First bike ride

Isobel got a kick out of 'riding'

this after watching Alexa on it.

Omaha

We recently had a fabulous week up at Omaha, just north of Auckland. It was a family break before David started his new job, and before we started open homes on our house.

It was a nice warm week, a tempter to what summer could bring.

The girls play very well together - Isobel is now crawling very slowly which means she can get to items that Alexa is playing with. This causes the occasional sibling fight - Alexa has yet to work out that she can move away.

Isobel gets a real kick out of playing with Alexa, and of anyone Alexa can make her giggle. Her tricks of late include clapping, and making the hand sign for a duck quacking. She loves watching animals, particularly dogs.

Feeding

Alexa has been brilliant of late, helping out with things and responding to simple requests. Here she is wanting to help feed Isobel. When asked what Isobel was eating, she responded "Tofood". This is her own version of Tofu, however other mispronunciations are clearly due to certain influences. David for medcine (instead of medicine) and John for misappeared (as opposed to disppeared), a mispronunciation Alexa made early on that John is perpetuating.

David's birthday

It was David's birthday recently.  Alexa's latest star chart of reinforcement involved a reward of decorating a cake once she had 10 stars, and coincidently she got 10 just in time to decorate Daddy's cake.  Unfortunately the decoration didn't quite conform to the vision she had given time constraints and a rush job, so instead of a chocolate cake with pink icing and a cherry on the top he got this.

What to do on a summery sunday morning

If you are struggling for ideas as to what to do with your children, try this sometime.  

1. Take one large bean bag. 

2. Get child to open both zips and begin pulling out the beans.  

3. Stop and start picking up the tiny little beans (one at a time) and put them back into the beanbag.  This will involve you all down on your hands and knees.  

4,. Then get said child to help by launching themselves onto the beanbag, with zip open, to engulf you in a cloud of fresh new beans.  

5 Begin picking them up again.  

It is great fun for the whole family.  If you want to make it even more fun - do it outside when it is windy and then add the challenge of a new crawler into the mix. 

Time taken - all of sunday morning.