I have been promising this “life lately” post for months now and I am finally getting around to it. I managed to lose half of your questions like a fool, but maybe they will get answered anyway, posts like these are generally just a big word vom for me and I tend to just chat away.

We’ve been a family of 4 for almost three months now and it’s still crazy busy, but not in an unorganised way thank goodness, I would not survive. Dan, the kids and I both thrive on routine (here’s our current evening routine) and so we worked really hard to have one down to a tee within about 2 weeks of bringing Maia home. Of course it doesn’t always go according to plan and that’s okay as well.

Aria is still the most incredible big sister, we have yet to have a negative reaction from her towards Maia, she is absolutely besotted with her “precious girl”. She has definitely given Dan and I a bit of a hard time here and there; she is incredibly headstrong and so you can only imagine how defiant she can be! But then again, she is also three years old and it’s completely normal for her to be pushing the bounderies with us. Her imagination is on another level at the moment and it’s amazing to watch – she recreates scenes from her books or TV shows that she’s watched and gives each of us a part to play and believe me, she will correct you if you say the wrong line! Her Little Dutch kitchen that we bought for her from Kids Living has also been such a hit, she literally hasn’t stopped playing with it since we gave it to her last week Saturday.

Our littlest sprog Maia is doing so well too. She is so all chunk and chub and I love it, although I’ve been asked a few times if shes 5 or 6 months and people are always shocked to hear that she’s only 2.5 months old. What can I say, she’s got her mama’s appetite! I’m not sure if it’s because she’s the second baby so she’s just had to fit into our schedules but she has been really easy; she happily plays in her rocker or on her playmat, doesn’t mind a little rough and tumble from Aria (or Moose, Malva still hasn’t clicked that there’s another baby) and generally either sleeps through the night or wakes up at about 3am for a quick 10min snack. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some hair-raising moments, just last night Maia screamed blue murder for an hour and eventually Dan got eight, EIGHT burps out of her! But for the most part she’s a happy little camper.

Dan and I are both plodding along, but happily. With a new baby in the house there seems even less time to spend together and so we try to find an hour here or there to just enjoy each others company, it’s a challenge for sure but I don’t see us gaining any extra time any time soon so it’s something that we need to get used to I suppose. My work has really taken off in the last few months and so if I’m not attending to one of the kids, I’m generally glued to my laptop which probably isn’t super healthy but that’s one of the challenges of being a work from home mom; you grab every free hour you can to get some work in. I still wouldn’t change my set up for the world though, it suits our family so well and I am incredibly lucky to be able to stay home with my girls but still contribute financially.

A lot of people asked about my post natal depression and how I’m doing this time around. If you’re new around these parts, you can read about my post natal depression over here and also over here. So far everything seems okay, I have my bad days of course, sometimes I will have a bad week which I also think is fine. I haven’t felt disconnected from my life or Maia which were two of the biggest indicators for my PND last time. I do know though that PND manifests in different ways and so both Dan and I are keeping an eye out for any symptoms.

I’m really excited because we are off on our first family holiday in a few days, Dan and I definitely need a bit of a break from Jozi and the constant go, go, go and so we are both looking forward to some downtime in Dullstroom… well as much downtime as the girls will let us have! Other than that, our lives are pretty normal at the moment, which sometimes I prefer if I’m honest, I’m not a fan of having curve balls thrown our way.

And that’s about it for this little update, I should definitely try to do them more often!