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Mamatography Week 10 And Week 11 : Playing Catch Up

Home / Mama Stuff / Mamatography Week 10 And Week 11 : Playing Catch Up
by Luschka

Week 10

Mamatography Week 10 for us was all about World Book Week. The kids loved it, and it was great fun for all of us.

62: Play – We were invited to a play and I was so nervous about going with the girls, but really wanted to give it a shot anyway. We sat near the exit so my husband could duck out with the girls when they got too fidgety, but they were amazing. Seriously, Ameli watched almost all of it, and Aviya played on the Kindle for the whole thing. Even the cast came afterwards to tell us how awesome the girls were. They were fantastic. I miss going to plays and theatre so very much, so this was a most encouraging outing for us. Oh, and if you have a chance to see In Praise of Elephants, go for it. It’s brilliant.

63:Paint By Numbers – I can’t believe my baby is old enough to do paint by numbers pictures. Madness. She was doing it so well too.

65:I Can Read With My Eyes Shut – Our book of the day, and the accompanying craft from Activities To Celebrate Dr Seuss

66: Activities Box – Most weeks I’ll put together a kit for the week. I’ll spend this week putting together things for next week, following our pre-determined PlayLearning Theme. It’s helpful in getting things done and looking calm and collected at the same time.

67:World Book Day Games – We had a World Book Day Party with friends, and here the kids are playing a game as Dr Seuss’ Sneetches, some with stars, some without.

68:Charlie and Lola Came For Tea – when Ameli got home from preschool, Charlie and Lola were at the table waiting for her. She was so excited, it was sweet.

Mamatography 10

Week 11

With Aviya having dental surgery last week, I totally ran out of time for all the blogging I ‘need’ to do. So here you  have two weeks of Mamatography in one. Aren’t you lucky!

69: Waiting To Grow: We made honey cookies from a Winnie the Pooh book, and planted flowers as instructed in the story too. Ameli was relatively disappointed that she managed to make it through the cookies and no plants had shown up yet. A week later and they still haven’t. Poor girl. A valuable lesson in patience, I’m sure.

70:In Yo Face! Or something less street. I took Aviya to the hospital in London for her pre-surgery assessment, and someone walking behind me commented on how uncomfortable Avi looked ‘tied up like that’. Well, I asked her loudly if she was comfortable, and snapped a photo of her response. I think we’re okay, random stranger. But thanks.

71: Friends: What’s better than having friends? Friends who bring you food and then cook it too. Yuri (you may know him as @Urbanvox) is a legend.

72: Spring Gardening: I’ve tried for a number of years now to get a decent garden space for the girls, but it seems year after year my budget just gets tighter. It’s amazing how creative you can be with next to nothing, and access to Pinterest.

73: Baking Carrot Cake: We reviewed the book The Carrot Cake Catastrophe, which involved Ameli and baking, something she’s been doing with me since she was two. I miss it, really, and it’s time for me to get Aviya cooking too.

75: Faux Birthday: The picture is tagged as 74, but it’s actually 75. It’s Aviya’s Faux-birthday, since her surgery was scheduled for her birthday, we had a pretend birthday the day before. We’ll have a party in a couple of weeks. I can’t believe mybaby girl is two.

Mamatography 11

See you again next week for Mamatography, Week 12!

mtbadge2
 This post is part of the Mamatography 2014 Project with Diary of a First Child and Momma Jorje.

We are taking (at least) a photo a day, a collage or a picture each week to keep a record of our year. Join us at any point during the year and start sharing your own daily photos!

Click Get the code here below to add the blog hop to your blog and join the fun. (Also sign up to be added to a comment group!)



Mamatography Week 22: Everything’s Good When The Sun Shines

Home / Mamatography / Mamatography Week 22: Everything’s Good When The Sun Shines
by Luschka

We’ve had a brilliant week. Summer has arrived in the UK, we’ve been surrounded by friends, and life is good.

145/366 – Friends

I am incredibly blessed to have a fairly new but wonderful group of friends. A bunch of them came round for a professional bra-fitting with Karen from Boobiemilk and we had a lovely afternoon with loads of children, and great conversation.

