Long overdue post

Summer has been a bit of a blur, but here we are again. We were on the island for most of the Christmas break, apart from 2 nights in Hamilton. Jane has been very busy with the Royal Commission as the report is due by 31 March, and is likely to be busy most of Feb and early March.

Henry started kindy (next door to us) last week and is really enjoying it. Here are some photos of his first day with his friend Jasmine (who started on the same day) and her Mum, Felicia.



The good news is that Zoe has been sleeping through the night about half the time since the start of January. Although to be fair, we are so weary from her constant sleeping in 2008 (where she slept through for 3 weeks in January but not again) that we regard her waking at 4.30-5 in the morning as more-or-less sleeping through.

Zoe is as independent as ever, and still refuses to let us feed her. Most of the time she does a good job of feeding herself, although she has developed a habit of putting her breakfast bowl (with the remaining rice bubbles, yoghurt and milk still in it) on her head to signify the end of breakfast. Luckily she eats most meals on the deck. The sparrows get excited when her highchair goes onto the deck because they know a good feed is on the way. Here is Zoe after a chocolate dairy food, which she ate and used as finger paint on the table.




We went to Manowar Bay, at the eastern end of Waiheke, for the afternoon a couple of weeks ago. The kids had a great time playing at the beach, and we had a picnic dinner (using the free council gas BBQ) to top it all off.

First weekend of summer

The weather on the island was stunning last weekend. We had a party for the kids on Saturday (belated 1st birthday for Zoe, who turned 1 on 22 Oct, and Henry's 3rd birthday on the day before his actual birthday). As with Henry's previous two birthdays we didn't quite get around to taking photos so will add some later...

On Sunday we went to the beach for our first swim of summer. The water was pretty warm at Palm Beach but we went late in the afternoon so the the wind picked up and made us glad that Henry was wearing his wetsuit. His teeth were chattering but he loved it.

Pirates and princesses

Henry's friend Jasmine had her 3rd birthday party yesterday. Henry really clicked with a sweet little blonde girl called Tehya, and they spent hours and hours playing on the swings together, chatting to each other and giggling madly the whole time. To the astonishment of anyone who knows either of them (they are both a bit shy) they even shared a couple of kisses in the Wendy house. What amazed me is that a lot of their conversation was reminiscing about the last time they met, which was a few months ago on the car ferry when they played chasies together. There was a lot of this sort of conversation yesterday:

"I chased you on the noisy boat."
"I chased you on the noisy boat too."
"I caught you."
"No I caught you. I am a good runner."
"No I ran away fast."
"And I went on the spinny chairs on the noisy boat."

etc etc etc...all very funny to the two of them for some reason.

Zoe is a natural at parties and all kinds of social occasions. She loves the hustle and bustle. Yesterday we had our doubts as she had only had half an hour's sleep when the party started at 2.30pm, but she was still going strong - not so much as a grizzle - when we left at around 9pm even though she must have been absolutely shattered.

She is starting to take a few steps on her own now, and today she managed to get into a standing position by herself for the first time (ie without pulling up on something or someone).

Out and about with Amanda

Petrol heads

Here are some photos of the kids playing cars this morning.

Also, we were thinking the other day that we should record some of Henry's funny pronunciations because some of them are disappearing now:
-earmouses
-bisketti
-cucumumber
-sausasages
-headcake (sometimes as part of a loud song called "Mum's got a headcake, let's sing her a song to make her feel better")

Happy birthday Zoe

Zoe turned 1 on 22 Oct. It was very low key, as my dislocated knee was the last straw in terms of party planning. We had one of Zoe's favourite foods, risotto, for dinner and grandma came over for chocolate cake. We will have a joint birthday party for both kids at the end of Nov.

At the end of her first year, Zoe is still not sleeping through the night, weighs 7.6kgs (10th percentile) and from memory is 71cms (25th percentile). She can say quite a few words, including ta, dog (and woof woof), pig, dad, mum, uh-oh, up, Amanda, banana, Henry, no. Some words are more approximate than others.

Dogs are amongst her favourite things. She calls most animals dogs, and pulls her animal books off her bookshelf to find the pictures of dogs and woof at them. She also pretends to be a dog by carrying things around in her mouth, dropping them and barking and panting.

Pizza helper pt 2

Here is a photo of Henry helping to knead the pizza dough on Sunday last week, proudly sporting the apron which Nana Glover made for him. (He is also wearing a shirt that his Dad used to wear when he was 2...)

Al fresco dining

Luckily spring is here so we can put the kids on the deck for the odd meal, and let Zoe indulge in one of her favourite pastimes - feeding herself. While her clear preference is for feeding herself messy foods over the carpet, she seems quite happy upending a bowl of plain pasta too.

Toilet humour and other boy stuff

Everything is about poo for Henry at the moment. Today, Henry and I established that fireflies do tiny poos, Mum does medium-sized poos, elephants do big poos, and plants don't do poos. Nice.

Today he also found a dead worm on the lawn. He thought that Paul (who mows our lawns) should chop it up with the weedeater so we could eat it for tea.

Lately, he has also figured out that different letters make different sounds, and he likes to think of words that start with a particular letter. So, until now, he knew that boat and baby start with "b", but only because we had told him so - now he can think of more on his own. He quite often gets them wrong, especially vowels (a is for ostrich), but he has the general idea. Imagine his delight when he realised that p is for poo.

Rollercoaster

For the past fortnight we have had a rollercoaster from the Waiheke Toy Library. I picked it up thinking that it might keep Henry amused for 10 minutes a couple of times a week, but didn't realise that he would spend about an hour a day on it (thanks to the endlessly patient Amanda, who looks after the kids while Jane is working).

I also had no idea that Zoe would be so into it. She is a bit of a daredevil, and loves to do anything which Henry is doing. By the end of the fortnight she was going down the rollercoaster by herself, and Henry thought it was a great game to roll Zoe back to the top and push her down again. Thankfully he was very careful when doing this, but it was still too much for Jane to watch. It was great to see them playing together so nicely, and it seems as though Henry now thinks his little sister is a bit more fun than she was.