And the fourth decade begins

It's been busy busy busy here! I picked a childcare centre for Naomi and she started attending today.  She will be going for 3 mornings a week to begin with and later this will probably become 2 or 3 full days.  Her first day went really well with no crying when I left her.  Hoping that continues but now that she knows Mummy is going to be leaving her there, she may not be so happy next time.  But let's think positively!

She's been a very good girl the last few days apart from a disastrous Sunday.  Not sure what the problem was but she had a big melt down after church and screamed the whole way home in the car.  Was fairly trying for the rest of the day too.  But then Monday morning arrived and she was the best little girl ever.  I suppose we all have our bad days!

She's also going really well on the potty training front.  We're haven't fully started yet, but she sits on the potty first thing in the morning and before bathtime in the evening.  She clearly knows what she's supposed to be doing now as most days she has some success at one or the other or both.  So I think it's time to be buying some big girls pants and get started!  Not looking forward to the accidents though!

I suppose other than the childcare, the big thing for this week was my birthday.  The big three-oh!  I had a lovely day.  Lydia was brought to me in bed for feeding and then taken away so I could go back to sleep.  Was so luxurious to have some extra sleep in the morning.  Then Mum and I went to downtown Anchorage to do some shopping.  It was really good fun discovering the new shops and best of all there was a big sale on in one of the shops so I got lots of new clothes.  I managed to save more than I spent in the sale.  Very successful.  Mum & I then had lunch together at a lovely Steakhouse.

In the afternoon, we had some birthday cake.  Kev, you would have been proud of the size of this cake!  Take 2 chocolate mud layer cakes and put them on top of each other and you have my birthday cake.  It was fabulous.  A chocoholics dream!  He then directed us all to the basement where he had prepared a birthday game for me to play.  He'd taken a huge piece of cardboard and fashioned a spinner onto it and drawn a dial with the numbers 1-30.  I was told to spin and that every spin won a prize!  That's 30 prizes people!  I got some lovely gifts, ranging from DVDs (The Unit as it's a bit difficult to borrow Pat and Danni's copy now!) to candles to a giant bucket/tin of popcorn (an essential keepsake for all future popcorn eating so I'm told!).  And the grand prize was a holiday.  As Pete's next birthday is a big one too, we've decided to get each other a holiday next year somewhere special.  When and where still to be decided.  It was a really fun game and Naomi loved helping with giving me all the presents and spinning the dial.

Then in the evening Pete and I made our way to Mamma Mia! the musical at the theatre.  It was fabulous.  Only downside was that we couldn't dance along to all the songs.  We sang our hearts out in the car on the way home.  Very fun.

Pete is off to Fairbanks tomorrow (another part of Alaska which is a flight away) for a conference. So we'll be trying to cope with the kids on our own until Sunday. Hopefully shouldn't cause too much problem with Mum & Dad being the amazing help that they are. They're helping me with the kids, helping me shop, helping me cook for Lydia, cooking for the rest of us, repairing things, researching things on the internet, and the list goes on and on. I'm not sure what I would have done without them or what I'll do when they leave. But they're definitely helping me to be set up here so that when they do leave more things will be in place to enable us to start a more routine and normal way of life (not that I know what normal is, especially in Alaska!).