Teachers V Mothers

It's started. Daniel came home a few minutes ago saying "Mum, Mrs Caglayan said that we're not supposed to lick our fingers and then turn the pages of a book... but you do that sometimes." Ahhh, yes, Mrs Caglayan is more right than me, I'll get used to that in good time.

What's funny...

...watching both D & L eat an entire raw carrot each while watching Bugs Bunny! ...a 4-year old running to the bathroom pulling his pants down prematurely while telling himself out loud, "make it, make it, make it!" ...a 2-year old using the word "otherwise". "It wouldn't be good if he wee-d on the floor, otherwise we might slip."

Little Milestones

Nick is now 4 months old, and his big brother started Kinder yesterday (that's the australian word for preschool). Daniel loved it, and really didn't look back, barely even said goodbye to me (he did do a 3 year old preschool in the U.S.). Laura would have stayed if I had let her. I told her we could go get her a lunchbag too, and go home and paint too, all like Daniel. She felt proud after that. But everything we did at home had a mention of Daniel in it, from the painting (I wrote her name on a painting -and she wanted daniel's name on it too), to lunch ("I'll save one for Daniel"). She misses him. Not the sad teary kind of missing him, just a natural tendency to include him in everything since he's normally there. Very sweet. I think she and Nick will become good friends during the time Daniel's at school (2 full school days per week), so it'll be fun for Laura to get to be just the big sister. They wear uniforms here at most schools. Kinder/Preschools are often actually at a school, so they wear the same uniform as all the other kids. He is pretty obsessed with any clothes that are dark (to be scary) or stripey (to be a tiger), so the uniform didn't get a huge reception, but he wore it without too much issue. After school he was sitting on the porch waiting for me to unlock the door, looking pretty spaced out, and I asked him if he was tired. "Yeah, but I sure did love it mum." Gotta love that. 4 months old and able to hold himself up much better for these photos now. Very proud of himself for being able to roll onto his tummy and look around! Falling asleep copying Laura's doll... Yeah, smart kid, waving at 4 months. :) I'll take the smile behind the blanket though! The kids with Big Opa and GrandMarie (great grandfather and grandma)

A morning's entertainment

Spray water bottles - who knew?!

Random

It's so lovely to watch sleeping kids, particularly when these 2 quiet times [pictured below] started with, "I'm definitely not going to sleep, mom." (a sleep is actually rare now, but I love the way he just can't help himself sometimes). This is how I found Laura one night at midnight. She hadn't wanted her jammies on, so I guess she was trying to prove the point that she could indeed sleep in her dress. All power to you girl. She must really love him if she shares her dollies with him. And the best part was her sitting there chatting away to all of them... For our 10th anniversary we had 3 nights away (thank you Oma!). we brought Nick, but then the place we stayed -surprisingly- offered to watch him during dinner! So we enjoyed 3 dinners **in a row** without kids. Luxury. The first night was our actual anniversary - pictured is dessert. Yum. I reckon Nicholas is the happiest of all our kids as babies. He's so ticklish, waits for people to look at him, and loves cuddles. Gotta love that. Parents are probably the only ones who can love this type of picture of their kids... but I really do love it.