A little break...

So I have been on Maternity leave for two weeks. It’s been lovely, apart from the fact that I thought I would have had the baby by now. At least I have not been as tired and cranky as when I was still working. It has made a difference not having to get dressed up each day, do my hair and make-up, drop Aiden at daycare and drive 45 minutes to work. And then work!
 

It's weird though, when I'm really busy and tired I find it easy to be creative and write blog updates. When I have heaps of time on my hands its more difficult! Maybe because its a different outlet to what I do most of the time? In any case this blog update has lots of photos to make up for the lack of writing!

Me being at home has given us the chance get some things around the house that are hard to achieve when Arran and I are working full time. We have lived in our Bridge Rd home for a year and a half and while we have managed to do a few things since we moved in, once you live in a place for a bit you discover other things that need to be fixed. So I thought I would tell you a bit about what we have achieved during the past couple of weeks as well as some of the other things we have been up to:

-       Aiden got a new room

 

-       The light switch in Aiden’s room finally got fixed. It’s one of those old fashioned cord-pull switches which worked intermittently.

-       The lights in our kitchen/family room also got fixed. There were 16 halogen lights set into the roof and only 13 worked reliably. Two came on and off like they were possessed. All the halogen lights have been replaced with lovely bright LCD’s which over time are more energy efficient and therefore cheaper to run.

-       Returned the Mini Cooper S at the end of the lease (sob!). This ended up taking 5 hours in the middle of the day!

 
Weather is starting to look like summer so spent some time shopping for Aiden's new summer wardrobe!

Hat and shoes from Seed, Polo's from Mothercare, Shorts from Pumpkin Patch

Shorts from Target, Shirt and T-Shirts from Cotton On

Had some acupuncture at Sydney Essential Health (to try and bring on labour). Brooke and Nicola are great. Very relaxing. So much so that I floated out from one of the treatments and floated into a shop called White at Woollahra and bought a dress and necklace   

Finished the photography course I have been doing. Here are a couple of images from the field trip:

Circular Quay

-       Caught up with some Mothers group friends for morning tea

-       Filed away all the bills and paperwork that usually lies around our kitchen in big piles

-       Bought some plants to replace the last round I killed. Arran was very unkind saying he gives them 2 days to live. I give them at least a month!

Just added the grass in the middle. Apparently grass plants are hard to kill!

Kangaroo Paw. Cheap and hardy (I hope)

Succulents. I have a few different ones that seem to survive despite me, so bought some different varieties.

-       Had a lovely pre-baby Sunday lunch with some girlfriends at Glebe Point Diner

-       Had a lovely pre-baby dinner with more girlfriends at El Bulli

-       Been grocery shopping twice during the day. Much more pleasant than at 6pm.

-       Had a few nice sleep-in’s when Arran took Aiden to daycare

Celebrated the great Sydney spring weather last Saturday afternoon by heading to Bondi to have fish and chips from Mongers. Yum.

End of a beautiful day at Bondi Beach

On Sunday morning Aiden and I went to the park and then walked home via the flower man to see the "birdie"

 

Luella came and hung out Sunday afternoon and helped me choose plants to kill at the nursery. We then had Simon, Julie and Henry, and Iain and Rebecca and Luella stay for dinner. Julie made cupcakes for dessert!

We don't know what 'flavour' the new baby will be so Julie made green and purple baby-cakes! Isn't she clever?

And here is who we are waiting for. Nice pic at 34 weeks

Aiden's New Room

It’s tricky to think about how to pull together a small boy’s room (that he will share with his new sibling for a bit) that will grow with him. I was pretty keen to put together a fun but classic room that he will love and is not too ‘designer’. I spend a lot of time looking at interior design magazines and blogs and sometimes the designs for kids are too kiddy or baby-ish. I don't think they would work for very long.

Months ago, probably around June, we went to have a look at some “big-boy beds”. Aiden had decided not long before then, that he no longer wanted to sleep in his cot. Despite not being a particularly physical/climbing kind of kid, he decided at 3am one morning that enough was enough and he would just climb out of his cot and land with a thump on his bedroom floor. Since that night he has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor.  A good mummy would have rushed out and bought him a bed the next day, but I’m just not that kind of mummy.

Firstly I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get in and out of a big bed (and I didn't think it was worth spending the money on a toddler bed he would grow out of quickly) and secondly I still hadn’t decided how to decorate his bedroom.

Here are some "before" shots:

 

When we went to look at "big-boy beds" in June I saw a wide red and white strip bed-head. For those of you who watch too many American home decorator/do-it-yourself type lifestyle shows, you will understand that this was the “jumping-off point” for Aiden’s new room.  I thought about that bed head for months and how it would fit into his room, what colour I would paint the walls, what kind of linen would I get for his bed….Despite there being lots of different bed options for small boys, ones with storage drawers or a trundle bed underneath, bunk beds, I settled on a single ensemble that would work best with the bed head.

The walls have just been painted in Dulux Natural Embrace. It’s a warm neutral colour (I normally hate ‘neutrals’) but the colour will work with reds and blues that I had pictured for the room. Colours, which will grow with him and will work if our next baby is a girl. It’s also a colour that is modern but suits the Victorian style of the house, which can be a tricky combination to achieve.

After the painting:

We moved the Ikea Expedit bookcase from the middle of one of the long walls to towards the window. This freed up some space to have a full size single bed, a cot and a change table. We have a number of rooms to put Aiden and the new baby in (they could have separate rooms), but Aiden’s current room is right outside our bedroom and has a reverse cycle air conditioning unit. Because we live on one of Glebe’s busiest roads (Bridge Rd) the main bedroom and the room beside it (Aiden’s room) have been carefully soundproofed from the road noise so they need to have air-conditioning for cold winter and humid summer nights. I’m pretty keen to get both kids in that room.

Also all the other bedrooms are up or down stairs which will be a bit fraught in the middle of the night if we need to get to them.

Here is the finished result:

The walls are still bare and need some pictures and an electrician is coming next week to fix the intermittent light switch but Aiden's pretty happy with his new bed. He loves hopping in for a sleep and snuggling in under the covers.