Hubby and Baby celebrate their Birthdays!!!!

Today Thinus and Linmari are celebrating their birthdays.  Last year this time, I was in quite a bit of pain, not really thinking about the fact that Thinus would be sharing his birthday with our child.  Never in a MILLION years did I think that would happen!

To celebrate this wonderful day, we went for a family shoot, complete with the grandparents!  We'll be getting the photo's on Thursday.  I CAN'T WAIT!  In the meanwhile, here are only a few pictures I took tonight to celebrate my beautiful family.

 

I feel like I should just add that it's really late at night (for Linmari, in any case) and she's not all that willing to pose for pictures any longer ;-P  I will shortly post some more pictures of their party that we had yesterday.  But for now, we're going to crawl into bed (because we're absolutely exhausted!), watch October Baby, and have a good night's rest.

Thank YOU, LORD, for these beautiful people that I can call my very own family!!!!!  Thank YOU for watching over them!

7 Months Old!!!

My babagirl is a full 7 months old today!

She:

• LOVES getting dirty!!!
• Micro-manages our entire apartment's floor, as well as any other floor / surface she gets into contact with.
• Still enjoys books but now more for the 'chewing-benefit'.
• Crawls off a single step as well as the stoep
• Crawls ONTO the back veranda!!!
• Moves from sitting to four-point kneeling.
• LOVES water and enjoys splashing in the bath...as well as getting everything else wet!
• Is very ticklish on the left side of her neck.
• Enjoys ALL foods, except broccoli (I'm VERY sad over this).
• Babbles away like it's nobody's business :-)
• Started saying what sounds like "hello"
• Talk more than she did when she was only 2 months old - and then I thought she was talking a lot.
• Steals all the attention wherever we go.
• Especially enjoys tags, on anything.
• Follows me wherever I go in the house.
• Can teach the army a thing or two about leopard crawling.
• Enjoys snuggles with Mommy and Daddy.
• Can hold her own bottle :-)
• Has started to develop object permanence, so she knows when I'm out of the room that I haven't completely left her.
• Enjoys lookint at herself in the mirror and chats to us when we're all looking in the mirror.

I enjoy my daughter so much, every.single.day!  Being a mother is the most fulfilling job I've ever had.  I cannot imagine my life without my daughter. Thank YOU, LORD, for this gorgeous, fun-loving child of ours!

Keeping my ducks in a row

I knew going back to work full-time, with Linmari in a daycare would be difficult.  Never in a million years did I realise HOW difficult it would be to juggle housework, parenthood and a full-time job! 

Even though I finish off at around 2-3 in the afternoon, I still seem to have nothing left of my day after picking up Linmari from daycare.  My entire last week we only got back home, on average, at about 9 PM after doing everything that was on my list.  I am a very social person and deem it very important to see my family at LEAST once a week.  Suddenly it has all become very difficult!

Housework has gotten completely out of control, to the point where I finally agreed with Thinus that I need someone to help me with it at least once every two weeks.  WOW, I hate the state it's in!  But when I get home with my little girl in the afternoon, I just want to play with her to make up for the time we've been apart!  Housework is the last thing on my mind!  And because of that I've started going for easy, high-carb dishes for dinner.  It's all a vicious cycle.

When I'm at work, I really miss my daughter SO much!  I try my best to do my job and I've promised myself that I will work hard.  But still, my heart yearns for my daughter.  She LOVES mornings and is at her best.  And now someone else (her darling daycare mother) gets to experience that lovely side of her, only for me to pick her up in the afternoon when she's already had lots of playtime with others.  Not only do I find that difficult, but also having to juggle my time table at work and my expressing times.  What a mission!  I don't mind expressing, not in the least, but I struggle to find time to do little else than work and express.  A woman needs to eat, you know?!  So Thinus has been sent on the mission to go and buy me a double electric breastpump to make life easier.

Linmari will also start with solids soon.  She literally STARES food out of your mouth!  She would love to get hold of anything and everything I eat and I tend to let her have taste.  She definitely prefers sour over sweet and is a real carnivore!  We might have some issues with vegetables, since she's gagging whenever I give her mashed up veggies.  Oh well, I knew there woud be a chance that she would be a fussy eater, especially since her daddy has issues with different textures in his mouth.  We'll start low and go slow!  At least she LOVES fruit!

