Interview with 4-year old Mia

I started this tradition last year - can read that interview here.  It was so much fun to do this questionnaire with her again, she sits with me seriously, and answers the questions with the first thing that pops into her mind.  I'm putting these, along with a photo of her, in a file to keep for her. Love doing this!

2014 Yearly Interview with Mia Jill Viljoen – 4 years old

What is your favourite colour? Purple and blue, like you and pappa

What is your favourite toy? This green motorbike

What is your favourite game to play? Barbie

What is your favourite fruit? A banana

What’s your favourite tv program or movie? Barbie movies. And Tarzan.

What’s your favourite thing to eat for lunch? Just a marmite sandwich

What is your favourite outfit? Ballerina rokkie

What makes you happy? You, Mommy

What is your favourite snack? Chippies and chocolate and juice

What’s your favourite animal? Zebra and bokkie. Bokkies are very cute

Where is your favourite place to go? Spur. I like the people at Spur!

What’s your favourite song? Ek’s ‘n Blou Bul. Also, “Here I Am” from Barbie and the Popstar!

What is your favourite book? Room on the Broom

Who is your best friend? Milla

What do you like to do with mommy? Jump on the trampoline and play in the garden

What do you like to do with pappa? I like to kiss him

Favourite thing to do outside? Pick flowers

Favourite drink? Cream Soda

Where is your favourite holiday place? Sun City.  I love to go there.  There’s monkeys and swimming places!

What do you like for breakfast? Bacon. Just bacon.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A mommy

What did you do on your birthday? A blue Cinderella party, with a blue Cinderella cake! I got a queen Elsa and princess Anna doll.  Everyone came to visit, we played with balloons!

 

Mia's Cinderella Party

Mia enjoyed her party so much.  She chose the theme a while ago - and even though I checked a couple of times to make sure she didn't change her mind - she was quite set on a Cinderella party.  With a Cinderella dress and all!  It was quite fun to do a "blue" party!

The venue is a little tea garden nearby here - it was definitely very convenient, the way everything was set up for us, we just took the few extra Cinderella décor items and balloons.  The snack platters, drinks and party packs were all done by the venue too.  Easy!

I designed the invitation myself this year, was quite happy with how it came out!

Pretty blue princess décor

 

 

 

Birthday Girl! ♥

 

 

Beautiful cake done by Rox, who is not officially doing cakes again but I'm just super lucky!  This cake was just princess-beautiful with the pretty ombre rosette-icing, and blue vanilla cake inside.  Of course - totally delicious too!

 

Mia was the cutest little hostess at her party.  She welcomed her little friends, took them by the hand to show them the play area, accepted her prezzies with a "thank you!", and was just too cute for words.

Birthday prezzie stash, lucky girl! 

 

On the jumping castle, princess rokkie and all!

 

Thank you piccie to send to everyone.

Happy 4th Birthday, Mia Mooi!

Happy 4th Birthday, my beautiful girl!

You are such a happy, energetic, bubbly, funny, precious little girl.  You make me laugh, you make me happy, you make me proud.  My heart could just burst. I love to watch you in awe, I love to be with you and talk to you and do things with you.

This past year was a big year for you: you became a big sister, and you started going to school.  You are being such a fabulous, special big sister to baby Ella, and you enjoy your school and your friends so much.  Well done my darling, I'm so proud of you!

I hope your year ahead is filled with princess fun, sparkly fairies and everything that is pink and shiny.  I hope all your dreams come true.

Love you with my whole heart, forever and ever
Mommy
xx

Spring time, solids and swimming lessons!

Each day I open up this page to write a blog post, and at the end of each day I close the blank page again.  Just not enough hours in a day!!

I am so behind in everything I want to blog about, moments I want to remember...

I am so happy it's September! I rejoice in the beautiful green leaves growing on the trees, and love how my excitement is infectious - Mia points out flowers to me all the time.  We take a walk often to a beautiful cherry blossom tree to see how many flowers are growing - just the other day there were no flowers, only buds - yesterday it was in full bloom! Beautiful, special and symbolic.

I'm feeling a great need to do a bit of a "spring cleaning" around the house - time is an issue, but I've decided to make a list of everything I want to do, break it up into smaller bits, so that I can tackle it one half-hour at a time!

Ella is almost 20 weeks old, and we starting giving her solids last weekend! We started with baby cereal - she wasn't super impressed - then mashed up some papaya, and she loved it! Since then she's started eating the cereal very nicely now, and I made a pot of butternut for her, added about 3 chopped up apples, and a small teaspoon of cinnamon.  I wasn't expecting much, I remember Mia refusing my homemade butternut meal - but Ella loves it!

