Sunday, December 27, 2009

Boxing Day

For our American Friends, Boxing day is the Day after Christmas Day. It has some origins relating to boxes, but basically it’s an extension to Christmas Day!

On Boxing Day, we got up, packed up the car and went to Nana’s house (Sal’s mum who lives one hour drive south). We got there around 9:30am. We spent the day having a second Christmas with Nana, Aunty Shell (Sal’s sister), Uncle Michael (Shell’s fiancĂ©), Aunty Linda and Heather (Linda’s mum). We exchanges presents and ate and ate and ate. It was a great day. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t so good and it was cool and rainy all day. That was a shame as we would have loved to have gone swimming in Nana’s pool. The rain stopped for a while, and the boys had fun playing outside with Nana and her dogs.

Ethan pushing Nana’s dog Cassie in the pram. That pram used to belong to Shell when she was a little kid. It is about 20 years old and still going strong!tn_PC260525

Ben and Ethan with Nana and Cassietn_PC260528

Ethan with his new pram pushing his teddy.tn_PC260530

Ben and Ethantn_PC260533

Ben tn_PC260536

Ethan and Bentn_PC260539 

Ben in the pram, Ethan pushing him!tn_PC260540 

Ben and Ethantn_PC260541

Mummy (Sal) pushing both boys.tn_PC260544

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful second Christmas with our little boys. We tried to teach the boys about the concept of Santa. They sat on Santa’s lap at the local shopping centre. (Pic coming) We told them several times a day for the few days leading up to Christmas that Santa would bring them presents. On Christmas Eve Aunty Linda came to visit. We had roast pork and vegetables for dinner, a “swim” in our outdoor spa and then the boys went to bed. Before they went to bed, they put cookies and milk out for Santa.

When they woke on Christmas morning they instantly noticed all the presents that appeared under the christmas tree. The expressions of joy on their faces were great. We had fun unwrapping presents.

Getting stuck into presents…tn_PC250471 

Ben examining his new Wiggles DVD and telling Aunty Linda about it.tn_PC250473

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Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan playing with new toystn_PC250476

Ethan and Bentn_PC250477

Ben and Mummy (Sal)tn_PC250478 tn_PC250479 tn_PC250480

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Mumma (Tracie) and Ben reading Ben’s new wiggles big red car booktn_PC250482 tn_PC250484 

Ethan – Still examining those wooden animal toystn_PC250485

Ben and Mummy (Sal) opening another presenttn_PC250486 tn_PC250487

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan – With Ethan’s new chair.tn_PC250488

Aunty Linda and Ben looking at a new car, sitting on a new chairtn_PC250489

Ben on his new chairtn_PC250491

Ben and Mummy (Sal) opening a Thomas Traintn_PC250494 

Cheeky Bentn_PC250497

Ben and Mummy (Sal) with the Thomas Train tn_PC250499

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan opening another presenttn_PC250500

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan with the new blockstn_PC250502 tn_PC250503

Ethan and Ben playing with the new blockstn_PC250504

Tracie opening her chocolatestn_PC250507

Ben – who was intently playing with his blocks when I told him to “look up” to get his picture taken!tn_PC250508

Messy Living roomtn_PC250511

All the Christmas paper and toys!tn_PC250513

Ben – sitting on his new chair, with his new dolly, watching his new wiggles DVDtn_PC250515

Ethan – sitting in Ben’s dolly’s stroller, with his dolly and stroller.tn_PC250517

Ben’s dolly and Ethan’s dolly – they chose those dolls them self about a month ago.tn_PC250472

Messy Little Toddlers

Life is very messy with toddlers. We feel like we are forever feeding them, then cleaning up the mess from meal time. Here are a few pics of messy eating!

Ben eating chocolate pudding.tn_PC110409

Ethan eating chocolate pudding – he’s much neater than Ben!tn_PC110412

Ben’s “bath” in the kitchen sink after the chocolate puddingtn_PC150448

Ethan cleaning up his mess – like I said, he’s much neater! tn_PC170454

Ethan and Ben. Ben is eating a plum, see it all over his legs too?tn_PC170457

Ethan, cleaning his teeth. He ran into the bathroom ahead of us and climbed up to get his toothbrush.tn_PC200464

See how high he climbed?!?! Both boys love to climb up onto the bath, then the cabinet, much to our disgust.tn_PC200466

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Early Christmas with Grandma

As I’ve posted before, we had an early Christmas with the boys’ grandma (Tracie’s mother) as she has gone to America to see her son for 6 weeks. Below is a video from “Christmas Morning” of the boys unwrapping their presents.

Cheeky Children

Sometimes our little darlings don’t feel like going to sleep. We listen to them giggle and talk in the bedroom for ages. In the video below, Ethan is blowing raspberries and Ben starts to laugh. By the end, both boys are laughing. The clock is shown, because on this day, they had been put to bed around 12:30pm. 45mins later during this video, they were still laughing!

 

Eating Rice Bubbles

Here’s a video of two messy little toddlers eating rice bubbles. They are using a dipping sauce bowl to eat from as Ethan saw it in the cupboard and wanted to eat out of it. Ben, of course had to have one too. . . . . Monkey see monkey do is a VERY BIG thing at the moment!!

 

Rock-a-bye Your Bear

Below is a video of Ben dancing to The Wiggles song “Rock-a-bye Your Bear

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Apologies

Sorry I haven’t uploaded any pictures in a while. Life is busy, and I have been slack :(

The boys have been very good lately. E has a little temp today, but apart from that they have not been sick since that awful illness in July. Both boys had their 18 month vaccination (chicken pox) and did extremely well. It was the best vaccination so far. Ben got a mini chicken pox rash for a few days, but it didn’t really bother him at all.

The boys have adjusted very well to the new house and we all love living here. They sleep 12 hours over night 7pm-7am and nap a couple of hours after lunch. They walk, run, climb and get into all sorts of mischief on a daily basis.

Ben is getting very chatty and says about 10-20 words. His favourite word is car and he says it the most. Ethan still doesn’t talk much and usually only says ‘mum’ but he can say about 5 words.

Both boys understand most of what we say and can follow 2 step directions very well. They love to help around the house and enjoy doing simple tasks when you ask. Ethan’s favourite chore is to clean up spills with a moist cloth.

They are also cheeky little toddlers who equally enjoy ignoring what we say, or doing the exact opposite of what is asked. This usually happens when we ask them to “come here please”. They often smile, laugh, shake their head and walk backwards, thinking it’s a great joke. Cheeky boys!

I could go on for ages telling stories of my little darlings, but I’ve wasted enough time on the computer today. Better go do some house work!!

Hope you enjoy the following pictures :)

Kitchen Antics

The boys are still learning the art of feeding them self with a spoon. It’s a tricky process that makes a lot of mess. Below are some pictures of the boys eating rice bubbles this morning.

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Bentn_PC100375 tn_PC100376 tn_PC100377

 

A little later in the day the boys sat at the table to do some drawing with their crayons. We’ve been a little slack in the art department lately. They boys will be getting some art supplies for Christmas, so we’ll be getting to art again next year.

Bentn_PC100401

Ben tn_PC100392

Ethantn_PC100394

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Ben’s drawingtn_PC100396

Ben – lots of concentrationtn_PC100397

Ethan’s drawingtn_PC100398

Ethan – concentrating hard on putting the crayons back in the box.tn_PC100400