The age of innocence

Beth amazes and amuses me with her ever-increasing language skills. I want to share a few cute sayings she has. She has a tendency to mimic what I say but with a twist which produces interesting dialogue.
"I'm warning you Mummy!". Used by Beth when she wants me to do something or she's getting frustrated. This is based on me counting Beth out for time-out and telling her, "Beth, this is your last warning". "Barnaby, that's naughty. Go to your bedroom for five minutes!". As above.
"Hello Barney darling", "Hello sweetie", "Aw, what's the matter?", "I don't know what's wrong", "Well done Mummy", "Good job Barnaby!" etc. etc. All mimicked from me but just melt my heart when I hear it in her sweet voice.
"Thank you for a lovely day", "I have had a lovely time", "I had such a lovely time at swimming Mummy". Do you feel like you're reading an Enid Blyton novel?
And here are some peculiarities that at some stage probably started with me, Tom or daycare but which now it seems Beth has made her own:
"What on earth are we doing here?". Stated when she was building a tower with blocks today.

"I want to build a harbour bridge and make them dance". Stated today when she was decorating toilet rolls with stickers and coloured paper.

I'm also trying to teach Beth the alphabet. We have a book she loves where each letter has two pictures for it - one folds out to reveal the other picture. She was going very well with the early letters... Mummy: "A is for ...." Beth: "Apple", Mummy: "And A is for ...", Beth: (whilst folding the picture out), "Angel" etc. etc. But the pictures probably get more ambiguous and the letters harder toward the end. So by V we had, Mummy: "V is for ..." Beth: "Mmm, what's that?", Mummy: "It's a volcano, V is for volcano", Beth: "I don't like that", Mummy affirms she doesn't either, then Mummy: "and V is for ...", Beth: "Flowers!", Mummy: "No darling V is for vase". But there were flowers in the vase. Mummy: "Y is for ...", Beth: "Fried egg!", Beth still loves her fried egg, Mummy: "well the yellow bit is called yolk, Y is for yolk", Beth: "Fried egg!" she says pointing at the picture. Well, she's got a point. So we move on, Mummy: "And Y is for ...", Beth: "orange!", I guess the yellow paint does look a bit orange. I'm giggling by this point and just trying to finish up. Bless her. Queen of the spelling bee, perhaps not?

Finally, the time of the eternal "why" has now arrived. Today Beth has questioned everything. I get the usual, "Mummy, what are you doing?" at least 20 times a day. But she's adding more to her repertoire, "Mummy, why is Daddy at work?", "Why is it Saturday?", "Why are we going to grandma's?", "What is Maddison (our 2yo neighbour) doing?", "What's this?" and "Where are you going?". "What is that man doing?", she asks as we're driving to Galston. I haven't even seen the guy and tell her that. "But what is he doing?" she demands. !! At least she thinks I'm omniscient.

Our Trip

I can't resist posting a few of the best photos of our wonderful trip to Blighty last month. The top three highlights for me (apart from seeing family of course) would be:

1) The Coast of Devon with John, Barbara, Amy and Phoebe -











































2) Lovebox Music Festival -

































3) Being in London sans kids -































More photos of the kids to come....

Coming up for air

It's been a huge few months. For details.... see Tom's blog. In short, end April - we are burgled. Barnaby and I arrive home whilst burglary is still in progress but thankfully we are unaware and blissfully feed away in Barnaby's room whilst burglars make a quick escape with all my jewellery (sigh) but nothing else. B-boy also gets a rotten double ear infection from a nasty cold that same week- bless. I joke that I'm waiting for the third bad thing to happen to friends a few days later. Unfortunately, in this case the third event is worse than any of us could imagine. Our darling Barnaby scalds himself with boiling water all down his chest at daycare the following Monday (5th May). May is a blur of distress, bandages, hospital visits and limbo to see how Barnaby is healing. The lowest point was finding out Barney needed skin grafts on some of the burns in order for them to heal properly. The high points were watching him smile (mostly) throughout his ordeal and the wonderment of how well kids recover from serious injuries. B-boy went from being unable to crawl, due to the burns hurting and being in a splint, to crawling and cruising a few weeks later. Now, three months on his burn scar is healing well and we're in a good routine for his care which is fairly intensive. His next hospital appointment is tomorrow so more on that as it comes. We just had over three weeks in England visiting Tom's family in July which was brilliant. It was just the break we all needed and wonderful time to spend together with all the family. We're now over the jet lag and getting back to some normality in our lives, albeit with quite a few changes for all of us. So, hopefully I'll get around to putting some photos up of our trip (otherwise checkout the flickr link). And the plan is to get back to posting a few times a week about the kids and their doings.

