Look what we have ...

We went to the Zoo last Saturday and tonight I think we took home a monkey! Our normally ground bound little girl decided it was a much better view from the top of the outdoor kids table, so up she climbed, just.like.that!

pulled herself up to stand

one leg

next leg

upper body

so proud of herself

Photobook Update

After receiving Tahnee's photobook, I was disappointed to notice that one page had funny text. It the word TEN, specifically the letters T and E, on the page about Ten Months Old. The 2 letters in question appeared to be squished together.

So I decided to email the company who printed the photobook, Albumworks, and see what they said. I emailed the above photo and respectfully expressed my disappointment. I received a reply asking me to send the whole project and they would follow up on their end.

A few days later I received an email saying the squashed text was not happening after they printed the page again, and they offered to reprint the complete photobook, free of charge.

A week later, I received the new photobook in the mail and am pleased to report that the squashed up text on that page is no where to be found, as you can see below :)

CDH Cherubs

Last night we had dinner with special friends we made in the NICU, who also happened to have a CDH baby. Austin is a week younger than Tahnee and is doing brilliantly. He even showed off his newly acquired walking skills :)

We last had dinner all together back in January of this year, when the children were 4.5 months old and we took these photos. 

Last night we finally remembered to take an updated photo of the two together. We have been meaning to do this for a while as we have seen each other throughout the year, but we always forgot!

And we also took a photo of the two mums with their 1 year old babies. We have been through a lot together, have shared many memories and have enjoyed their friendship. Thanks for the wonderful evening last night and we are looking forward to the next BBQ at yours and a swim in the pool :)

Walking {nearly}

Tahnee has recently decided that it was time to show off a little and started walking behind her walker/pusher! She hasn't done this yet, so we were very excited and out came the camera and video :)

Since then she has been practising her new skill and loves to show off. She just needs to work out how to steer the pusher and then she will be much happier!

Photobooks

After Lucas was born, I found myself wasting a lot of time on the computer in aimless internet surfing, as Lucas slept a lot. I also realised we were taking a lot of photos of him ... so I decided to make a photobook of his first year. I continued this for Tahnee's first year of life as well. And have plans to do so for anymore future children we are blessed with. (apologies in advance - I received a link to view Tahnee's online, so those photos are all screen shots. With Lucas's that option wasn't available back then, so they are photos of the book, which are very hard to do due to flash reflection!)  

Each of their photobooks have common themes. The front cover is the same design as their birth announcements. They each have a page with their birth details, the obligatory family photo and I also devoted a two-page spread to each month of their first year, highlighting their achievements and carrying through the same layout (see below for more details on that particular layout). Their birthday pages include their birthday invitation and they each have a page about their first Christmas celebrations. 

Each photobook is also different. While they are each follow chronological order as much as possible, some pages are laid out different (eg. Christmas and First Birthday), and each have different "special pages". These special pages I made based on what photos I had take throughout the year. With Lucas I had many photos of him eating, so I created a page about food. With Tahnee I had lots of photos of her with Lucas, so a page of the two of them was made. Naturally, Tahnee has many more hospital pages (the first 20 pages deals with that), but CDH is a big part of her life that couldnt be skimmed over. 

Lucas first page - birth

Tahnee first page - CDH diagnosis

Tahnee birth

For both photobooks I used the program editor available from Albumworks. This company continually updates their editor, so the 2 I have used were slightly different. In general, the editor comes with different page layouts, assorted photo frames and backgrounds, plus the ability to create your own. I found this editor had a few pros and cons (which I imagine many do). 

Lucas

Lucas - sleeping positions

Tahnee - ambulance

Tahnee - surgery

Tahnee - cuddles

With the editor for Tahnee's book, I found some text fonts did not the option to bold, italicise or underline. This was frustrating as it meant I couldn't do exactly what I wanted each time. I also found that editing in both editors was difficult as the program has no spell checker function. 

