Joshua moments - April 2011 (3 years old)

So April started off with Joshua turning 3. Where has the time gone?!?

Some of his cute things...

He talks about "Buzz Lightyear of Star Camma"

He sometimes likes to give you a "hard hug". I'm not sure where this name came from, but it's quite a firm hug he can give out!

He's actually started saying "yes" at times.

If I ask him what he did at school he'll say "I didn't fight". He doesn't often fight though, so maybe it's his way of reminding himself not to?

Anything in the past is "last week"

Whenever he refers to his or someone else's chin it will be "chinny chin chin"

He loves going to the park! Most days when we leave school he wants to go either to the park right outside his school or to one of the other parks in the area. And if I let him, we'd stay there for AGES!!

One afternoon when I was fetching him there were some toys lined up in his class. He was looking at the Barneys all lined up, and I asked him how many there were. He was two meters away from then, but he pointed to each one and counted 1, 2, 3, 4. I was quite impressed!

He likes to have something to watch him sleep. He'll normally put a toy on the table next to his bed, and he doesn't generally play with it instead of going to sleep or anything, he's quite good about it just sitting there. But sometimes he likes to have a whole lot of cars, and then they all have to line up to watch him sleep.

He's now able to take off his own jerseys and shirts. Of course being able to doesn't make him always want to actually do it himself...

And he's now finally able to blow bubbles properly, without just spitting. And he's also able to catch a bubble back on the hoop thing.

Joshua's birthday party with the families. Cindy made his cake, which he chose from the book with birthday cakes. In fact he kept on coming back to this picture... He really wanted a house!

 Playing with his duplo rubbish truck and new fire engine

 Showing Hannah his new toys

 The actual big day. Opening presents is SO exciting!

Playing peek-a-boo at Spur

 Being a bridge for Hannah

 Showing off his new Ben 10 shoes

 Showing off his cool frog shoes

 Pretending to be a doctor just like Granny

Being creative to get his battery operated train to pull the old fashioned train

He just loves playing with the washing basket!

Our little boy is growing up!

Hannah moments - April 2011 (10-11 months)

My little girl is starting to walk! On 7 April she took two steps on our bed, so a nice soft surface, and on 9 April I counted 8 steps on the floor. So now there's no stopping her! Her next thing was then hanging on the table, wishing she was taller!

She's also decided that she should just be able to go wherever she pleases. She'll climb onto Joshua's small chairs and stand up, and if she's on our bed, she's now figured out that she can turn around and slide to the ground. Having a big brother to watch has definitely made her quicker with this kind of thing! (And any grannies around all tend to freak out about then...)

Some footage of her walking and other cool stuff she did this month:

She really enjoys music. She'll start bouncing completely involuntarily if there's music or singing, and sometimes she'll even try and sing along.
She also likes books, and she's actually able to page through a book quite effectively. I remember with Josh that I couldn't let him look at normal paper books, only the board books. But she's actually quite gentle even with soft paper pages, and she can turn them.

Reading with Granny and Grandpa

When she gets really excited she'll shake her head and then turn away.
For a while she stopped scrunching up her nose. But that cute expression is back for a while! And look at her cute hair!

She's staring to understand what we're saying, and if you just say goodbye to someone she'll now start waving, she doesn't have to see us waving as well.

She likes order it would seem... If she sees something with its lid off, she'll pick up the lid and put it back on (even if we're trying to work with the open container!) and she also likes to put things where they belong. A bit like her mom...

Hanging out at Spur

When she's tired she'll do things like clasping her hands, or continuously patting the surface she's lying on.

And she looks so cute sleeping!

She's also started nodding her head nicely, and she tries to clap. She'll keep the one hand still, and hit it with the other hand. Then later in the month she started clapping properly, and sometime she'll look at her hands, as if to say, wow, I can do this!
When I'm changing her, if she's sitting up when I take her shirt off she'll pat her tummy. It's so cool to watch her discovering every little thing around her, and marvelling at it all!

Playing with her teddy

She's starting to drink independently from a sipper bottle. She'll normally drink close to a full bottle of water each day. I hope I can keep that habit up!
Riding on the vacuum cleaner

Some people might say this is just what happens with girls, but she's started this manipulative little cry. If she doesn't get what she wants then she'll give a really petulant cry until we give it to her or distract her... A little teenager already!
But one thing that we'll probable lose before her teens is how cuddly and affectionate she is. If we're on the the bed she'll come and just cuddle next to you, and sometimes just give you a kiss. I love it!

And still such a beautiful girl!

Family time - March 2011

My Valentine's Day card from Andrew and the kids - Josh signed his name as the purple scribble on the right.

Worshipping Little Red Riding Hood

 Playing at the beach with the Powrie's

Hannah and Josh interacting - mainly Hannah trying to copy everything her hero does!

Hannah moments - March 2011 (9-10 months)

So this month saw Hannah making major strides forward with her physical development.
1 March: she tried to stand on the bed by letting go of me.
4 March: she stood by herself for about 1 second.
8 March: she stood up by herself from the floor.
22 March: she took 1 step.
So exciting to see!

She's also just really independent. She'll crawl from one side of the house right to the other side, and if she's holding your hands she'll walk the length as well, which, when you're that small, is quite a distance!

