This post is for w/c Sunday 31st August 2008.

The rain has finally stopped and the sun has been out and shining. This is beneficial for many reasons - getting the washing dry, Joseph can run around at Bear Park (and be tired) and George and I can get out for a walk in the buggy.

Joseph's imagination is starting to become evident and he can now pretend objects are something else...here's an example where Joseph was using pegs to be bigger ladders on his fire engines. He was balancing the pegs on the top of the fire engine and pushing them around all the while talking about the ladders.

George has been spending more time awake and has been talking (a key skill if Joseph and Dan are anything to go by!) and smiling. It is hard to capture his smile but here is a shot that kind of shows it!

He also seems to be settling down at night and not requiring as many feeds - for most of last week I put him down to bed about 7pm and didn't feed him again until 1pm (ie he'd dropped the 11pm feed). I bought a different brand of bottle on Friday and George has been happier feeding from that one that the Avent bottles...finger's crossed that continues this week as it means that I can have some time away from George and that Dan can spend that nice cuddly time with him.

Here's a pic of the angel George just before he woke up on Friday morning.

On the weekend, we went out to Jo and Phil's house in Piha...Lizzie and Joseph were a bit niggly with each other and we had a bit of a meltdown over who's turn it was to push the buggy. Here's a picture of Jo's solution.

We went for a walk on the beach (Dan went for a 1:43 run - he's training for the Taupo Ironman in March 09) and all that sea air must have tired the boys out. Here's what they looked like when we got home on Sunday afternoon.

This post is for w/c Sunday 24th August.

This was our first week with no visitors which meant we just had to get on with things with no help! This led to George, Joseph and I getting into the Bear Park drop off and pick up routine each day. We've had a few teething problems coordindating everyone to be fed, dressed and ready to go at the same time but I am sure that will come right in the next week or so!

Here's a pic of George and me (he's seven weeks old here)

and also one of Dan and Joseph taken on Friday night after our fish and chips dinner - Dan and Joseph are sharing a chocolate paddle pop.

George is spending more time awake during the day and we're adding in a bit of tummy time every day...here's an effort from last week!

In last week's post I mentioned Joseph's use of the phrase "look at me, Mum" - here is the aftermath of that phrase, leaping off the couch into the bean bag (very gymnastic!). All was fine for the first five or so jumps but then he missed the bean bag and landed on his face - luckily a cuddle and some rice wheels set Joseph up to carry on.

Finally, here's Joseph and George having their weekly cuddle.

This post is for w/c Sunday 17th August (even though today is Wednesday 20th!).

Again, another very busy week with lots of visitors and tasks to cross off the list.

For George, this meant his six week check with Plunket and his six week injections with our GP. Here's George being weighed by Joan Springgay, the same Plunket nurse we have with Joseph. George weighed in at 4.91kg so he's put on about 1.2kg since he was born.

The injections were a bit painful for young George and we had a couple of unsettled days and nights. Luckily, Grandma was here to help out until she left on Saturday and then Great Aunt Aida came over to help.

Joan told me that we needed to start tummy time for George so here he is on his second attempt.

Joseph has been busy perfecting his big brother and sharing skills...here is a picture of Joseph laying out some of his toys for George to play with. He did get a bit perturbed when George wasn't actively playing with them though. I had to explain that at the moment he could only look at them!

Dan was in Sydney Wednesday through Sunday (a combination of work and play) and has really noticed a change in Joseph...again, language based. His two favourite phrases at the moment are "Look at me, Mum" (generally when perched precariously on the edge of the sofa) and "I do it myself" (this applies to everything - cutting, reading, pulling off socks, fixing the train track).

Something I noticed with Joseph over the weekend was that he is starting to transfer knowledge learnt in one area to others. He has a magnestised puzzle and a magnetised fire engine, police car and ambulance. I noticed on Saturday that he had used the magnet of the puzzle to connect to the magnet on the fire engine and was using the fire engine to pull the puzzle along. Very clever I thought!

Finally, here's a picture of the two brothers!

This post is for Sunday 10th August 2008.

This week was characterised by lots of visitors.

On Monday Aunty Dorothy and Uncle Bruce came down from Warkworth - bearing lots of gifts for both Joseph and George.

Grandad BQ left on Wednesday, returning to the warmer climes of Brisbane! We managed to snap some shots of him with George.

Then on Thursday my cousin, Rebecca, made a flying visit enroute to Cambodia where she teaches at an international school. She and Joseph caught up (they hadn't seen each other since Joseph's christening) and did lots of jigsaws together. She was also instrumental in settling George on Thursday night when I was out for dinner.

Uncle Gerry also came to visit on the weekend - he came bearing gifts for both boys and we managed to convince him to read a Hairy McLary book to Joseph. Gerry gave Joseph a garage containing a fire engine, an ambulance and a police car, complete with flashing lights and siren noises. All favourite things of Joseph's!!

Joseph was a bit tired on Sunday afternoon (a big trip to the zoo in the morning will do that to a young man) and he, for the first time ever, took himself off to bed late in the afternoon. We had to wake him up and he needed some sugar to make it through until dinner time (he was a bit grumpy!). So, we gave him some honey sandwiches...unfortunately he was too unfocused to eat them at the table so he looks like a little beggar child!

This post is for w/c Sunday 3rd August 2008.


Unfortunately New Zealand has been gripped by storms in the past week so we've had A LOT of inside time...George and I have hardly been out of the house!

Joseph had his first bout of impetigo ("school sores") which resulted in him being sent home on Thursday along with a quick trip to the doctor for an antibiotic prescription! He wasn't allowed to go to Bear Park on Friday either - resulting in the house being in a bit of a quarantine situation! He was very sad on Friday and spent much of the day asleep. However he made a miraculous recovery on Friday night - just in time to devour a lot of hot chips when the fish and chips arrived!! Every day he gets bigger and bigger and his vocabulary increases all the time. Rather disconcertingly he has taken to calling us "Mum" and "Dad" rather than Mummy and Daddy. It sounds quite bizarre and so grown up! He has also started wearing the puffer jacket I bought for him in Melbourne back in March - after months of not letting it near his body, on Thursday he just let Dan put it on - no questions asked. I don't know how much more wear he'll get out of it as it a bit snug! Here's a pic of both the puffer jacker and the impetigo!

George did go on an outing on Friday when Dan and I took him to see Peter Nobbs, the paediatrician, for a check up. All's well and he'd had another sizeable weight gain - as of Friday, he's weighing in at 4.5kg (so, 800g since he was born). I thought this was excellent until Dan checked this against Joseph at the same age - Joseph weighed a whopping 5.5kg!! Here's the weight chart showing all four of us (but only our first 50 days!).

Both Dan and I have managed to elicit smiles from George and I am hoping to see them more regularly from now on. We've notched up five weeks today (Mon 4th). Here he is on Sunday afternoon...I was just changing his cot sheets and put him on our bed to rest...he conked out looking very angelic.

I am going out for dinner on Thu 7th so in preparation we tried George on a bottle on Sunday afternoon...he had no trouble drinking it all. Yay! So, now I'm expressing like mad to build up a stock pile of milk to tide Dan over whilst I'm out for a few hours (missing a couple of feeds).

Finally, here's a picture of the three Warren boys. Joseph is still enjoying his micro holds of George. You will see that Joseph also had his hair cut on Saturday - the less said about that the better (I wasn't present for the cut but apparently it was very traumatic!).