Holiday Pics

Rhys loves it too - chatted all the way out to the beach. The ice cream soon put a stop to the chit chatting.

This is a 1928 Dodge Victory. It's Nick's Father's Grandfathers. So I guess that makes it a Great Grandfather to Nick. Anyway, it now lives in our garage and has been out a few times. This was a trip we did last week to Sumner beach. Obviously so comfortable a ride that Jospeh was lulled off to sleep. He loves it. Another ride we did just the other day he refused to get out when we had arrived at the destination ' stay in old car'. Thankfully the weather has been mild still so it's nice to take it out. Don't know if I'm up for a trip in the middle of winter though. It's a very cool car and has almost all original parts.

This pic makes the kitten look huge, but I can assure you it was tiny. Nick offered to catsit for a colleague. She is 12 weeks old, toilet trained and very cute. The boys were both fascinated with her. We had her for 3 nights and Joseph was very good at saying goodbye too, we thought he may have been too attached but was happy to wave goodbye. Although she was very cute and loads of fun for the boys we weren't sold on the idea of having a pet just yet, also, seeing another friend's house and lawn in a state of destruction form their puppy put us off even more.

Just another day at home with two precious boys

This was taken a wee while ago. Joseph still uplifts the toy basket so that Rhys can play with ALL the toys.

Check out the shoes. One of Joseph's favourite wet day activities is to go into our wardrobe and get more often than not, my shoes or big boots and try them on. He is really good at walking in these ones. He went through a stage of insisting that our visitors take their shoes and socks off (with his help) and putting them on. Thankfully he hasn't asked anyone for their footwear lately.

Just a typical look from the wee one. Fingers in mouth with the teething - except now because he has a couple of top teeth chewing on fingers gives more pain than comfort, wonder when he'll figure that one out. The standing up is getting toward clambering around the furniture now. We have to be fast shutting doors to the outside and to cupboards now too - he races so fast across the floor heading straight for the leaves on the deck or the plates in the cupboard.

We got this tunnel from the toy library, it's a bit of a hit. Looks like Rhys is giving a cheeky wink on the way through but he's actually trying to shield his precious eyes from the flash of the camera, poor child.

This is Rhys ploughing through Joseph's train set up. Pity I don't have any audio of the crime, it went someting like this: ' NO RHYS!' Rhys not 'lowed that!' There is often a giant baby on the corner of the tracks, he has been known to pick up whole passenger carriages and eat them.

Orana Park Visit

Going on safari is a serious business

The hand and hat belong to Joseph - he got brave and fed the giraffes, they eventually saw his little branch sticking up and came over to devour it.

Yesterday we went Orana Park. If we go somewhere we normally go for the morning getting home in time for lunch and then putting boys to bed. Well, by the time we had watched the lions snoozing, the meerkats smooching, seen the tigers being fed and then fed the giraffes it was almost 1pm. So we stayed on to have some lunch snatched from hands by ducks and peacocks and watch the lions being fed (much more exciting than the snoozing) and didn't make it home until about 4pm, by which time there were two exhausted toddlers sleeping and one wee one raring to move because he'd been stuck in the buggy most of the day. We went with Alex's (Joseph's cousin) Grandma as his Mum has been away on a course. Was a super day, although I still don't know how I feel about animals in captivity. They seemed pretty happy. Boys being boys, the ride on the safari tractor/trailer was the most exciting.

Sleep Time

This is how I found Rhys the other day when I went to check on him. I opened the door and looked in the cot but couldn't see him. At first I thought he had fallen out and was on the floor (he is into climbing on anything at the moment and we really need to put the base of the cot down). He had broken out of hs safe-t-sleep which velcroes around his tummy and (usually) keeps him from banging his head and ending up like this. He still slept for a couple of hours and I did remove the blanket from his face but it doesn't look the most comfortable.

I am pretty lucky with Joseph and sleep time as he still normally sleeps for a couple of hours or more in the middle of the day - it's grand when they sleep at the same time! Yesterday however, he had different ideas. We did the usual routine, toilet, nappy on (it's always dry when he wakes but we still put it on anyway), story, then I say I will come back in a minute. Well, I came back four times and he was still awake - about 40 minutes had passed and in that time he had done handstands (feet on the wall, hands on the bed), reached into the dresser and tried on socks and baby shoes, thrown pillows off the bed and the final one where I knew I was not going to get my two hours toddler free time, sitting on the dresser after throwing off all the toys complete with huge grin and very wide awake eyes. We opened the curtains, took the nappy off, got dressed and went out! Needless to say he was exhausted by 5pm and went to sleep when Nick was reading to him sometime after 7.

Rhys' New Trick

In the spirit of not wanting to give in, Rhys has decided to continue mastering things way earlier than Joseph did (he will be 8 months tomorrow, 4th). This is the latest, pulling himself up to stand. He will try it with anything, toy baskets, rubbish bins, Joseph's legs, but the favourite has to be the speakers. You can see in the photo the highchair(s) which he loves to clamber about on, often getting stuck but he always goes back to them.

He has his top teeth coming through at the moment so is chewing manically on anything and everything. It hasn't stopped his appetite though and sometimes we can hardly believe what he manages to put away in one sitting!

Joseph is being a typical two year old. He loves having his friends over to play. There are two that we see each week, sometimes 3 times a week depending on how the mothers are coping. They are two great women whio live nearby and we all have two children now.

We keep being impressed with Joseph's talking. He is stringing more and more words together. "where's Rhys Mummy?" is a favourite at the moment, 'read this one', 'where's that book gone?' and of course, 'go away naughty cat!' as he's running chasing away the cats that are always trying out our soil. (Does anyone have any remedies for keeping cats away?)

This is taking a very long time toput together today. Rhys managed to push the lounge door open and make his way rapidly down to Joseph's room, where he is peacefully sleeping. It's like rounding up chickens some days.

This pic was taken last week when we went for a walk to feed the ducks...