New blog …check out www.chasingthewind.co.za

As from today The Kooymans blog site will remain inactive. To follow me on my new blog (www.chasingthewind.co.za) please subscribe (and unsubscribe to The Kooymans)… or just check it out.

 

Play dates are fun!

Play dates are really fun… especially for the mommies involved! Last Friday we were invited to the Alfino girls house for a catch up (for the mommies) and play time for the girls…even though Leah is still a bit small, she still enjoyed herself looking at all the glorious toys and beautiful girly friends! These four girls really had a ball and us moms were able to sit back and relax, chatting and catching up… which was much needed! Thanks Cindy for hosting us this time around, we look forward to lots more moms and tots play dates!

I like to sew…

Kirsty and I have been sewing together (mostly once a week) for almost 2 years and in that time we have had many laughs, tears, unpicking and jammed sewing machines! This is where I find my escape, a time to be creative and imaginative as I fumble through patterns and tutorials found online, begging Kirsty to help me out because I just can’t see how this pattern works out (I beg Kirsty because she is a genius at figuring out the tuts and patterns!) and in the end creating something, not perfect, but mine. A great sense of achievement can be found when you struggle through something and in the end produce something that shows the fruits of your labour…most times for me though it doesn’t look half as good as the picture..but that’s alright. When I sew I usually like to just go for it, I don’t pay too much attention to what the pattern says (hence always asking Kirsty for advice and help) and I don’t sew straight… I do try but I just don’t get it right…I usually end up “MacGyvering” sewing to make it work! Anyway here are a few photo’s of some of the things we’ve created so far, I look forward to making many more “creations” in the future…watch this space 🙂

Health buzz

To date I have lost 17kg of the 22kg’s I picked up while pregnant (yes I picked up that much) but I am struggling to drop the last 5kg -it’s been especially hard to exercise with my back/leg being in so much pain, apparently it’s my sciatic nerve that’s damaged (Sciatica) – that all I can do at the gym is walk on the treadmill (very painful) or do spinning (stretching afterwards extremely painful)… so the next thing I decided might help would be to eat healthy (we do generally eat healthy already but a few adjustments here and there could still be made) I have cut out sugar and trying my best to cut out the sweet things. Now eating healthy isn’t difficult and it doesn’t have to be expensive either…but it does take a bit of effort (more so than just throwing some crumbed something in the oven). I decided to surprise Corne with a nice healthy and hearty meal with what ever we had at home… and this how supper turned out.

Basically steamed veggies, fillet chicken (in a soy sauce – prob not that healthy), brown rice and seeds to garnish. I must say it tasted good and filled the spot…now the hard part is doing something like this every night.

Good ol’ laugh :D

I know I may lose a friend or two but I had to share some of these pic’s (sorry Cindy :P). Last night Corne and I were looking at some of the old pic’s from the good ol’days when we were a little younger and carefree with nothing really much to worry about and came across these photo’s of a holiday we spent with our dear friends back when …the Alfino’s were newly weds and they chaperoned Corne and I (and some other friends) on a weekend away to Club Mykonos! We had such fun, relaxing, braaing, chatting and just being! Then we came across these funny pic’s and felt that we needed to share the laughs… please forgive me 🙂 The memories of that weekend made me feel so happy and good inside (yes that sounds cheesy) that I am so glad to have been blessed with such amazing friends and good times (and no I am not sucking up now) 🙂 I now look forward to more holidays with you guys…just this time with a few smaller additions along 😉

House (home) hunting

We have been house (or should I rather say home) hunting for a couple of months now (looking online while preggers and now actively viewing houses). It has become an all consuming activity (especially on a Sunday – How ungodly! 😉 ) I have resigned myself to the fact that there is no perfect home (unless you mega rich and can make it perfect). I am still waiting to walk into the potential home and have that I’m home feeling. There has been one place so far which both Corne and I were super excited about, but upon closer inspection realised too many potential problems that would way exceed our budget in the long run 😦 But for now we are content with our flat and one plate mini oven… I do dream though of a slightly bigger kitchen (at least bigger than our matchbox one we have now) that has a real oven/stove in it…where I can cook more than one thing at a time. All in time I keep telling myself … one thing for certain though, we will struggle to get a new home with the same awesome view we have from our flat!

Leah is 3 months today!

I can’t believe how quickly time has gone! Looking back over the last 3 months at this little girl who has now almost doubled in weight since she was born is astounding! So much has happened in these few months, how she has changed and started forming a distinctive personality with likes and dislikes, it is so amazing and totally miraculous! Only God could be the author of something so mystifying as the creation of a little life that grows and grows. From in the womb to the world it is still utterly magical in my eyes at least anyway 🙂

Baby Sense has become my primary guide as to what Leah should be doing and more importantly how I should be looking after her 😉 One of the things that we have not managed yet to do is to get Leah to sleep for 10-12 hours at night?? We rejoice if she makes 5 hours uninterrupted.  If your 3month+ baby is sleeping for this length of time please let me know what your trick is?:D Oh and how do you stretch a hungry baby from 3 hourly feeds to 4 hourly feeds?? LOL 😀 Sometimes I think you just have to take some of the things these books say with a pinch of salt 🙂 Besides this post is not suppose to be about what Leah isn’t doing yet but rather some of the things I just love about this sweet girl – I couldn’t write about all the things I love about her because this post would be never-ending then. Here are just a few of the thing I just love about this girl…

