Australia Zoo

Zoos are one of our favorite places to visit  pretty much anywhere we go. We were very fortunate that my sister in law gave us Australia Zoo passes for Christmas before we came over! We don't get to go as often as we'd like because it's a bit of a drive, but we've been a couple of times. 

It's amazing to see how much Babygirl has grown and how fast. These are some pictures from when her and I went to the zoo without HB (it was finals studying time so a good time to be gone all day).

She was just starting to walk around on her own, and we had a nice little picnic. She loves her PB&J sandwiches!

They have an awesome area full of Kangaroos and wallabies that you can walk through and pat or feed them. But Babygirl was not too sure about the Roos. She wouldn't get too close. 

I, however, love feeding and petting the very friendly critters. 

She did like the koalas at this visit, probably because they were more her size and mommy had to hold her to see them. 

A few weeks later we went back to the zoo with daddy, and she was a whole new baby! She's walking with more and more confidence and was excited to see the kangaroos. She actually walked up to them on her own.

Though I did have to try to keep her from eating the Kangaroo food!

She mostly let the kangaroos eat it...mostly. 

And of course you have to get a selfie with the kangaroo...if you're Honeybunches that is. 

Try convincing a Kangaroo to look at the camera...

Wind Tubes

I have been on the look out for some fun stuff for us to do, both to get some of Babygirl's energy out and to keep me sane. It turns out there are a ton of fun things to do around here for little kids, and a lot of them are free! (Bonus for us!) We came across the Wind Tunnel exhibit for kids at the local art museum and we were hooked!

The art museum has a whole upstairs area dedicated to this kid's exhibit...complete with doors to keep roaming kids in and a little area just for wee ones. Babygirl had a blast with her little buddy (who has taught her SO many cute things!). There are tunnels to crawl through, pads to climb up, and a table with mini wind tubes to make balls float, pinwheels spin and see how high your creations can fly!

It's perfect for them to toddle around and start to learn the basic concepts of gravity and wind. 

Like most of our crafts, Babygirl "helps" to create a great little flying machine with a styrofoam ball and some feathers provided by the museum. They have a huge assortment of supplies and some of the contraptions built are quite impressive.

Then you stick them in the wind tubes and watch them fly up to the ceiling! It took a few trips and showing her how to do it, but now Babygirl loves to put the ball in the tube herself and watch it fly up. She gets quite the kick out of it. 

It's amazing to see this little girl grow and learn. She knows when we are at the wind tunnels and insists that we make something and put it in the big kid wind tunnels before she'll go play in the 2 and under area! But she has such a great time playing with all the kids there. 

Cake Smash Time!

The cake smash was very messy and very fun. I was quite proud of my cake, and it took quite a bit to keep it safe from HB. But don't feel too bad for him, there were a few trial runs that he was "forced" to taste test for me. You can check out how I did it in my DIY Multi-colored cake post coming soon. 

These are some of my favorite pictures. They really capture all of her different facial expressions.

Bath time was by far her favorite part of this session. If we would have let her she would have splashed all day long. 

Who doesn't love a squeaky clean baby?!

I loved our photo session! I think Sophia was more interested in the photographer than anything else, but the result was awesome. Thank you One Moment One Time Photography!

Babygirl Turns One!

It was both a happy and sad occasion. Our Babybear turned one year old. She's growing into such an amazing little person, full of personality and universally known as a happy baby! (She has her moments, but thankfully they are few and far between) 

I love watching her grow and learn, but it's going too fast! It feels like just yesterday she was being stubborn and refusing to turn and determined to let mommy check out the NICU. She has always known exactly what she wants, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's been an amazing year getting to know this bundle of joy and I wanted to make her first birthday special. 

And it turned out just perfect! She was surrounded by people who simply adore her and got to play with her favorite little baby friend in the water. 

And of course she loved her gifts, though sometimes the wrapping paper was her favorite part. 

She, surprisingly, wasn't a fan of her cake. We gave her free reign of it and she barely touched it with one finger and proceeded to give it to me. I know it was delicious because HB ate it for her! I suppose I can't be upset when my child chooses to eat the fruits and veggies over a pure sugar, strawberry cake. I'll take it as a mommy and daddy win. 

I think it was planning this birthday that sparked my interest in crafts again. The past few months have been full of packing, organizing, moving and unpacking that I couldn't even begin to think about creating more things! But now that we were all settled in I could focus on making things. The fact that things tend to be a bit more expensive here helped fuel my desire to make everything as well.

The first task was deciding on a theme for the party. I knew I wanted it to be colorful, but I'm not a huge fan of rainbows. Then one night as we were reading our bedtime story I decided that our theme would be "oh, the places you'll go!". Typically I think this is used as a graduation theme, but what better way to prepare for the places she'll go than from the beginning! And she's already been fortunate enough to travel across the world and will hopefully be able to continue exploring the wonders of the world when she gets older. 

I had a great time creating all the different elements, and I made almost everything. I'll be making posts with how-to's for everything in the coming posts. One of the things I didn't make was Sophia's headband. I got that from the awesome Lucy&Riley. It just matched the color scheme so well I couldn't help myself. For those in Australia you can check out her Facebook page to see all of her beautiful headbands! 

We decided to do a cake smash session for Sophia's one year pictures. She wasn't the biggest fan of the cake part, but we got some beautiful pictures. Here's a sneak peek courtesy of One Moment One Time Photography!

A momma bear introduction

I thought I would start with a little introduction for those that might not know us very well. To start, I am Shauntay (AKA: Snicker doodle, momma bear, Snickies, and pretty much any other silly name you could think of). I am married to the most wonderful, and silliest, man Shawn (AKA: Honeybunches, bunches of love, etc.). We have, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful little girl Sophia (AKA: Babybear, Babygirl, Cakies, etc.). Together we make up SKM3.

A little over six months ago we learned that we would be going on an adventure 'down under'. In two short months we packed up our entire lives, spent over 30 hours in airports and on planes and found ourselves in Brisbane, QLD Australia. It was an emotional roller coaster and a very busy couple of months, but it has been an amazing adventure thus far. I wouldn't do anything differently (ok, maybe I would like a bit more time to plan and such, but that just added to the fun).

This whole adventure has been and will continue to be a huge learning curve for me. I have worked at least one job since I was allowed to. But this adventure encouraged me to take the opportunity to be a stay at home mom and enjoy these couple of years with that beautiful baby of ours. I have never really enjoyed not being busy or having something to work on so the idea of staying at home with the baby was daunting. I'm not saying I ever thought it would be easy or boring or would consist of me sitting on the couch doing nothing all day. But I had a hard time picturing myself staying busy with things other than housework. Don't get me wrong, I love trying to see if I can put away toys faster than S can get them out, but I knew we would need more fun.

I love crafts of all kinds, so I decided that beyond play dates and parks and playgroup I would focus on creating things with S to help her learn and develop new skills. We've already done some pretty fun stuff (like our edible paint at 10 months) and each time we did something new I wanted to share it, hence the reason for this blog. It's meant to be a mix of keeping family and friends back home up to date as S grows and to share some of the ideas we have found with those who are interested.