Cheese! *literally

Yes I gave birth to her!

We went to Lewis strawberry farms the other week. Unfortunately there were no strawberries left 'all brown' according to Lucy but blueberries and blackberries are still available. Lucy, who is shy with strangers, wouldn't talk to the lady serving us. The lady asked me 'are you the mom or the nanny?' I was shocked. Why would you ask such a question and why would you frame it in that particular way? I don't know anyone who has a nanny, do you?

Lucy's Top 5 Washington moments

1. Riding the carousel on the Mall outside the Smithsonian Castle (twice)

2. Drinking babyccinos at Ebenezers cafe (across the road from our accommodation)

3. Seeing the Washington Monument and telling everyone each time

4. Visiting the National Zoo and seeing an elephant have a bath

5. Sending a postcard to grandma from the National Postal museum and driving the purple(!) delivery truck

The things mums do!

When we go out to eat Lucy is usually provided crayons and a colouring-in sheet by the restaurant. I keep some of these crayons in my handbag for those times when I want to wait for my meal in peace. My handbag was starting to feel unusally heavy so I cleaned it out only to discover to my horror that there were 29 crayons in my bag! These have been culled significantly. Can you see the triangular 'crayangles'? These are awesome as they don't roll off the table onto the floor.

Weekend quarantine

Lucy was out of sorts on Friday so she was shipped off to the doctor. 2 and a half hours later she was diagnosed with sand gnat bites and sent home. That afternoon green goo started oozing from her eye. After another 2 hours at the doctor on Saturday morning, with a belly full of Cracker Barrel blueberry pancakes, she was diagnosed with an ear infection and conjunctivitis (hence the quarantine). It is the same ear from the other week so she is on stronger antibiotics than before and has to have eye drops three times a day. It is not fun putting 2 drops in each eye of a 2 year old! Thankfully Lucy has not shown signs of the predicted diarrhea and vomiting but her eye is looking good now.

So we missed gymnastics and strawberry/blueberry/blackberry picking. But we had fun at home and did lots of gardening (ie weeding and mulching) so the main bed out the front is looking ALOT better. We still don't have enough mulch though. We used 11 bags and covered half the bed. We are thinking of getting a truck to deliver a ton to make it more economical to do the rest of the beds.

We also celebrated Fathers Day on Sunday! Andrew got a cup of tea in bed and after a little reluctance from Lucy he was given some presents (various salts including Peruvian pink, a salt mouse to serve the salt and an All Clad saucepan). Andrew and Lucy played in the sandpit together and then cooked lemon ricotta fritters with lemon curd dipping sauce. They were awesome! They are kind of like mini round doughnuts with a lemon zing to them. Lucy had fun sifting the flour and eating the lemon curd.

Now Andrew is in Boston again. It's another crazy week and then we head off on holidays on Friday.

I like purple!

Lucy's favourite colour is purple. Purple clothes, purple food and purple toys. Anything purple is claimed as 'my purple'. When Andrew was in Boston he bought her a few little presents: a purple handbag, a purple cap, a purple book and purple socks. In the same week I bought her some purple crocs. Now that she is moving into a regular bed I have ordered some purple sheets and a purple blanket. Should I be feeding this obsession???

Den of snakes

I went to Toys R Us a couple of weeks ago to check out presents for Lucy. I was particularly interested in getting some plastic food for her kitchen. To my horror all the food assortments available were sponsored by various food conglomerates including McDonalds, Betty Crocker and Subway. There was no plain normal food items, just branded items. She has plain food items purchased from other stores but it was interesting to see that the choices at Toys R Us were indeed limited to food chains wanting to get their product out.

An AWESOME weekend!!

