Busy, busy, busy.

No time to post lately, we've been far too busy building for anything else! Life should get back to normal next week when PVT is back at work, but for now here's what's been going on...

We love Uncle Steve

Jacob and Jeremy spent an extra week in Canberra after the rest of us came home.

The grandparents suggested it a while ago, to give us some extra time to build the house (I think they are keener then we are for us to move in!). The idea took a little getting used to for me - the boys are after all only 5 and 4, and they still need their mummy. Hopefully when they are 25 and 24 they'll still need their mummy. Paul was keen on the idea from the start - not that he wouldn't miss them, but as he has the ability to think removed from his emotions, he saw straight away how good it would be for them, and for him to be able to work on the house without being distracted every 10 minutes to help them make mud bricks, or bang in some nails, or build them a car out of scrap wood (now you can understand why the house is taking so long to build!!).

So anyway, the boys stayed an extra week and we came home. We didn't really get that much extra done on the house, but we did manage to have some nice quality time with Isaac, who was totally lost without his brothers. He'd wander around the house a bit, get the lego out, build a few things, put the lego away, *sigh*. He was happy when they came home.

And the boys had a great time in Canberra. They were taken here, there and everywhere by their grandparents and aunts, got to play with their mummy's and aunty's old lego, and played on Uncle Steve's Wii. They LOVE Uncle Steve. But then he's so much fun...

Who wouldn't love Uncle Steve??!!

Who stole 2008???

I have to apologise for not sending out Christmas Cards this year. I usually do enjoy sending out a yearly update of our family, but 2008 just seemed to slip away. Paul's theory is that the older you get, the faster the years seem to go because they are a smaller proportion of your life. So when you are one, it's a long time between birthdays because one year is 100% of your life, right?? Stay with me here. But when you are, say, 30, then 1 year is 3% of your life, if I did my maths correctly, so it goes really fast. Are you with me? It sounds good anyway.

2008 at a glance:

• Caleb arrived 25th May, our fourth boy. Praise God for another healthy happy baby boy.
• The house progressed a fair bit, with the internal WALLS going up, woo hoo!!, and there is light at the end of the tunnel.
• A nice family wedding in April with Paul's sister getting married, where we got to catch up with some family and friends.
• A nice 'calmer' year of the Youth Group and Awana Kids Club including a great trip to Lake Burrendong in November.
• Jacob began Little Atheletics in October. After a few initial hiccups he really enjoyed the last session before Christmas - restarts February.

2009 at a glance (so far):

• hopefully we'll move into our house within a month or two (February is the current estimate, yes - February 2009!)
• Jacob and Jeremy are currently doing swimming lessons
• Jacob will officially start home schooling
• Jeremy will also start home schooling, unofficially, as he is keener then Jacob!
  

We had a really nice Christmas and a quiet New Year - J&J stayed in Canberra an extra 5 days by themselves. The Grandparents are now recovering, and I's is delighted to have them home.

And finally, just in case you were wondering, yes Caleb at seven months is still so cute...

Our local pool has been revamped. As we live so close to the pool, the boys have been watching the progress eagerly - they are of course experts at building already so have watched with interest.

A few months back the new pool 'toys' arrived. We could see them pretty easily from the road so each time we drove past the boys would scream "TOYS!!!". They would then immediately turn their attention to the other side of the road where a motel is being built and would scream "MOTEL!!!". They have been watching the progress of the motel and trying to work out how come the motel will be well and truly finished before we move into our house, even though we started to build 2 years before the motel began. Thank goodness the pool is finished otherwise we'd be having to drive a different route to our block to save our ears. Is there such a thing as industrial deafness for mothers??

So now the 'toys' are ready to go, the boys are pretty happy to be able to go for a swim and have checked out the pool twice already. They are booked in for swimming lessons in January so there should be just enough time to have a few sessions at the pool before lessons start. They've done a pretty good job on the revamp, check out the new little kids pool and the cool 'toys' in the background...

Someone else is pretty happy that they have brought back the diving board...

He's like a kid at Christmas...

The boys like to take a break when they get too cold and watch daddy on the diving board...

Can't blame them, I like to watch him too ;)

But somebody else wasn't too impressed that he didn't get to taste the water that day...

"it's too cold for you" doesn't mean much to a 6 month old.

I'm too tired to write anything today so here's just some photos (let me hear you say aaahhhh)...

