Mmmm Food!

Katy had her first taste of food today testing her taste buds on good old farex rice cereal. All seemed to go well although I think she was more interested in grabbing the spoon. Perhaps a sign that she is going to be determined to feed herself - could get messy.

Katy has decided that she likes to 'sit up' in the bath watching her legs move in the water and splashing a little with her hands. I say 'sit up' but it's really being held up.

Another fantastic achievement for Katy is that she has finally worked out how to sleep through (ie from 8pm until 6am) for the last 4 nights. Perhaps waking up is a thing of the past?? Combine this with no nighttime visits from Ella makes two very happy parents :) Going to bed for Ella however is another story or should I say saga....

Rainy Day Antics

What to do when the weather prevents you from going outside to climb - improvise!

Helicopter

Out to Black Mountain Peninsula to meet up with the regular mothers group gang today. As we were driving along the peninsula we saw the Snowy hydro Southcare helicopter flying rather low over the lake. I stopped and pointed it out to Ella, thinking it would fly off pretty quickly. However after parking I saw our group of mum's (with their kids) watching the helicopter from the lookout. It seemed that the helicopter and crew were doing some training activities - dropping off and picking up people from the moving boat below. After 15 minutes the kids lost interest so we wandered back over to the playground to expend some energy.

Noodles

Little kids really are surprising at times.

Tonight was a pretty normal night. We had pasta for dinner (home made sweet potato gnocchi which Ella rejected; and had noodles instead) then bathtime. I struggled for half an hour to dress Ella before Nat intervened, and milk time followed. The bottle of milk was finished before things started to seriously unravel. First it was a little burp, followed by a tiny spew towards the couch, and then it all came up (I'm talking about Ella here, not Nat). We didn't have the foresight to shift Ella sufficiently far from the rug, so we grabbed some towels to try and stop the flow and clean up before it soaked in.

Now a normal person would expect to feel pretty down after an episode like this -- maybe crawl off to bed and feel sorry for one's self. But Ella seemed completely unshaken. So unperturbed that when she looked down at her filthy top, all she could think to say was: "Look, noodle" and tried to shove the offending article back in her mouth....

HB Andy

Happy Birthday Andy. As today was going to be a busy day we decided to have a nice dinner last night. This involved the girls and I cooking lamb shanks followed by a baked cheesecake. Both girls were keen to help out in their own ways - Ella licked the beaters while Katy played happily with her tiger.

As for today, Katy kept Andy entertained all day as there was no 3 hour sleep like last week! Luckily the new iPod docking station worked a treat. Pippa also did her bit by taking Andy and Katy for a short run in the sunshine.

Orienteering Summer Series

Tonight saw a change of routine - we went off to the first orienteering summer series event held at the Pinnacle. While Andy ran around his course Ella, Katy and I tackled the blue course. Ella began well racing off to the first 3 controls. Her attention and stamina ran out between 4 - 5. Rather than find controls #5, Ella climbed trees and then picked lots of gum leaves. By this time Katy was getting more upset (from the bumpy ride in the pram I expect), Ella refused to walk anymore so I turfed Katy out of the pram into the baby bjorn and Ella into the pram.

If I thought the cross country from 4 -5 was bumpy then 5 -7 was getting to the stage of ridiculous. Anyway we did survive and the 1.6km course took us about 50mins. An enjoyable evening especially now that the weather has begun to warm up.

Weekend Wrap Up

Busy weekend. Here are a few things we did....

Ella getting Katy ready to go out to afternoon tea with Nat and her work colleagues.

Wood fired pizza at Loics - yum!

With ice cream

Playing under the trampoline with Selima

Pulling faces in the kettle

BBQ dinner at Nana and Grandpas for Andy's birthday

Cuddling Nana

Balla Balla Bambina Part 2

Here is a photo of Ella in her Balla Balla Bambina / Upsy Daisy outfit dancing and watching Dorothy.

And this is Ella about 15mins later (at 5.30pm) after too much dancing and not enough sleeping during the day :)

Needles

Katy had her 4 month old needles today - a little later than originally planned. Needless to say she didn't particularly like them giving a good cry after each one. As for the oral vaccination - she wasn't too fussed - I would even say she prefers it to formula. Her weight is 6.2kg (just under 50th percentile) and length 64cm (just under 90th percentile). She has cut down to 4 feeds during the day and 1 sometime during the night. Next step solids!!

Balla Balla Bambina

Dance, Dance, Little Girl. It's a Wiggles song from the Dorothy the Dinosaur Memory Box dvd which Ella is obsessed with. It started the other day when she said 'Step, hop, hop' and was trying to do the corresponding actions. Andy and I were a little bemused at first assuming this was something learnt from childcare. Interestingly it's the first time Ella has taken something she has watched and repeated it. Now we have to sing and dance to this traditional italian song (which is sung in italian so there is alot of la, la, la going on) all the time. The dancing part involves holding our skirts out (usually the sides of our jeans), picking up imaginary ribbons as well as hopping.