Our 'big girl' is now 2 years old. We had an AWESOME birthday weekend spent at the beach, gardening, at church and having a pool party in the backyard. It was so fun and so easy! God kept the thunderstorms at bay until Monday afternoon (and now our backyard is totally flooded). We ate home-made strawberry ice cream, drank wine and soaked in the 30 degree heat (85F). As I mentioned earlier the theme of the party was butterflies. So there was a butterfly sign out the front, a butterfly wreath on the door, butterfly napkins(!) and plates, and of course a butterfly cake. The party favors (lolly bags) were butterfly handbags with butterfly stamps and paraphenalia for the girls and bug boxes for the boys. Lucy spent most of the party eating! She says hi to Gabriel, Julian, Caleb, Rachel, Ava, Samantha, Baxter, Abigail, Aidan, and Rory. Also happy birthday to Mr Dave!

2 more days until 2 years old

The countdown is now on, the upstairs room is filled with presents and party paraphenalia and muffins are baking in the kitchen. Lucy is practising singing 'Happy Birthday' and blowing out candles. The party favors (lolly bags) are assembled, the lawn has been mowed and we've made the strawberry ice cream. We're getting ready for a 2 year old's birthday!!

Product of the week - Lindt (and other) lambs

Our theme for this Easter week is 'lambs'. All of the shops are promoting Easter with chickens, rabbits, and eggs but if you look carefully it is possible to find a very small amount of lamb related items! These chocolate lambs from Lindt are very cute, four white sheep and one black sheep! I'm sure they taste good but I won't be able to tell you until Sunday! We are also putting in Lucy's basket a lamb soft toy and a 'grow farm' lamb that grows to four times its original size when put in water (it will shrink back down when dry and can be used many times)


Continuing on our lamb theme yesterday Lucy and I made pictures of lambs with cotton balls, paper and glue. We put one lamb on each placemat at the dinner table as decoration!

Palm Sunday

We have a super fun Easter week program planned for our household! So this week's blog entries will outline our activities.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday so before church we made some palm fronds and Lucy took hers along with her to wave. We tried to teach her to say 'Hosanna', and whilst she tried very hard, what she came out with was something quite different!

Matthew 21 The Royal Welcome
When they neared Jerusalem, having arrived at Bethphage on Mount Olives, Jesus sent two disciples with these instructions: "Go over to the village across from you. You'll find a donkey tethered there, her colt with her. Untie her and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you're doing, say, 'The Master needs them!' He will send them with you." This is the full story of what was sketched earlier by the prophet: Tell Zion's daughter, "Look, your king's on his way,poised and ready, mounted On a donkey,on a colt, foal of a pack animal." The disciples went and did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They led the donkey and colt out, laid some of their clothes on them, and Jesus mounted. Nearly all the people in the crowd threw their garments down on the road, giving him a royal welcome. Others cut branches from the trees and threw them down as a welcome mat. Crowds went ahead and crowds followed, all of them calling out, "Hosanna to David's son!" "Blessed is he who comes in God's name!" "Hosanna in highest heaven!" As he made his entrance into Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken. Unnerved, people were asking, "What's going on here? Who is this?" The parade crowd answered, "This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee."

Nicola's

On Saturday night we headed out for a Silex dinner at a mod Italian restaurant called Nicola's. With children not allowed the lovely Erica, a trained paramedic, had the task of putting Lucy to bed. Lucy played happily 45 minutes but by bedtime she was crying. She hid in a corner before deciding to run into her room and put herself to bed. She wouldn't allow Erica to put the blankets on so when she fell asleep Erica sneaked in and did so. Meanwhile we were enjoying some merlot and a nice dinner (prawns and lamb - separately) followed by profiteroles covered in a nutella/cream mix.

Weekend time

Yesterday was the start of daylight savings for us so we lost an hour of sleep and a number of people were late for church! So if you're in Sydney you can work out the time in Wilmington by subtracting 3 hours and reversing the am/pm. So if you're reading this at 9am Sydney time, it will be 6pm the night before in Wilmington. Or you can just check the clock on this blog!


Given Lucy's stomach flu we stayed home on Saturday. We were all exhausted after a difficult week of cleaning up poo and working late (you can guess who did what). We ordered some more plants for the backyard and we can't wait for April when they will be shipped to us.


Sunday we spent all day at church as we had a meeting after church to talk about some issues.


We are all ready for bed!

