So after a somewhat slow and shaky start to my family day care business opening, the calls and enquiries have really started rolling in steadily over the past couple of weeks. I’ve had a number of parent visits to my home which has been quite exciting and I now have three awesome families ready to come on board. People still shake their head in disbelief or apprehensiveness whenever they hear about my crazy venture… “Four kids! That’s a lot to handle!” “I can’t believe you’re doing this” “I could never do anything like that” I don’t know why, but I’m still strangely optimistic about the whole thing. I’m simply excited about having a little group to be able to plan little activities to do together, coming up with a mix of different play invitations and observing their different individual plays and personalities. Of course there’s also the messier bits, like cooking, cleaning, changing nappies, toileting and other such ‘yucky’ stuff. But I’m just choosing to roll with it. I do it...

I’ve been blogging for close to nine years now. Because it's IBOT tomorrow A post shared by Serenely (@livingserenely) on Feb 24, 2014 at 5:40am PST I first started out writing mainly as a way to keep family and friends updated on my life. I still do. However recently my blogging has evolved and expanded to become a platform for me to make new connections, discover new passions, develop new skills and broaden my horizons. A few of you might have noticed that I’ve been going through a clean up and overhaul of my blog and social media networks, working with Alison of Little Love Media to help me in this process, to get more focused and intentional about my online presence. Among numerous things that came up, the two that I’ve been tip-toeing and ho-humming about are: Getting my own domain name; and Twitter. Getting my own domain name feels like a really big, big deal to me. I somehow don’t feel I am deserving of it. I mean I’m just a tiny little blogger hardly ev...

My baby’s first innocence has been stolen away. By chocolate. She unwittingly discovered her first taste of of it all on her own. Her big brother had accidentally left a piece of his foil wrapped chocolate from Valentine’s Day on the floor. No one else noticed it. No one except baby. I found her under the table, quietly and happily chomping away at it… wrapper and all. At only seven months old, this is considered a very very bad thing. I should have been crying but I ended up laughing instead. I couldn’t help it. Especially when I was met with such a look of pure bliss on her cute little chocolate-covered face. Horror of horrors! Baby found her first taste of chocolate at 7 months. Her big brother left a piece of it on the floor. I found her chomping it away, wrapper and all. I should be crying but ended up laughing instead #babygirl #babymischief #chocolate A post shared by Serenely (@livingserenely) on Feb 15, 2014 at 3:57pm PST What surprises have your little ones come u...

How did you spend your Valentine’s Day? Hubby and I were home bound (by choice). We don’t really like going out on Valentine’s Day anyway as we’re not big on crowds and over-priced menus. And I really do enjoy just chilling out in the nice hangout spaces we’ve created in our house. Plus we have everything we need for a romantic evening.. wine, chocolate, a plush couch and each other. After we put the kids to bed, we watched a movie (‘She’s All That’ - a classic from the 90s), chatted about random stuff and then later hubby taught me how to play poker. It was fun coming up with silly bets and bids. The bets soon escalated into the raunchy zone, but that’s strictly between hubs and I. Hubby wrote me this ‘poem’ for the occasion which got me all smiley and gooey inside… What I like about you… I like holding your hands I like to watch you sleep I like to listen to you describe your day I like the way you encourage our boy to share about his day I like the way you teach our kids I li...

{Sponsored Link} Given a choice, which season do you prefer: Summer or Winter? Do you prefer having to handle very very hot weather or being in very very cold weather? I am totally a summer person. I say it’s much easier to cool off on a very hot day, than to rug up and try to muster up some heat to stay nice and warm in winter. Summer is the perfect time to get the kids outside and active. If it’s especially hot day, I just slap on the sunscreen and throw some water into the mix. Here are some simple water play ideas to to cool off in the backyard this summer… Have a blast with a water gun fight The boys got these for just a dollar each from Big W Get artistic with water painting Just water, a paintbrush and a blank concrete canvas   Give the toys a bath Bring out a tub of water, throw in some toys     If you’re lucky enough to have a pool (or a friend who has one), then it’s a no brainer. Put on your swimsuit and just dive in! Mix things up and play some ...