Special photoshoots

Both kids two-page spread look like this in their books

A big difference between the 2 editors was the way that text was added. With Lucas's, when you added text it popped in a window and you typed it in (much like WordArt does in MS Publisher). With Tahnee's it created the text box and you typed straight into it. Once you added in backgrounds and changed fonts, editing was extremely difficult. As a result, after sending the photobook off for printing, I discovered a spelling mistake and after receiving the book someone else spotted a mistake!! I was devastated! So much work had gone into it, I had edited it 3 times and Chris had done it once, and we had still missed them :( And unfortunately Albumworks is unable to make modifications once you send the book off. 

Lucas - month page example - I used the same image twice, one as transparent background and the other as the front image

Then did a 3 photo spread like this for each of the 12 months

Tahnee - 2 page spread

Some pages have many words and some pages have very few, or no words! It depended on what I was wanting to achieve with the page. For example, Tahnee's page of daily life at PMH has many words as it would take too many pages to outline each thing I wanted to include (baths, changing cots, moving from HDU to Nursery etc). Yet all of it was important and I didn't want to miss anything. Thus the very wordy page.

It was an easy ordering process. I uploaded the finished book on Monday morning. Waited around 15 minutes for that to complete, then finalised the payment online and waited for it to be printed and sent. It arrived on my doorstep on Thursday sometime. Unfortunately, that day was very stormy, windy and rainy, and even though we were home all day, the delivery man did not make his presence known and just left the book (in a cardboard wrap-around box) at the front door. Albumworks do not cover their photobooks in plastic to protect them from the elements either. Thankfully my front door is protected, otherwise I would have been very disappointed and angry if the book had gotten wet!

Albumworks also releases codes throughout the year that you can input during the ordering phase and receive a discount. With both photobooks I used different codes that gave us 20% off the total price (including delivery).

Lucas - baptism 1

Lucas - baptism 2

Lucas - park

Lucas - toys 2

Lucas - toys 1

Lucas - birthday

Lucas - family photo - final page

Finally, I liked how Albumworks allowed the user to upload photos to the program either individually or by folder. The previous editor did not allow this (I think), so it took a while when loading larger folders, especially when just needing one photo.

Both versions of the editor allowed to user to know at a glance which photos had been used already, and how many times, provided that photo was uploaded to the program. The user is able to load and clear the photos as they wish.

In general, the photobooks were fun to do. It gave me direction when taking photos and it allowed me to create something special for each child. Each photobook took over a year to finish, and I worked on them sporadically throughout that year.

Tahnee - pretty in pink

Tahnee - birthday

Tahnee - family photo - final page

The photos I included in this blog post are but a mere selection. Lucas's book is 54 pages and Tahnee's book is 74 pages long. If you want to have a look at each of them in full you will have to come on over :)

Jungle Gym

Chris told me about Jungle Gym in Willeton. He had met the owners through work and they spoke about their business. Jungle Gym offers both a play ground and structured classes. The area is set up like a gymnasium, with thick mats, parallel bars, uneven bars, balance beams, rings and a few fun things like slides and foam pits. During the week the playground is open to walk ins. So myself, the kids and my sister went out for the morning. It wasn't until we got there that we discovered that adults are not permitted on the various apparatus. They had to spot their children, but we not allowed on with them. This was very frustrating for us as Lucas did not understand what to do with all the equipment. He was grumpy and miserable and refused to participate in most of the activities. On the other hand, Tahnee had a ball. She couldn't do much, but she did enjoy it :)

On the rocking horse, mats, crocodile, uneven bars and trampoline :)

sitting in a grump on the chair, watching Tahnee, wanting cuddles and generally not playing :(

Jungle Gym was a nice morning out, albeit frustrating that adults were not allowed to demonstrate the apparatus (and no one from the centre was either). If I went back, it would be with another family with some older kids who could help out. There wasn't much for Tahnee's age (and lack of walking), especially compared to somewhere like Act-i-vate in Kelmscott. But it was cheap at $6 per child, adults free. Be warned, if you go along, leave the pram in the car as these are not allowed in (although there is a room you can put them if the room is unused at the time).

Cousins

This morning I babysat my nephews and niece. They played reasonably well with Lucas and Tahnee. They played with cars and stickers, played with the cars outside, stepped in dog poo, played chasey and watched a bit of tv. And while my kids were nicely occupied I was able to get quite a few things done around the house :)