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.