sunday update

This week was all about the babies. OK, so most every day for me is all about the baby, but we spent a lot of time with other babies (and toddlers) as well.

Tuesday and Thursday both saw us checking out a local playgroup - well, I would call it a playgroup, but here they seem to use that term for what I would call pre-school... Anyway, this place is basically an open-house in a church basement for parents/carers and their under-5s, although there didn't seem to be many kids over 3 - probably because they send them off to school at that age here. They have a cafe, a bunch of play equipment, a separate area for the non-walkers to play in without getting trampled, plus a second-hand shop. Apparently there are also other activities in some of the separated rooms, but I wasn't able to get clear information on them. The best way to sum up my experience of it so far is that it's one of those things that's a really great idea, but doesn't quite live up to potential. But hey, Lily had heaps of fun playing with the other babies and some different toys and I got to chat to some other mums, so it's a perfectly worthwhile way to spend one morning a week (we went twice this week because I was told that there was different stuff on on the different days - either that was misinformation, or [more likely] there just wasn't any indication of what different stuff was happening).

Afterwards on Tuesday, we went to Westfield to have lunch and do some shopping. I don't think I've mentioned how excited I was when Westfield opened. It's not even about the shopping. It's all about the familiarity of not just the Westfield brand, but the big open layout, the decent toilet/babychange facilities, the presence of a food court - it's like the shopping centres I'm used to back home, which is not at all common here. On Tuesday, we probably spent about 3 hours there and all I bought was lunch, though I did make some notes about possible gifts for Lily's first birthday...

On Friday, after our usual library visit and snack with friends, we went to one of the posher local high streets, to seek out something in the art supply shops and also to scour the charity shops - if you're going to look in second-hand shops, I always recommend the most affluent bit of town, because that's where you find the quality stuff, although I didn't get anything this time. We did buy some cheap books from the discount bookstore though and I was thrilled when we got home and Lily just wanted to play with and look at her new books and not eat them.

Yesterday, Lily got her first pair of proper shoes, as in shoes that have soles suitable for walking on (but soft ones, since her little feet are still working out their place in the world). Unsurprisingly, they were fairly huge for her age and we had to go up half a size in length in order to get ones that were wide enough for her giant wide, pudgy feet - as in, the H width still wasn't quite wide enough in size 4, so we went up to a 4.5H. There are no cheap shoes in Lily's foreseeable future, since they just don't make them wide enough. Again, this doesn't really come as a surprise - my feet are still too long and wide to buy many brands of shoes. Or, more accurately, non-brands... it's the brand-name ones that tend to actually come in suitable sizes and therefore cost the money. Oh well, 'quality over quantity' seems to be becoming a stronger mantra for me every day.

Today, we had a small insight into why we are so tired - not only have we all had a cold, which makes breathing and therefore sleeping quite tricky for the smallest member of our family, in turn making sleeping a luxury for us, but we discovered this afternoon that she's broken another tooth.

On the crafty front, I am almost finished a knitted dress for Lily, am about a third of the way through a crocheted pram blanket (for which I bought the yarn before she was even born, but which I kept starting a pattern and then changing my mind) and am completely stalled on my February Lady sweater (a cardigan for me) because I have got to the end of the yoke and am somehow a stitch short and can't decide where or how I want to fix it (especially since I can't work out where or how it happened). The biggest problem is that no matter how many great toys Lily has, as soon as I pull something out to work on, that becomes the most interesting thing in the room (books, computers and tv remotes included) so I am finding it very difficult to accomplish much of anything.

Seems Lily has woken up for a feed and it won't be Sunday much longer... so, how was your week?