Lost

I experienced every parents worst nightmare today when Ella, Katy and I were at the mushroom playground. Ella was happily playing while I was breastfeeding. She then decided to head for the stage. By the time I had detached Katy, put her in the pram and chased after Ella (whom I assumed would be playing on horsy seats adjacent to the stage) she had disappeared. The total distance between the playground and stage would be 40m and I estimate that Ella was out of my sight for about 20secs. Panic set in.....I headed towards the pet store but decided on pulling the door half open it was too heavy for Ella to open so she couldn't have been in there. Back to the stage again...quick look in organic shop - not in there. Asked some parents who were at the playground if they had seen her - no luck there but they started to help me look. They checked the toilets while I did a lap through the lane to the carpark and around the back via the car. Still no Ella. Next I headed inside thinking maybe she wanted some fruit (the fruit and vegie shops cut up fruit for shoppers to sample so often we have our morning or afternoon tea there!) Did a complete lap past all the fruit and vegie shops and then around the outside still no Ella. The other parents headed towards the centre management. I headed back to pet shop to have a better look and there she was happily talking to the shop assistant.

THANK GOD!!! I calmly told her that I was very worried when she had disappeared without telling me where she was going. According to the shop assistant, Ella wandered in, went straight to the dog meat fridge, took a packet of meat out and proceeded to the cash register. There she also asked for a fish!! By this stage the shop assistant had assumed I was in the shop somewhere and was going around to trying to find me at which point I came in. Ella was happy the whole time (prob about 10min) and not in the slightest bit concerned or upset that I wasn't there.....hmmm don't know quite what to make of that....needless to say we stayed home for the rest of the day.

I forgot to add that on the way home in the car Ella retold the story of Found You Little Wombat (in her own words of course) which was quite amusing!!! It's about little wombat, koala and rabbit playing hide and seek when litle wombat gets lost and then found by his mummy!

More Spring Flowers

Flowers continue to blossom in our garden as seen here.

Aoife Visits

Last week Aoife stopped by in Canberra for a few days before being whisked away by her parents to go to the World Masters in Sydney. Ella and Aoife had a fun day together on Thursday. Firstly they visited the zoo, then a picnic at Weston Park followed by dinner and a big bubble bath at our house.

Clockwork Katy

I thought by now that Katy would be in some sort of routine but apparently the word routine isn't in her vocabulary...yet! So as for sleep Katy began waking up once per night around the age of 6 weeks. Shortly after that we decided to do a dream feed - that is feed her at about 10.30pm in hope that she sleeps until 6am. It worked for the first week but after that she regressed to waking up at 3am. Our rational was 'it will take her a little time to get used to it.' so we persevered with it for about another 6 weeks with random successes but mostly failures. So a few weeks ago we were soooo tired that we gave up the dream feed.

Since then each night has been a different scenario. Last night was a historic moment in time when Ella and Katy both slept from 8pm until 6.30am! It's a pity we didn't get to bed until midnight due to an Easter Twenty10 meeting....

Just for the Record

So another 'Just for the Record' entry. Katy is 4 months and Ella is nearly 2.5 yrs.

1am Katy wakes for a feed

6.30am Ella wanders into our room and climbs into our bed for a cuddle.

7am Katy wakes up ready for another feed and Ella drinks her 240ml bottle of milk

7.30am Nat gets ready for work and leaves by 8am

8am Daddy day care begins!

8.15am Girls get dressed

8.30am Jumping session on the trampoline - Katy thought Ella bouncing her (while in Andy's arms) was hilarious and giggled non stop - very cute according to Andy

9am Walk down to the markets in the big pram - Katy falls asleep

9.30am Meet up with Abby and Zoe, Jase and BA for a play on the mushroom and coffee

10am Try to feed Katy a bottle with not much success

11am Leave to walk back home

11.30am Try to feed Katy milk again with not much success

12pm Ella has macaroni cheese for lunch and Andy has toasty cheese sandwich

12.30pm Try to feed Katy milk again and success!!

1pm - 1.45pm Katy naps while Andy and Ella play in backgarden, hang out washing, picked some vegies, looked at the chickens (over the fence)

1.45pm Nat arrives home and expresses

2pm Katy's awake

3pm Andy goes running with Jase, Rob and Pippa while Al and Max hang around at our house

3.15pm Katy feeds

3.30pm Al, Max, Nat, Ella and Katy walk around to Oakes St to check out a house that's for sale and then continue on to have a play on the blue playground

4.30pm Arrive back home to find the boys having coffee after their run

5pm Al, Rob and Max leave

5.15pm Ella watches Dorothy the Dinosaur DVD while Nat gets dinner ready, Andy showers and then brings in washing, waters lawn and does a few other little things

5.30pm Nat and Katy dash to Cook shops to get Pippa some dinner

5.45pm Katy falls asleep in rocker

6pm Dinner

6.45pm Bath time

7pm Katy feeds while Ella drinks her 240ml of milk on couch

7.15pm Ella falls asleep while drinking her milk!! No reading books tonight :(

7.30pm Katy is in bad asleep too.