She's such a small girl though, despite standing and walking so early that she can't see over most things that Josh could when he was starting to stand. So she'll go up on tip toes to try and peer over something. You just see this little face peeking out at you!

Playing on the swings outside Josh's school.

She's also very happy to sit quietly by herself playing, which is something that Josh still doesn't like to do really. I don't know how much is personality, and how much is 1st vs 2nd child and how we have reacted differently to them.

She just adores Joshua, and if she sees him coming she gets super excited!

Such cute little feet and legs!

She responds really well to music, and any music that she hears will get her to start dancing. Towards the end of the month she even started dancing while standing!

Her funny face continues to be a source of great entertainment. Her tongue does all sorts of funny things like she'll put it out and back in repeatedly. And one morning Richard was entertaining her by putting his tongue out and shaking his head to make it waggle around, and she tried to copy him with her tongue out and shaking her head.

She's started navigating the two low steps in my parents lounge, and gets up and down quite well.

She's also a really brave girl. When she's teething and her bum gets all sore she will be so brave when you're changing her nappy. She tries really hard not to cry, which is strange, because at this age she's got no reason not to just let rip, but she seems to really try hard not to. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse... I just wish that teething didn't come with SO many other problems for babies!

Hannah loves to eat whatever we are eating. She won't always want to eat her own food, but if it's going in our mouth... One of her favourites though is Milo cereal. Loves it!

I can't say for sure, but I think she's saying mama, dada, more and ball.

One of the girls at church decided to dress her up a bit...

Hannah loves books! She'll sit for ages looking at and paging through books. But then look at her parents...

She's started initiating peek-a-boo, which is just so cute! And sometimes even if you're not close to her to play with she'll cover her eyes to try and play.

She's definitely a little girl, who loves dolls and teddies. And she loves to just hug a teddy.

She does a cute thing with her hands like she's dry washing them, and she's also started waving really nicely.

She's got a really mischevious streak. If I'm trying to dress her on our bed she'll get up and quickly crawl up. Then I'll grab her foot and drag her back, and first chance she gets she'll quickly crawl away again, but all the time chuckling!

Joshua moments - March 2011

I suppose that we shouldn't be surprised, but as we see Joshua's personality emerge one things is very evident - he is VERY competitive! He's now discovered to concept of beating someone, and now he just wants to beat everyone in whatever he's doing! So we have some work to do to make sure this is healthy competitiveness!
But he's also just a sweet boy. One of his latest things is taking a toy, wrapping it up in a small cloth, bringing it to you and singing Happy Birthday, and then we have to unwrap our present. He just loves to be nice too!
He was wrapping himself up in a blanket the one morning, and decided that he was an egg. So he would hatch, and then wrap himself up again to be an egg again.

Playing with the new dolphin toy for the pool.

Showing off his new "Bokkie" shirt.

At the park - one of his favourite things to do when I fetch him from school...

One of his favourite things to do is sit on our bed and read stories with me. But just sitting on the bed isn't good enough any more. He now wants to sit "in your cot". He'll sit between my legs and then put a blanket over himself and then he's ready for his story.

And one of his favourite stories, which he will repeatedly ask for, is the "troll story" (ie The Three Billy Goats Gruff). I got a book of beautifully illustrated fairy tales, which he recently discovered, and he likes all of the stories, but his favourite is the very last one - the troll story.

He's started to learn a lot of rhymes from school, and we'll often hear him reciting them over and over.

He's also learning some of the books that we read often at home. The one morning he recited "Driving Down to Grandma's" as he paged through the book. And he had it about 95% correct! Most of what he got wrong is what he is obviously hearing wrong, but that's normal at his age...

Josh threw these things up onto the shower door, and look how they ended up!

Just like Hannah, Joshua's tongue also sometimes does funny things, but his most common thing is sticking his tongue out slightly, normally curled, when he's being all shy and coy.

I'm not sure if we get take outs too often... But Josh has pretty much decided that all take away places are Chicken and Chips. Some times he'll talk about "Mac-in-donalds". But what he also likes to do is wave at places as we drive past. So he'll wave, "Bye Chicken and Chips", "Bye Aunty Lindsay" (his swimming teacher)

One evening he suddenly got a bit upset about our cars parked outside our house, which he can see through the small windows next to our front door. He was saying that there was an eye on my car (presumably the light). He at first wanted us to carry him past the windows so that the eye couldn't see him, or he would crawl under the window. But then we put some books in the windows which effectively blocked them. And then he was happy. It took a couple of days for all of this to progress though, and in that time we would take him outside to see the car and touch it and see that there was no eye. But one of those strange childhood phobias. The books stayed in the windows for a few days and then when I quietly took them away he was fine, and hasn't mentioned the eyes again.

Josh also has a fascination with helicopters (really anything that moves). One afternoon there was a helicopter that flew over our house repeatedly (we're not housing any fugitives - I promise!). Josh was saying that he wants to go in a helicopter, so I told him when he's bigger then he'll be able to, and we'll ask Uncle Ron to try and arrange something for us. Well... for the next few weeks and even longer he would remind me very often that when he's big he's going in a helicopter, and tell me that I must ask Uncle Ron. I'd remind him that Uncle Ron said he has to wait till he's bigger and he'd try and stand as tall as he could to show me that he is getting bigger! One day he'll get to live that dream!

My cute boy: