We have four little gymnasts in our family. These are photos from the display day they had at the end of last year, Sabrina chose Grandma as her assistant for the day.

Each child that participated in the display day was given a medal, Sabi was very proud, this is her first ever medal.

Eli and Lani are both in Stages and got to show off their stuff after Sabi’s beginners group cleared the floor.

Gynasticas has been great for our family. It’s a group that they can all go to together. There is enough twirling and pointing of toes to keep the girls happy and an equal amount of daring acts of danger and displays of strength to satisfy the boys.

of course acts of daring aren’t always limited to the males of the species.

and the boys do twirl as well but you know what I mean.

Also the instructors are great with the kids, if you like having your toes tickled that is. In all seriousness they have been wonderful and so accepting of Eli and the oddities he brings with him. He’s had two different instructors since he started and both of them have put so much effort into guiding him and helping him overcome the hurdles that come with ASD. It’s wonderful to see him run out to join his class now, full of confidence, seeming just like all the other boys in his group. I get a little teary when I think back to the squealing, flapping, bonkers boy that ran like a tornado through the gym bawling his eyes out and declaring in a loud voice that his instructor was trying to make him dead.   

Eli was a little self-conscious about getting a medal ( in fact when his instructor put it over his head he immediately took it off and threw it away) But he did let me get one quick photo of it before it was taken off for good.

Sabi was more keen on her medal and showed it off with great enthusiasm.

Then it was Lilly and her pre level groups turn.

The levels kids all had routines that they have been working on. It was a bit like watching synchronized swimming without the water.

I was very proud of her, it was the first time she has ever performed in front of a crowd and she was a little nervous.

She remembered everything she needed to do and finished smiling and that is really what it is all about.

Ha easy peasy, This lot!

No matter what sort of day it’s been there is always something said or done by this quirky lot that will cause the corners of my mouth to curl upwards.

Also I am a girl of simple pleasures. Glenn put up a shelf in Eli’s room so I could finally get the mountain of books up off the floor.See me smile (actually I think I did a little dance I told you I’m easy to please)

I made a path, something you begin and complete yourself always brings those happy fuzzy feelings.

Glenn reading bedtime stories, always smile worthy.

Lani loving reading her own book so much she didn’t realize Glenn had started. I can’t help smiling anytime I see her wrapped up in a book.

Sabrina trying to take Jonas for a backwards walk. Practically everything she does at the moment makes me smile, oh except for waking all hours of the night with teething pain and splitting her head open on the wall I didn’t smile then.

SMILE!!!!!!!

I just found out that a meme I used to do has found a new home at HELLO OWL so I thought I would play along. It goes a little like this:

“This weeks theme is PINK…. How does pink fit into your life? Do you love it or hate it? I’d love to hear your side of the story..
Show me something pink in your home and for some reason there’s is no pink in your house..don’t be afraid to step outside and search for it.”

You don’t have to worry there is no shortage of pink in this house. With three girls still in the frilly tutus and fairy splattered hair accessories age it’s escaping from the dreaded pink that becomes the issue. Well at least it is for the too dudes in the photo above.

Super Black as my 6 year old son now goes by is anything but a fan of pink, or any other colour for that matter. And the other male in the shot, Mr Murc clearly is not impressed by finding himself so close to such a lurid colour, either that or he’s not to thrilled by the baby resting her head on his butt. And that about sums it up for this place, even if you take yourself to the darkest dingy corner PINK will creep up and poke its face into your business, but it does have a cute face so we will forgive it.

Alanah and Lillian are March babies the same as my sister and I, what can i say it’s just the best month ever. Also as you can imagine a very full one. The only blessing in all this March madness being that the girls love the idea of combined parties. Which is the reason I am still sane because I could not do this two weekends in a row.

This year the girls have requested a rainbow party, which doesn’t sound to hard till you sit down and work out how many little plastic garden pots need little wire handles. All this fiddly wire twisting is because, as all good fairy folk know, you can’t have a true magical rainbow without a pot of gold at its base.

Don’t worry I whinge in jest, I actually find repetitive monotonous craft preparation soothing, sort of.

Besides how many of you out there can say in all honesty that you have all your smarties in order.

I’m going to start by apologising, if a picture is worth a thousand words then this post is as long as Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.

Just after the last dinosaur adorned child left a year ago and Glenn and I sank into a post party stupor Eli asked "Next year at my pirate party can I have chocolate coins?"

