DEBS DEBS DEBSDEBSDEBSDEBS! WE GOT THE HOUSE!
The Boobook and I just finished signing the papers for the loan and the exchange of contracts for the house!
It’s perfect Debs! LOOK AT IT!
The house! Isn’t it lovely?
A slightly overexposed garden. It’s quite bright in Newcastle.
It’s at the end of the lane so that now the Boobook and I can be called A Becky Lee and the Boobook at the end of the lane!
PS. We’re still thinking of what to name the place. Something that has to do with rabbits, cats or rats would be nice.
PPSS. Also considering, “Wombotuff House”.
School holidays started a few days early for Little E, but poor weather conditions have kept us all indoors during the morning when J is still in school.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t get a chance to really spend a lot of time alone with Little E in the recent months, as I am either tending to Thumper or helping J revise for his end-of-year tests. However, Little E has been a very supportive sister to her two brothers and just does her own thing, playing nicely by herself. Part of this is because of her own independent nature, but I often feel that she has learned to entertain herself out of necessity.
This morning, Thumper was feeling very tired, so I put him down for a nap early, which meant that I had some extra time. Instead of using this time to catch up on household paperwork, I decided to sit with Little E and do some colouring, which is one of her favourite activities.
I went online and printed out some colouring pages for us to colour together. I decided not to use the usual kids colouring pages that I normally find, but one of the ‘colouring for adults’ pages. Johanna Basford, who started off this adult colouring craze with her book, ‘Secret Garden’, has a few sample pages from her book available as a free printable so I printed those off. (If you like, you can scroll to the bottom of the page for the links).
I personally have never really enjoyed colouring, which I always viewed as a tedious school activity meant to train children to focus and to develop fine motor skills. However, sitting down and colouring with Little E for an hour was a very different experience altogether.
First of all, there is that sense of achievement as you fill a small area with a colour of your choosing. Additionally, as you focus on the simplicity of the action, which is to create something of beauty, it is incredibly relaxing.
One of my friends once told me that having a kid meant that she had an excuse to buy colouring books for herself. At the time, I remember laughing at her quirkiness, but as Little E and I worked on a colouring page together, I began to see how therapeutic it might be. I can now understand why there are colouring books for adults now!
Secondly, it was nice to be able to collaborate on a small art project with Little E and it was interesting to see how organic the collaboration became, especially when I didn’t try to dictate her actions or give her any advice or feedback other than ‘That’s really good! I like that!’.
We started out by colouring in separate corners of the page, but after a while, I began to notice how Little E liked to mix colours within a space, and she noticed how I liked to colour in small areas in one colour before changing colour pencils. We then started to copy each other’s style, but adding our own touch to it by varying the colour choices – Little E tended towards high-contrast colour-combinations, whilst I chose complementary colours. By the end of the hour, we were each colouring over the whole page filling in tiny portions that the other might have missed.
Lastly, Little E didn’t stop singing, humming or chatting to me for the entire hour so I learned a lot about the things that she was learning in school, and about her friends in class. She told stories about the owl that we were colouring, and made up a little song about it, and was generally very entertaining. It was so much fun, I am looking forward to our next colouring session together!
In preparation for that, I’ve found a ton of great colouring resources online, which are free to print with permission from the artist! You can even print them out to make your own mini colouring activity book – so great for long plane journeys, waiting rooms and wedding dinners!
By the way, many of the independent artists who host free printable colouring pages on their websites are very dependant on views and clickthroughs in order to keep those pages free-to-download on their sites. If you have used and enjoyed any colouring pages from the links above, please do take some time to explore each independent artist’s main page by clicking on their names (underlined in bold).
I promise that you won’t be disappointed – I’ve taken great pains in to find artists who do beautiful work and who share many other family-friendly creative projects on their websites. Not only will you also find more free colouring pages on each site that I have not included in the links above, you’ll also be supporting a starving artist, whilst keeping the colouring pages free-to-download for everybody. That’s three good things for the low, low price of one click!
Okay, it’s been more than a month since you’ve had a full night’s sleep, and maybe you were getting a little bit of cabin fever after the month long confinement so heading into the 2nd month can be tricky. This is also when people are starting to expect you to have things under control when everything still feels very new. Additionally, the baby is becoming more alert, so not only will baby be slightly more demanding during wake time, but settling him or her to sleep will also be more challenging.
However, here are a few Motherhood Hacks that have helped me to maintain my sanity in the 2nd month!
Babies in their second month are starting to develop their sight and hearing a little bit more, and they can quite easily recognise your voice and your face. After they have been fed, burped and changed, cradle your baby close to you and just…talk.
Quite likely, your baby will gaze into your face intently. This focus is so intense that often he or she will stop wiggling around and lie absolutely still for a few moments. Look into your baby’s eyes and see watch the expression on his face change as he listens with rapt wonder at the sound of your voice. Very soon, very, very soon, your baby will start to look for you and smile, just hearing the sound your voice.
Know without question that you are your baby’s entire world. There is not a single human being on the planet that your baby loves more than you.