146/366 – Puzzles

A quiet day at home, with a suddenly unwell Ameli and not a lot else going on. Aviya is 10 weeks here – look at the neck control!

147/366 – Summer Days, Drifting Away

We had about a week of awesome summery weather, typically UK it didn’t last for too long. Here’s Ameli soaking up some late afternoon rays at a BBQ with our friends Chris and Gloria.

148/366 – Penticost Party

The local church we sometimes attend had a Plenti-cost-nothing party – a free celebration for Penticost – so the girls and I attended. I don’t know why, but there’s something about this weeks’ pictures of Ameli that are so grown up. It’s like she’s totally left being a baby behind her and has turned into a beautiful little girl. It makes me sad, and nostalgic and incredibly proud.

149/366 – Bath Time, Unusual

We have a hosepipe ban at the moment, so we’re not allowed to fill the paddling pool or water the garden. We are still allowed to bathe our children though, so I took the collapsible Flexibath  baby bath out into the garden, popped some warm-ish water in, put the girls in their costumes and bathed them in the garden. A day without soap wasn’t going to kill them!

150/366 – Passed out

The heat, the watching, the drooling, the eating. It all just gets too much sometimes and you have to pass out wherever you are!

152/366 – My Girls
It was ridiculously hot again today, so we decided to kill a few hours in the waterpark at Legoland. Not many pictures of that (or any, as it turns out) but here’s a rare picture of me with both my girlies. And another because it’s beautiful.

Thanks for joining us for our week in pictures! Be sure to stop by the other participants too!

Mamatography Week 21: It’s My Life

Home / Mama Stuff / Mamatography Week 21: It’s My Life
by Luschka

It’s been something of a low-key, home based week. We’ve been really busy, de-wintering the house and getting things ready for summer. It’s amazing, however, how little you get done with a baby in the house, and tasks that used to take a day can seriously now take a week! But, when these are the the faces you’re looking at, who cares how long it takes!

138/365 – I can sleep

Confession time? I don’t buy into the whole ‘good baby’ thing. People keep asking me if Aviya is a ‘good baby’. She’s a baby. Of course she’s good! Does she cry? Sometimes. Does she poo when I’m about to head out the door? Yes. Does she wee three seconds after I’ve taken her nappy off? YES! Does she sleep through the night and large portions of the day? YES! But that doesn’t make her a good or a bad baby. It just makes her a sleeper. Thank God. 

139/365 – I haz smiles

I mean, really. How can that face NOT belong to a ‘good’ baby. I love her beautiful all inclusive smile. 

140/365 – Glitta Girl II

New Years Eve 2000/2001 my sister and I went out for the night and had a fantastic time. We were both covered in body glitter and nicknamed ourselves Glitta Girl and Glitta Sista. This picture reminded me of that.

142/365 – Bringing on the pretty

I’ve been working hard at getting our conservatory summer ready again. I saw this sun catcher idea somewhere on Pinterest – the parenting resource for the modern generation, I tell you – and just had to do it too. Sadly, it doesn’t fill the conservatory with the coloured light I expected when the sun shines on it, but never mind. It still looks pretty.

143/365 – Teacher’s Pet

Totally teacher’s pet. She’s just growing up so incredibly quickly.

144/365 – Why I wake up tired?

Not to blame my beautifully girlies unfairly, but I may finally have gotten to the bottom of why I wake up tired and sometimes even a little stiff. (It has nothing to do with my 1-3am bed times, I’m sure!)

Don’t forget to stop by the other Mamatography participants to see what they’ve been up to!

Kodak Pulse Digital Photo Frame Review & Giveaway

Home / Competitions / Kodak Pulse Digital Photo Frame Review & Giveaway
by Luschka

Okay, so this technically has nothing to do with parenting, specifically, and I’ll admit to that. It does, however, have to do with another hobby of mine: photography. Or more specifically, with the viewing of photographs.

My husband bought me a digital photo frame for Christmas a few years ago, and I loved it. With over 20,000 digital photos in my possession, I can honestly lie watching my photo frame for hours – who needs television when you can relive your own happy memories?

