I still can’t fully justify paying for an outfit that I will (hopefully) get to wear for a couple more months… the CHEAPSKATE in me won’t even let ME buy a simple T-shirt, that will last me… a week?? 2 at most? Pants are even worse. My hips and ass just seems to get bigger by the day, and each day is like a BINGO match, all with the anxiety of whether I will get into a pair of pants that I once was able to zip up… just 12 hours ago.

This is me WEEK 25. This Witchery top has been super awesome, perfect in width (to cover up the belly) and length (to cover up my crack).

And ofcoarse… I have to accesorise my head so people don’t just stare are my tummy, or my alien 3rd nipple.

WEEK 29 – This dress too has served me well. When I first bought this from the markets… I honestly didn’t even think it was a maternity dress until I got home and tried it on. It has these elasticated gathers from the bust diagonally down along side of the belly. At THAT time, there was just this gapping drooopy hole thing where my belly was which was not very attractive. BUT NOW… I’ve got a belly to fill it up with .. and its super comfy!

It’s funny too how the hemline keeps getting shorter as time goes with my belly lifting it higher and higher…

(my view from above… yes I cannot see anything past my belly and hence have to rely on the mirror to do up my zips…)

WEEK 30 – If you are ever preggos… INVEST in those kookai tube skirts. I had a few in my wardrobe… size 1… and they still fit! Because I’m abit of a shorty anyway, I always found the hemline alittle long on these skirts, but they serve you well when you are preggos. You have the option of wearing above your belly, and use it as a belly band… or because of its stretch anyway, you can wear it under your hips. The belly band thing has been a GOd send because… NOW that I can’t seem to zip up my pants, I use it as a layered look to cover my unbuttoned pants… and the mishap of flashing my crack when I have to crouch down.

Week 30 – Missy A’s school SPORTS DAY. I couldn’t help myself but to dress to the occasion. Turns out… no parent did. They were all in heels, and their usual day attire, while me, being the only preggo one too… rocked up in my sports gear. Then later to find out… that for safety reasons… I had to be excluded from the mum and dad race. I was so sad. My first sports day… *cough* I mean.. Missy A’s first sports day… and I wasn’t allowed to participate! Come on man! Don’t my adidas shoes shows that I WANNA RUN! .

Well I was also silly enough not to bring the battery for my camera so I didn’t take any pics of the day itself. BUT we managed to get this one! THE ONE THAT COUNTS!!! lol… Missy A.. my little winner! She got a place in all her events!

Lol… Missy A came home, bursting through the front door to find Kong Kong on the couch. She yells out to him!

Missy A: “Kong Kong!! I won! AND I was the fastest in the sacks race”

Kong kong looked puzzled and unsure if he should congratulate her or interrogate her with what she actually meant or where she had learned that from…

HEHEHE.. it also took me a few seconds to realise what she meant (right after I nearly had the heart attack from embarrasment from my potty mounth daughter).

LOL…

I have a few personal goals but I also have a few in terms of my parenting. In 2009, I would like to teach Missy A to read. (Does that sentence make sense??). Missy A has also already mastered the phonetics of each individual letter… thanks to Montesorri, so I’ve begun setting a few high frequency words as a start.

Missy A has always had an interest in books so that has made it easy. Instead of spending money on buying books that she will only read a couple of times, we’ve really made GOOD use of our library card. In the library, in the kids section… there’s a box with reading challenges. One of them is a ‘Pre-reader’ box which has great books that got us started. There’s about 30 books and a few ‘brands’ but one that I have found really good and consistent is “Sails – First Waves by …I dunno.” The backs of the books look like this so I’m the frantic mum at the library turning all the books back to front just to find this signature bright pink back cover.

The inside cover of the BACK has a great ‘teacher’s assistant’ to give guidance as to what to do with that book…. This is whether to read the book to them, or to assist them into reading it themselves making sure that the child corresponds the spoken word to the one written….etc…

Missy A and I go through the focus words for the book first. She would point to the word, and she would read it out loud. Then we play a little game where I point to each word and she says them out loud, and each one in a random sequence to keep her on the ball. After she has mastered these words, we red the book. I make her point to each words as she reads them out just so she doesn’t ‘cheat’ by looking at the pictures and then guessing what the words might say (they’re sneaky like that…).

We’ve read a few but I try to build her confidence by reading the same ones a few times before we move onto any newer ones. This way, even sometimes I get her to read it to Grandma, or Daddy just to show that she is learning to read. I like this part because I know that her confidence is really lifted from the reaction she gets and for me too I get the encouragement that she really is learning! Win-win right?

Trying to be consistent it hard for me . I’m kinda one of those all over the place people… I do what I like… when I like. No Routine. I recognise this doens’t help her reading, so as a reminder for the both of us we make sure that at the very least she reads her “mummy made” flash cards of a few high-frequency words. I’ll write about this in the next post… now … its just time for me to eat…

YES I am unemployed now that I have a bun in the oven. Not too sure if I have mentioned it earlier but as soon as REVIEW (lol now I can tell you where I worked…) found out that I was preggers, they were quite pushy that I moved into a casual role from being a full-timer. (Do I have a case?? heheheh)

I’m not too fussed about not working but just today… I realised something…or atleast… thought about something (she thinks!).

As I was hanging up the 32nd hankerchief onto our clothes dryer… I wondered whether I was over-compensating for NOT working. For me… of late, my unemployementness has made me feel abit like a potato. Just a spud that doesn’t do much and I feel like a useless spud (no offences to spuds… don’t get me wrong… I LOVE potatoes! Hmmm baked with cheese, or scalloped with chives… oh deep fried by Maccas).

I realised that I have put all my energy into Missy A’s school. This last week… I have volunteered to:

1. Wash the kids hand towels
2. Paint the backdrop for the Christmas concert
3. Paint the kids faces for the Christmas party
4. Make sushi for the Christmas party
5. Buy headscarves for a Portugese dance performance for the concert
6. Buy necklaces for African dance performance for the concert
7. Sew all 8 Princess sashes
8. Paint the names of the Princesses on the sash
9. Sew the donkey costume, tail and ears included, AND
10. Make Missy A’s ‘Gretel’ costume.

OMG… I AM over-compensating, aren’t I!!!!?????

Missy A turns 4! Well, she turned 4 earlier but finally… the long awaited birthday party is here! We planned a “Under The Sea” theme… Yes the little mermaid Ariel, and the birthday girl Missy A… I know… not very imaginative but I don’t care.

Now… 12 school friends, 12 parents, 1 pair of grandparents, 1 great grandma, 5 aunties, 3 uncles, 1 grand auntie, 1 godmother…and a handful of mummy’s and daddy’s friends has called for a bit of planning for (You think??)

So…

1) BUDGET – This was a big deciding factor in everything from the venue to the party favours and the food. To go to a play centre, it costs between $12 – $17 per child. I wanted to spend less considering there were going to be plenty of adults tagging along, and in all honesty… I wanted to be more involved in her party than just to hire out a place and let someone else coordinate MY BABY GIRL’s day! (Control freak kicking in…) Anyway… so given the amount of people we set a budget of $200, adults and all.

2) VENUE – Some where free! THE PARK!

3) THEME - Under The Sea Theme (UTS). NOTE: From what happened… CHOOSE a theme that revolves around themes that are readily available at the party store. There were plenty of fairy, princess, farm animal, pirate, cars type packs and decorations. NONE fitted our UTS theme which made it quite difficult… and HENCE.. stressful!

4) INVITATIONS – Choose a date first, and then work backwards. Date up:

• When to complete invitiations
• When the invitations have to go out
• When RSVP
• When to call to double check RSVP

We made our invitations on coloured cardboard. I cut out a fish template which we decorated with sequins as scales, and also cut out starfishes and decorated those with glitter. On the back of them, I just printed out all the details, cut them out… and stuck them on the backs of them. A nice project that we did together and took us a good 3 hours spanned across the week.

5) ACTIVITIES – The fun part…or as others would put it… the headache part.

We had an Octopus chasey game where an adult played the octopus, and if they tagged someone, they had to join up and make a bigger octopus and work as a team to catch the other kids.