So now I would like to welcome you to Elijah’s 6th birthday Pirate party, chocolate coins and all.

We started with a craft to keep inquisitive little fingers busy till the stragglers (and those having costume malfunctions) arrived. This year we made Oceans in a Bottle from this incredibly helpful party site. They served their purpose well and the kids seemed to enjoy making them although one child ended up wearing an ocean, I really should have had the foresight not to leave the large bottle on the table, Ooops.

After all the kids turned up I climbed up on a chair and announced that last night the nasty pirate Captain Scarface had stolen all the party food and games but that he had left behind a map, torn into pieces and entrusted to three of his crew. I told the children that if we found those three pirates we might be able to persuade them to give us their piece of the map if we did a job for them. I made the map by the age old soak in coffee technique. I find that this looks more authentic it you fold the map first then open and refold it a few times while still wet allowing the paper to age in all the appropriate places.

The first pirate had dropped his treasure chest on a desert island and all his treasure had been lost in the sand.

He gave us his piece of the map once we had dug around in the sand to find his treasure and fill his chest. At this point I would like to thank (it’s a bit like an awards speech really) my darling sister who lives a very busy and far away life but still cares enough about small boys smiles that she provided the contents of this chest and other piratey decorations including an eye patch and hook. The pre party pirate parcel from Jill has been opened and eagerly riffled through many times before the day.

The second pirate gave us his piece of the map after we rebuilt his pirate ship that had been torn to shreds on a dreaded reef.

The last pirate was under attack from an enemy fleet and gave us his piece of the map after we used our scrunched news paper cannon balls to blow the enemy ships out of the water. The terrible enemy ships were printed from this site and coloured in by Lillian.

When all the pieces of the map had been won off the crew members (Two friends and my husband Glenn who I really need to thank for turning up dressed so piratey and playing along, actually most of the adults dressed up as well and it really added to the whole swashbuckling atmosphere) the kids put the map back together. 

They then followed the map taking five steps from the tree marked with a cross and following the rock (it had a tiny arrow on it) for eleven paces and other piratey instructions.

A few of the kids wanted to have a turn at reading the next instruction including Lillian who at four is better at sounding out words like CAT as opposed to YOURSELF and TOWARDS but we managed.

The trail ended with a seemingly inconspicuous patch of ground that everyone had been walking over all day and the simple instruction, dig.

Glenn had dug a hole the day before and buried an esky which I filled with a small treasure chest, party food and a few ice packs because November in Australia is not really the best time to be leaving chocolaty treasure laying around.

The small treasure chest contained little parcels wrapped in news paper with a chocolate coin sticky taped to it (see request accomplished)

We all sat down and played pass the treasure chest which worked a bit like a lucky dip box.

Cloppy horse and Pooh Bear are modelling the items found in the treasure chest. I made little daggers and eye patches with stiffened felt bought from Spotlight and the necklaces had gold coin beads from Spotlight that really did look like pirate doubloons. The rest of the beads were from local cheap shops because they were about a quarter of the price of the bags of beads from Spotlight and I wasn’t sure how much money I wanted to pour into children’s party favours that could be tossed in a day or two, we know how fickle children’s interest can be.

The cake was a treasure chest by request but with a surprise, because I’m like that. I’m pretty sure it went down well judging by the glass shattering squealing that ensued just after this photo was taken, but this post is already to long to explain, I might do a separate cake post, I took pictures.

Some of the other food from the treasure esky. These are mini pirate face cup cakes (another Eli request) I have found mini works better at parties if you offer the large they just eat the icing then your house ends up full of cake crumbs. The bandanas were piped on, the eye patch was a chocolate button cut in half, the eye a mini M&M and the mouth was a pink dot from a box of sprinkles.

I will leave you with a warning if you are ever heading this way.

ARRRRR Me Hearties BEWARE OF PIRATES!!!!

Oh and as we were tidying up after the party Glenn mentioned to me that he needed to shave now that he wasn’t being a scruffy pirate. To which Eli called out

"NO, you can’t do that or I wont let you come to my Super Hero party because you have to come as SUPER BEARD"

…my true love gave to me, a waving at you baby.

But not too much or anything, we wouldn’t want you guys to get to excited.

Lani, Eli and Lilly have been…um…how shall I put this. Pestering the life out of her teaching her to wave her hand since the moment we brought her back from the hospital and had that conversation. The one that when a little like this:

Me "So do you guys like your new baby sister?"

