79 Weeks & 18 months

Carmen turned 18 months on Wednesday.  I can't believe what a big girl she has become!  My cousins came down from Sydney for the day, and they brought their kids too, so Carmen had a blast running around with her new little playmates.  We have also been potty training this week, but I think we are about to give up for a while.  We have only had two partial successes in 8 days!  She will tell us when she has to go, then she will sit on the potty for a good 20 minutes and continuously peek between her legs to see if she has peed, but to no avail.  She seems to want to pee, but can't, and gets off the potty but tells us she still has to go.  We end up giving up, and within 2 minutes Carmen will pee on the floor, or on whoever she is sitting.  It is very frustrating, but I figure she is just not ready :(

On another note, we have been taking Carmen down to Narrawallee Inlet.  It is so amazing down there, just like a giant splash pool.  She had a play date with her friend Hannah at the Inlet (this day was made even more exciting because Carmen pooed all over me!)  Today is an absolute scorcher, so as soon as Carmen wakes up, we are headed back down there.

18 months today

Down at the inlet

78 Weeks

Well, it has been a fairly boring week, which is probably a good thing after all of the excitement of Christmas.  We had a few visits to the farm - Carmen is still obsessed with Whinny the horse and neighs all the way there.  Carmen also has two new molars poking through (still hoping this accounts for her super fussy days), and she is still rather clingy.  We are starting potty training, so I'll let you know how it goes.  She has been telling us for a while when she goes to the loo, so I think she is ready, but so far it hasn't been a huge success.  Keep your fingers crossed!

77 Weeks & Christmas!

Well, we made it through Christmas!  Carmen loved Santa in theory, but when it came to meeting him in person, she didn't like him at all!  He was very scary indeed.  But he still came to visit her and gave her lots of presents all the same.  By the end of present time, she even knew that she was supposed to take the wrapping paper off the present instead of carry it around fully wrapped.  Christmas was lovely, spent over at the farm at my parents' and sister's houses.  My brothers and sister and I were all together for the first Christmas in 15 years, so we got in a lot of family time.  It was all a lot of fun (a little too much fun for Jeffrey and Sting - Christmas Eve - but they both paid sorely for it on Christmas day).  We had a couple of trips to the beach, and Jeffrey even helped rescue a guy and a girl from being pulled out to sea in a rip!  It was all rather exciting.  I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too.

Carmen's last swimming lesson:

With Santa :(

Uncle Jay

Feeding Uncle Sting

76 Weeks

It has been a busy week!  Oma and Opa came to visit from Germany, and we haven't seen them in a year.  It was lovely to have them back, I just wish it could happen more often.  Carmen was fairly unsure and clingy to me, however that is not surprising considering her separation anxiety issues! We had an afternoon tea at Aunty Georgia's where Carmen got to play with her cousins' little 4-day-old chicks.  We also had a lunch here on Saturday with my cousin Joel and his wife Karen, and Carmen got to play with their three kids - they all seemed to love her and vice versa.  It was a really lovely day.  And then this morning Oma and Opa came back around to say goodbye and to swap Christmas presents. (Thanks guys!)  And it was so hot today!  This afternoon Jeffrey and I took Carmen down to Narrawallee Inlet.  The water was pretty icy, but that didn't seem to bother Carmen one bit.  She's a real water baby.

Here is a rather unexciting video of Carmen and her dad at Narrawallee this afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pUQXl9IFA

Carmen's separation anxiety seems to have abated a bit - I even left the house today and left her with Jeffrey, without a tear!  She is starting to be a little more verbal.  She will try to repeat words that I ask her to say.  She usually makes a total mess of it, but at least she is trying!  I can't wait until I can understand what she wants!  Right now she makes this horrible drawn-out whining noise.  In an effort to put an end to this noise at lunch one day, I started making her say wawa for water (she was whining for her water).  Now whenever she is whining, we say to her, "what do you say?"  and she says wawawawa.  She never clued in to the fact that I was actually talking about water.  But let me tell you, wawawawa is a lot better than the whining noise!

This week-end we had our 2nd annual Thornhill family pre-Christmas get together (thanks for all of your hard work Aunty Georgia!).  Carmen slept through the lunch, but was quite happy to see Georgia's house full of people and to have her first taste of real ice cream (yes, I know I am strict, but she loves her broccoli in her breakfast!).  She got to spend some time with her (2nd) cousin Lucy who is only just a few months older, as well meeting the rest of the family for only the second time.

On Sunday we took her to her favourite park.  How can you not take her, when she thinks it is the best place in the whole world?  If only her favourite park had horses freely roaming through it...

Two cute videos of Carmen after her bath:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbq580-pO2w&list=UU21-zydO1IYNApoXHx_P8LQ&index=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF-Ztg3-orM&list=UU21-zydO1IYNApoXHx_P8LQ&index=1