Taking stock at 37

Making : Summer holiday plans over and over
Cooking : Mostly FODMAP food
Drinking : Three litres of water a day
Reading: Lots of excited 'YES!' messages after the survey results released today
Trawling: AI articles
Wanting: Simplicity
Looking: Out at all the greens in the garden as I drink my morning coffee
Deciding: On a new job
Wishing: For a wonderful fourth trimester for my new nephew
Enjoying: Milla and her character
Waiting: For the job offer to land in my inbox!
Liking: My new coconut yoghurt and peanut butter treat
Wondering: How Milla's first haircut will go tonight
Loving: Having a houseguest
Pondering: If I will actually read more books in 2018
Listening: To the tap tap tap of the keyboards around the office, including mine
Considering: My years at this workplace and all the people I have in my village here.
Buying: No Christmas presents yet, eep
Watching: Half of Jo Cinque's Consolation
Hoping: For a happy tummy
Marvelling: At how happy a new nephew makes me
Cringing: When my colleagues get their coffees in disposable cups.
Needing: A filing system for household papers.
Questioning:
Smelling: Pollen, jasmine and the warm asphalt
Wearing: Dresses most days
Noticing: New train stations being built apace
Knowing:
Trouble-shooting: Logistics, always logistics
Thinking: About writing a Christmas list
Admiring: Newly re-hung pictures
Getting: Back into morning probiotics
Bookmarking: Or more like, opening tabs and laving there all week, unread
Opening: A present from my Dad this morning
Closing: My mind to new projects here
Feeling: Queasy at the survey announcement
Dreaming: Vividly in the mornings
Hearing: Chatter
Celebrating: My own birthday!
Pretending: A little awkwardly in Milla's games
Embracing: Summer.

Inspired and loaning from Practising Simplicity and Meet me at Mike's.

Morning

Milla is my alarm. Hot day. Charlie away. She pitters down hallway. Breakfast is rice bubbles for her, cows milk and probiotics. Mine is cornflakes, coconut milk, flaxseed oil and LSA. We're up at bench, she standing on box, me on Thonet stool.

Summer dress but it's a cool morning so leggings, cardigan. Walking off to station. Panic trying to top up ticket. Making friends on train. Change at North Melbourne and tow her up ramp. Platform 1 or 3?

Make more friends on sardine express, farewells at Melbourne Central and up escalator and again and again and again. 8:25am so no clock chiming.

Through and across campus, brief stop in my office to bag drop and receive more attention, have chats. Sore legs walking up to Lygon Street, growing pains? Lots of seeds and pollen in the air. Up to childcare and warm greetings all round.

Sick day

Milla is three years old and so healthy. Thriving. Growing. Sleeps well. Most weeks we stand her in the doorway to see if she's grown. Today she said 'iPad' which was a surprise. We don't even have one. Who taught her that? Looking at the candle on the restaurant table last night at dinner, she told us the word for 'fire' in Chinese.

We were at an Indian restaurant. She was sooky and annoying and didn't eat. The staff had lots of 'mango' specials on the menu, including dessert. The owner wanted to give some but we declined on grounds that she had refused all her dinner. He told her to eat it so she could have ice-cream. She shoveled it all down. Loved the ice-cream and shared it voluntarily with all at the table, and didn't finish it all.

This morning at 4am I woke to her in the hallway, crying because she left her backpack on the train. Sweet little confused creature went back to sleep so easily with consoling.

Who's that peeping? 

Mondays are a 6am gym day for me, I'm home at 7am to a kid with a runny bottom. Panic as we both have busy workdays. Then sweet relief when I remember a set of grandparents have handily retired. Hurrah.

Three years old

Three years old and planned her party: chocolate cake, orange jelly and presents. Lego from Charlie. Much nose breathing as she concentrates. 

Bum wiggle dance going strong.

Does letters and numbers in record time.

Recognises M and W are the same, reversed, as are 6 and 9.

Schools us in Chinese, can count to ten and name colours, and sometimes say 'wash your face' in Chinese. Intonation impressive to us and we never get it right when we try to copy her.

Last night, milestone, three years and three weeks, she got up in the night to have a wee by herself, negotiating her layers of PJs and to her potty in the dark.

Can write her name with a somewhat disconnected 'a'. Draws maps and rainbows and mountains and zigzags. Says she can't draw animals or trees.

Managed to serve dessert. Tower to fridge, container of fruit, bowl and spoon from drawer, tower to bench...

Very affectionate. Insists on lots of goodbye kisses and cuddles. This week very clingy and hard to say goodbye. 

Talks about the twins in her tummy.

34 months and activities

Riding to work. Milla eating seaweed nice crackers that I buy from Aldi on my way to collect her. Can sing nonsense for fifteen minutes on the ride home. Darkness and three lights on my bike and the trailer. Home around 6pm after I hurry out of office at 4:30ish.

Discovered by accident that Milla can count to ten in Chinese.

Revisited the Mt Victoria hiking trail up Mt Donna Buang from Warburton. I blogged about it ages ago. This time I had my Garmin watch and could actually track the distance, elevation, etc properly. The sign still says 12kms / 7 hours, but it's 16kms and took us 4 hours. The path was busier than ever but aside from that, pretty much unchanged since I first walked it in 2010.

Planning a return to the winter high country adventures before the gates close.

This year of toddler

In her workshop with new drill. 

33 months and a half... A year since toilet training. A year since we stopped using a stroller. I thought of these milestones as we strutted along Elizabeth Street in the morning. Charlie's away for work, been gone only two days of 14 and each time we open the door she expects him to be there. It's a bit heartbreaking.

