It has been a really, really long time since I dropped a personal post down in these pages. I don’t really have any usable excuse – two little girls keeps you pretty busy, and after a long day of desk-bound keyboard bashing work, followed by play time, supper time, and finally bed time, means that come the few hours before bed, I’d much rather do something else than spend even more time behind the keyboard. Still, it has been a long time and well, there’s loads of updates to deliver I guess.
On Jessica, she’s absolutely flourishing at Vergeet-My-Nie playschool, turning into a real little girl who loves to play with her Barbies, has a fixation with all things My Little Pony, is fascinated by Teen Titans Go!, and is thoroughly enjoying her weekly ballet lesson. Make no mistake, she can get grumpy and tends to cry a lot if things don’t go her way, but that normalcy aside, she really is a little darling.
The bike riding isn’t really coming along, but that’s partly our fault – we don’t really practice very often with her. She still plays with the girls in the complex though, and I’ll often come home to find a small gaggle of girls having overrun the place!
Sadly, she has a cavity in her one tooth (confirmed by the dentist) which will have to be fixed sooner than later, but man, dentistry is expensive! Also, she’s inherited my overbite, meaning braces will most certainly be staring her down come her teenage future. Sigh.
Emily is just plain adorable! She smiles at anything and everything, and now that she has finally outgrown her bad reflux, she’s much, much easier for me to love even more (it grated me that every time I used to pick her up, she’d throw up on me. Sigh, the pleasures of being a daddy I suppose). Anyway, she now spends her days at Baby Steps creche (where Jess went), and it’s nice to see how well she is progressing in comparison to Jess at her age – Emily can sit independently (with pillows packer around her for just in case!), has been holding her own bottle during feeds for ages now, is eating solids like sweet potato and butternut, and has two nice and sharp, protruding teeth in her bottom jaw. (Funny, because she seems to take great pleasure in taking a nip at Chantelle’s nipple every now and then during breastfeeding!)
Oh, and you should see how she flaps her arms and legs and squeals in delight whenever she spots Chantelle for the first time in a little while! Too adorable for words! :)
(On the breastfeeding note, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to live with that incessant groaning noise that Chantelle’s breast pump makes during her daily milk expression sessions! Still, it is a lot cheaper than formula, so I guess I can’t complain that much…)
Chantelle is keeping pretty busy, she successfully completed her wedding cake course presented by Angie Boyd of Vanilla House fame, and aside from being the primary caregiver of Emily and Jess outside of work hours, she is still keeping her little baking venture in the form of Chantelle’s Cupcakery alive and well.
Also, she’s joined an informal walking club here in Gordon’s Bay, and now quite happily does a handful of 7+ km walks every week!
On the baking business front, sadly it must be said that Chantelle’s Cupcakery is struggling somewhat in terms of finances. As it turns out, trading at the markets just isn’t so financially viable when it comes to cakes and cupcakes, and in addition to losing that business, the big contract with Sacred Ground deli was ended, picked up again, and then finally ended for good from their side, meaning a big income blow there as well.
Also, believe it or not, there is a lot of baking competition here in Gordon’s Bay, and it would seem that the local market just isn’t the right fit for what Chantelle does. Nevertheless, we do have some plans up our sleeves, and of course, a change of market may go a long way in turning things around financially. All that said and done, the good news is that Chantelle is already starting to see some traction on the wedding cake front – which is of course exciting news for the business.
As for me, on the work front I’m still battling as a DevOp/Team Manager on the Touchwork front, a task made harder by the recent loss of my senior development resource to takealot.com – honestly, I’ve been on this front for a while now, and I have to say, I’m beginning to tire of it.
Boring work stuff aside though, this year thus far has been pretty good in terms of family getaways (a good thing, because I enjoy getting away from the house) – and is about to get EVEN better for me with the “two brothers travel to Japan” adventure looming up just around the corner! (More of which I’ll detail in a separate post, promise.)
As I said at the start of this post though, two little girls tends to keep one pretty busy, meaning still no extramural activities for me (bad), and unfortunately this blasted dark all the time Winter mornings and evenings has meant a complete stall of exercise (even worse). Sigh.
I have interestingly enough being gaming a fair bit again, interesting because I had kind of gone off gaming, but obviously it’s a hobby good enough to fill that little hole left by the rather diminished social life I lead at the moment. On a different interests’ front, sadly, outside of the more mature DC animated movies which I still pick up and watch without fail, my love for animated fare hasn’t returned – meaning that I guess have to now accept the inevitable fact that I have matured to a point where I can no longer watch kiddies television and gain enjoyment from it. Sad. (That said, I am currently enjoying watching Teen Titans Go! with Jessica. It makes me chuckle. Don’t judge.)
Asset news? Well one positive is that our 2010 Hyundai Getz is almost completely paid off, in just less than two years before the original signed repayment term ends. This is of course great news in terms of interest saved and even better because of the incoming boost to our monthly finances once that monthly car repayment debit is no more. (Important because as mentioned earlier, Chantelle’s business that is not performing well for a while now).
On the moving back to Bellville front – sadly our house still hasn’t been sold, and it has to be said, we’re not seeing much foot traffic in the form of potential buyers at the moment. It could be that winter has chased everyone away, but the reality is that the property just isn’t proving popular with buyers, much to the bewilderment of Len our property agent in charge of selling the house. Hopefully spring/summer will heat things up again, but Chantelle and I have pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we’ll be in Gordon’s Bay for much of this year after all, so much so that I even went and put back up all the baking/braai room shelving that I had taken down in order to sell the house! (A project that takes the better part of a day I’ll have you know.)
Anyway, so that’s pretty much all the updates I think that needed to be given, meaning the only thing still to do is play catch up on all the photo galleries I avoided posting over the last couple of months!
(Eventually. This post took ages to churn out I’ll have you know!)