It happened. I knew it would eventually, I just didn't know when, or which child it would be. But Isaac took out the grand prize last night when he stuck a piece of lego up his nose. I'll repeat that in case you didn't quite get it the first time. Isaac stuck a piece of lego up his nose.

I realise it happens to every child or family at some time or another. Personally, I never felt the urge to see if some inanimate object would fit up my nostril. But my sister Tory stuck some foam up there which my mum had to pull out with tweezers - obviously a very delicate operation (especially with 3 sisters laughing hysterically in the background). It wasn't so bad in her case as the foam kind of softened the impact the tweezers could have made. And my oldest sister had to be taken to the doctor for a bead to be removed from her ear. Not that I remember that but it's one of the family stories that get brought up every now and again.

As far I as know, Paul never stuck anything up his nose, but he made up for it by eating things. Legend has it that he swallowed a coin or some such similar small item and when taken to the doctor for an x-ray the doctor was more concerned about all the other nuts and bolts they discovered already inside his stomach. And he reckons Jeremy gets his dirt-eating habits from my side of the family.

Anyway, so last night Isaac, for some reason only understood by other 3 year olds, decided to see if a piece of lego would fit up his nostril. Oh yes, it did fit. Then he tried to get it out all by himself, only suceeding to push it further up.

Our first knowledge of the incident was "mummy, please get it out". As Paul and I were busily building rockets and space shuttle's out of lego at the time, it took a few moments for us to realise what he meant. There was lego up his nose. After an initial consultation it was determined that although we could see the lego, we couldn't reach it and tweezers were way to risky for such a delicate part of the anatomy. We tried to get him to blow his nose, but hey, he's only 3 and hasn't got a great handle on that yet.

After a phone call to a paramedic friend for advice (because you never know, there may be a trick to removing lego from a 3 year old's nose that we hadn't come across before) we realised a visit to the hospital would be in order, most likely along with having to hold down a screaming child or even knocking him out in order to remove the lego. With little hope we held one side of his nose and advised him one last time to "blow big like a rocket taking off" and fortunately out flew the piece of lego. Jacob's comment was "wow Isaac that came out fast like a bullet".

He's fine now.

PS: I realise this is not a cute photo of my child. It was taken a few days after his hair cut, out bush on a day he got no sleep, filthy dirty from playing in the dust, and yes, his nose is running. I figure this photo will help illustrate the above story, and not every photo is cute, nice and "aaahhh". This is reality. This is a photo of a child that would stick lego up his nose.

I sit here with the baby behind me playing on the floor, exercising his vocal chords with his nether-regions exposed to the air. (He loves that). Caleb turned six months old this week, and so I decided I’d do a ‘snapshot in time’ thing of what he’s like, so you can see he’s just as cute as we keep telling you.

1. Wingnut. That’s his nickname, because his ears stick out just a little. When he grows a bit more hair we’ll probably have to rethink the name.

2. Cay. That’s what the boys call him. Jacob and Jeremy call Isaac, “I”. So now we have an I, two J’s, and a K.

3. He’s a stickybeak. He has to be in on all the action, and forget feeding him with other things going on in the room, because it ain’t gonna happen.

4. He stares at things, particularly Paul. Then he breaks out into a huge grin when Paul looks at him.

5. He grabs at things. When he manages to grab it hard enough to grasp it, he of course brings it straight to his mouth for a drool session.

6. If he can’t grab something, he bangs on it. Thumps it with his hand.

7. He’s just starting to get noisy. He was a very quiet baby until recently. We referred to him as a mime a few times, because he’d open his mouth wide to laugh but no sound would come out. Maybe we just couldn’t hear him over the three other muppets. But he’s discovering his voice and how much fun it is to add it to the commotion already happening around him.

8. He loves his dummy. He grabs it himself and shoves it in his mouth. He’s so clever. :D

9. He loves the jolly jumper, and he still loves his bouncer which he bounces himself by kicking his legs.

10. He’s just started solids and screws his face up each time the food gets into his mouth.

11. He can be a real cranky bear when he wants to be. And he still has the newborn 'woe is me' cry - complete with poochy lip just to make sure he gets his point across.

12. He can roll over a few different ways, but mostly from his back to his tummy. He doesn't bother to roll any other way because his brothers will do it all for him.


Happy half birthday Cay Cay!!