Pirate children

They may be dressed up as pirates but Jemma in particular is acting like a pirate- holding her parents to ransom! Not often, but every now and then Jemma wakes up in the middle of the night. She wants to come to our bed or Mum to sleep with her. If we say no, she screams and carries on to wake Riley... a loud voice for a wee miss!! So we are changing her name to 'terrorist'. Mum is her favourite at the moment. When Dad goes in to get her out of bed in the morning, she says 'no, Mummy get me' so Daddy leaves her there until she changes her mind....same with dressing her, brushing her teeth, drying her... the list goes on. She played on a trampoline for an hour the other day and when I said they had to go, I was told by her "no, I just want one more minute".. you see where we are confused between pirate and terrorist..............


We have met the challenging times with our beautifully independent and strong willed child? :-) We certainly value her strength of character but man, it is hard work training her!!

Swimming lessons have finished for the winter and both children are at the same stage. They have done well and Riley is slowly building confidence. Jemma is capable of doing it on her own... she just can't touch the bottom so we are praying she will have a growth spurt before October. They will probably be in a class together then..saves us time at the pool. Riley is wearing the cap he wanted as a reward for floating with the noodle and kickboard but noone touching him.

We are excitedly counting down to our Australia trip, though Dad goes off to England and Europe first so we will meet him in ChCh - busy times ahead especially for Mum.

Kite flying

What has been happening with us?

Jemma finally posed nicely for pixifoto so hopefully we will get some good ones so that it doesn't look like we play favourites with the photos presently on the wall. It is amazing what a few months maturity will do. She was such a poser this time around, with her knee high purple boots and skirt and top!

At their childcare is a teacher mad on rugby and Jemma would never turn down having her face painted. As it is, she is slowly decimating all my make up.

Riley had his first 'wee kids wednesday' which is an hour a week preparing for school. He was slow to warm up and Mum needed to sit on the mat with him but by the end, he was leading them all around the school on a scavenger hunt. My baby is going to school in less than 4 months.... sniff... sniff...

We had a windy day today so we took the new plane kite to the park. It took a bit of building and Dad the engineer swore every which way but loose but once it was up and flying, it was worth it. Riley even flew it on his own with Dad launching it - the look of pride on Rileys face was priceless- a real confidence booster for him.

Easter has been and gone

Time still continuing to fly by. We had a great Easter with both sets of grandparents joining us in Omarama. Nana managed to find another singing bunny- she has a knack for that... We went to the airshow. Jemma found it really scary and Nana took her to the family tent to de-stress. A week later, we had a conversation a bit like this. "The spitfire was a bit noisy Mum. A wee bit scary. I didn't like it. Nana looked after me in the tent. Riley was scared too" So I don't think she is quite over the trauma yet.

Riley wore earmuffs and coped better with the noise but he too did not like the fireworks at the beginning. However, he talked about the planes for ages.. still is. We put lots of pictures in his special book and he knows the planes pretty well. Though today, the train set came out so maybe we will have a new/old focus again.

Jemma has found my make up container and she likes to bring the makeup out for me to open and her to put it on 'all by myself'. She then checks herself out in the mirror... can you imagine what she will be like as she gets older???? She coloured her toenails with black vivid on Sunday whilst watching Dr Seuss ABC on the computer. Unfortunately she also coloured her face and my office chair......

Riley had a 24 hour vomiting bug last week which thankfully didn't get shared with the family (touchwood) as it looked horrible and Mum is sick of washing bedclothes. Riley likes using his new word 'vomit' though.

We are counting down to our Australia trip. I have set up a folder in my favourites of where we are staying and all the places we are going so when we are bored, that fills in 3/4 of an hour for us. 46 days to go.....