Dakota did the transition to her bed rather nicely, and still (mostly) stays there. Having said that, we have had the occasional daytime experience that began with playing in (or should I say destroying!) her room for an hour, followed by extremely strong (incredibly loud so the whole neighbourhood can hear) objections to sleeping, resulting in a very cranky girl later in the day. There have also been a couple of incidents of falling asleep on the floor behind the door. As far as we know, she's only fallen out of bed about four times (onto another mattress on the floor). So on the whole, the new bed thing has been quite the success!
We've had family visiting - Dave's parents came down from Mackay recently and his brother Tim returned from London to live. His sister also moves back from London in January, which will be excellent! Now we just need them to move to the Sunny Coast...
Below are some shots of Grandpa trying to teach Dakota what to do on Uncle Tim's skateboard.
I've been trying to cross a number of "jobs" off my to do list - things that I've been wanting to do for ages but kept procrastinating over - such as stripping back and repainting Dakota's little kiddie table and chairs (that were mine when I was little), spring cleaning the house (YUK! - still working on that slowly) and finally getting around to printing out some photos of our almost two-year old daughter - just to name a few.
On the healthier side, I'm endeavouring to walk from our place and back a few times a week, to either Mooloolaba beach / or Alex beach (depending on the mood). So far, I'm mostly achieving that goal so I'm gradually getting fit again.
We're also trying to increase our "family time" as much as is possible with Dave's work being so busy. He's been working most weekends for a long time, so recently I decided that regardless of what work he had on, we needed to take some time out on the weekend even if just for a few hours. So one of the mornings, we walk to the beach for a paddle, and then have brekkie or coffee before coming home. It's been wonderful! We also decided that one night every fortnight, we will have dinner out somewhere - nothing flash but just to get out and be together as a family. Last week was our first time, and having dinner out with a toddler is quite interesting (dare I say challenging), but I'm sure once we start doing it regularly it will be fine.
Other than that, life is pretty much the same. Swimming lessons, playgroup, play dates, etc. The usual Mum stuff... I hosted a Melbourne Cup lunch at our place yesterday with eight of the mums from our group and the kids, including two new babies. Have I mentioned how obsessed our daughter is with babies!!!! She's very gentle with them, but becomes quite a handful when they spit their dummy out - she seems to feel it's her duty to put the dummy back in the baby's mouth, and we literally have to physically move her away from them before she'll eventually stop. We currently have on loan from the toy library a little baby pram which she's loving putting her little baby dolls in and carrying them around. She's recently started trying to feed her babies food from her little toy kitchen as well. It's all very cute!
Dakota is LOVING reading at the moment. She always has but now she's starting to remember how certain stories go, so she "reads" along with you. Here's a beautiful shot taken one night of Dave reading to Dakota and her little cousin, Isabella.
She's also mastered the ABC's and can count to 14. Our neighbours (who have been teaching her Italian since she was born) can get her to count to 5 in Italian, but she only does it for them. She also completely understands what they are saying and responds when they ask her questions. It's incredible!
1 comment:
Nice to see you back blogging. Wondered where you got too? :)
Family time paddling in the water then brekky and coffee sounds lovely. I like to do that when I stay at my parents house. They live around the corner from you in Palm drive.
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