  For Valentine’s Day…   We made some sugary sweet spicy hearts…   I made the cookie dough using the gingerbread recipe from earlier this week. Nathan helped to cut out heart shapes with a cookie cutter and we decorated them with white icing and pink and purple sprinkles. Nathan asked if we could save one piece to give to his favourite gal pal , which I thought was very sweet of him. I think these gingerbread cookie hearts make especially perfect Valentine’s Day gifts for little girls, because you know, girls are made from sugar and spice, right? Happy Valentine’s Day to you and have a lovely weekend.

Some days, We can bounce from this…   To this… Up and down. Down and up. Sweet and sour. Good and bad. Laughter and tears. Happy and sad. Things have been moving slowly but steadily in the family day care department. I encountered a few delays and glitches in the administrative side of things, but thankfully it’s all sorted out now. The calls and enquiries have started trickling, mostly from parents just asking around. I’ve had to turn down a couple of really interested parents because I was not able to meet certain specific requirements they needed. But two families have pretty much confirmed their interest. Next step will be to arrange an introductory meeting and take it from there, Hope you are having a nice day wherever you are.   Here are some nice bits and pieces I’ve picked up lately… 12 things family day care providers wish parents knew 8 birthing practices from waaaay back when Smash Books , the new way to Un-scrapbook 5 simple ways to organise the pl...

I think almost everyone grew up knowing the classic story of the gingerbread man. It’s a great story to play –very simple and catchy story with repetitive rhymes that are easy for little ones to remember. “ Run, run as fast as you can, You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man! ” So we made a gingerbread man puppet. And we re-enacted the story together. It was fun coming up with improvisations using different animals and characters… because let’s face it, EVERYONE wants to eat the gingerbread man. After all that imaginary eating of the gingerbread man, we started to get pretty hungry. So we made lots more little gingerbread men. REAL ones this time. And then comes the best part… Chomping them up! Nathan’s gingerbread man disappeared very quickly. So I asked him what happened to it… “ It’s sleeping ”, he said. “ Sleeping? Where?”, I asked. “ In my tummy! ”, he grinned. I quite liked the gingerbread men recipe I used. Very easy, with just a handful of ingredients. Shar...

Do you know what is the best thing I love about breastfeeding? The sheer convenience. No lugging around bottles, flasks, formula or fiddling with sterilising equipment, bottle warmers and measuring spoons. Just pop and go, baby! But do you know what is one of the worst things I used to dislike about breastfeeding? Fiddling with my clothes and tops to latch baby on as discreetly as possible. And constantly stressing out if I would accidentally ‘flash’ someone. When I first started breastfeeding, I was really extremely self conscious. I was convinced that everyone around was staring at me and thinking about boobies. Specifically mine. I dreaded stepping out of the house and always timed my errands so that I could feed baby at home first, then rush back in time for the next feed. If I absolutely had to nurse while out, I would always look for a parents room or any place completely hidden away from prying eyes. My confidence was even more shaken when being shunned in a departmen...

What adventures have you been up to lately this summer? My friend Jamie recently told me about this charming little miniature railway tucked away somewhere in Wilson along the Canning River. The trains are real models of classic steam engines and diesel trains, but in miniature child-sized versions. It all sounded so cute and storybook-like that I simply had to check it out. I knew Nathan would simply love it given his obsession with Thomas and Chuggington and the whole gang. So on one blazing hot Sunday, we braved the summer heat and hauled our little troops along for a miniature adventure. A couple of the locomotives on the miniature railway ( photo source ) The miniature railway has two stations running public rides on different Sundays each month. We opted for the Wilson Park Station because it is situated by a park, with a big playground, plenty of shady trees, and a cafe nearby – perfect spot for a picnic and family outing. The babies camping out on the picnic mat...

One evening as I was lounging around doing some channel surfing, I happened to catch the movie Minority Report on TV. The scene playing was the one when Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, was grieving over his son who was abducted several years ago at six-years-old. John Anderton’s son’s abduction scene from Minority Report It was a chilling scene to watch. It starts out with Anderton sharing a happy moment with his son at a public swimming pool. He playfully ducked his head underwater to show his boy how long he could hold his breath. He was only under the water a few moments but when he popped his head up, his son had disappeared. The scene ends tragically with Anderton running frantically through the crowd, shouting and screaming his son’s name. It’s one of the worst nightmares a parent could ever have. In a way it can be worse than witnessing your child die before your eyes. “ Missing ” leaves an open wound with no sense of closure. There is a poison in that wound th...