Reading in the tunnel

His old favourite tunnel now doubles as a sanctuary. He quite often wants it to be stood upright so he could sit in there.

On Sunday morning he filled it with 2 beach balls, his giant fish (it's as big as he is), daycare bag, toy cars, Mr Potato Head, and I can't remember what else. He also wanted me to pass him his book. I left him and went about my business and when I got back into the lounge I found a lovely sight.

My boy was "reading" aloud to himself. If you are receiving this post as an e-mail you will not see the embedded video. Please come to this post online or if all else fails you can see it on youtube.

It melts my heart hearing his little voice.

A little carefree

Once upon a time we used to go to a fair few gigs. Music is just so much better being seen live, I reckon. So it's just so great when there are free outdoors concerts for the whole family to enjoy - like the bFM summer series we went to last Saturday. It was the first time they held it at Silo Park, and I think it was a perfect venue for it.

I packed us a picnic and got there early afternoon with Kien while Jef finished up some chores at home. I was actually hoping Kien would fall asleep in the buggy during the walk in. We picked a spot to settle in for the afternoon.

By about the 5th line up the place was looking more like a concert stadium (a really nice open-air one) and less like a picnic area.

But when Kien was playing in the surrounding garden area it was like he was somewhere else entirely.

Where is he?

There he is!

He could also be found playing with pebbles.

Or throwing them into the stream.

As we walked home in the late afternoon through Victoria Park there were men in cricket whites out enjoying the sun.

We stayed and watched them play until the game was over (and saw one guy bat 2 balls onto the motorway - luckily we didn't hear any thud and ensuing crash!).

It was a fabulous day and not only a reminder of yesteryear but also what more we have to look forward to now that there is a little more flex as Kien gets older.

Stories and bubbles

On my day off we hang around the house in our pyjamas playing games until I make up my mind about what it is we will do for the rest of the morning.

Story-time at the Ponsonby library on Tuesday morning was surprisingly fun. I say surprisingly because the last time I took Kien to story-time was at Central library, and the woman who ran it was *so* not engaging and the kids all ran riot. That was also a year ago when Kien was not interested in paying attention. Now he loves being read to.

I must admit I really do need to read more to him. He gets so excited when I tell him to pick a book to read. Usually I forget until it's bedtime, and by then we only have time for a few quick ones before the natural light is gone from his room making it too dark for me to see the words. Then I usually make up stories and he can see the book's silhouette still open. He likes that - he has told me off a few times for not having the book open .

My aunt wanted to see him on Tuesday afternoon, so after his daytime sleep we headed out to my dad's.

As an aside I have a love/hate relationship with his daytime nap. On the one hand I am loving that I can have a break for a couple of hours during the day while the high energy boy sleeps. But it is getting increasingly harder for me to make him sleep, and he really needs to, otherwise he is tired and irritable. On the other hand Jef and I are always having to plan our schedule around that daytime sleep - because I am precious and want my son to have a decent sleep (if I can help it). Plus, like I said, it gives us a break, some peace and quiet. I'm pretty sure in the next few months when the daycare transitions him out of the baby room he will drop his daytime sleep altogether. We'll see.

Whenever we go my dad's Kien is always wanting to eat ice. Ice! I wish he would eat food as readily as he eats ice!

My aunt gave him some bubble solution and implements for blowing bubbles. Oh boy, we had bubbles and solution everywhere.

Kien loved it so much. What a treat for him to be able to blow bubbles inside. AND what a treat that his mummy didn't have to clean up!

I only had to give him some time-out once whilst there, and that was because he got so excited while playing with his ông ngoại he hit him on the face. I asked him to say "sorry" - I know it's just a word and two year olds don't fully understand the concept of apologising, but all round it just makes the other person that was hit feel better, and in this instance I really wanted him to say it. But Kien refused and would not budge. I asked him if he wanted some time-out so he could think about it - he didn't say anything so I told him to say "sorry" or I'll take him for time-out. Still he wouldn't say it, so I took him to the storeroom for a bit. I explained that he hurt his granddad and that he should say "sorry" to make him feel better. I asked him if he would say it, he said yes, so we held hands and came back out and he said "sorry, ông ngoại" and gave him a kiss.

~~~~~

Last night we had our two year interviews for the Growing up in NZ longitudinal study. Lynda, the interviewer, played blocks with Kien by, firstly, asking him to watch as she stacked the blocks...

...then she smashed the tower down and asked him to stack the blocks...

...and he took such great delight in smashing the blocks down.

The interviews took almost 3 hours all up (first with Kien, then with Jef, and lastly with me). There were lots of questions from the interview that has left me pondering...

Jef had to go to work so I had to put Kien to bed whilst undergoing the interview. He was very good though and put himself to sleep relatively quickly - which was a relief.

Summer ain't over yet

It isn't, it isn't, it isn't. Perhaps if I say it enough it may actually be a reality. Well, judging from the amount of people at the beach on Sunday afternoon you'd think we were in the heart of summer.

There was even a beach party going down!

Kien loves the kayak, and as soon as Jef said "shall we go for a paddle?" and Kien was into it and waiting patiently (as patient as a two year old can be).

The end of another variable weekend.

During my walk to work this morning there was evidence of the weather bomb on Saturday.

It was mad at work today. Just really mad, and busy with lots of meetings, lots of testing of software for our go-live next week, as well as a major production fault (hence lots of meetings, and madness). Yawn. Boring work talk. I couldn't wait to get out of there so I could pick Kien up from daycare.

When I get to daycare every day now I get an amazing reception from Kien. He is so happy to see me, comes running up and gives me a big cuddle before skipping off to get his bag. It's the same ritual every day. We get his bag, he wants to do up the buckles, he wants to put the bag on, he runs out of daycare waving at the teachers and says good-bye to anyone left, and he runs off to the playground.

He'll throw the bark around for a bit, climb up the stairs, slide down, throw some more bark around, climb the stairs, slide down etc etc. Then I persuade him to go home to see if his daddy is there. Sometimes Jef will come over and walk home with us. He did so tonight, and then we flew helicopters and had a picnic.

Kien chased sticks that Jef threw for him.

Good night moon. Hey, are those leaves changing colour on the trees or is that just the camera playing tricks on me?

Nope, summer ain't over yet. It's definitely still summer.

Latte Junkie is convinced it's Autumn and even made it the theme for Lyrical Sunday - but I say nay, NAY!

Running with sticks

So the weather bomb passed through Auckland yesterday, and today we have beautiful blue and sunny skies. I just had to take advantage of the lovely weather and go out for a walk, and what a better place to spend an hour this morning than a beautiful reserve in Grey Lynn. Kien was keen, and he took off as soon as we got on the path.

He collected sticks along the way.

What for? So he can throw them over the edge, hoping for them to land in the water.

He would find a stick on one side of the path and toss it over the edge on the other side. This game went on for a really long time (there were lots of sticks to be found and tossed!). I had to coax him to keep walking and find us a spot for lunch.

We found a nice little spot under some gum trees. In between bites of quiche he ran around, and climbed the stone steps close by. Look how big they are compared to him!

From the bakery where I got the quiche I also purchased a few little decorated biscuits (because they caught my attention in the display cabinet looking so pretty). Imagine my surprise when Kien ate a whole one, and then asked for another!

The boy likes to run - what more can I say. He ran...

...and ran...

...and ran all the way out of the reserve to the car.

Mismatch

When a toddler and his dad picks an outfit for the aforementioned child to wear to daycare this morning the end result is this:

"Hi, Mummy!" he yelled and waved proudly.

Tonight I made pizza for dinner - second time this week I've made pizza, which is very rare because I hardly ever eat pizza. Kien likes it, and since he is tolerating cheese these days I'm enjoying the new found freedom of cooking with dairy for him.

Meanwhile my guys were watching Mythbusters.

That was after they played with the bubble machine (before they took it to pieces because it wasn't bubbling consistently).

I'm loving our vegetable "patch" on the balcony/ledge. We have tomatoes ripening, lemon grass, jalapeños, and do you see how big that capsicum is? Kien says "capsicum" as he points at it, and he asks to eat tomatoes. Gosh he talks a lot these days. His caregivers at daycare even mentioned a few times how rapidly he has developed. He sings all the time, and when they change his nappy he likes to sing "B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name, Oh". He recognises the letter O now and last night he looked for the magnetic letter to put into his alphabet machine on the fridge. I am excited to see what will be next.