MY KID IS POTTY TRAINED!!

And it only took 2 weeks too.

I’m so proud of her (and so happy about the money we’re saving on nappies).  She still uses a night nappy, but we might take her off that soon as well, seeing as she has woken up with a dry nappy every day for the past week.

Potty training was one of the things I was most anxious about when we embarked on this whole parenting journey.  I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up accident after accident, or being stuck at home with a kid who needed to be taken to the loo every 15 minutes for weeks on end.  I should’ve known that it wouldn’t be like that.  Sienna has been the easiest kid on the planet to raise up to now.  Potty training was no exception.

Bring on the next thing

My drug of choice? Pinterest.

When I first heard of Pinterest, I thought that I would never find a use for it.  I don’t have a wedding to plan, I’m not a designer or a fashionista and I don’t spend hours on the net looking for pretty images.  I decided to request an invite anyway, being the serial early adopter that I am.

A few days later I received my invite.  I’m yet to figure out if this was a good thing or a bad thing.  I spent all of two minutes on the site before coming up with at least ten different boards that I could make.  The food category alone was enough to keep me staring at my screen for hours on end, pinning one delicious picture after the other.

I’ve discovered that you don’t need to be a designer or a fashion fundi or a bride-to-be to appreciate the stunning ideas and images on the site.  I’m not a photographer, but one day I might want someone to take pictures of me and Pinterest has helped me find poses that I may want to try.  I’m not a chef, but I’ve found countless meal ideas that are quick and easy to make by even the most disastrous of cooks.  I’ve found hundreds of fun and informative games and crafts to do with my little girl.  I’ve even become the proud owner of a sewing machine and can’t wait to try some of the patterns that I’ve come across on Pinterest.

My biggest challenge now?  Getting off of Pinterest long enough to actually try the dozens of projects that I’ve pinned.

And the dealer part I mentioned above? Pinterest is open by invitation only, so leave me a comment and I’ll send you an invite

Growing up in Joburg, you get used to pretty extreme weather.  We have howling winds, torrential rain and spectacular thunderstorms.  We also have hail on a fairly frequent basis.

I always knew that a storm was particularly heavy if the noise on the roof suddenly became too loud and the lawn started looking like it was popping popcorn all over the place.  I loved watching the little balls of hail jump around as they fell on the grass.

The biggest hail I’ve ever seen before was about the size of a small gumball, and the noise that went with it was insane.  I’m very glad that I wasn’t home yet when yesterday’s storm happened.

The first signs of the hailstorm was evident when I made my way up the Krugersdorp hill.  Piles of hail, looking like snow, were scattered all along the rock face.  As I rounded the bend at the top of the hill, I could see the debris of leaves and twigs strewn over the road.  I drove on to pick my daughter up from daycare, where I heard the first stories.  One poor mom arrived at the daycare just as the hail started falling and got stuck in her car.  The worst part was that she was terrified that she might still get hurt as the hail struck dents into her car and threatened to knock out her front windscreen.

I did a quick check of my phone as a left the daycare and saw that a friend who lives up the street from me had updated his Blackberry status.  A few of the windows in his house got knocked out.  I thought he was being funny and ignored it, until I got home.

You could tell that the storm was unusual by the number of old ladies running around in our complex, trying to see if their roses got damaged. Leaves and twigs were everywhere.  I got my daughter and walked into the house, knowing immediately that my friend hadn’t been joking.  My husband was in the process of cleaning up the last few pieces of glass from where a golf ball sized hailstone had shattered one of the windows in our lounge.

Thankfully, that was the only window in our house that got hit.  I went back to see if my friend had posted any pictures of the damage to his house.  They had lost about 4 windows, with the biggest hail stones hitting their house being about the size of cricket balls.  Other friends had multiple cracked windows and dented cars.

Driving to work this morning, the streets looked like a hurricane had passed through.  What I had thought were twigs turned out to be entire branches that had been ripped off of the trees lining the streets.  I was truly thankful that I missed the storm.

It did get me thinking though.  Storms seem to be getting worse.  Torrential rains have turned into dangerous flash floods, hail storms have turned into deadly downpours.  I can only imagine what would’ve happened if one of those hailstones had hit an actual person instead of just a few windows.

Is our planet starting to fight back?

TV Show: Spongebob Squarepants, ad nauseum.

Meal: Its a toss up between 2 minute noodles and toast with Bovril on. Easy kid.

Fruit: okay, maybe not that easy.  She likes those dried fruit sticks at least. Real fruit is a no-go for now.

Vegetable: erm, potatoes?

Breakfast: this one isn’t so hard.  Sienna loves oats and cereal.  She normally eats a very hearty breakfast that lasts her until well into the morning.

Drink: my kid has always loved any form of liquid.  Her favourites at the moment are milk with the Purity powder in and Oros.

Drinking yogurt flavour: I must admit that I haven’t tried giving her drinking yogurt yet, but she loves the eating kind. Strawberry is her absolute fav.

Sweets: somewhere along the line, Sienna started liking chocolate.  It’s not something she picked up from me.  Her favourites are Chomps and the little chocolate bear vitamins that she gets every day.

Chips/crisps: I much prefer salty snacks to sweets and most of the time Sienna’s the same.  She’ll eat any chip, even if it burns.  We usually get her Cheese Curls or Flings.

Toy: this changes daily.  I don’t think she has one toy that she prefers over anything else. (I’ve been thinking about this for 10 minutes and I still can’t think of any toy that she likes more than all her others)

Colour: As far as I can tell, it’s always been red.  She loves wearing red clothes and notices red things first.  Her favourite outfit is a red dress.