Beth and her "breast pads"

Beth's curiosity knows no bounds and she wants to know what everything is all the time. "Mummy whaz that?" would be one of her most common questions. At some time in the past she must have found out that I wear breast pads to help with leakage when breastfeeding. Naturally, she wanted to have some of her own to look at but I don't remember her ever wanting to wear them. Anyway, she found some muffin cake paper liners in the pantry and started playing with them. Then she came up to me holding one and said "here Mummy, here's a breast pad for you". "Thanks Beth", I said. "You're welcome" was her response. Since then these muffin liners have been "breast pads" to Beth and come in handy for putting stickers on, drawing on, or just lining up all over the kitchen floor.

After Easter up at Avoca we had our usual mess of unpacking in the hallway upstairs and so Beth was rummaging through it and being quietly industrious while Tom and I were running her bath. She came into the bathroom holding her green gumboot in her hand. "What's in there Beth", asked Tom. "I've got breastpads in my gumboot Daddy" she said. "Now that's a sentence that's probably never been said before" was Tom's response. I think he's right on that one.

Things that wrench your heart

Barnaby started at Daycare on Monday 31st March. He's going one day a week and is in the same room as Beth which I'm really glad about. But it was a really tough decision to make about him starting when we got the call a couple of weeks ago. If he was just a couple of months older it would have been an easier decision, especially once he started crawling. But... he's just a little 7 month old baby (our baby!) who can only just sit up on his own and gets around by rolling everywhere. I shed quite a few tears on Sunday night despite having a week or so to emotionally process this transition. I guess it means to me that I'll never have Barnaby with me 24/7 again. We're both moving on from that - but are either of us ready for it?

Well, Barney had a great first day and the staff are enamoured with him. He gives them a huge smile whenever we walk in the door to drop off Beth. It's good that he's been seeing this place twice a week ever since he was born because of her. I don't think it even registered to him to feel sad that I had left him there with Beth - he was just interested in watching everything going on around him. So he's fine, Beth's fine, Tom's fine and I am too (mostly). But it does tug at the heart strings a bit (at times a lot). How must it be when kids start kindy five days a week?

Baby's growing up

It's amazing how much can change in a month. Around end Jan when Barnaby was just 5 months old I tried him with rice cereal for the first time. His response was far from encouraging - face pulling, hands trying to bat the food away, crying etc. Too early... he's not ready. So I just tried every few days or so but didn't stress if he didn't have any. Barney started to get the whole swallowing thing but not the mouth opening part. Then at the beginning of March, when I was at my sister's minding Alex and Annabel, Barnaby started opening his mouth as the spoon with food came toward him... hallelujah! Yep, he's got it! Since then Barney has quickly progressed to 3 meals a day and eats everything! Hurrah. He had cous cous with mashed sweet potato and natural yoghurt for dinner tonight and couldn't get enough of it. He then had 2/3 of a mashed banana for dessert and would have had more if I'd offered it.

We were up at Avoca last weekend and Barnaby slept through the night until 8am - yey again. This week I've offered him water in a bottle rather than milk if he's woken in the night and he's settled back to sleep again until 8-ish. Hopefully in a few more days he'll wake up, cry a little and then settle himself back to sleep (just like Beth learned to do). So I'm hopeful we're about to get uninterrupted nights back again.

