Isn’t this gorgeous? I love the filter effects on this… makes me think of springtime. Sigh. Winter is closing in and I can’t wait to feel warmth from the sun on my arms again.

dailypeptalk:

Pretty

Home is where the heart is…

Hubs and I love to explore where we live. It’s all too easy to pause your life, uproot and move to a new neighbourhood then press play again and keep on living. Until I was heavily pregnant and not driving anymore I think we’d pressed play on our life in the valley. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been plenty of heavy duty exploring through the Hartz Mountains, Geeveston hills, the back roads to Dover, but less of the local exploring.

When we lived in southern NSW we used to take a Sunday drive. We’d just get in the car and take all the windy back roads. We went to Collector, Crookwell, Nerriga, Lake George, to find the lake at Lake Bathurst (it dried up years ago!) and any dirt road we could find. We started doing the same through the Huon Valley. We’ve been up the back of Franklin, the hills behind Ranelagh, the back roads through Lucaston, and our latest jaunt up Scenic Hill drive in Huonville.

You can see Scenic Hill from my house. It is, indeed scenic. There’s a landowner who’s been burning off near Scenic Hill for weeks and when you’re driving into the Valley from town you can occasionally see a giant cross erected up the top of Scenic Hill.

We took the windy road up to the top, admiring houses, gawking at the view, discovering that there’s a LOT of swamp land near the banks of the Huon River, seeing some of the Huon water supply and getting perfect reception parked next to the telephone tower. Which is where I took these photos. This is where I live. Gorgeous huh?

And the final photo is the sunset from my joint. Yes indeedy, this is where I live.

Big Sister Cat Updates

Just so you know I can talk about things other than babies. Like cats. (Hold your horses folks, this gal’s a firecracker! What controversial topic will she talk about next?)

Lucy has coped quite well with Millie’s arrival. She avoided me like the plague for the first four weeks but has been integrating into our new lifestyle quite well. Or have we been re-assimilating into her lifestyle?

I think that Lucy has moved through the many stages of grief and has arrived at acceptance. Acceptance that the small furless noisy cat isn’t leaving. Acceptance that if you awaken a sleeping Mummy to notify her that said small furless noisy cat is waking up (often an hour before this happens) you will be forcibly ejected from the bedroom. Acceptance that sometimes your bowl is empty and your humans need a gentle reminder that you haven’t been fed today and are quite honestly wasting away to nothing.

Lucy’s also started hanging out with Millie and I during the day. Like, needing to be part of the action. Millie’s on Mummy’s lap? I NEED TO BE ON MUMMY’S LAP TOO. Millie and Mummy are having a snooze in the bed? I WILL BE ON THE BED TOO. Possibly in a highly inconvenient spot. Like the middle.

She’s very tender and sweet with Millie and I’m not in the slightest bit concerned about leaving her alone in the room with Millie. I think Millie would boof Lucy before Lucy would be any kind of trouble.

Big Sister Cat, you rock my world.

This one time, when I was very pregnant…

When I was around 38 weeks pregnant my Twitter friends starting taking bets amongst themselves as to when Millie would arrive. This caught on and there was a hashtag (#babykendall) and it was all very funny. I made a joke about the prize being a present for Millie and we all laughed and moved on.

The dates ticked by and still no M. There was one date that I thought to be so incredibly far fetched (and a little mean - I mean, who wants to be 40+10?) that I laughed and inwardly groaned. And yep… she was off by an hour.

So I stayed in hospital and tweeted many pictures of Divine Miss M and the world kept turning.

When Millie was almost two weeks old when Andy went back to work. On our third day at home alone we had a terror of a day, where M wouldn’t stop crying & I couldn’t settle her. She and I cried together from 8.30am-1pm. Eventually the gods smiled and we both got settled and had a snooze (mine brief, hers not so brief thankfully!). Just before sunset I shuffled down to the mailbox - and there was a parcel from RedBubble.com.

I eagerly opened it and inside were three GORGEOUS onesies made by Hobart artist SameDog, who is also a good Twitter friend. One was Puss Invaders, which I’d expressed a nerdy love for, the second was a custom made three legged creature called Millie the Wombat, and the third was a take on my band logo for Amy Kendall & the Kitchenhands. I figured my Twitter mates had something to do with this, and I’d been keeping it together fairly well until I spotted Baby Kendall & the Tender Hands - the sweetness and thoughtfulness did me in.

I’m completely floored by the kindness and generosity of my friends, some of whom I’ve never met in real life. The effort that they all went to to organise this, and Rory (SameDog)’s illustrations are nothing short of amazing.

In conjunction with the RedBubble parcel Lou Dalton dropped off a gift bag to Andrew that had a bottle of Bream Creek Schonburger wine (my favourite that I’d mentioned in passing to one of my Twitter friends) and a $50 massage voucher to my favourite massage centre (organised by another Twitter friend), along with a babysitting voucher from yet another gorgeous friend.

Sometimes the world seems huge and scary, like when you’re holding a baby and you’ve got NO idea what to do next. Then things like this happen and you know that it’s all going to be okay.

Thank you Ash, Brad, Fi, Dani, Geoff, Mel, Em, Lou, John, Lauren, Nigel, Barb, Andrew and Rory. Or, @ashnoble, @brad_gunn, @chick_wana, @elissma, @emity, @fifimacks, @gobalmy, @GPRollins, @johndalton, @Lauren_Lolly_, @NigelHoney, @NorfickChick, @quinnal and @samedog.

We can never thank you enough for your thoughtfulness. It’s really been a lovely shining light in the first few highly charged weeks.

Snatching Moments

Quick! She’s asleep! Not in my arms! It’s a miracle! Do something. Do something.

Once the essentials are dealt with (toilet! lunch! returning the lounge room back to order!) there’s usually only time to sit back on the couch and prepare to feed. Again. Lovely Lauren kept warning me that for the first 6 weeks (months?) one pretty much feels like a cow… She wasn’t lying. The plus side is in the first four weeks I watched every episode of How I Met Your Mother, and now I’m smashing through Glee S1 & The West Wing S5.

Millie changes so much every day sometimes it’s hard to believe it was only 6 weeks ago that we welcomed her into our world…