19 July 2009

Fairer weather

A busy Saturday followed by a slightly less hectic Sunday is how I'd describe this weekend. All in all it's been a good week, Noah enjoyed a trip to the library with daycare on Friday, and told us all about the books he and his friends had taken out. It was also show and tell day, and in the spirit of being creative we'd decided to take along some of the beautifully perfumed Daphne flowers from the garden. When we picked him up, we were informed by the teachers that they'd had to quarantine it in a cup and some gladwrap as apparently (and news to us!) it is highly poisonous. I looked it up on the Internet on Friday night and sure enough, the bark and berries are extremely toxic to humans and animals, and just ingesting a few berries (not that our little posy had any!) is apparently enough to kill a child....eek how bad did I feel! Oh well you can't know everything all of the time...! Noah also enjoyed a 'Wheels' day on Wednesday where all the kids took in something with wheels, whether it be a bike, trike, scooter, skateboard or dolls pushchair. We felt a little bad that Noah had the only baby plastic ride-on trike amongst all the other proper bikes and trikes....but that will be remedied when he gets his Glide2Ride bike for his birthday which we've had since before Christmas but have saved it till now so he's a better size to ride it. He didn't appear to be at all fazed by having a baby trike (he is still the youngest one there by nearly 6 months) and apparently he had a go on all the other kids bikes anyway!

Saturday morning we headed out bright and early to Porirua to do the shopping followed by a look around KMart - made a nice change from the Warehouse. We're in the market for a bike helmet as Noah will be needing one for the new bike, and are thinking that Nana and Poppa might be able to get him a mini scooter for his birthday too as he enjoyed having a little hoon around (albeit with Daddy holding the handlebars!) KMart on one whilst we were there. We've started collecting a few bits and pieces for his 'Little Einsteins' birthday party on 8th August, not that we can find any themed party items around so will have to make do with Daddy making a red rocket cake and putting some Little Einsteins pictures around on the day.

Then it was off to Paetahanui for little Maddison's 2nd birthday brunch for an hour, before whizzing back to town to catch up with the daycare crew for our first ever yum cha. It was a lot of fun to experience so many new tastes and flavours, although a little lost on the kids as I think the best bit for them was being able to run around and hide together under the big round tables we were sitting at!

Home for a short sleep for Noah (even I found myself in need of a half hour lie-down, no sleep forthcoming as I am useless at sleeping during the day but at least a rest for the body!). Then Noah and Daddy went up to the park to leave me to sand down some drawers and a bookcase we want to repaint for the baby's room. When I started I thought 'this isn't going to take long' but I was still going at it an hour later when the boys returned from the park and it was only when Mark told me to knock it off as it was dinnertime (and dark by this stage too I might add!) that I called it a day with 1 1/2 drawers to go. My arm and shoulders are feeling it a bit today but am glad it is done, we made good use of a still afternoon to have the garage open so the sawdust could escape outdoors rather than covering everything in the garage. And now to paint!





We had contemplated going to the Winter Carnival to see the fire burning and fireworks but one of the daycare parents very cleverly reminded us of how difficult it would probably be getting out of Petone afterwards (one road in, one road out). So instead we made our own fun and after dinner got in the car and took a drive (stopping on the way to pick up some icecreams) up to the top of Mt. Victoria to watch the fireworks from a distance. There were only 2-3 other cars up there and we had a pretty decent view of them without the worry of finding a park and fighting through the traffic to get home again afterwards. It was the perfect way to introduce Noah to his first ever fireworks as 7pm was a much better time than the usual 9pm start time for the annual Guy Fawkes show later in the year. Although I think we might be tempted to get some sparklers to do in the garden this year!

This morning we took our first walk down to the ducks in months, and it appeared they hadn't been fed in about as long as they totally devoured the bread we had taken along in what seemed like seconds. We then made a puzzling discovery of nearly a full loaf of fairly fresh bread in a bread bag in the bin as we went to throw our bread bag away so proceeded to feed all that to them as well (look out....gypsy family at our best!). We couldn't figure out why someone would have thrown it away with the ducks so close by, but at least we didn't let it go to waste. Then it was up to the park for a slide and a go on the flying fox before going home via the cable car museum. On our walk home, a police car pulled up alongside us and it was none other than Mark's good friend JP who is in his first year of policing so we had a chat to him for 5 minutes. Noah was most intrigued by the sounds coming from his police radio every so often. Fluffy and coffees with cheese scones for morning tea followed hot on its heels by bacon, egg and cheese toasties for lunch made sure that we renewed all the energy we had expended on our walk!

This afternoon we headed to Karori Pool for an hour's swim/aquajog with George and his dad Craig joining us. I seem to have done something to my foot which is rather annoying, and nearly couldn't make it home from the ducks this morning. It's been getting worse all week, and initially I thought it was muscular so have been rubbing antiflamme on and trying to stretch it out, but now there's a funny creaking, grating sound whenever I go up from standing up into tip toes so there goes my walking regime for the next 2 days. Luckily, my walking buddy Shannon is keen to go aquajogging instead so that'll be where we're headed at 6am tomorrow. It may be that its a pregnancy related thing in that I had a couple of weeks of no exercise when getting over the flu and have now overstretched a ligament or something, will be booking in to see the osteopath though to check it out as have always found her very helpful when it comes to long-term strains and pulled muscles that don't seem to heal on their own.

This has been the first weekend where both Saturday and Sunday have been fine in simply ages, and it has been so nice to see some blue sky! Here's a wee video of Noah on the flying fox at the park this morning...we had the park to ourselves which is a real rarity!