NOTE: Explain the game clearly, and make sure they GET IT!… and wear runners…

ALSO have a clear boundary… otherwise… they just go all over the place… which is what happened…and that got tiring…for EVERYONE

Then we got the kids settled by doing abit of craft. This worked out really well. I didn’t realise that kids REALLY love to colour. So in-line with the theme… they all got to decorate their own little fish that I had cut out earlier. I gave them some glue, small pieces of coloured paper, some colouring pencils… and they were at it!

All eager to go!

Then up again for a Balloon Relay. Another observation… Kids LOVE balloons. So when you tell them they get balloons and the later tell them they have to run and pop it… they’re not too happy.

But still… I’m the Host… I MAKE the RULES! hehehe…

Then we used the fish that they all made… to go fishing! I made fishing rods with dowel, string and a paper clip hook at the end. NOTE: Use a magnet at the end for it to be easier for the little ones… but make sure that the magnet is strong enough to pick up the fish. I bought some the night before and tried it…and it wasn’t strong enough so I improvised with a paperclip hook – which CAN be dangerous. (Eye gouging type dangerous…)

We stuck like 5 paper clips on the end of each fish so that they had more chances of catching something.

SPECIAL mentions to a dear boy who was so good at catching fish that he caught a fish just by scratching his arm!

6) FOOD – keep it simple. I was putting my effort into the activities, I decided that simple oven baked foods was the easiest. If the focus of the party is the food, then plan a nice menu, but with Missy A’s UTS, it was about the activities, so party pies and nuggets were the go. NO complaints from the kids. NOTE: Be aware of any allergies which you can specify on the invitations. I knew one of the kids were allergic to peanuts – scarey stuff…

I catered for the adults charcoal chicken chicken, and a few salads – pasta salad, coselaw, potato salad, greek salad, spinach dip with celery and carrots (which most of the kids actually liked!) Chicken, buy on the day, the salads, all made the nigth before.

So after some CHOW. One last activities to pick up the energy again….PINNATA TIME! NOTE: When making your own pinnata, go easy on the layers… Ours were just too strong that we had to get in an adult to do some damage.

7) CAKE – Depending on your budget. Most cake shops can decorate things really nicely if you provide a design to them. I opted just to order the base of the cake so that atleast it was edible ( Last years’ was NOT)… and decorated it myself.

That’s right… I made little sea creatures out from plastic Icing that I bought from Spartys…. then hand painted each one. I enjoyed  making it.

PARTY FAVOURS - Again in the UTS theme, I organised green noodle boxes and put sea stickers on the front. I bought everything from Carribean Market, so it was really cheap. Lollies, mini water gun, rings and stickers. With the stickers, again I bought bigger packets and cut them up into portions. Then I gave each kid back their own fish that they made, along with a fishing rod to take home.

9) PHOTOGRAPHER – You’d want a few pics for memory to make sure you organise beforehand who you’d like to capture every moment. NOTE: make sure batteries are charged and MEMORY cards are IN the camera (happened to us… )

SOME of these photos are courtesy of Sherry!

I have never been able to ‘grow’ anything. When I was preggers with Missy A, I had this idea of growing herbs and have a super vegie patch. So I went off to Kmart with my fat rounded tummy, bought a 5kg bag of soil, and numerous packets of seeds. Cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, thyme, basil, rosemary…. everything that I could get my hands on. Did all my homework thanks to google, and went berserk planting. I even measured with my trusty ruler how deep into the soil I was putting them, and exactly how far apart I should set them…. NOTHING grew! ZilCH! Nada! @@@@!! So I have to admit that I was really worried when we started the Hairy Harry Project. One week passed… Nada… (oh dear)… and then OOOOMMMMGGGG!!!! These tiny little stubs started sprouting out!!! OMG!!!! I have to admit I was way more excited than Missy A was. Two weeks on now… and I’m proud as can be!!!!!

Prepped it up for “show and tell”. Missy A had already decided to call it “Hairy Harry the Octopus” so we drew up 8 wobbly legs, and put on a bow tie that she found in her treasure chest.

Growing stuff… is an awesome feeling!!!(Not so at the begining but when it does…. MY…WHOOOOHOOO)