My little girl has developed so much in the past week! (Good and bad).  She started balancing on her hands and feet (like a bear ;-P ) and got her first two teeth!  She also managed to contract bronchiolitis from somewhere and another virus causing upper respiratory infections, and started with her first antibiotics.  Somehow I thought that she was invincible since she was exclusively breastfed.  I was wrong!  She also discovered her tongue and thinks its HILARIOUS to stick it out for anyone who cares to look!  My little girl is not so little anymore!  Oh ja, and she's sitting all by herself :-D  *Proud OT mommy!* She got that right at just under 5 months! SCORE!  Okay, I'll stop gloating now...

So, this has been a hard few weeks on both my husband and I.  Our little girl made us sick and it's not fun not being able to breathe through your nose, nor taste.  We're both tired from our late nights and would really like to get into a better (earlier) routine.  Hopefully we'll get there soon!

Linmari's Christening

My dearest baby girl got Christened today.  It was a very long road that we travelled before finally deciding to Christen our little Linmari.  But it was beautiful, and it was the right decision for us, and I just SO wish that my mother-in-law and my baby brother could partake in this lovely day with us...

I was going to load photo's, but it seems Blogger won't allow me to load from my personal albums on my computer (don't know why).

I'm beyond tired, and tomorrow I start to work again.  And it's also Linmari's first day at Daycare...  My heart is broken, and I hope that I'll soon be able to change this situation into one where my daughter is the centre of my attention!

Be blessed, fellow bloggers!

Back to work...back to a nasty reality

My cousin once said to me that she decided to become a full-time mom after she realised that she couldn't be 100% engineer and 100% mom...  I now understand what she meant.

I returned to work on 26 November 2012, and what a hectic time for me.  The first day was not SO bad, since Linmari was with me.  Mind you, she was with me for the first 3 days!  And when I had to drop her off at her auntie on the Thursday, that wasn't so bad, either.  Rather, what got to me was having to get my girl ready and dressed at 06h00 in the morning when she was still FAST asleep, just so that we could be on time for work.  And the following Monday (2 December 2012) I had to go to work with my little one that was sick (teething is not so much fun!).  It broke my heart that she and I could not lie in bed all day, with her simply feeding and sleeping the miserable feeling away.

People have told me I would get used to not having my little one with me in the mornings, and that at least I have a half-day job so that I get to see Linmari more than the average working-parent.  But that's little consolation when I know that Linmari's CUTEST time is in the mornings, and that she sleeps most of her afternoon away!  I never thought I would enjoy being a stay-at-home mommy THIS much, but the 3 1/2 months with her at home has taught me valuable lessons:

• I have learned that housework is not such a dread (since I now manage my house on a daily basis, not a once-a-week-let's-quickly-sorta-clean-up-the-house-basis.  
• I have learned that every moment with my little girl is precious, and NO ONE can replace the time that I have lost with her, EVER. 
• Being a stay-at-home Mom is a FULL TIME JOB!
• You will feel guilt over not having done certain things with your child during the day, in my case I often-times worry that I haven't played enough or stimulated enough, even though I do this at every possibly opportunity!
• Being a Mom is more rewarding than being a career woman!
• Seeing your daughter smile at you first thing when she wakes up in the morning is irreplaceable.
• Experiencing your daughter's milestones with her is amazing - she really is growing up!

Our school broke up for Christmas-holidays on 12 December, and it has been LOVELY to spend all that time with my daugther!  She is beyond precious and being able to see her 24/7 is such a blessing!  We are currently fighting a bout of sniffles / hoarseness and snotty nose, but hey, we'll survive!

 See, even when she's sick she still finds the time to be silly!  She discovered yesterday how to suck her bottom lip...too cute!

Oh, and one last thing.  My cousin sent me the BumGenius AIO Version 4 Diapers (FIVE OF THEM!) from America.  WOW!!!  Now not even my husband can tell me he's struggling with cloth diapering!  They're amazing, and I'm seriously considering buying 5 more (just have to save up some money first).

Here's Linmari wearing one of them:

 They're super-soft, HIGHLY absorbent and very easy to wash! (And they're Noodle Colour, for those interested.)

I have to go and finish my Christmas baking, and then do some laundry, dishes and general housework.

One last picture:

 

My niece turned 7 in November, and she decided she wanted a Tangled-themed party.  Her Mommy did all the homework and then asked me to make her a Tangled-wig.  I found this tutorial and was SUPER-impressed by it!  It really was easy to use and helped me to make the perfect wig! For those of you that are still at a loss as to what to make for your daughter / niece / girl-cousin as a nice gift for Christmas, this wig should most definitely do the trick!  It's easy (PLEASE follow instructions carefully) and VERY beautiful!