I'm taking a relaxed approach to feeding Ella solids.  We'll get into more of a routine in a few weeks, but for now I just want to introduce her to the concept of eating and as far as possible I want to only give her homemade foodies - Mia was much too much of a "Purity-baby" and I'm convinced that's where her fussy eating stems from!!

Ella has had a post-nasal infection for a month now! So over it. Been nebulising her and using saline spray and using the NoseFrida and the snottiness is just not clearing up! Finally phoned the paed's office and spoke to a nurse there, who said I can give her Celestamine.  So irritated that they didn't recommend this, and I've been to the paed with her twice!!  Hopefully it works to clear her sinuses up now.

Mia started swimming lessons last week!  At the gym.  Twice a week, for twenty minutes. She swims with the instructor and then one other little girl of the same age and same swimming ability.  The first lesson went really well and she loved it.  The second lesson, aw shame, there was some tears - there were other people in the pool, plus another instructor with two kids also swimming in the same area, and when Mia had to stay on the step while the instructor took the other little girl around the pool, it was just a bit overwhelming for her.  But she recovered quickly and did enjoy the rest of it. 

My 360XBT challenge is going well - still not exercising quite as much as I would like to, but the eating plan is going well.  I'm 5kg down and we're just past halfway through the challenge.  So need to up my game to reach my goal of losing 10kg, but I know I can do it, there is room for improvement.  I'm at a horrible in-between stage where my clothes fit terribly - half are too big and baggy and other half too tight and squishy.  Looking forward to tossing the big baggy ones out soon!!

Wyn has been overseas for work again this week - he gets back tomorrow.  We've coped quite fine, supper time and bed time is a little bit of a challenge but not impossible - no meltdowns, from either the kiddies or me! ;-)

Mia's 4th birthday celebrations are coming up in two weeks' time! Lots of excitement and preparation for the Cinderella themed party and all the family that will be coming to visit.  Added motivation to spring clean the house, indeed!

Okay, this was about 3 blog posts rolled into one, but at least I got around to it!  Will post piccies soon.

xx

A Day At Mia's School

Recently there was a photographer at Mia's school who made a video of their school day, and took piccies too.  It was really sweet to see - Mia is shy and reserved and keeps to the back - but she does take part, singing the songs, doing the movements, clapping and waving.

I'm really so happy with her school and her teacher is wonderful.

Bit of a photo update!

 Mia had fun dressing up for Layla's birthday party recently.

 

Bottle time for little one.

 

I've started showing her picture books, she quite likes it!

 

Everything goes to the mouth now, too cute!

 

I giggled so much at this face she's pulling.  She looks so much like her pappa here!

 

Sisters reading and chilling together. ♥

 

Ella got a makeover. ;-)

 

Mia and her friend Milla at the Monte Casino Bird Gardens. Such a cute special friendship forming!

 

These sparkly eyes and rosy cheeks. Love.

 

Ouma Poppie came to visit for a day recently. We gave her a manicure!

 

Tummy time for blue-eyed beautiful tiny one!

 

And a huge thanks to my sister for designing my new blog header! Yay, absolutely love it and excited about a bit of a new look!

 

 

The end of breastfeeding

Ella has officially decided she's done with the boob.  After three weeks of only doing one feed per day in the morning, she has refused to latch the last three days.

I was feeling quite heartbroken and emotional about it this morning, but after much contemplation, I have made peace with it.  I made it to 16 weeks, and although I had hoped for a couple more months, at least she did start off quite well with mommy's liquid gold.

Breastfeeding Ella was such a different experience to breastfeeding Mia! Can read my blog post about breastfeeding Mia here.

I think what happened was, Mia breastfed so often, it kept my supply stimulated and sufficient.  I don't think Ella fed enough, and the low milk supply caused her lots of frustration at how hard she had to work to drink.  There were already lots of milk ducts that didn't work due to being damaged after my breast reduction op from 10 years ago.  So actually having been able to have breastfed at all was already lucky!

I can still snuggle her and hold her close as she drinks her bottle, so I'm not worried about the "closeness" that breastfeeding brings, I know we're snugglebugs enough!  I am sad that she's not getting all the good antibodies and probiotics that a mother's milk naturally supplies. I'm sad I didn't wean her based on my decision and on my terms...