So, when I had the opportunity to get my hands on one of these lightweight (read: easy to travel with) photo frames, I jumped at it.

Honestly, it’s way fancier than I needed, and does a lot more than I feel is necessary in a photo frame, but that’s just because I’m perfectly happy with doing it the old-fashioned way – with a memory card full of pictures.

This Kodak Pulse does so much more, though. Firstly, it is Wi-Fi compatible, so it’s options for receiving data are so much wider. It is quick and easy to connect to a wireless network, from where you can add pictures from your computer, the Kodak gallery, Facebook, your mobile phone and from your frame’s own email address (so that people can send pictures directly to it).

In addition, the Pulse alerts you when new photos are added, so you don’t have to miss any pictures, ever. The touch screen makes for easy navigation of the 4000 photos that can be hosted on the internal memory, with USB and card slots also available.

From an environmental point of view, the Kodak Pulse is great too. Not only does the screen not contain any mercury, but it has a programmable timer so it can be set to be on when you’re generally around and off when not.

The downsides are the cost – at anything from £89 to £130 depending on retailer it costs a lot more than ordinary Wi-Fi-free frames –  and the fact that you pretty much have to have wifi to set it up and get it to work.

All in all, the Kodak Pulse is a great frame, and is kind of the picture version of Twitter – you will see all your friend’s photos if you set up for Facebook – but these are easy to delete at least – and you can walk in to find new photos every day if you wish. A great benefit is that select family and friends can email photos directly to it – so granny and grandad can see photos of the young ‘uns at any time. Or you can see photos of a wedding in progress as it’s happening.

Although I still love my photo albums, I can happily admit that I print less photos now that I have them all visible and available. And of course, 20,000 photos travel a whole lot easier on the Kodak Pulse than in a suitcase!

Kodak has very kindly offered a Diary of a First Child reader the chance to win your very own Pulse. In order to win, tell me about your favourite photograph in the comment section below. The competition closes at 12 GMT on 25 October 2010, a winner will be chosen at random using Random.org and is open worldwide, but please note the plug is for a UK product so if you’re not based in the UK you will need an adapter.

You do not have to tweet or share this competition to enter, but doing so helps ensure that I can keep bringing you give-aways every week! You can subscribe to Diary of a First Child by RSS, email or through Google Friend Connect (see the bottom to the right). You can also follow us on Facebook or on Twitter. We hope to see you back again soon!

Small Print:

Please leave an email address/blog address/twitter name where I can contact the winner. If I am unable to make contact within one week I will select a new winner and the previously selected winner will have no recourse to the prize. Prize cannot be exchanged for cash. All decisions are final.

And the winner is : Pauleen Lazar, congratulations and happy photo viewing!

A huge thank you to everyone that participated in this competition. Some of your favourite memories and recollections of favourite photos brought a tear to my eye!

365-244 to 365-250 A Week in Pictures

Home / Mamatography / 365-244 to 365-250 A Week in Pictures
by Luschka

With our move coming up soon we’ve been so busy. From visits with friends to simple things like putting unwanted items on eBay and Freecycle, time has flown by. (I even had a dream that I put an ad on Freecycle for second hand bath water. The ad read ‘when you’ve had your bath, call me and I’ll come round for mine’! I think I need a break!)

I’ve missed a few days, but here’s what I have.

Day 246 – Deen City Farm

Martin, Ameli and I have been to a number of the London City Farms, and this is close to the top of the list of favourites. It has a greasy spoon kind of cafe, and there weren’t any horses around – in fact it had quite a few empty pens – but it was well laid out and offered something precious in London: green and open space. I love this picture of Ameli. It’s so true to her personality, going out, discovering, exploring, while making sure she’s perfectly safely grounded in someone she trusts. That’s a quality I hope she retains for many years to come.

Day 247 – Aunty Glors

A day out with our friends Chris & Gloria. Gloria has been such an amazing friend over the past five or so years. She did so much for Ameli before she was born, hosted my babyshower and has just been a star friend. Many friends drift away after babies come along and she just never has. I’ve been so blessed by her friendship.

