Just because...

This week has been tough for me and Chris decided to cheer me up. He came home with this:

A pie maker! Something we have been talking about getting for a while now ... and we just had to try it out! Chris whipped up an easy apple pie which was yummy!

We are looking forward to trying many different pie fillings. The only problem is now I don't know what to get Chris for father's day :(

Favourite Weekend Snap Link Up

So a blogging friend has started a Link Up ... and I thought I would give it a try for something new as I never done one before!

Our favourite weekend snap is of the kids enjoying the leaves in the back yard. They had a ball throwing the leaves, eating the leaves, sliding in the leaves and generally doing what kids do :)

Tahnee: 11 months

Yesterday our daughter officially turned 11 months! Or as Chris likes to say, yesterday Tahnee was 1 month off being a 1 year old.

This month Tahnee:
~ has learnt a few words and can now say Bye-Bye, Opa, Mum, Dad, Hi and we have gotten her to say Ta once
~ for a while she has been starting to copy actions and recently she has started to copy some of the actions we use in songs. She can "clap her hands" and attempts to "blow a little kiss" when singing "Open, Shut Them". She is also starting to move her hands up and down for rain and flood for the song "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock". And she nods her head and moves her body like crazy when we sing "Horse and Rider"
~ has been weaned to only 2 breastfeeds a day, morning and night. At lunch she has a cup of milk which she usually drinks
~ is loving her water bottle and will drink from it without any problems
~ has also figured out how to crawl properly!! Although she does this only a few times, as she gets somewhere faster by army crawling ... we also blame the vinyl flooring for being quite slippery and not giving her enough grip.
~ sleeps very good and often does 12-14 solid hours overnight and at least once a week requires me to wake her up. As I write this its 930am and Tahnee is still asleep after going to bed at 730pm last night.

I think that outlines most of the new developments regarding Tahnee. Our task over the next month is to start checking off her developments as listed on her 12 month questionnaire we received from PMH (and which we received at 4 and 8 months). Unlike her previous questionnaires, Tahnee has quite a few things she does not do yet, but her appointment isn't for another month or so, so hopefully she can achieve many of these things in that time :)

Our other task over the next month is to plan for her birthday party! We have made the invitations and had them printed. Now to finalise the decorations and food and agree on a cake. Its shaping up to be a busy month :)

Just a quick note about her weight gain - I know I talk about it a lot, but its part of her CDH condition. CDH kids use so much energy to breathe, and for Tahnee, she also uses so much energy by constantly moving (remember my CHN calls her a fidget widget), so its hard for her to gain weight. Last month I blogged about her dropping to the 10th percentile, but now she is back up and tracking along the same line as she had been before :) She is now over 8kg! {I am not concerned about her weight figure/number, but we do need to know about how she is doing and if she is gaining or loosing)

Tahnee: early present

Tahnee received an early birthday present from her Uncle K, who will be away overseas when she turns 1. Lucas was very disappointed and just didn't understand that Tahnee got a present and he didn't. And then he didn't understand why Tahnee got first dibs on playing with it!! Two years old {rolls eyes} Guess that happens!

Hmm..tastes yummy

This monkey had to get in on the action too

Toy Room

Ever since moving, I have struggled with ideas for setting up an exciting toy room for the kids. There were a few pre-requisites, namely being cost effective, organised and able to adapt to changes (kids growing up and having different toys etc).

We have been storing the kids' toys in various sized and coloured buckets, nappy boxes, ikea fabric boxes and even in the blue esky type bags from Coles & K-mart. It worked well for the other house, where we had a very small area for them to play in. 

Way back when Lucas was a baby - the space could only have 16 of the foam alphabet squares)

Behind Lucas in the top LH corner was the "baby toys" including a small box of toys, the bouncer and bumbo
In the middle, RHS of photo was the blue round toy for Tahnee
Their bookshelf was in the dining room, through the arch on the RHS of photo

Same toy area as first photo, just different toys (next to entertainment cabinet)
Lucas's blue table and chair were behind the single seat couch on the LHS
Car mat as floor runner between blue table & buffet cabinet and the single seat couch

For many years I have been eye-ing off the cube storage systems available from Ikea. Then a Masters shop opened up down the road, offering a similar cube system at a lower cost. And it so happens that a friend works there and told me about a 10% off deal that was happening last weekend ... so we trundled off to have a look ... and came home with a new storage system :)

The toy room in the new house, basically just the toys in the same containers, spread around the edges of the room

Chris employed his great cabinet making skills and knocked up the cupboards in no time. Then he put his organisational and creative tools to work, and rearranged the whole room while I was out. I was very impressed with the end results, even though it was different to my "mud map" drawing I had made a few weeks previously. 

Same wall as above photo with new white cube storage system and boxes

We now have room for the entire foam alphabet floor mat

Other end of room with large toy box in 1 corner and bookshelf in other corner

The kids seem to love the new room layout and we are both happy with it :) 

Scitech

The "Vdl" family arranged to spend the day at Scitech, a science and technology based play centre. It has many exhibitions, a planetarium, a puppet theatre and more. I asked my sister to come along, as she is on holidays at the moment too.

On the way there, we realised that it was actually school holidays (!) meaning it would be quite busy - when we arrived we realised it was more like crazy busy! It took over half an hour of waiting in line to purchase tickets!!

After gaining entrance we wondered around the various exhibitions. The main attraction for the school holidays was one on dinosaurs. Lucas was extremely excited about this (must be a boy thing!) ... until we actually walked through the display of life size, moving, noise making dinosaurs! Then he decided that it was "too scary mum" and "too nosy". Poor kid was clinging on to me for dear life!

Thankfully he was able to enjoy a few of the tamer (LOL) parts to the exhibit including searching the sand for dinosaur bones and colouring in pictures.

Lucas was also relatively happy to pose for a photo with Mum under the jaws of a dinosaur. As was Tahnee with my sister. Unfortunately many people were trying to take photos, so that explains why these two aren't very clear.

From there we were to a Discover Land section, where the toys and games were aimed at 3 years and older. Some where a little too complex for Lucas, but he loved playing in the Aquarium and with the Trains.

Can you spot my sister and Tahnee?

After all meeting back together for some lunch, we headed over to the puppet theatre. While we were waiting in line, Lucas and Sierra decided to be dinosaurs and roar loudly, along with playing chasey!

After today's experience, I have decided to try and avoid places such as these during the school holidays, especially as I don't have school aged children at the moment!! It was so busy today, that half of our family group were told that Scitech had stopped allowing admissions, and they needed to wait for people to leave before buying tickets! Crazy busy!!