American baby showers!!!!

I went to my first American baby shower last week for Amber. I was curious to see how different it would be to an Australian baby shower! On the whole it was fairly similar - lots of nibblies, lots of women, lots of noise and laughter and lots of presents. We played a couple of games which were okay except for one. This particular game we had to guess the brand of chocolate bar from the contents. We had a list of potential chocolates and we were allowed to look at and smell the sample chocolates. The only catch was that the sample was smeared onto a diaper to look like poo! It looked so GROSS!!! One lady (who has 3 grown children) couldn't even bring herself to smell the diaper and turned a little white in the face. It was quite funny but oh so awful! I told everyone that I would be blogging this back to Aus and most of them instantly shouted to me that this was not a normal game to play at baby showers and shouldn't be held up as a typical American baby shower!


According to Babyshower101.com it is a popular game. "Guess the Chocolate - (Materials- 5-10 diapers with 5-10 different types of chocolates). This game is one of the funniest and most popular baby shower games. Have the baby shower host or appointed person moderately melt 5-10 different candy bars separately, placing each one in a diaper to be viewed by everyone. Mark each diaper as A, B, C, D, etc. Have everyone guess which candy is in each of the diapers. Make sure to use some candies that have nuts, toffee, caramel, etc. You are sure to get great laughs!"


Australia you be the judge.

Valentines Day sugar

I know this is late but I wanted to record it anyway. Daycare sent home a note a few weeks ago with a class list asking us to provide valentines day cards for all the kids in the class. I thought about doing it and given that Lucy was not attending daycare that day decided not to send any in. When we arrived the next week Lucy had a bag of goodies waiting for her. Expecting to see half a dozen cards I was shocked to find that each child had given out not only cards but lollies as well. The lollies ranged from the not as bad Welchs fruit snacks (made with 'real fruit' but primarily corn syrup and sugar) to a disgusting Sponge Bob Squarepants 'Gummy Krabby Patty' which made no pretences about its contents bolding stating 'artificial flavouring' on the wrapper. Andrew ate most of the lollies but it was a shock to see the snacks that parents are happy for their children (and others!) to consume.

Australian morning tea II

I had another Australian morning tea for the moms group today. This time I made vegemite sandwiches, chocolate caramel slice, lamingtons and ANZAC biscuits. To quote Amy 'vegemite tastes like stale anchovies with a pound of salt'. So as you may guess no one liked the vegemite! But the lamingtons turned out awesome and of course the ccs is always good! Lucy was very very good at sharing her toys (she only said 'mine' once at the beginning and then we had a little talk). We talked about 'sharing' at breakfast and she said 'share share' but I wan't sure she understood. But she did and she shared her toys with Vivian, Jack, Dominic, Mariana, Syriana, Sam, Charlotte, Elizabeth, and Ansley.

Royal Family

I mentioned at the start of this blog that I was looking forward to not being compared to Princess Mary whilst living in the US. Alas our daughter believes me to be PM and Andrew to be Prince Frederik. We have a magnet on our fridge of the royal couple which Katrina sent to us from a previous jaunt to Denmark. Lucy frequently runs up to it, points and says 'mum, dad' no matter how many times I tell her that it is not us!

color fun with jello

Lucy and I headed downtown to the Wilmington Childrens Museum with some of the moms from our group. We had a great time shopping in the grocery store, cooking in the diner, camping in tents and playing in the rubber pit. The 'color fun with jello' session was a disappointment as the toddlers didn't have enough co-ordination to inject dye into huge jello moulds! In any case Lucy had a ball and is now peacefully sleeping.

It's still fishy around here...

We decided to continue our fish theme this week. Today Lucy and I made an 'under the sea' mural with crayons and fish stickers, we ate tuna casserole for lunch and we are playing with a sea creatures jigsaw puzzle. It is such fun!

Sneak Peak 2: New York lights

Ok I haven't finished my NY report, so sue me (this is the US after all!) Here is a video offering of Lucy signing 'lights' as we walk up Times Square. Check back tomorrow.