7.45pm Peace and quiet. Time to read newspapers, do Easter 2010 stuff, make phone calls and update blog!

8.45pm Time for cheesecake - mmmmm and watch some tv.

10.30pm Bedtime

11.30pm Katy wakes up for a feed

12.30am All in bed asleep!

Oz Champs Weekend - Part 3

Final day - the Australian Relay Champs. This was on the same area as yesterday's individual race. We had a pretty bad nights sleep - combine day light starting with Ella and Katy playing tag team which resulted in me sleeping on the couch with Katy from about 4.30am. It also meant that Andy slept through his alarm and if it wasn't for Al and Rob waking me up Andy would have missed his start.

So after a very fast pack up we arrived at the event with about 30mins spare. Andy was running in the Cockies #2 team with Jase and Murray. They came a respectable 7th.

While Andy, Rob and Al were out running, Ella, Max, Katy and I ventured around the Winnie and friends string course in reverse. Again the weather wasn't exactly friendly for spectators espcially those with kids. By 1pm we'd have enough and decide it was time to make the big trip home.

We met up with Abby, Zoe, Belinda and Jase at the Holbrook bakery for a much deserved stop. After that it was straight home arriving back at 7pm to an excited Pippa and Fuji.

Oz Champs Weekend - Part 2

Saturday was the Australian Long Distance Champs at Warby Ranges, just north west of Wangaratta. While Andy was out running his 13km course, Ella, Katy and I managed to complete the Winnie and friends string course. Andy finished 23rd today and was fairly happy but slow in his own words. Again it was a pity about the weather - grey, cold at times and drizzly.

It was lovely to kinda catch up with lots of friends from interstate especially those from WA. I say kinda because as I was looking after 2 little people, conversations become interrupted or half finished as I duck off to help or chase Ella! Ella did meet lots of new little people including Aoife, Max (Walter), Kate and Lachlan (Braid), Patrick and Ingrid (Shelton-Agar), Mila (Key), Sophie (Arthur), Amy and Liam (Dufty), Abby and Zoe (McCrae), Maki and Luca (Talbot) and Roy (Shepherd). Have I missed anyone? I did overhear someone say that the schools champs will be interesting in 10 yrs or so....

Oz Champs Weekend - Part 1

Last weekend saw us travel to Wangaratta for the Australian Orienteering Champs. It was an early start on Friday to ensure we could make Andy's 12.24pm start time. Surprisingly good drive - left at 5.45am and arrived at 11.30pm with 3 stops - one for Ella (get out of pj's and play), one for Andy (coffee) and one for Katy (breastfeed).

The Sprint race was held on the river banks in Benella. Andy came 20th about 2min down on the winner (Dave Shepherd). Ella had fun running around with Aoife, climbing on various rocks and trees as well as trying to swing on the finish bunting.

Pity about the weather - it was overcast but after the elites had finished it started to drizzle so we headed off faily quickly to find our accommodation in Beechworth.

Our instructions for our rented cottage were 'Key under rock next to letterbox.' On arriving there we discovered a couple of things: 1. The key wasn't there and 2. Someone else's car and stuff were in the cottage! Turns out the cottage had been double booked!! Wouldn't be so bad except we were now looking for accomodation for 6 adults and 3 kids for 2 nights.

Luckily the owner of the cottage came to the rescue (which was fair enough as it was her mistake). A friend of hers had a large unoccupied house so off we went to check it out and see if it would do. Needless to say I think we scored - the house was massive and very well kept. Disatser averted.

Nana's Last Day

We spent Nana's last day going to swimming lessons and then headed off to the Botanical Gardens. Apart from the cloudy weather and me tearing my calf again (by running back to the car!) it was a great day. The Botanical Gardens are excellent for kids. Our first stop involves the discovery trail - a small walk which has interactive signs and pretend wildlife. A great way to wear out little people who love to walk, run and climb - are you allowed to climb trees in the botanical gardens?

Our walk ended at the Rock Garden where we spotted 11 water dragons sunning themselves. Nana wasn't too keen with these lizards but put on a brave face :) After all that walking and playing we decided to have lunch at the cafe. Ella gobbled up her sausage roll which is her latest favourite food while Nana and I had quiche. It's always a blessing when Ella falls asleep on the way home as she did today.

Nana packed her bags for her flight home. Ella and Katy were both sad to see her go however it's only 6 or so more weeks before we get to play with her and Grandad.