Happy Festivus!

So it's Christmas Eve and I thought I'd write a little note to say thank you for reading this little blog over the past year or so. I am doing the 'Photo-A-Day' challenge in January (much to Jimbo's dismay) so I'll also try to write up a blog post more often as well.

Harry has spent the past week refining her writing - she loves to write and has progressed from writing just her name to lots of different words in just over a week. She hasn't got a particularly 'fine' hand to put it mildly. Some letters start a centimetre high but by the end of the word they're filling the A4 sheet, which is pretty cute! We can't spell words out in front of her either because she is way too clued in on the whole letter/word/sound thing, tricky little monkey. Her latest developmental surprise to us was when we were playing 'the quiz', a weekend favourite in our house. The Good Weekend supplement in the Saturday paper has a little 10-question quiz in it that James and I love to ask each other. Now that Harry is in the family we're relieved to see the love of trivia continue - she LOVES the quiz and we alternate 'child' questions with 'adult' questions. An example of a child question would be 'How many children are there in TSOM?'. But on this Saturday, James asked Harry "If you had five pieces of pizza and you ate two of them, how many slices would be left?". Without even hesitating, Harry calmly announced "Three" in between bites of her lunch. Blow me down! Is there like an invisible line that they cross for when they can suddenly do this sort of thing? Because it sure feels as though if we'd asked her that question only a week ago she would have had to use her fingers to work it out.

Tomorrow for Festivus we have surveyed her present stash and realised that she quite honestly has about 90% books. I'm putting in a bet that the abridged Anne of Green Gables picture book will be the big hit. James thinks it will be the soccer ball. He picked it last year with the Lily May book, so he may well have got it pegged for this December as well.

It's been a HUGE couple of days for Harriet, because on the 23rd we took her out for lunch, without quite telling her the whole story, ie: that Nana and Grandpa would be there as well. To say she was ecstatic would be a huge understatement! She insisted on sitting over near Nana, spent the whole time playing peekaboo with Grandpa and then ran the whole way down through the city to their hotel. Then today it was a full day out on the ferry with them while I did a bit of last minute run around shopping. The result? A very, very exhausted girl tonight who burst into hysterics when we discussed having a bath. Poor poppet could barely hold a conversation, so hopefully a big sleep will do her the world of good.

Well it's goodbye from us - will post some Festivus photos soon I promise!

Late, Late Post

Yes, yes I know, again with the incommunicado issue. My new year's resolution (not that I do that stuff but here it goes) is to regularly update this blog!

It's just a quick one tonight - I've been up since 2.30am, it's now 5am and I really should at least try to sleep. Insomnia is a killer! But thought I'd share this list of food that James sms-ed me while I was in Canberra for the weekend recently. Apparently in one day Harriet ate:
2 apples, a peach, a mango, a bowl of edamame, 3 inari, a piece of toast, a salad, a plate of avocado sushi, a bowl of brown rice, a baby squirter thing (pureed vegetables in a pouch), a fruit strap, a bag of pickled ginger, a bottle of mineral water, a nudie, two handfuls of cheese, a hardboiled egg, another bowl of rice and another bowl of salad.

And give her the chance to eat some stone fruit and she is off and racing. A HUGE proportion of our food bill at the moment is being spent on her eating fruit! And in a true indication of how children regulate their own appetites so well, she has steadfastly stayed at just on or under 18kgs throughout all of this massive food fest. Just this afternoon I was thinking how you could see her ribs so clearly - of course she was eating at the time!

In other news I am now officially huge - Snippy was kind enough to let me stay in my normal shirts until about 20wks, but now at 22wks there is no way I can get away with that . In fact there are times when I can feel my muscles stretching and my belly growing over an hour period. It's really weird and definitely not like anything I had with Harriet. Oh and yes, we do know the gender but no, you're not going to know. We're still using the masculine pronouns now just out of habit and because Harriet has been using them as well so she's used to it now. The not-knowing is driving Mike and Nadia crazy! And there's no turning to Harry either because she doesn't know.

It's soon going to be our time away up the coast, which we're all excited about. Here we are all modelling our early Christmas presents to each other. What a handsome family, don't you think? Harry *loves* it when we use the timer on the camera, but we could only manage one shot with all of us ensnorkelled (like that word?). So this is what we're stuck with. Pretty cute though if I do say so myself.