363 – 365 of 365

Day 363

We took my grandmother out for tea of this day. There’s a new coffee shop that opened at Randridge Mall called Petit Four. Lovely place, even if it is helluva expensive! They brought Nicola her own cookie, which she promptly took two big bites off before spitting it all over their floor. She was much more keen on eating their plastic flower arrangements.

I thought it might be a good time to try a dress. She looked so cute in it, but as you can see it made her miserable – it keeps getting caught under her knees when she crawls…so we ditched it after a few minutes and spent the rest of the afternoon in a nappy only to make up for the inconvenience.

Day 364

We went for a playdate at Esmeralda’s where Nicola wreaked havoc on anything she could lay her hands on. The entire bottom two shelves on the book case for instance.

The kids discovered a puddle after the rain – they came out of it looking fairly filthy and very happy. Jumping and splashing in puddles after the rain FTW. 😀

Day 365

For old years’s eve we packed our passports and headed to Pretoria for a braai and sleepover at my old boarding school roomy’s house. Her daughter Hannah is three months younger than Nicola.

It was unreasonably HOT there, so when Tania’s boyfriend put on the sprinkler to water the garden I decided that Nicola and I could dance around under it to cool off a bit. It was a big hit – and we were both completely soaked and cooled off after. The walking is going great, every day she gets a bit steadier as she gains some confidence in her new-found skill.

Poor baby…she had a big day and was quite exhausted. It was meant to be a quiet braai but turned out a little rowdier than I anticipated. Nicola flatly refused to sleep without me, so we both just managed to welcome the new year before turning in.

And that…my dear friends…concludes our 365 day photo challenge! It’s been quite a journey over the last year. Thanks for sharing it with us. 🙂

355 – 362 of 365

Nothing like drawing your attention to the LAST three days of the year like seeing number 362 of 365 pop up, hey? 😉

Day 355

Nicola, trying to either climb through the window or chew her way out!

My dad installed a solar geyser add-on to our normal one. To be honest, I’m not loving it. The water now trickles out – no pressure, and I often end up with hardly lukewarm water to bath in…which makes me kind of cranky. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that my inner-morning-person is only activated by warm water of some sorts?

Anyway, legend has it that it actually works fine and that my dad is just playing around with some settings and timers to see what will work best. So far he hasn’t quite hit that combo yet.

Day 356

One of my colleagues has been complaining about a rat infestation at her house. I thought she might get a kick out of these marshmallow mice on her key board.

Actually I’ve been feeding my entire department left-over birthday party sugar all week – the mice just came in handy too.

Hanging with Uncle Riaan when we went out to celebrate his birthday.

Day 357

I took NewBroom to the dentist on this day. Poor woman has been sitting with a sore tooth since the beginning of December and she finally allowed me to make her an appointment with our uber dentist instead of the butcher she’s been going to. It’s a great dentist but the parking is kind of weird, not so? If someone parks behind that guy I think he’d have to levitate out of there to get away.

Anyway, NewBroom has been fixed up properly. They took care of the giant abscess that her guy just put a filling on and yanked out her wisdom tooth which was the main culprit anyway. Seriously though, who the heck puts a filling in a wisdom tooth?! Plus NewBroom is a vegetarian on top of everything else, so she’s definitely not going to need the extra teeth to tear meat off anything.

Snooze time…

Day 358

Saw these on the steps of a little coffee shop in the CBD and they just looked so pretty I had to take a picture.

Chilling with grandpa.

Cuteness herself… 😀

Day 359

Merry Christmas!

No matter how cute she looked in the hat I could not get her to keep it on for more than a few minutes at a time…so this photo is pretty special. 😉

Investigating grandma’s new plant on the patio.

Nicola has discovered the stereo…and how to switch it on. Only thing is that she thinks she has to keep pressing buttons to make it sing. Mostly she grabs it by the two speakers and shakes her little behind to whatever’s on…even if it’s just the DJ talking. 😆

Day 360

NewBroom invited us to go feed her ducks with her, which turned out to be geese! 😆 Nicola was kind of into it as long as I was the one throwing the bread – any I gave her, she promptly ate herself. 😆

Day 361

So peaceful…

Day 362

All hail Princess Nicola – destroyer of sandcastles! 😆

Taking both grandparents for little walks round the house. She can now walk quite comfortably holding only one hand for a little balance help. Actually I think she’s be fine on her own already if she just believed that she could. 😉

She doesn’t walk really, she grabs your hand and starts running! It’s not easy to keep up, let me tell you. 😆

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Day 352

Wakey wakey! Big day ahead of us – so we best get to it.

Before shot.

As you can see, not an extremely happy baby. I suggested we lose the cape and it went a lot better after that. She was flapping that thing like a bat trying to get her hands out from under it!

My mom’s hairdresser, after hearing about Nicola for a whole year, offered to give her her first cut for free. He was really good with her and very patient. I would have absolutely no problem taking her back there again.

I had a cut too. Glen, the hairdresser, said, “Oh I see she gets her curls from you.” and I’m going, “Dude…I have straight hair?” looking confused. Then he put some moose on my hair and I turned into a poodle! 😆 Apparently Nicola gets her curly hair from me, even though mine just started curling on Saturday.

