birth announcement

as you have seen from previous posts on this very blog - and if you know me in real life - it's kind of obvious... my name is jade and i have raging ocd. so it took me quite some time to be happy with a birth announcement for master joseph. i won't send it until i am happy, and being that they serve as our thankyou cards (writing on the back) it has to be right. i surfed red stamp non stop until i found the perfect setup. nb. if you don't have the red stamp app on your iphone you are missing out and need to get onto that stat! best. app. ever. it's free and you can make invites, cards, announcements, thinking of yous etc etc. so good.

i then made about 5 (??) different ones and sent them all to the bestie for approval - and we picked one together. anddddd this is not it. haha. i went back on to my app to edit the final choice and found this one which i thought was simple enough that it might just be perfect - and it was. type type type send... the best one yet. so here you have it ladies and gentlemen of the blogisphere. get red stamp (i wish they were paying me to write this, but i promise they are not) so you can make awesome things like this - all with the touch of a screen... and if you sent us a gift for our baby - watch your letterbox, cause one of these masterpieces featuring our incredibly goodlooking second child will be on it's way to you very soon!

taytay gets girly!

 

last night tayla came over to our house to get ready for her all important school ball... we had a team working on her to get her hot and ready in time - niques on hair, jo on hair and me? i was in charge of accessories and nails. not the most important or time consuming job, but important nonetheless... 

niques and jo did such a good job and tay looked so grown up, so beautiful and so girly! this is our tay that gets around in shorts or jeans with jandals most of the time and just doesn't care. she didn't even have pierced ears until a month ago. but right in front of our eyes shes been becoming a young lady - and a gorgeous one at that.

tays date for the night was her friend cam from our ward (he and his family have moved here in recent months from nz) and you could tell the two of them were going to have a good time together, clowning around and have a good laugh - even when i was begging them to be serious for just one photo! i did get two good ones though, thank goodness, i am pretty sure that their mums would have killed me if i didn't.

it's so nice to watch someone grow up before your very eyes and tay has done just that this weekend. work it girl. won't be long before the boys are chasing you! ♥

pippa skye's surprise bday!

i love this girl! so much! and tonight we got to celebrate her turning 31 with a lovely surprise dinner at siena's in leederville that another one of her gorgeous friends organised. you should have seen her face! completely unaware that it was in the works, thought she was rocking up for a casual dinner with a few friends... and there we all were - waiting. there were smiles, there was a few tears, but she was loving it! 

pip and i became firm friends when doug and i moved into dianella ward when we got married (8 years ago now yikes!) we knew each other as teenagers (and even unknowingly dated the same boy - apparently at the same time - a.w.k.w.a.r.d...) we weren't overly keen on being mates back then - but totally hit it off once we had grown up some.

since then we have spent a ridiculous amount of time together - laughed, cried, agreed, disagreed, had kids, worn each others clothes, eaten copious amounts of food, shopped (and op-shopped) up a storm, watched buttloads of televison, partied hard, teased each others husbands and just generally loved the hell out of each other.

i wouldn't trade her friendship for anything - she's amazing. 

so... happy early birthday pippa! 

love you long time! ♥

ocd...

we had family lunch at my brother jareds house after church today and laughed and laughed and laughed like we always do - we are the most mental family and talk about the weirdest things. today's topic was about how ocd runs in our family... i will not deny for one minute that i have it - bad! i have all my dvds in alphabetical order, my perfumes in height order, clothes must be ironed before being put away, dishes stacked neatly in the cupboard, dishes washed before i can go to bed...

 

i cracked up so bad when i saw the picture attached to this post cause i totally get it. alphabetical order is a go-to for me. ocd has always been a bit of a joke to our family - jared, aaron and i are all exactly the same. it seems to have passed isaac by, but as any of you will know if you know him - he is so laid back that he's almost horizontal. in fact my ocd was so bad when we were kids that he used to pay me to clean his room, which i was totally okay with - it's not like i had to clean mine first.

