Lollo

Before Zac could say much, we'd been wondering what his word for Holly would be.  In the last month or two, we've discovered it's Lollo.  Sounds very cute when he says it.

Now that he can say it he uses it a lot.  It's clear just how much he adores his big sister.  The other night Holly stayed at her Oma's house, and in the morning, Zac kept walking into Holly's bedroom, calling out Lollo, Lollo, looking for his sister.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a bit cross with Holly right before she was going to go to the toilet, and she was crying and crying in the bathroom, and Zac was just standing at the door saying Lollo, with a worried little expression on his face.  I pointed out to Holly that Zac was concerned for her, and she went over to him and he was touching her face.  He then took her hand and they walked into the toilet together.  She instructed me to go away, as Zac was taking her to the toilet!

dolls house continued

It's fun listening to the conversations Holly makes up between her dolls in their dolls house.  Gives you quite an insight into her world.  One the other day went like this:

Little girl - Daddy, we've finished our breakfast, can we have some milk?
Daddy - No.
Little girl - Okay, Mummy, we've finished our breakfast can we have some milk?
Mummy - Yes you can have milk.

Is this how she sees us?!!

dolls house

We gave Holly a second hand dolls house and some furniture for her 3rd b'day recently.  It's been so much fun to watch her playing with it.  She totally immerses herself in the beautiful world of pretend play.  I hope it's going to be a present that stays popular for a while.

I love you

Stefan and Holly's dinner conversation the other night:

Holly: Daddy I love you.
Stefan: I love you, all the way to the ceiling.
Holly: (catching on very quickly to the idea) I love you all the way to the roof.
Stefan: I love you to the top of the trees.
Holly: I love you as high the plants.
Stefan: I love you to the top of the building.
Holly: (my favourite one) I love you as far as we can go.
Stefan: I love you as high as a helicopter.
Holly: I love you as high as a plane.
Stefan: I love you all the way to the moon.
Holly: I love you all the way to the stars.

So beautiful :)

don't say good girl

We've had a lot of challenging behaviour from Holly lately.  Defiance, disobedience, rudeness, etc.  Just part of being nearly 3 I think.  There is one odd thing that she always says though.  If one of us has asked her to do something, and there's been a long battle about it, and she's finally coming close to doing it, she always says "don't say good girl".  We then must agree not to say "good girl" when she does the required action, and then she'll usually do it (often after repeating her warning several more times).

We're not quite sure if that's because she knows she hasn't been a good girl, or because she doesn't like the tone in our voice when we say it, or what... but she's very adamant that she doesn't want to hear "good girl" at those times.

Nanna

My mum comes to look after the kids every Thursday while I go to work.  Both kids love it.  They get so excited when they hear Nanna at the door in the morning, and they always have such a lovely day with her.  Nanna/Mum is a real blessing to our family.

Mum always has lots of lovely things to tell me about from their day together, and last week she wrote down a few.  Here they are:

I took H & Z to the Library and Holly went up to the desk and said "Excuse me Library Lady could I please do some drawing - I'd like a picture with flowers on it". So the Library Lady (LL) gave her a sheet and crayons. Then she said: "Excuse me LL but I can't see my picture of Spot up on the wall." Absolutely months ago they pinned up one of her colouring in drawings of Spot the Dog on the wall. I could see the LL not really knowing what to say and I told Holly that lots of children did drawings and everyone had to have
a turn of having their picture pinned up. She accepted this as she knows about taking turns.

She can write her own name absolutely perfectly now so when she had finished colouring in she wrote her name and went running over to the LL with her picture and said "LL - have a look at my picture and I wrote my own name". Then she saw the Other LL and went running over to also show & tell her.

Somehow I did a tiny cut on my finger which was bleeding just slightly which I commented on and Holly said "Nanna we've got bandaids - would you like one?" Then she rubbed my back and said she wanted to make it all better so  that I can "pick up kids".

Growing up

There have been a few things in the last week that have really made me stop and think - my little girl is growing up.

The first was one morning while I was getting ready to go out.  Holly was asking for lipstick.  I said no.  She said "all the other girls wear lipstick"!!!!  What?!  I'd expect this from an 8/9 year old, but not a (nearly) 3 year old.  I asked her who wears lipstick.  She thought for a moment, before rattling off a list of make believe names!

