Rainy Days

Cabin fever has hit us hard with these cold rainy days. I totally appreciate the need for rain but selfishly I'm wishing for some sun, and soon!

We continue to travel from house to house, play date- to play date, and otherwise find ways of entertaining ourselves here.

These pictures are rare moments of sun. I think we managed a total of 10 minutes outside, just enough time to snap these shots and give Mia the impression of an out-doorsy day (the soccer ball is one of her new favourite things, she's quite the kicker too).

Mia has been fabulous at entertaining herself not only with what we have here, but even more so with her rapidly developing and wild imagination. Some of the things she has conjured up in her colourful little head:

• Jumping castle- Excuses herself, goes to the kitchen, emerges with her arms spread wide holding on to her giant imaginary jumping castle. Proceeds to enthusiastically jump on it (sometimes with her boyfriend Charlie). Then stops abruptly, hands on face "oh no, Oscar ate the jumping castle!" Oscar is scolded as Mia wraps up the castle and places it in the bin announcing "never mind, we'll get a new one." And of course she does.
  
• Fire Engine (as per the ride-on one from Charlie's Birthday). Goes through a whole routine from its arrival to its sad farewell.
• Ice-cream truck: Love this one, she generously hands out ice-cream to everyone, including Oscar and exclaims that its of course Shokaad flavoured.
• Musical medleys: Mia can go from Gretel (the youngest of the Von-Traps) to Jane (from Mary Poppins), Annie and Oliver (notice the orphan/absent parents theme???) in a matter of minutes. We're called in to join, as she refers to us by many names (Luke: usually Burt and I am often Mary Poppins).

Other than the imaginary, we've been dancing, singing, doll-housing, painting, drawing, cutting, pasting, play-doughing (what a mess!), playing with lego (still into the duplo, our selfish attempt to move her on to the real little pieces failed, but Luke and I are having a blast with it) cooking & baking (both real and make-believe).

Mia's drawing and painting skills are developing nicely. She's been drawing people and faces the last couple of months and these are some of the best. I'm also having a go and trying to fulfil Mia's requests from Yo Gabba Gabba to Poppy & Luke. I'm quite proud of my cartoon Poppy (near bottom left), I look forward to perfecting it over the coming weeks.





I have to say all these activities are feeding my on going nesting urge and I'm loving the craftiness of it all. Who knows, perhaps I can give this woman a run for her money (then again, she did get caught for some financial scheming). Maybe I too can own colour coordinated horses that will only be allowed 8.37 minutes of sunlight a day to ensure they match my decor?

Anyway, I took a step closer to completing my masters of Martha Stewart by attending a cupcake baking demonstration at the Magnolia Square market. A disappointing start (Bron & I thought we were there for an actual workshop) led to a fine finish where we were shown some superb decorating secrets, we left excited and hyper (scored some free cupcakes, below is one of them) with the hope that we too could one day create such fine looking delicacies. We also observed it was the best behaved we'd ever been at any workshop/seminar/meeting... well done to us!

The workshop was one outing I had on my own this past week, followed by two more (Luke is a superstar!). I've finally commenced Pilates. I've been procrastinating for weeks and was inspired by some of our more glamorous athletes (mostly the beach volleyballers). More than anything else, I'm actually just hoping they can help me repair the massive ab split, which the instructor was positive they could and then I can resume my highly successful swimsuit modelling career.

The other outing was to the hairdresser! Finally, after 5 months off I had my hair done. I went for the edgy heavy fringe look (to address my I'm a stay at home Mumsy look) hoping to exit the salon looking like this.

However, to my dismay, as I drove past Caulfield Park and the local walkers, I realised in fact, I look more like an orthodox Jewish chick with a wig!!! Just call me Ruchel Schnitzelburg.

Now, I wanted to place a picture here of the kind of orthodox chick wig that my hair now resembles and I just couldn't find the right one..... but I did come across this, which made me laugh (ridiculous!).