Something that happened yesterday:

I was off sick with a tummy bug yesterday, so I don’t really know how many cute things she was doing around the house while I was hiding in bed.

She did do one really cute thing though, I’d gotten back into bed soon after her dad brought her home from daycare, and she proceeded to climb up onto the bed.  The next moment she was snuggled up under the covers next to me.  It would’ve been lovely to keep her there if she could lay still for longer than 2 seconds.

You may remember that I mentioned my reunion a few weeks ago.

Last week Saturday was the big day.  We ended up being an hour late (we’re always late), but luckily it was pretty informal so it didn’t matter.

The first thought that went through my head was: “I’m not the only one who got fat….YAY!”.  Apparently my own body issues was my only stumbling block to having a good time.  That, and how quickly I could get….lubricated.  Hubby and I cracked open our wine and let the good times commence.

It was so good to see how everybody had grown up.  There were your odd pockets of people that still wouldn’t mingle with anyone else, but for the most part everyone chatted to everyone else with none of high school prejudice we had 10 years ago.  We laughed and reminisced and talked the night away.  We had a few quiet moments remembering all of our friends that had passed away since we matriculated (11 in total, I was told).  All in all we had a blast.

In fact, so much of a blast was had that we’ve decided to have a reunion after party.  Only about half of our year was able to make it to the reunion because of the long weekend so we’re doing it again….in summer.  They’ve even specifically requested that everyone bring their kids along instead of leaving them with sitters.

I can’t wait!

Which is why I tend to avoid writing full blown diary entries.  My writing is just not interesting/funny enough to convey the humour in a situation.  (Incidentally, I don’t tell jokes for the same reason.  My humour seems to be confined to sarcastic comments and stupid questions.)

Sadly, this means that regaling you with our Singstar  adventures from last night would probably not be nearly as hilarious as it was at the time. Telling you how my one opponent and I would sort of moan the words instead of singing them, is probably not as hysterical as it would’ve been had you been able to see the Neanderthal looks on our faces while we made sounds that should rather be confined to private restrooms.

Describing how my insane friend sat in front of me pulling ridiculous faces in a desperate attempt to draw my attention away from the song, resulting in me staring so hard at the screen that I forgot to blink, doesn’t quite do the moment justice.

Finally, reconstructing the scene where all four of us took turns wrestling each other alongside fervent claims that the other teams were cheating, all the while hiding the fact that we’d unplugged our opponents’ microphones isn’t even remotely as funny as it would’ve been if you had just been there.

So I won’t bore you with the details.  Just know that we had a blast

Do you ever find that you get stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to having exciting news?

Something that I’ve always struggled with is when to keep a secret so that I can have a surprise and when to tell the whole world about my exciting news.

I seem to have this habit of telling one or two (or five) close friends about whatever my news is, and then I just keep telling more and more people until everyone knows anyway.  I’m terrible at surprises.

This is strange, as I tend to be excellent with keeping secrets.  If you make me promise that I won’t tell anyone your secret then no-one will be told.  Not even my husband.

But, when the secret is my own, I tend to want to tell the world.

I have such a secret right now and I’m insanely excited about it, which makes it almost impossible to keep quiet about it.

Maybe, if you’re nice to me, I’ll let you have a guess….

Some have gotten married and had kids.  Some are gay now.  One even had a sex change.  One died.

So much has happened in the past 10 years.  I’m excited and terrified to hear all the stories.  I’m wondering if the cliques will still be there.  Will we care as much about what people thought of us as we did in school?  How many have gained a few inches over the years (please let it not be just me!!)?

What will I say to people I considered friends 10 years ago?  I’ve never been a fan of awkwardness.  I hope we don’t all just sit there and stare at each other.

I feel the sudden urge to have a massive make-over.

*sigh*

The blame for this rests on the shoulders of Pinterest and Jessica.

Anyone who has had the good fortune of receiving an invite from Pinterest, will know how many hours you suddenly spend trawling the Net for pretty pictures that inspire you, make you laugh or help you put pictures to your dreams.   Their categories make it easy to find more and more and just one more board to add to your collection.

One of my favourite categories is obviously food.  The women in my family have always had a particular love of food and I myself rarely cook run of the mill meals, preferring to experiment with exotic recipes.  The seemingly endless stream of ideas on Pinterest has inspired me to try many more new things.

Enter Jessica.  I’ve been following her blog for ages anyway, especially looking forward to her dessert reviews.  I”m not much of a sweet tooth myself, but hearing how much she enjoyed some of her sugary adventures left my mouth watering all the same.  I could tell that she was as much of a food lover as I am (albeit food of the sweeter variety )  It should come as no surprise then, that her blog lead me to this one.

Pure genius!  I’m a Joburger through and through, but I find myself yearning for Cape Town just to try out the restaurants mentioned by Rob.  I’ve even made the single recipe that he’s posted on his young blog (it was delicious!).  Waiting for his next post has become like waiting for the next episode of my favourite show.

It’s been all downhill from there.  I’ve taken to adding a separate category in my reader for food blogs only.  I’ve even started planning my grocery lists according to the ideas that I’ve found online.  My feed reader has turned into an ever evolving cookbook and I just can’t get enough!

Let’s hope my waistline survives my new obsession.

It’s as if I take 6 months to recover from December, which is normally when I stop writing.

Or maybe the first six months are always the busiest, hence having no time to write.

Or maybe I just don’t feel like writing for the first six months of the year.

Whichever it may be.  I might be around more often again.

Who knows?….