The second was last weekend when Holly was invited to go to the Disney on Ice concert with her friend.  I drove her there, and her friend's mum met us at the car to take Holly in.  Watching my daughter walk away, then driving away with an empty car was a new experience for me, one which I'm sure will happen a thousand more times throughout my kids' childhoods.

The third happened on Monday.  Holly spotted the board game "Guess Who" in the cupboard, and wanted to play it.  I was dubious about whether she was old enough for it, but Stefan wanted to give it a try.  I was amazed by how quickly she got it!  After a few turns, she knew exactly how it worked, and despite me continuing to check whether she had put the right people down, she got it right every time!

My little girl really is growing up!

sleepy cuddles

Zac was pretty sick a couple of weeks ago, which obviously wasn't so great, EXCEPT for the lovely snuggles we got.  He was so tired he was just falling asleep all over the place, so we got lots of sleepy cuddles.  So lovely. :)

Reading time

So glad I caught this precious, totally unpromted moment on camera.  Holly loves reading, and will occasionally do it on her own, and Zac loves to copy everything Holly does.  Beautiful :)

The not bosses

Okay, time to get back into blogging again!

I'll start with a quote from Holly.

In a discussion about who's the boss, and why mummy is still the boss of Holly even though God is the big boss.
Me: "God made the mummies and daddies the bosses of the children."
Holly: "And God made little people the not bosses."

Bingo!

Holly's little fairy

Holly loves dressing up as a fairy, and the other day she got the great idea to dress Zac up a as a fairy.  Zac was very obliging at first:

but then started to get a little upset with the annoying wings behind his head...

and finally crawled to me to be rescued.

I wonder how many more times in his life he'll be dressed up by his big sister!

Sister and brother

Our kids are still so little, but they already have a unique relationship with one another.  They love to be around each other; watching them begin to actually play together is one of our recent joys.  Holly adores her baby brother.  She's great at looking out for him and letting me know if something is up, but she's also very good at pointing out when he's doing the wrong thing.

I'm not sure how a little brother acquires the characteristics typical of little brothers, but Zac seems to have it down already.  He is SO good at annoying Holly, doing it almost effortlessly and seems to get the desired reaction every time.  He drives Holly absolutely crazy, and delights in that!!  I do feel sorry for Holly sometimes when she is trying to work on something a bit more "grown-up" - like drawing, play dough, building things - and Zac just comes along and wrecks it in a second.  We're trying to train her to do some of those things in her room with her door closed (which of course Zac hates).

There are frustrations and there are joys... but every day we love watching our kids grow up together.

Below are some photos of some of their recent moments together.

a compliment!

Holly was having some vegemite toast at lunch yesterday, and said to me "Yummo.  You make good toast... and breakfast, and eggs, and jaffles".  Very sweet, made me smile. :)

Our actress

Holly hurt her lip quite badly the other day (lots of blood, very swollen, etc).  A few days later she bumped it slightly during the day, so when she complained that it was sore while eating dinner that night (very believable, complete with pained noises and tears), I accepted that and, without thinking too much about it, obligingly took the carrots away.

I took the corn that I was preparing for her out of the saucepan, and started eating it myself.  That's when things started to get a bit... fishy.  She wanted the corn and was apparently completely capable of eating the corn without pain to her lip.  I then put the carrots back in front of her and told her she needed to eat them before getting any yoghurt.  She attempted one small bite, before the lip performance (as I then realised it was) began again.  I have to give her credit, she was incredibly believable and was still able to invoke a feeling of sympathy in me, even when I knew it wasn't true!  But I stood my ground and told her to eat the carrots.  When she realised she wasn't getting anywhere, she finished all her carrots very quickly, and then asked for a cookie.  I hesitated for a split second, during which time she said "the answer is yes".  That made me laugh.  And she got her cookie. :)

The zoo

A few weeks ago we went to the zoo with some friends from church.  Holly absolutely loved it.  Since then, everything has been all about the zoo.  She tells everyone about it, she wants us to tell her about it over and over again, and she even prays about it!  Tonight before going to bed she prayed:
Dear God, thank you for the zoo.  We had a wonderful time.  We saw the elephants and giraffes and seals catching balls and zebras and tigers and koalas.  We went with Eva and Cristy and Mike and Archie and Julian and Jo and... what's that man's name?
Daddy fills in the blank.
and Daniel. Amen.