Barney is now 8.3kgs and 68cms long. He's really chubbing up, especially in the legs, since he got into solids fully. Up at Avoca on Sunday morning he was up on all fours rocking which is fantastic. I think he'll be on the move fairly soon.

Back to Life... Back to Reality

We've been home six weeks and I am now feeling like I'm almost on top of things... sort of, well not really but I have to jolly myself along with this perception. We're all really well. We had a brilliant trip to England but I must say it was also nice to be back in our own home, in our super comfy bed (something I love almost as much as Tom and the kids), and in familiar environs. I can't say I love our area but it's nice to go to the local shops and know exactly where to buy something from and be able to achieve little things easily. I've also enjoyed getting back in the kitchen and cooking proper meals and knowing where everything is - funny how the little things make a difference.

Quick update on the kids.

Barney is now 6 months old! He had doubled his birthweight at 5 mths old and has just started to happily take solids. We had a couple of weeks of him learning to swallow, not opening his mouth for the food, whacking the spoon with his hands anytime it came close to him, and very funny face pulling. So it's great that he seems to be in the swing of eating mushy food and chomping on bread crusts. Barney's also traversing the lounge room floor by rolling around the place - something I fondly remember Beth doing at a similar age. He's extremely good natured, always got a huge gummy smile for us, loves to blow raspberries and occasionally sounds like he's saying something such as "hello" (but that's probably parental projection). The rougher Beth is with Barney the more he laughs. He's sitting up on his own reasonably well if he's on a cushioned surface but I'm still not sure how he'd do sitting on tiles or in the bath. He hasn't got any teeth yet - no rush - and he's breastfeeding well. Barney's not sleeping fully through yet but it's not too bad either. He tends to go to bed at 7pm, wake around 5am for a breastfeed before going straight back to sleep until 7.30am-8am when he's up and ready for brekkie. He's gorgeous.

Beth is fab. She's started swimming lessons since we got home. She had a couple of lessons a few weeks in when she decided she didn't want to get in the water and it took a lot of imagination and gentle coaxing on the part of the swimming teachers to get her in. Last week she was straight in the water and had a ball so I think we're on track again. She can't wait to be 5 as this is when I've told her she can go to school. She loves driving past our local school and telling me she'll be going there when she's 5. Sometimes she tells me she is "5 today" but she's ok when I disagree and remind her she's only 2. She's very strong-willed and is getting more stubborn by the day. A common response when I ask her not to do something is, "I will do it!". On the other hand, threats of time out in her bedroom are working very well and she usually comes round after a couple of warnings.

Beth's language and pronunciation keep improving. Her daycare teachers remarked how much better it was just in the 7 weeks we were away overseas. She's lovely to Barney and is pretty good at sharing with him. Now that he's getting rusks she's decided she wants them too. She can't pronounce them properly so it sounds like she's asking for "rucks". She keeps asking me to sing songs that I don't know about an "orc" (not sure what it really is) and "darry dar" (again no idea). So we tend to sing a song that consists of two words and two notes - rather repetitive. I've also realised how much of my phrases she copies. I must have said "I'm afraid" to prefix some bad news I had to tell her ie. "I'm afraid your butterfly shorts are in the wash". Suddenly I had this coming back at me in the funniest circumstances. Beth - "I'm going to wear my blue skirt today I'm afraid Mummy". We also don't know what she thinks "yet" means or "plan" for that matter. Today Tom told Beth he had a plan. Beth's response was, "Oh dear, don't be sad Daddy". She now lets me put her hair up in hairbands (yey!) and these almost last the whole day depending on whatever else is going on. She's into stickers, buttons, felt, playdough, finger painting and putting things into something else. We made a treasure chest today by covering a shoe box in various colourful wrapping paper. The plan is to keep all her little treasures that are not Barney friendly in this box in her room. So far, it's been very handy for me to stuff whatever mess is lying around into. And I've realised we're going to need a bigger box!