Feeding time is at least much faster now that it's only a bottle, which helps a lot, especially when I'm doing my best to give both baby and pre-schooler lots of attention!

Also, now I have my body back to myself, after 9 months of pregnancy and 3 months of breastfeeding!

Bittersweet, everything just goes so fast.  We've got the introduction of solids coming up in the next couple of weeks, wow!
xx

This and that and everything!

Oh goodness, have really been neglecting my blog! I just literally, physically don't have the time. To give you an idea - I opened up this compose page at about 10am this morning to start a post, it's now after five in the afternoon...  Let me share a few random updates on us and see how far I get before my attention is needed elsewhere! ;-)

• My 360XBT Challenge is going well.  We're into the third week now, and so far I'm 2.7kg down! Already feeling better about myself, not such a squashed sausage anymore! Still have 10kg to go to get to pre-preggy weight, but feeling more confident now that I will get there sooner rather than later.

• I'm enjoying the eating plan - it follows lots of the principles of Paleo, no dairy, no white carbs, no sugar, no processed goods - but it includes oats, lentils, brown rice and such, which is wonderful! I'm learning about new things too, such as using miso to flavour foods, and to drink kombucha, amongst other things!  Really love veggies and doesn't feel like much extra work to do veggies for me and a starch for Wyn and Mia.

• The exercises are really great, can do them either at the gym or at home.  I'm liking the versatility of kettlebells and amazed at discovering Tabata, absolutely no more excuses to not fit some form of workout in each and every day!  Think I'm getting addicted to doing squats, and even managing my first-ever burpees!

• Mia has pink-eye.  We were at the doctor this morning, poor thing, it looks very irritated and inflamed, but luckily she says it's not sore. Got ointment to put in her and Ella's eyes, and drops for myself too.

• Ella is 15 weeks old tomorrow, she's getting so big, I can't stop smooching her and our fave thing to do these days is to get her to laugh, such a beautiful sound!  Naps are a bit of a struggle, often she only catnaps for 20-30 minutes at a time, and by the afternoon she's overstimulated, overtired and super fussy and impossible to calm and get to sleep...

• My dad paid some money into my account for me, Mia and Ella. Such a nice surprise. Thinking to put it towards some clothes for us all - next year's sizes for the two girlies, and as a reward when I lose my 10kg!

• I'm so, so glad winter is almost over!

• Wyn is enjoying his craft-beer brewing a lot, actually such a cool hobby for a guy to have. He does it really well and everyone is so impressed with his beer!

• It's Mia's 4th birthday in just over 6 weeks' time, can't believe it, think I'm in denial! Seriously need to start some party-planning, absolutely no idea yet as to where, what, who, how, eeeeek!

• My business needs a bit of a boost, winter is always a quiet time, but I really need to make a plan to get more feet in.

• I did my first ever yoga class last week, and really enjoyed it.  The full-body stretching workout, as well as the visualisation, spiritual healing and positive affirmations that the instructor does was really enlightening and empowering.  Will definitely do that again.

• Am feeling a strong urge to spring clean specific areas of the house that are so cluttered, but time just doesn't allow it at the moment...

• I bought a box of hair colour to do DIY hair colour again. Never comes out the colour on the box, and never as nice as a salon treatment - but at 1/10th of the price of a salon treatment, I'm gonna do it myself! Once again - when time allows me to!

• Today we had an earth tremor, it was quite scary to experience, goodness.

That's pretty much us in a nutshell - will do a photo update soon, and hopefully not be absent from the blog for such a long time again!
xx

Ella's 3 Months Update

1. How old today:  3 Months / 13 weeks

2. Current weight & length:  She was 5.4kg at her 10-week vaccs, she must be around the 6kg mark now. Not sure about length!

3. Recent milestone reached:  She started laughing out loud last week, it's the most beautiful sound ever!  She's also starting to grasp things, very cute. She's managed a 7-hour stretch at night a couple of times, hoping it will become a habit!  She loves being pulled into a sitting position, and often puts her legs straight and stands for a few seconds. Strong baba!

4. Next milestone:  Getting more control over her movements.  More new sounds.

5. How is baby sleeping at night?  She's been giving us a good stretch from 9pm til 3 or 4am, which is really great - although the 4am one is difficult, coz by the time I get her back to sleep again just after 5, I have half an hour to sleep before the alarm clock goes off.  Hoping she'll stretch that 4am piece to 5am soon!