Day 248 – Holiday Pictures and Wandering Wednesday

One of the very first blogs I ever fell in love with is called Garden Mamma. She is such a beautiful blogger, I find visiting her site actually spills peace in to my day. Garden Mamma has until very recently run a weekly post called Wandering Wednesday where her readers send in a photo of their feet and what they are doing or where they are standing. I loved this every week, although I never actually participated, so when we were abroad for eight weeks over the summer, I decided to take photos of my feet in some of the different places.

We returned home and I forgot about it as I became swept up in other things. But on this particularly quiet and rainy day, I was going through all the holiday photos and found all my ‘feet’ photos. I’ve put them together here in a little bit of a tribute to Garden Mamma, a recollection of an amazing holiday with my husband and daughter (and some other family thrown in from time to time) and an odd but special thank you to my fabulous Reetone Flipflops for being my most comfortable shoes ever (they’re in every picture, since I wore them all holiday!)


Day 250 – Moving Box Art

I always hate moving, especially when it’s not a straight A-B move, but something else in between. No matter how well I label boxes, I aways seem to struggle to locate the important boxes with necessary essentials.  So on another rainy day, Ameli and I found a solution to the problem. We decorated a moving box. I painted a primer red layer over it and she painted hands and feet and various other splotches all around it. I’ll add more on this later, but it was great, messy fun. That will be her box for those valuable momentoes like her first baby grow, her first pair of shoes and also for the masses of other sentimental items, like the photo albums and backup CD’s all around the house.

painting

Thank you for joining us for our week in pictures

365-203 to 365-209 A Week in Pictures

Home / Mamatography / 365-203 to 365-209 A Week in Pictures
by Luschka

All good things come to an end, and while our week started in Austria and moved on to Germany, it ended at home amidst a mountain of laundry and a lot of ‘to do’s.

Day 203 – Memories of the Sea

In a coffee shop garden in Austria, this is such a wistful picture – I’m sure she wasn’t, but it makes me miss the sea

Remember the sea
Day 204 – Graz, Ausria

Graz is a beautiful city. It has a huge mountain (from where I’m taking this picture) with a castle on it, overlooking the city. The strange looking blue thing on the left is a zeplin-style are center and the contraption in the middle of the river is a man made island with a restaurant and outdoor eating/concert area.  The city is now a world heritage site as a result of the ‘harmonious way in which architectures from different periods co-exist’

Graz, Austria

Day 205 – Dinner Time in Munich

This was our 4th visit to Munich, so we didn’t actually do anything touristy. We went to a very big supermarket and looked at the things locals buy, and how much they pay for it. (Germany gets so many more Lindt chocolate varieties than we do!) Afterwards we went for dinner and Ameli kept herself occupied with the coasters.

Day 206 – Going Home

On the ferry on the way home – 8 weeks is a long time for a baby to be on the road – almost a fifth of her life.

Day 207 – Paper Work

Arriving home after 1am, we unpacked and went to bed. I was up and out and at the council office by 8.30 the following morning, because our parking permit and vehicle tax expired and there were a few things at the post office for us. An admin day was not really what I had in mind for my first day back, but bills wait for no… woman

Admin Day

Day 208 – Laundry Day

Admin all sorted, it was time to get the holiday goods unpacked. Washing for three peole for about 10 days (we were able to wash once on holiday) is about 30 outfits – a lot of laundry. Add in towels, nappies and what was already in the basket – I did a lot of washing. Unfortunately, there’s no way to make that look like fun!

Day 209 – …

Surrounded by drying washing and exhausted from 8 weeks of travelling, and two days of hard work, this was a quiet day. I don’t honestly recall what we did, but I do have a vague memory of icecream.

Thanks for joining us for our week in pictures!

365-154 to 365-160 A Week in Pictures

Home / Mamatography / 365-154 to 365-160 A Week in Pictures
by Luschka

We are just being blessed beyond measure. My brother and my grandmother are here visiting us and we are going all over the country and continent at the moment. It’s been such an amazing time and there have been some fantastic moments that I will treasure for ever. With a family as far flung as my own, these moments are way too few and far between.

Read more: 365-154 to 365-160 A Week in Pictures