She thinks 'kill' is 'pew', as in the noise little boys make with their toy guns... "I pew you!". Pop gave her a real drill, a real drill! Which has occupied many happy minutes, drilling into wood, changing the bits, and eventually recharging the thing.

33 or just say nearly 3

Milla at 33 months

• Monologue stories, with great imaginative flourishes and crushingly strange realities, tales that go on and on, for thirty, forty minutes...  
• Still loves 'rabbits', a great incentive for good behaviour.  
• Moved into 'Joey' room at childcare and is SO PROUD. 
• Lots of friends - Nina the koala, sloth, ratty, Alpi, Ruby, Bun Buns. Nina was named by Milla, came free with our new mattress, is very soft and a favourite at the moment. 
• So fast and confident on balance bike. 
• Started to swing with great confidence, using her whole body. Will swing off any pol or bike rack she can find as we walk along the street.  
• So good with lego! Very patient, knows where and how to check the instructions, can find at match pieces quickly, never gets frustrated, is very methodical. 
• Started watching pop video clips, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and the like. A big departure from her 90 rock education... 
• Very quickly trained on the 4 digit code to unlock gadget screen, was asked hours later (while scrubbing walls!) what the numbers were and she told me, very clearly and thoughtfully. 

Meanwhile, my Papa has passed away, my heart fills with gratitude that Milla met him and had meaningful time with him before he passed. I know that it's unlikely she'll recall any of it, as I don't remember my grandmother who passed when I was six months younger than Milla. 

Meanwhile also, we grew so tired of tantrums that we returned early from Easter camping in the Bogong High Plains. Great, theatrical, persistent, seemingly non-ending, tireless, tiring, boring, pointless, petty tantrums. And embarrassing.

32 months

Life barrels on with busy days and weeks at work. Milla's getting promoted to the 'Joey' room after a year in 'Platypus' where in the new year she became the most senior by a long shot. We've been riding in to the city most days - will we remember what it was like? Constant traffic diversions in the the CBD as the new metro is being built and thousands of floors of new apartments climb up and RMIT takes a new shape? Weather has been great to encourage the ride, and I've been quicker, Milla a cheerful passenger for the most part.

Easy like Sunday morning. Messing about on my bed.

Milla at thirty two months can tell people that she is two and a half and that her birthday is in July. Hasn't been getting up in the midnight morning for a walk and a drink of water. Been a reliable alarm clock around 7am.

Long beautiful hair with big ringlets at the end, threads of blonde through the brown. Still some days has wee 'accidents', much to our frustration. Still in night nappies that are usually very heavy upon waking. She wants to be out of it immediately on waking.

Tantruming just now as she wants to do typing. Sat up at computer the other evening and typed for a good long stretch, loving finding letters and delighting at seeing them appear on screen. It was a weird sight to me.

Can tell me about her day, who she played with, what she had for lunch, who was throwing sand! Who was hitting! Who did her hair.

Her Christmas bike has had the pedals and training wheels put on and we've got to get practicing more.

Milla at thirty-two months loves dancing to surf rock. Still talks about the gym and exercise with vivid energy (and imagination!).

The way she says "I do", as in, Damien Rice's song 'O' is playing and she's grooving and I ask, 'do you like this song?', "I do!".

31 months and up to FNQ

Can count perfectly to eleven and then just free forms.

Calls me by my short name, so tenderly.

She's taller and thinner. Easily alternates skipping breakfast and dinner.

When she wets her undies and we're mad she says 'are you my friend?'.

Still has a cup o milk before bed, and a nighttime nappy. Still in cot with side off. Gets up for a drink of water often around 4:45am. Is lead peacefully back to bed.

Talks a lot about school, as in, when she's bigger she'll go to school. On a bike, on two busses, on a train. In Footscray. Going to have a big orange backpack. A big 'lello' backpack.

31 months: Hot summer day and hosing the garden and shortly, herself. 

Flew up to see my Papa, maybe for the last time, for Milla's second time. She was a great little traveller, warm and cheery with Papa, slept great in our random AirBnB, and good company on outings and the mundane.

30 months and a long time in the tent

It took more than ten days for Milla to ask about home. We were on the road, camping and adventuring and there was no mention of home, Alpi or screentime. We had fourteen nights away all up, final two nights in a house but 12 nights in the tent. Longest continuous camping ever I reckon.

Cape Conran campsite pack up 31 December. 2.5 years old. 

Milla at thirty months:

• Converses! Can talk and talk. Drops words into sentences like 'different' and 'wheelchair' and 'true'... and 'actually' is how she starts many sentences!! 
• Very tender with her cousin Solomon... Says his name 'Somolon'. Gazes at his pictures and says 'ohhh he's soooo cute'. 
• Bedtime routine is milk, teeth, pjs, some books, with an episode of Peter Rabbit somewhere in there as an incentive: usually with milk, sometime also after teeth. Teeth can sometime be a battle resulting in a smacked hand by Charlie.
• Still has a nighttime nappy, that is quite wet most mornings.
• Loves to exercise! Karate, dancing, somersaults recently, lunges, push ups and jumping.
• Can open her bedroom door, and ours. Gets up and comes into our room - but at a mercifully reasonable hour. 
• Calls our bluff when we ask her where the plot is!  "Here it is!" with an imaginary thing in her hand. 
• Can spell out the letters of her name! Can write M - i - l - l - under supervision.  
• Very confident swimmer.  
• Met her paternal great-grandmother.
• Tantrums.
• Tantrums.
• Tantrums.