6. Day naps?  She sleeps after an awake time of around 1.5hrs, for around 2 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Sometimes she goes to sleep easily, sometimes she fights it.  We’re not in a set routine yet, just taking it as it comes.

7. How is feeding going? Combination of breast and bottle feeding.  Last weekend I thought it was the end of breastfeeding, the way she was refusing to feed. My boobs got so full and hard and sore! Luckily after two days it went better again - but now she fights the bottle that she gets after her breastfeed - and she needs it, the breast milk isn't enough... Battles battles!

8. Feeding times?  Every four hours, on average.  Sometimes a bit sooner, sometimes a bit later.

9. What has been the recent baby highs? I just adore her smiles, laughs, and little chatting noises she makes.

10. And baby lows? When she fights sleep!

11. How is the rest of the family doing?  Everyone's really adjusted well to being a family of four.  Mia loves giving her sister kisses and love, I think she can't wait for more interactions from Ella's side.  Wyn helps so much with our evening routine of juggling the two girls at bath and bed time.

12. What has been working best recently, baby-related?  Taking me-time and going to the gym! I get a bit frustrated sometimes if I'm struggling to get her to feed or sleep, so it's nice to hand her over to the nanny sometimes.

A 90-Day Challenge!

Today is the beginning of a 90-day challenge that I signed up for two weeks ago.  I'm super excited about this.  Basically it's an online programme with eating plan guidelines, exercise plans, and lots of motivation and inspiration to be found through the group on Facebook.  It's called 360XBT - and it's exactly what I need to help my weight loss mission along, but not only that, to set a good foundation of healthy nutrition habits and a fitness regime to help me be the best me I can!

My goal is to lose 10kg in these 3 months.  I know it's do-able.  And can't wait to be 10 kilo's lighter!

But together with this plan, I've also set myself a few more goals, because this feels like a "spring-cleaning" of my body, I feel the need to do the same for the rest of me and my living space:

 - Look after my skin: exfoliate and mask treatment every week!
 - Look after the rest of my skin - moisturise, and stop picking at my arms and making scabs, this has become a terrible habit and it's going to leave scars if I don't stop now!
 - Do hair treatments and colour my hair so that I feel better about the state and condition of my hair
 - Declutter: the bathroom cupboards, my dressing table, the laptop desk, and the study!
 - Make an inventory of frozen foods and use what I have before buying new goods.

Today is Day 1, and slowly but surely all the info is being shared in the secret Facebook group, I'm loving the positivity and vibe in the group, everyone is very helpful with questions people have, and info being given on what, why, how is really awesome.

My sister helped me take all my "before" pics, and although it wasn't very fun to do, I do look forward to seeing the transformation in 90 days' time!

Yay!
xx

Mia's Winter School Holiday in Pictures

Two weeks of holiday went by way too fast! It was wonderful to not have to get up while it's still dark to prepare a lunchbox, to be in a mad rush juggling a baby that needs to be fed and getting Mia dressed and breakfasted in time!

This is a few of the things we got up to:

She's finally understanding the memory card game, so it was fun to play with her! She just didn't grasp the concept of "taking turns" - so she won the game, because for each turn I get, she got 3 turns! ;-)

 

She and I both went for a haircut.  So serious. ♥

 

She had a sleepover at Aunty Boo's house. She loved it!

 

We baked pink cupcakes with pink icing. Love these lil handies at work.

 

A visit to the dairy farm.

 

She tossed a coin into the wishing well, and she wished for summer! Bless!

 

A fairy in the garden!

 

We went to the movies, always fun, think I enjoy these movie outings even more than she does!

 

Sister love ♥

 

Icing marie biscuits for great-grandfather. It's his favourite treat.

 

Presents that Pappa brought the girlies from overseas.

 

And back to school this morning!

Mia says to Ella...

"When it was just mommy and pappa and me... I wished for you."

Oh my heart!
I got such a lump in my throat.
Even now just remembering it. 
An amazing special bond is forming between these two sisters! ♥

No electricity, 10-week vaccs, and bulletproof coffee!

Goodness, what a week.

On Monday afternoon our electricity went off.  The substation where we get our power from was vandalised and set on fire.  It only came back on again during the early hours of Thursday morning.  Three nights of candlelit cold dinners and night feeds ain't fun!!

Luckily we could go to my sister's house to bath, we have a little gas stove to boil water, and on the second night Wyn borrowed his uncle's generator to keep our freezers frozen.  Gosh, it was really quite stressful, just silly things like not having instant hot water, being able to sterilise bottles, having the tv to entertain Mia, and keeping my phone in the car to charge from there.  Luckily clever Wyn set up some LED lights on a battery, which gave better light than candles. 

