Update

It seems that I blink and 6 weeks have passed by since I last blogged.  Thought I'd give a general update on how the kids are doing.

Claudia has finally started opening her mouth for food!  This was pretty exciting after 6 weeks of trying (on and off) and no luck.  She's still a bit hit and miss with it, sometimes ravenous, sometimes only mildly interested, but at least it's a start.  We've had a bit of a setback the last week or so, as she's been pretty sick.  Bad cough, high temperatures, lethargic, vomiting.  The antibiotics seem to be (slowly) fixing her up.  Poor little cherub.

My favourite thing about Zac lately is how he's so into pretend play.  Every second sentence of his starts with "-tend I'm Fireman Sam/Mike the Knight/a baby monkey/a daddy gorilla" etc.  He loves pretending to rescue people and has this cute little tune he sings when in rescue mode "da na na na".  Love it.

Holly is growing up so much.  I feel like she's ready to go to school!  She has started spending a lot of time writing words or sentences which I spell out for her.  She has pretty much learnt every letter, capital and small, and writes very legibly.  I can have quite grown up conversations with her which are really quite enjoyable.

Love our little family.

Questions

Holly asks lots of questions. Sweet, innocent, sometimes touching, sometimes hard to answer, usually bringing a smile to my face.  I decided to write them down for a week, and here's (some of) what I got:

Why are mummies allowed to wear high heel shoes out and kids aren't?

Why are there always flowers on that pole? (beside the road)

Does God still love us? (When talking about the things we do wrong)
Why are the clouds dark when it rains?
Mummy when will you die?
How do you make pens?
(To a pregnant friend) What does it feel like to have a baby in your tummy?
Why did dinosaurs live before people?
Are there any people already in heaven?
How do the street lights turn on?

Zac growing up

Lately I've noticed a few things in Zac which have reminded me that he's really growing up and getting smarter.  I think sometimes I tend to miss these things a bit, probably because they don't seem so remarkable as I've already seen them before in Holly.  But he's a different child and he's younger and I want to make more of an effort to consciously notice them

One of them is that he's started noticing when words rhyme with one another, and making up nonsense words to rhyme with a certain word.

Another, when I told him something interesting the other day he said "fancy that"!!

More fun in the rain

The rain didn't deter the kids from playing this week.  They loved getting their gumboots and raincoats on and heading outside.

Trying food

We tried giving Claudia some food this week.  Here are some photos of how it turned out.  Maybe she's not ready?!!

Pirates

When Holly spotted our local newspaper on the table the other day, she wanted to do something crafty with it, and decided on making pirate hats.  We made one for everyone in the family, and had some fun being pirates.

Outside fun

One of the things I was really excited about in moving to the country was to have a big yard.  And being able to get some cool things to put in it.  We found a really great second-hand outdoor playset on gumtree, and decided to go for it.  I'm so thankful to have a husband who is so handy, cause it was a lot of work!  It took him about 3 hours (in the blazing sun) to take it apart and get it into the trailer, and then probably another 15 hours in our back garden to put it up.  But now it is done, and the kids are loving it.  Here are some photos.