Two!

We've passed a few momentous milestones in this house recently.

Firstly, J has started daycare once a week.  She did her first full day last week and although she didn't sleep while there, and there were some tears at drop-off, she seems to have taken to it really well.  She's especially proud of her "bap-pack" which is almost as big as she is.

She also turned two (or "doo" if you ask her) last week.  She didn't really have a clue what her birthday was beforehand but she had a pretty good grasp of it by the end of the day.  Watching her running up and down the driveway squealing and playing, while I held baby A in my arms, really drove home to me more than ever that they do grow up so quickly.  It's hard to picture but is very likely that within a year A will be chasing her big sister, and possibly even trying to talk.  Honestly I can't wait.

CAKE DELICIOUS CAKE

At two, J is pure joy.  She has been slow to speak but the little words and sentences are starting to come through (I'm sure daycare will help immensely with that).  She is such a helpful little girl and whatever we're doing she's right there front and centre "helping".

I'm sure her helpful nature has been a big contributing factor in making the transition from one to two kids such a smooth one for us - more on that later.  I'll be writing a post to follow up on the one I wrote about all my "second baby" fears on my old blog.

It was also my birthday earlier in the month - the big 36.  I can't remember how I felt about turning 35 but certainly this year turning 36 gave me pause.  I'm not one to get depressed about getting older (or not yet anyway) but 36 does seem awfully grown up.  I even went for a nice invigorating walk to start the day.

Not much to report on the move to NZ - the renovations on the cottage are ticking along at a great rate and will apparently be finished very soon!  It makes me itch with anticipation to imagine the house all ready standing empty waiting for us, but unfortunately we won't be moving just yet.  I'll post some photos as soon as I have some decent ones to share.

Parrots and a Dragonfly

When I started this blog (all of a week ago), I told myself I would only be using high quality photos that I'd shot on my DSLR.

That's all well and good for posts about things here in Perth, but for now we can only rely on my husband B's family sending us photos of Ten Acres from their phones.  So already I'm realising that if I'm going to write about renovations and so on, as I intend to, I may have to let the odd low res image through.  I'm clutching my pearls at the very thought.

Anyway.  Just getting that off my chest.

Here, though, are some nice shiny DSLR images from the other day when we had an early morning visit from some corellas and, er, green parrots (king parrots maybe? A twitcher* I am not), and, later on, the most amazing huge glittery dragonfly.

We've grown these sunflowers to attract bees to the garden, plus they grow quickly and look very cool.  Having the wildlife come for breakfast has just been an added bonus.

This reminds me of a book we had as kids called Where Is The Green Parrot

The birds sent J into an absolute paroxysm of delight.  She was crouching down in her pyjamas pointing with her stubby little finger: "Bords! Bords!".  Then, in an exaggerated pantomime with her finger to her lips: "Shhh! Woaw."  Think how Lydia from Real Housewives of Melbourne says "wow".  Like that.

J was also very pleased with the dragonfly visitor and it took some restraining to convince her not to touch and just look.  I think she got it in the end: "Non't touch."

*Twitcher means bird-watcher.  Look it up if you don't believe me.  This is the kind of useless knowledge I retain so that I can forget the names of everyone I meet

Welcome!

Welcome to the shiny new Ten Acres Blog!

This is where I'll be chronicling my adventures with my family as we pack up our life here in Perth and make the move to New Zealand, where we'll be living in a little cottage on - you guessed it - ten acres.

Firstly, some background:
I'm from South Australia.  My husband is from New Zealand.  We have two very young daughters, J and A (sorry for the abbreviations but you know, digital footprints and all that).  Suburban Perth hasn't offered quite what we'd envisaged for our girls' childhood so we're taking the plunge for ye olde tree change.  For lots of space and mud, and veggies, and ponies.  Not to mention multiple grandparents all within 20 minutes' drive (or less!), whereas in Perth we have a grand total of oh yeah ZERO.

We'll still be in Perth for the moment while our little cottage in NZ is basically pulled apart and put back together again.  Which means, lots of fun renovation posts!  Is there anything more boring than reading about someone else's renovation?  Probably hearing about someone else's dinner.  Or seeing photos of their garden.  Exactly the kind of thing that I'm going to post about all the time.

I'll also be cracking excellent awful excellent puns at every opportunity.

If there is anything about that which appeals to you, stick around.  If you're really excited at the thought, you can enter your email address in the box under Subscribe over there on the right.  You'll receive every post via email so you don't miss a nail-biting moment.

I'll be back soon with the first "proper" post.

Thanks for joining me!

x Prue