Memorise this look and remember it during the times when your baby seems to do nothing except cling to you and cry. It will help you maintain perspective.
At this stage, most babies have progressed beyond feed-me-seymour cries, their needs are still very basic and their cries usually signify either hunger, tiredness or discomfort (usually a soggy nappy). In other words, nothing that a full tummy, dry nappy and a cuddle can’t resolve.
Rule of thumb for crying – If they’ve just woken up, feed them. If they’ve been up for an hour, cuddle put them to bed. If they smell bad, change their nappy.
This also means that the stream of visual stimuli provided by just being in the world will make babies mentally fatigued after a while, so if you need to calm them down or settle them for a nap, put them in a dark room. Failing that, literally pulling the wool over their eyes will do the trick. I always carry a large muslin cloth with me when I go out and if Thumper gets tired, I just drape it over his head and he goes out like a light. Works for birds of prey, works for two month old babies.
Two month olds are not mobile at all, they have no coordination to speak of, and they still sleep most of the day. This means that this is actually one of the best times to get out and about because your baby will be happy to sit quietly in a sling and doze off against your chest whilst you get a well deserved reflexology massage or a pedicure. So go on and pamper yourself!
Sometimes you might feel like you can’t leave your baby’s side, not even for a minute. But at two months old, your baby physically cannot go anywhere. So if you need to take a few minutes to go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea, have a shower or just sit in a different room until your ears stop ringing, then put your baby down in a safe place (like in their cot), then go ahead and take five minutes to yourself. Your baby cannot get into much trouble whilst you are away, and those few minutes away from him or her will refresh your mind and energy stores!
It is HOT in Sydney. As in, it’s egg cooking into the pavement melt into a puddle HOT. It’s so hot, in fact, that nobody is allowed to go visit the National Parks in case they, y’know, CATCH FIRE.
It’s this kind of weather that makes me want to reach for a glass of ice cold water, but drinking plain cold water on a hot day isn’t always the most comfortable and I’m not a big fan of fizzy drinks, no matter how chilled.
So, I’m taking a leaf from Little House in the Prairie and our Auntie G from Alabama, and making me some good ol’ fashioned American Deep South cold drinks for the fridge.
Now, most American recipes tend to be a lot sweeter than we like, so I’ve modified them a little to reduce the amount of sugar. Still, if you prefer a sweeter drink, feel free to sweeten the pot, so to speak!
Becky’s Note: The pinch of baking soda is really mostly recommended for black or green tea brews. The tannins in black and green tea tend to become more stringent tasting when cooled, so adding a little bit of baking soda helps smooth the taste. This is optional for red teas and is NOT recommended for white teas.
Dissolve the sugar in the remaining 250 ml of boiling water.
Becky’s Note: The amount of sugar used should be reflective both of how sweet you want the tea, but also the kind of tea you used. If you’re using a black tea, you’ll want to add more sugar to counteract the bitterness. If you’re using a red or white tea, less sugar is advised or the sweetness will overcome the natural taste of the tea.
I used Red Choc Mint tea from T2, as the minty flavour adds a little extra cooling to a hot day. The jug I used is also from T2, and is a specialty jug for making iced tea in. You can use a regular carafe or even a tea pot for this stage, of course, just make sure to put the tea leaves in a strainer for easy removal later!
When the tea is fully steeped, remove the leaves, add the sugar syrup and stir. Then, add the cold water and bung the jug in the fridge. Leave for at least 1 hour, then enjoy!
A glass of Ginger Water after a long day goes a long way!
Mix the sugar, ginger and apple cider vinegar and heat until the sugar is dissolved.
Becky’s Note: Honey can be substituted for brown sugar in this recipe and the results taste equally as delicious, though slightly tangier.
Pour the sugar syrup into a carafe and fill with cold water. Put in fridge for at least 1 hour.
 I will make an exception here for Bundaberg’s Peach drink, which is absolutely heavenly. I’ve always liked Peach Soda though, as it was one of the first things I ever bought with my very first paycheck.
It’s Travel Thursday and we are continuing our Great Smoky Mountain Cool series over at Owl Fly Away!
It was a lovely, dry morning, just perfect for a walk in the woods. We were pretty tired out from the previous day’s long drive, so we decided to do an easy hike.
We started out at the Elkmont Nature Trail, but after about 30 minutes in, we came across a large muddy scree, so instead of tiptoeing through it, we decided to cut our losses and head for the Little River Trail instead.
If you saw my post earlier this week, you will have read about how important it is to label every single thing that your kid intends to bring to school – especially if he or she is starting school for the first time. Or maybe you have an absent minded new BIL who might just lose his bento box at work.
Stickerkid is very kindly sponsoring a giveaway of ONE set of round stickers for one lucky Owls Well reader! Hooray! Each sticker can be personalised and the round labels have space for two lines of text, so you can use them as name labels, return address labels, even gift tags!
Update: This giveaway is now closed. Jaime is our winner! Congrats!