 

i've had it as long as i can remember, to the point of lining up my coloured pencils and markers in primary school in colour order - to memorising all the fruit and vegetable codes as a teenager whilst working at the local supermarket, to lining up the clothes in my wardrobe in colour order now. sigh.

 

i must admit there are times it has been helpful in my life though, when working as a funeral arranger for example - when you are obsessive, you rarely make a mistake, but saying that - when you do, you beat yourself up and spend who knows how long stressing about it. at least i am not crazy with it and don't need professional help. things just have to be done my way. i think the worst thing is with photos - i like to take them so they are how i want them, which must be why i am so rarely in them!

 

the best part of this conversation was watching my niece nod along furiously to our ocd confessions - as clearly ocd apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the next generation is coming along nicely.

mother in law

doug has just taken his mum back to the airport. it's sad. she has been here with us for two weeks and i have been able to sleep in each morning with baby joe whilst maddie has danced around the house, watched movies, had tea parties, gone for walks to the shop and just generally had a complete fuss made over her.

oli loves her grandkids so much (well just kids in general really - she has made no secret of her desire to have a whole bunch of kids even though she was only blessed with two) and i am so glad that she made the effort to come and help us for so long. i know so many mother-in-laws are crazy and cause all kinds of drama, but my mine is amazing! i am so lucky and feel so blessed to have her as a part of my life - and for my babies to call her grandma.

in sickness and health

this content looking chubba has already had a visit to the hospital and the doctor since he entered the world. day three we went to princess margaret childrens hospital after joseph came out in a rash all over - which we were very quickly assured was a extremely common in newborns (called erythema toxicum) but oh my word were they amazing. we called the after hours gp, who said he couldn't give any advice for a 3 day old baby as he wasn't a pediatrician and then sent us to the hospital.

within 5 minutes of arriving of the hospital, we had been ushered into a private observation room (it was due to the fact that the hospital didn't know what any one in the waiting room could have had - and joseph clearly couldn't have had his shots yet) where the hospital registrar came to us to get our details (yep joseph hadn't been registered into the medicare system yet either) then a nurse came in, followed quickly by a dr - and we were in and out of the hospital within 20 minutes. champions. but great - because lets be honest, who wants to sit in a waiting room with a newborn...

doug had a bit of a cold when he was born and maddie quickly caught it, she loves her daddy and always wants to be 10cms from him... but then due to all the love she keeps throwing at baby joseph, he has it now too. not even two weeks old and he is snuffling, has a little cough, sneezing all over the place... it's yuck. the child health nurse came this morning and suggested it was best to take him to the doctor just in case - but of course, there's nothing you can give a newborn and i was given exactly what i assumed, the advice of keeping his nose cleaned out and as long as he kept feeding without any dramas, that there wasn't anything else i could do... sigh

she did give us some good news though, breastfed babies are expected to gain about 30gms per day to be healthy - and our little machine is gaining sixtyone! what a champ. must be because a) i have so much milk and b) all he wants to do all day is drink drink and drink some more. it's much the same as when i had madeline, sometimes he'll pull off and get a nice stream of milk in the face - or i'll have a nice pain going on because they are filling again too quickly. to be honest i am glad though... lots of milk is great - and a healthy baby is exactly what the dr ordered.

maddie and seffa

i am the luckiest person in the world. two from two. a boy and a girl. a pigeon pair. and they are absolutely adorable. i can't get over just how cute the two of them are and how much madeline loves her baby brother is just amazing. all i hear all day is, "mummy! mummy! where's jofiss? i see him? i kiss him?" she is absolutely obsessed with him and it makes me so happy.

it can be a little difficult at times, like when she tries to climb into his bassinet to cuddle him (unfortunately she has succeeded more than once...) and when she insists on holding him twentysixthousand  times a day. but at least she likes him. that's better than some sibling relationships i have seen in the past. i only hope that in 15 years time she still feels the same way about him.

i especially love this picture of them together - the look of utter disdain on his face whilst maddie is having the time of her life tickling him "mummy i tickle him!" 

one thing is for sure, i am going to enjoy the heck out of them!