I love the way she is always happy to see me in the wee hours of the morning, how she makes the cutest, frantic face (with a little snork) at feeding time out of sheer excitement for milk. I love the way she laugh-coughs, how she yawns with such emotion and a little cute noise that I can’t quite describe. I love the way she sneezes (about a million times a day) and how sometimes the sneeze doesn’t happen and she remains in a state of “sneeze delay” for a couple of seconds. I love it when her tongue sticks out while she concentrates or when she is feeling lazy and relaxed. I love the way when I blow bubbles on her tummy she giggles a real girly giggle and grabs my hair. I love the way she opens her mouth for a kiss and how when she is enjoying play time her whole face expresses this emotion. I love the way she gets soo excited when playing that she kicks madly and moves her hands all over the place with shrieks and coos. I love the way she has to have her fingers feeling something or moving while feeding and when not feeding how she sits with her hands clasped on her chest. I love the way she talks to me with excited gurgles and made up baby language in such an emotive manner as if she is having an in depth conversation with me, I can’t wait to ask her about “da karr” she keeps saying one day. I love it when she is about to cry that her bottom lip protrudes out and she starts off crying softly and delicately and that in an instant I can make her smile again with a little tickle. I love the way that each time I tickle her feet and “eat” them she gives the biggest smile and giggle. I love it when she stares intensely at patterns, pictures or even the wall and gives a cute little smile to herself (as if she sees something that nobody else can see). I love the way she looks sometimes at someone new through the corner of her eye as if she is pretending “not” to look and best of all, I love that when she is super tired and feeling upset that only I can calm her and put her to sleep. Leah poppy, one day when you can read this, you will know that your piercing blue eyes look deep into my soul and melts me every time. I love  you more each day to the fullest extent and I feel so blessed to be your mommy and grateful that God has placed you in our lives! I look forward to many, many more special days shared with you. 😛

The cats must go…for now

This is going to be a very hard post to write because I have to make some serious decisions about our beloved cats. I don’t know quite how it happened but I have started to seriously dislike my cats which previously were / are like my children! I know having a baby changes a lot of things but I didn’t quite expect it to change my feelings towards my fur babies. I know deep down inside I do love them still very much (hence the reason I haven’t got rid of them yet) but it has got to a point where my sanity is at stake.

I admittedly do not give them as much attention as before Leah arrived (but a baby does take up a lot time and energy) so they get up to all sorts of naughty mischief which drives me nuts! The other big factor is that we live in a flat with no garden for them to roam and shed their HAIR that accumulates in our house in an hour (I am forever cleaning hair off my clothes, furniture, floor etc) and on top of that Leah seems to be affected by the hair, if the cats are close by or were in a spot just before Leah is, she will sneeze. I spoke to the Paed about it and he said the only thing would be to get rid of the cats, but even that wouldn’t help in the long run because the hair will remain. The next most irritating thing they do is that they insist on being in Leah’s room, rub their hair all over her carpet and even try and climb into her cot (well Kaiya tried but I caught her in time). We can’t leave anything of Leah’s on the floor (like playgym) or on the couch because they love lying all over her stuff (this morning I forgot to pick up the playgym and found Kaiya sleeping on it!) I have also had to chase Mugen and Kaiya out of the beautiful moses basket that Cindy and Seth lent to us because they think its their bed… that I am too scared to leave Leah in it (unless I am sitting right next to her) because I am scared the cats will join in on her snooze time. Mugen has always loved to use our couch as a scratching post (eventhough he has the state of the art scratch post that cost us almost more than our couch!) however now he is even more determined to wreck our furniture, Leah’s curtain, our mattress and material cupboard thing we have. Mugen cries to be let out (which he is not allowed – the rules of our flat) and wakes up Leah when he manages to sneak into Leah’s room and scratch at the window. They never use to sleep in our bed but now have managed to sneak in when I get up in the early hours of the morning to feed Leah and shed all their hair and germs all over our bed. I am then woken up not only by a baby crying but also by two cats licking each other in the wee hours of the morning. Thank goodness they don’t have fleas… it would surely be the end of them then!

So my problem is that although I love these cats ..I really do, I love my child more and my sanity too! I really don’t want to get rid of them but I don’t know how much more of stinky litter trays, hair in our child’s mouth and dodging cats I can take on top of having a growing baby in the flat! We are planning on moving but it is a question of time and the next place will hopefully be suitable to have the cats too (as in there will be a garden and space) but what do we do now? Corne is not keen to get rid of them for good so my suggestion is to ask someone / people to temporarily look after them. Then I think that maybe that is also cruel …. I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

Leah Laughs :D

I have wanted to write a post about all the amazing things Leah has started doing .. lets call them “milestones” so far. Milestones are interesting in that many books and website articles give general guidelines as to when your baby should be reaching a specific milestone. The thing to remember though is that every baby is different (and no I am not just saying that to make myself feel better in case Leah hasn’t reached a specific milestone at the “recommended” age) and develops at different rates. These guidelines are broad so that’s something to keep in mind before the proud mommy or daddy thinks they have a little genius on their hands because ” my child has already started doing X before the normal age”… tisk tisk let’s not be like this! So rather I am going to document (mostly for keepsake) what Leah has achieved thus far…the best being in my eyes, her gorgeous laugh! More about that later. She will be 3 whole months on the 9th and already 12 weeks have passed. Time is flying and each day I learn something new about this sweet child … and I thought I had her all figured out!!

Leah is generally happy baby! It started out easy, she slept most of the time and then the “awakening” happened and she became a real “cry baby” 😉 It was really tough (still is but not as tough now)…in fact I became a real cry baby too! She would cry and cry and cry and cry…. get my point… and nothing I did made her happy… until oneday out of the blue she stopped crying all the time…BUT then a new trait emerged…the high pitch SCREAM… yes my darling has a good pair of lungs on her and sadly my hearing has diminished quite a bit since…seriously my right ear is partially deaf … so remember to talk into my “good” ear next time you visit 😉 … but after tears come laughter… or is it the other way around …sometimes it is! Anyway I am getting off point here. Leah can really have a good chuckle and the first time we heard it was 4am in the morning while changing her nappy… this was apparently a very funny thing for her, not so much for us but was so worth it when she made her first giggle! So for ease of reference (for one day when I want to quickly see) I am going to list what she has done so far and which week it happened (then you can see for yourself that we have a genius on our hands – LOL)

Wind smile – 1 Week old  (I still believe it was a full on proper smile but hey whatever wind or no wind it was cute)

Proper smile @ me -3 Weeks (and the “awakening” phase started)

Swipes & Stares at mobile / playgym – 4 Weeks (Leah had already noticed her mobile before this but was interacting more and more from this week onward)

4am laugh – 5 Weeks 

Sleeping 5-7 hours & proper 3hour pattern – 6 weeks (But things soon changed after 1st set of injections…all hell broke loose and out went that sleeping pattern)

Took dummy FINALLY! – 10 Weeks (Okay I know this is not much of an achievement but for us it was like winning the lottery!!)

Settled into a new routine & tummy cramps became less – 10 Weeks (This week she also slept 7 hours…once…but it happened!)

Deliberate move of hand for toy – 11 Weeks (In the bath with toys floating around Leah stares intensley at them, she can sit nicely with me only supporting her slighly – she has quite good neck control, she delibrately moved her hand for the toys in front of her…I thought that was pretty awesome)

And last but certainly not for long.. her most recent achievement … a good ‘ol continuous laugh at her crazy mommy! 12 Weeks! Leah has laughed before this but this was the first time she laughed more than once or twice at me for something I was doing. I managed to get the end bit of her laughing on video, watch especially from 1min- it’s hysterical!

The school year is half way…already!!

2011 brought in a new class of excited and eager young lads and lasses, all bright eyed and bushy tailed for their new class and teacher! I tried very hard this year to make it known that I am infact a dragon of a teacher, who roars and spits fire balls…however these younglings did not frighten easily! Instead I looked more like someone who had eaten too much pudding or swallowed a watermelon than a dragon… must try and work on my appearances next year 🙂 When this year started I was 5 months pregnant (but looked about 8 months already) and quite anxious to get the year started, knowing that I needed to prep these great minds before I left on Maternity leave. So between all the frantic work and planning ahead for the substitute teacher I totally neglected to update my classroom blog (think I should do it soon before the year ends!) Now that I am on maternity leave (with a 3 month old baby already) I have finally had the time to sit down and write a short post(for my classroom blog as well) and while doing that it dawned on me that next month..four short weeks time I go back to work (back to school, back to reality) which is bitter-sweet because I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and doing what I love but at the same time I am torn to be away from my precious baby girl! I know I am not the first to feel like this nor will I be the last but nevertheless it doesn’t make the reality any easier. However it is best to look at the positives and dwell on those rather than think and stress about the things that are out of my control at this stage. Now wouldn’t it just be absolutely fabulous if I could take Leah with me to school everyday??

What I am really looking forward to is seeing my kids at school again, see how they have grown (physically and academically) in four months. I am looking forward to growing relationships with them that I started at the beginning of the year and reward them on their achievements while I was gone. Generally the 3rd term in Grade 5 is known as the term where attitudes change and when the squabbles begin(thank goodness I’m missing most of  Term 3 – LOL), however I have been given only good reports about my class so far (perhaps this year has skipped that phase – lets hope so!).  I hope to post some pictures of my stunning class of 2011 as soon as I am back at work to show you all how truly lucky I am to be where I am right now, blessings upon blessings, how grateful I should be!

So I aim to  enter the second half of the year on a positive note with the knowledge that I have super great class waiting at school for me and super adorable daughter waiting at home for me each day – how more awesome than that can it get?!!