30 seconds she was asleep. Doesn't work my toosh!

We also started her on a set routine. Previously we had tried Tissie Hall's routines and they hadn't really worked for us, so we called it quits. This time it did work. We started with the closest routine to her age group that hadn't introduced solids as she hadn't started yet. It basically meant that she had set nap times, a set bedtime, and it gave me some guidelines on when to complete tasks like feeds, walks and baths. Some days I was quite strict with it, other days I used the day time routine quite losely, especially if we had to go out. It worked well, she seemed to appreciate the routine and I liked knowing what was coming up.

But things weren't improving on the night front. At best she would wake up 3 times a night, around 10pm, 1am and 4am. At worst she would wake up at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, midnight, 1am and 4am and then start the day at 6am. There were more bad nights than good. Each time we would have to go and pat her back to sleep, except for the 1am waking where she was given a bottle.

I can't remember what spurred my googling, but one random Tuesday I found myself googling private sleep schools. Our MCHN had suggested a few weeks earlier we go to Tweddle for a long stay program, however the wait is astronomically long, meaning we could be waiting 6+ months to be seen. So I went looking for private sleep schools.

I found one that sounded up our alley and rang to enquire about the cost. I was at the point where I was willing to sell my left kidney if need be, and it turned out I didn't need to. As Eliza is covered by our Private Health Insurance her stay was free of charge to us, and all that was payable was a small daily boarding fee to cover my meals. I spoke to a lovely nurse who assured me that I was doing the right thing by making an enquiry and that it sounded like I did need some help. She offered us a place for two days time, providing I could get a doctors referral for Eliza.

Um, what? The public system has a 6 month wait list, but these people could see me within 2 days? Why had no-one told me about this earlier???

So we packed our little car with everything needed for a weeks 'holiday' and off we tripped. Once admitted we were shown to our rooms. I knew I was going into a private hospital, but I really didn't expect to be given a single room with ensuite. Each room is set up like a hotel actually, and was very comfortable. Eliza had her own room across the hall, which only had a cot and chair in it, however what else does one need? Each room has an in fared video monitor in it so that the nurses can see into any room at any given stage, and a sound monitor which is fixed to a wall of speakers near the nurses station. There was a communal kitchen where all meals were delivered to, along with the usual tea/coffee/bottle making facilities.

We were assigned a nurse each shift who would sit with me for each settling period of Eliza's sleeps. Providing they can, they like to give the parents the first night off so that they can get a decants night sleep.The first night she cried and the nurses settled her. Their strategy was to go in when she made noise, give her a sleep message, and then leave, returning every 10 minutes or so to give her the same message. She was not a fan of this and got crankier and crankier each time they entered the room. After an hour they patted her to sleep. The second, third and fourth nights she became the perfect sleeping baby who went to sleep and stayed asleep overnight. It wasn't until the fifth night she woke up during the night, giving us the opportunity to put our plan into motion.

I was never a fan of Controlled Crying, however desperate times call for desperate measures. When she woke we went in and gave her a sleep message and left. She screamed an angry scream for over an hour before going to sleep. If she had ever changed to an emotional cry we would have gone into her, however I learnt the difference between her screams a long time ago and knew she was just angry that we weren't coming into her and doing things her way.

The nurses were lovely when I broke down several times, and assured me I was doing the right thing. As they put it, she has had 8 months of calling the shots, and this is all new to her. It is time for her to learn who is the boss. Hopefully she wouldn't take too long to work out who was boss.

As our days had ran out, we went nervously home. I won't lie and say things have been easy, they haven't always been. There have been nights where Eliza tried to revert back to her old ways, but the majority of nights she has slept through. We still give her a bottle just before we go to bed, but most nights she will sleep from 7pm through to 6-7am. Her day sleeps are a still bit of a mystery, some days she will sleep for an hour and a half each sleep, some times only one sleep will be 40 minutes, the other an hour and a half. I can hack that though.

And that is how I won the war. Most days. If I had my time again I would have gone to sleep school much earlier, as it was very beneficial. I highly recommend it if you are having problems with sleep.
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