Mia enjoyed the first night of walking around with a torch, but the novelty quickly wore off!  I was terribly aware that I couldn't hear Mia if she called me - we rely very much on the sound monitor still, so I kept going to her room to check up on her - luckily she slept soundly!  Ella of course was blissfully unaware of any effect of having no electricity! ;-)

I have new appreciation since the power came back on - each time I boil the kettle or switch a light on I feel grateful!

On Wednesday I took Ella to the baby clinic for her 10 week vaccinations.  Lil star that she is, only cried for a short while.  She weighs 5.4kg, growing nicely! She really hasn't had any bad side effects from the vaccs, but poor body does have a sniffly nose again. I'm so over these winter bugs!

I've lost 2.3kg in 3 weeks.  Happy with the progress!  Haven't been to the gym since Monday morning as their electricity was also off, will hopefully make up for lost time this weekend.  Something that I feel is helping the weightloss, is that I have a bulletproof coffee in the morning, and then only eat around 11am.  The bulletproof coffee sounds very odd, but it's a nice creamy taste, I like it! 

I make my bulletproof coffee with one spoon of Jacobs coffee, one teaspoon of coconut oil, and a little less than one teaspoon of Kerrigold butter. I sometimes add a pinch of cinnamon or a pinch of cocoa powder. Fill the cup about halfway with boiling water so that it doesn't mess while I blend.  I blitz it with a little handheld milk frother until it's creamy and then top up with more water.  It's really a nice taste, although a little rich, I definitely wouldn't want more than one cup a day.  It doesn't give me a burst of energy like I've heard it should, but I definitely don't feel hungry until late morning!

Yay, it's weekend.
xx

Winter holiday time!

School has closed today, for two weeks!

I am rejoicing in the thought of two weeks of not having to get up at 6am to get dressed and prepare a lunchbox and juggle Ella's feeding and awake time with Mia's getting dressed and breakfast time!  I can stay in my pj's and breakfast can be at any time and we can all snuggle together in bed! Yippee!!

I want it to be a special fun time for Mia though, so have planned a few activities and outings:

• We're going to go see Mr Maker at the DSTV Kids Extravaganza at Vodaworld
• A trip to the hairdresser to trim Mia's hair
• Lunch at the dairy farm
• Bake cookies
• Make playdough
• Playdates with a few friends
• Tea parties
• Watch movies in our pajamas
• A sleep-over for Mia at Aunty Boo's house

Yeah, sounds fun. And hopefully after two weeks when I know I'm going to be quite relieved that school is starting again, it won't be quite as dark at 6am anymore! ;-)

xx

Enjoying my gym workouts this week!

I went to the gym on Saturday, and just suddenly found my groove! I initially told Wyn that I'll be back in less than an hour, thinking I wouldn't be inspired to exercise very much... But then while on the treadmill, I decided to jog a lil bit too, and although I couldn't run for more than a minute at a time, I really enjoyed it, and ended up doing twenty minutes instead of my initial plan of only 5 minutes for warm-up.

Same thing happened when I did the weight machines, I just kept thinking, "this feels good!" and did way more than planned.  I felt so exhilerated when I left!

Went to the gym again on Sunday - Wyn really supports me so nicely in this and doesn't mind looking after the girlies while I escape. ;-)

Monday's workout was also fabulous, and only third day of jogging but already managed to do more than I could on Saturday.

I really enjoy the gym, the music gets me amped, the people all on their own mission, the variety of exercises I can choose from.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to go yesterday, and today I had the mirena fitted, so will go again on Friday.

(The mirena appointment went really well! Really love my gynea, dr Jacquie Grassie, she's fantastic.  I love the way she explained to me exactly what she's doing.  It wasn't nearly as painful as I expected it to be, uncomfortable, but over in 60 seconds! She answered all my questions too, put my mind at ease, and I'm happy with the decision so far.)

I heard a good expression this week when chatting to a friend for some weight loss tips, she said, "you can't outrun a bad diet" - and this is seriously the truth.  Diet is definitely the biggest aspect of losing weight - but I do like the way exercise makes me feel stronger and healthier, and the effect of toning muscles just helps weight loss so much too.

I'm down 1.2kg in two weeks - it's slower progress than I was hoping for, but it's progress nonetheless, I'll take it!

I like these Reasons To Be Fit piccies: