Muffins

Strawberry and Ricotta muffins

(recipe from Delicious magazine Feb 2003)

Savory muffins with 2 fillings -
Goat cheese, spanish onion and rosemary
Swiss cheese, sping onion and sage

(recipe from Delia Smith online)

[1 year 10 months] Chatterbox

Lara's favorite words are all to do with food - apple, pear, raisin, kiwi fruit, grapes, berry(strawberry), mato(tomato), ice cream, pizza, bread, milk. She especially likes to recite all the fruit she knows before going to sleep. Lara initiates "hellos" to people in the shops. Last week, she called out "hellos" and "grapes" again and again in a fruit shop that the old man works there ended up cutting a small bunch of grapes for her.


Lara also likes to dance and sing along to the songs in Wiggles. She knows most of the Wiggles' names. Wiggles is definitely her favorite now, surpassing "in the night garden". "Tellitubbies" is popular too. Lara tends to move closer and closer to the TV set if I don’t' watch her.

It's not always easy to understand what Lara says. You need a little imagination (sometimes a lot) and patience. Most days she is an angel, so easy and fun to be with. Other times she could be very difficult. The tantrums usually come without warnings but are mostly gone quite quickly too.


(Lara likes to pretend to fall over)

Others:
* Lara likes sushi rolls with avocado fillings or California rolls, not so keen on tuna ones.
* We went to yum char and Lara had a piece of prawn for the first time. She started having funny rashes that day. We are not sure at this stage if this is prawn related.
*We saw a couple of houses one weekend. The first 2 houses had swimming pools. Lara liked to point at them and repeated "swimming pool". Lara was looking around in the backyard of the third house (no pools) for some time. Then she turned to her Daddy and held her hands out and said "No swimming pool?"
* Lara enjoyed being in a peddling pool with Milo. Those blow-up peddling pool seems to be a great idea.
* This is how Lara counts to ten: "two... four ... six... seben...ten!".
* Lara like to run around naked before bath.
* Last weekend we were discussing where to go in the car. Husband said "ok turn right at the next traffic light". And we heard Lara said "turn left" from the back seat.
* Lara asks me which daycare we are going in the car -"Hello Jenny? Hello Mari?"? If I said "oh we are going to see Jenny today, hello Jenny", Lara would repeat "Hello Jenny, bye-bye Mari".
* Lara wants to pick flowers before getting into the car every morning. It's taking me longer to get her out of the door in the morning.
* Seemed to sleep for 3 hours frequently in daycares. They have to wake her up often.

Newport beach

We spent 2 lazy hours at Newport beach a couple of weekends ago. It was quite a windy day and there were a lot of flies around for some reason. Lara and I had a very short play at the beach and a little dab of the cold but refreshing sea water. To get to know the neighbourhood better, we are planning little excursions on the weekend that don't take up the whole weekend. Palm beach is next on the agenda.


(Lara and Dadddy enjoyed their chicken'n' chips.)


(After dinner entertainment is several songs and dances, including some duets.)

Looking for daycares

The most stressful part of this move was finding Lara a daycare. I started looking casually when we first put our house on the market. Everywhere I went, I got the same "we are full and waiting list is long" story. Not knowing where we would live and when we would move only made things more difficult.

I knew there was a possibility that I would not find somewhere satisfactory in time, and that meant I would have to take an extended holiday from work. But secretely I thought there had to be some movements in one of the daycares and just hoped I would be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when a vacancy came up.

I called the daycare I like the most and closest to where we would be living every week to enquire the possibility of getting a place. It was a very stressful time. Luck must be on my side and my persistent calling somehow paid off. Three days before our move, I was told there is one day available for Lara and managed to get another day (total of 2 days) on the second week.

Because there seemed to be impossible to get into daycares, I also widened my search to include family daycares (people looking after up to 5 kids at their own homes) and daycares further away. I went and visited a few places, some were available but none to my satisfation. During this process, I happened to talk to a lady running her own family daycare. She sounded really nice over the phone and cleared some of my reservations. A visit with Lara made me decide to try her one day a week.

Lara loves the family daycare environment and never cried once when I left. With daycare, Lara only cried a couple of times. The good news is Lara seems to be happy with both places. She knows the names of some of her carers and friends, she lingers on and never wants to rush home with me. In fact, most days I have a real job dragging her home after work!

Both places tell me how good Lara is and how easy it is to look after her. They both offered me all the days I want for next year. I could not have planned a better outcome, I am very grateful for that.

Big red car

Lara loves driving around in her new red car. The first week we got it from the toy library, Lara spent most of her waking hours driving. The first thing she wanted to do when she got up was get into the car and drive around. She's very good at maneuvering around our furniture and reversing to avoid collisions. Now (2 weeks later) the car spent more time parked in her room than being driven around. It's almost time to return it!

Real estae agents

We met Lush 6 years ago when we were looking for a house to buy. Lush was friendly and courteous. He made a good impression on us and we felt sorry that we didn't buy a house from him at the end. During the last 6 years, we bumped into Lush many times in the neighborhood. He remembered our names and always appeared extremely happy to see us. His office is across the road from the train station. He would wave to us from his desk every time we walked past.

Before putting our house on the market, we invited a few agents to come and gave us market appraisals. Lush stood out as the best agent, way ahead of everyone else we had over- he was the most positive about fetching the right price for our house. The decision was easy. Lush made selling a house relatively easy and stress-free! We were really lucky to have met Lush 6 years ago!

We are again looking for a house. We enjoy going to open homes on the weekend but the same can't be said about some of the "snob" agents we met. We met an agent called 'Barbara" on the weekend, like a bad taste in the mouth, the annoying feeling lingered on all weekend. Dont' these people realise they just lost the chance of ever selling our house?

ps Lush seemed to make a great impression on Lara as well. We were at an open for inspection on the weekend. Lara said "Bye bye Lush" to the agent at the door. She knows a real estate agent when she sees one!

Broken plate

This ceramic sushi plate was one of the first I painted in 2004 and one of my favorite.
I have served a few dishes on it over the years.
Even though it was wrapped in towels, it still got broken during the move.
I want to paint more plates, just need to find the time!