12 July 2009

Canvas creations

I am pleased to report that we all seem to be a little more fighting fit than 2 weeks ago. I ended up having to take to my bed with what turned into flu and a chest infection, and had pretty much the whole week off work. Mark's back recovered pretty quickly which was just as well as he spent at least part of the week solo parenting while I was trying to rest and keep my germs to myself. I started to feel a little more human later in the week (apart from a nasty chesty cough) but still had to take it easy over all of last weekend.



Apart from a visit from Allie for coffee on the Saturday, it was a very quiet day at home. Sunday we baked some delicious cheese and bacon scones to rival any cafe in Wellington, care of the Blokes who Bake website recipe . Mark took Noah out for an hour in the afternoon as I found myself flagging and in need of an afternoon rest as my body was obviously still trying to fight off the bug.

It felt a little weird heading back to my 'new' office on Monday after having only made it in for the first day the Monday before by the skin of my teeth and not even lasting the day. It feels a little weird being part of a much larger Finance team (there are 8 of us including Michelle and me), and getting to grips with a new accounting system and how things work is likely to take some time. It also feels a little strange being on a different floor to the rest of my old M-co colleagues, but I try and make sure I get to see a few of them on my daily trip up to get my caffeine fix at the inhouse coffee machine - which is a real bonus and will be saving me lots of money on the daily coffees I used to indulge in over the road at the coffee bar Ripe. After 7 years of patronage, I was quite sad to leave particularly as they used to fill up my giant coffee cup for a standard price - so it was probably the best value coffee in town. I ended up giving the two guys a box of chocolates and promised to come back and visit with new baby if not before!

The one good thing that came out of being so floored by the flu was the chance for me to do a little canvas painting. After the first two days in bed I was going a little crazy and had already watched 4 DVDs and was getting a bit bored of staring at the computer screen! I had come across some designs I really liked and had a canvas that had been in the cupboard for a few months that I kept seeing and thinking 'I must find something to paint for it'. I had also been thinking about some artwork for the baby's room, and had a partially completed idea for a 'word' canvas from earlier this year. So over the past 10 days or so, I have had a bit of a painting frenzy, finishing 6 canvases altogether, the results of which I've shared below! Hopefully this will satisfy the 'canvas cravings' I seem to get every so often for a wee while!



My set of 3 animal canvases for the baby's room!




Memories of our honeymoon for a canvas to go above our bed




A set of 3 planes for Noah's room


And a nice way to fill a gap on the lounge wall!

This weekend we took Noah to see a show called 'Tale of a Dog' which is on at Capital E for the school holidays. Noah had already taken in a brochure of the show for 'show and tell' at daycare the day before, so was pretty excited about the whole affair by the time Saturday rolled around! The story revolves around 'Dog', a circus dog who is a little mischievious and wants to do some new tricks in his routine (such as playing the piano), much to the chagrin of the ring master who has no time for Dog's games. They have a falling out and the ringmaster sends Dog packing. But she realises the error of her ways when she realises the star attraction of her circus is gone and so she must go and find him and beg him to come back. He agrees, so long as she lets him do some new tricks and they perform together, oh and as long as he is guaranteed some big, juicy bones. It was about a 40 minute performance, just right for the 2-7 age groupt that it targets, and there was some lovely acrobatics - roly polys, cartwheels, trapeeze and rope swinging. Later in the aftenoon we quickly whipped up our standard visitor fare (lemon muffins) for Andrew, Nichola and 2-year old Maddison who came for afternoon tea.

Today, I finally made it to church after not being in any fit state to leave the house the past 2 Sundays, and then poppped in to visit my friend Tanya who had her second wee girl, Niamh a month ago. Mark and Noah had baked some yummy cheese and herb scones for lunch (same recipe as last week!) which was a pleasant surprise to come home to!

With the strength of the nasty bugs doing the rounds this year and the weather being so darned cold and miserable for what seems like months of winter already, we have really been treasuring lots of quiet weekends at home with our new fabulous heating keeping us lovely and warm and cosy. Besides which, the number of weekends we have left as a 3-person family are dwindling so we are trying to make the very most of each and every day we have together! And quite surprisingly, we often ask Noah if he wants to go out (thinking he might be getting cabin fever like we sometimes do in the afternoons!) but more often than not he's completely happy just to be at home hanging out with us! We spend a lot of time playing in the spare room on the bed playing rough and tumble, hiding under the covers, playing boofheads, throwing soft toys around, doing flips off the bed onto the pillows, basically we follow Noah's lead and anything goes!

This weekend Nana and Poppa have travelled to Sydney to see Uncle Nic graduate from his 2-year bible college course at Oxford Falls Christian City Church. It was Nana's first trip to Australia so we hope they have had a lovely time and some good weather to fit in a little sightseeing as well. And Nic we're so proud to see you graduate, and look forward to hearing what God has in store for you next!

One night this week we had a lovely conversation with Noah about clouds and the sun on the way home, and his ability to question and his understanding of what we explained really blew me away. To start with he asked 'Why are those clouds pink Mummy?' (The sunset on the way home), to which I replied 'Well the sun is going down underneath the clouds and shining up underneath them to make them turn pink'. 'Where is the sun going Mummy?' 'It's going to bed for the night and it'll be dark soon'. 'Why does the sun have to go to bed Mummy?' 'The sun needs to sleep just like we do otherwise we would all get very tired, wouldn't we?' to which we got a 'yep' in agreement. 'But the sun will come back again in the morning and it will be light again when the sun wakes up'. I love having conversations like this, it is truly one of the great pleasures of being a parent, knowing your child is discovering new things all the time, what a wonder the world must be to those who see it with such new and fresh eyes!

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