While my hair was being cut Nicola joined my mom at the wash basins to prep for her haircut, and entertained everyone there by trying to climb on top of my mom to look into the basin and see what they were doing to grandma.

The after shot.

My mom and gran went last minute Christmas shopping and Nicola had a little riot until I allowed her to get in the pool with grandpa.

Day 353

Birthday! Yay! I’m putting together a whole separate post on that so I’m only showing you this photo here.

Day 354

Calm after the storm…back to picking off decorations from the tree. Any little figurines are being called baba/baby at the moment – it’s very sweet. She takes them off, sings to them, tries to chew them a bit (which could also be a kiss of sorts), and then holds them out feet first to try and get them to climb back into the tree.

Talking about feet, I almost forgot to tell you: Nicola gave her first few solo steps this week! She’s not taken off running since then yet, still building a bit of confidence I think, but she does manage a very decent three wobbly steps at a time now before she loses her balance. So exciting! 😀

347 – 351 of 365

Day 347

Cuteness herself! 😉

Monday morning walking into the office was a bit different. Some or another important delegation from Europe arrived and the powers that be decided that a marimba band was the way to go. Quite loud really…and makes you want to have a cocktail in office hours. 😉

Day 348

On Tuesday the delegation and all other staff members was treated to a cacophony of corporate drumming. Excuse the crap photo, just wanted to show you that mine was even labelled – was good to know. 😉

Day 349

Look Ma, no hands!

Day 350

Lookie! Our Earthbabies teething necklace arrived. I haven’t taken it off Nicola since I laid hands on it. Truthfully, it works. I don’t know how…and I don’t care. She cut another molar this week, and it’s friend is sitting ready to cut (as you know Nicola only cuts teeth in groups of two or four). We’ve had no fevers, hardly any coughing, and she has not been miserable at all. And it can’t be a placebo effect either since she is not aware that she has to believe in it for it to work. 😉

Day 351

Helping grandma park the car in the garage. 😆

Very important hair washing day…you might recall that I said I wasn’t going to cut Nicola’s hair before she turned one? Well, the time has come. The hairdresser said that if we washed her hair the night before he would only have to spritz it for cutting which might be a little less traumatic for her.

You can say, “Don’t eat that!” a thousand times, but sometimes there really is no substitute for experience. And yes, our Santa decoration often gets dragged to the bath for a wash along with any of the others that Nicola manages to wrangle off the tree.

340 – 346 of 365

Day 340

We got these as a thank you gift from someone we helped out. Pretty aren’t they?

Day 341

Playing in the sandpit. Nicola thinks it’s a pretty cool idea to hand the sand to me one fist-full at a time. It’s quite sweet I think, that she’s trying to share it with me. 🙂

Every evening Nicola goes to fetch my dad to take her to the Christmas tree.

She really really loves this tree. So many things that she can reach!

Day 342

Some days you just don’t feel like going to school…

Here we are, going through the car wash (yep, the recent streak of foul weather was probably my doing). I was on my way to go pick Nicola up from school when a taxi drove into me from behind. Now usually I am very in touch with my inner road rage and would have given him a decent earful, but he was really polite about the whole thing and showed some proper remorse at having shitty brakes.

Anyway, I think he mostly bounced of my car’s protective layer of dirt…I had to have it washed to see if there was any real damage! There’s wasn’t. Just another small scratch on a panel that already sported a much more impressive dent from a bash by an Uno.

I had a little stiff neck the next day, but other that that the whole thing was actually a bit of a non-event.

Day 343

Ooooh, shiny!

Day 344

We went shopping with grandma for some of the stuff we need for next week. We’ve abandoned the pram-shopping for now, because Nicola prefers to be carried wherever at the moment. Soon I think she’ll prefer walking herself? 😉

Back home, we got stuck into a bit of gardening…which means Nicola was digging hands full of dirt out of my bonsai pots and redistributing it across the lawn.

Square eyes! I always put something on the laptop when Nicola goes to bed for a bit of background noise…usually she’s not to bothered with what it is (usually Harry Potter), but as of this week she wants to see. Here we are, moments away from a quality night’s sleep, watching Happy Feet. *Note to self: must grow animated movie collection considerably!

Day 345

The day of TWO kiddies parties in Pretoria. Sjoe! As you can imagine, many little people and tons of sugar.

Yumm… 🙂

Time to saddle up and head for our next do?

Also the day of many clean/dry outfits of course. 😉

The first party was a fairy themed affair for our little cousin Giselle’s third birthday, and the second was a fishing themed party for our other little cousin Markus’ third. His mom packed the cutest little “tackle boxes” as party packs.

I’ve seen many a deserted jumping castle at kiddy birthday parties, but luckily there were a handful of teenagers and a bottle of sunlight liquid around to make proper use of this one. Not sure how they got the plates clean but the teenagers were spotless! 😉

Day 346

Today we just took a quiet day at home, chilling with the family. You need a rest day too now and then, right?