General collective response "Yeah, what does she do?"

Me " Well nothing yet give her a chance, she’s just getting over the worst day of her life"

(I’m pretty sure this was Lilly) "But when will she say hello?"

Me " Oh not for a long time, first she’ll learn to roll over, babble a bit, learn to sit up, learn to crawl, learn to wave her hand and then she’ll talk to you"

So there you have It guys. All my fault, and my only advice to you is this, never give your older children a list of things to accomplish with their new baby, you just don’t need that kind of stress.

Now she does it, very quickly and when hardly anyone is looking, She’ll waggle those little hands in the air for a second then laugh in all our faces as the whole family lines up in front of her madly flapping their hands and chanting, "Come on you can do it!, YOU CAN DO IT!" It’s going to be crazy around here when she does speak or worse enter her first sporting competition.

So tomorrow my baby will graduate officially from the class of Baby and head off on a year of Oh She’s Not A Baby Anymore, and to celebrate we let Alanah plan a party for her. So tomorrow we will have a few little friends around to the LAND OF MAGICAL CREATURES to party with Sabrina the Unicorn Princess and attempt to unwrap a pass the parcel, should be fun with one year olds. Wish me luck.

…my true love gave to me, a tree climbing baby.

Who also has become a little obsessed with bath time.

And this new game where she stands up inside the tub, bobs up and down like a cork for a bit then throws her hands up in the air above her head. This causes her whole body to whoosh backwards down the slope of the tub and under the water. 

Each time she popped back up the thrill of flying and the shock of the water covering her clung to her features. Just for a moment, till she composed herself. Then a cheeky smile took over her face.

Mean old mummy put a stop to the game after a while. I noticed she was collecting red head spots from face planting the tub so I thought calling a time out was in order. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that every time she went under I held my breath too.

…my true love gave to me, an artistic baby.

Sabrina’s first but I’m sure not the last self portrait with textas.

She also learnt to pull herself up this month making homework time at the coffee table a thing of the past.

Her crawling became more adventurous finally having a go at getting around on that prickly tickly green stuff.

*** I swear I didn’t dress her in that top every day this month, she just happened to do all the cool things while wearing it, honest.***

Oh and the foot fetish continued. (Photo of Sabrina dressed as Thing 1 taken moments before she attacked)

…my true love gave to me, a toe sucking baby.

Actually the toe sucking wasn’t new to this month, about the first thing she did after her birth was stick her toe in her mouth. I think the toe is to blame for her being so late to roll over. She would start the process of rocking around on her back then, using the momentum she had built up she would flip onto her side. To complete the flip right over onto her stomach she would bring her legs up, I guess the theory was to quickly kick them back down giving her body the extra boost to get over. I never found out if her theory held any merit because when ever she tried this manoeuvre she would get distracted by the feet. "OH Look TOES!! nom nom nom" and it was all over, no rolling baby for at least half an hour while she gnawed on her feet.

No, the new thing for this month came with the increased mobility and there fore increased curiosity. Now everything went in the mouth. Oh look building blocks, stick it in the mouth, oooo play doh tasty, oh look a dog, I wonder what that tastes like? NOM NOM NOM.

And Shoes! (Sorry for  all those not keen on excessive punctuation but this really deserves the exclamation mark) She was, and still is really (I’m so hoping this is not a life long thing) completely and utterly addicted to shoes. Whenever they were left lying around she’d be there giving them a good old suck.

As she got better at moving around would she crawl to her toys? no, she made a bee line to the shoe box and pulled them all out. But worse than that whenever we had a visitor dare to enter the mayhem that is our house she would, under the cover of hyped up older sibling story telling, latch herself onto there feet, tiny prickly baby nails snaring the lip of the shoe impossible to prize off, and while the poor guests exclamations when from "Oh darling you really don’t want that in you mouth" to "AHHH for goodness sake get it off, GET IT OFF!" she would would proceed to smear baby slobber all over there fancy new shoes, not unlike the gloop that green ghost from ghost busters produced, only less green.

I was really worried that sibling jealousy or at least annoyance would kick as she got around more and put whatever they were trying to play with in her mouth. But we have been so blessed with children to distracted by adoration to notice. Yay for Dorable Sporina the Unicorn princess (Eli’s name for her) you are too cute.

…my true love gave to me, a no way are you going to get me to sit still for a photo now that I can get about, baby.