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On the first Saturday in March, oma Grannybunts came to stay with us for a few weeks. This meant lots of attention, and new books, for Piet and Emma.
Eastern View
The next weekend, right after Soccer Time Kids on Friday morning, we went to the beach house in Eastern View on the
Great Ocean Road.
Piet and Emma discovered that they can touch each other's feet while sitting in their car seats: Piet has to stretch his foot to the far left and at the same time Emma needs to stretch her's to the far right. This provided an ideal issue to quarrel about on our way to the beach house. Once inside, Piet and Emma spotted a dead fly on the
carpet and had a
close look. We had some
watermelon, which Piet is
rather fond of. Leaving most books behind at home means that the children rediscover the
joy of reading
others.
Twice a day we went to the beach. Piet was always keenest. Oma Grannybunts helped digging a car castle in the sand. Piet and Emma proudly sat in it and managed to wave at the camera when required. We went for short walks along the beach. Emma is often cautious near the water, preferring to be carried. The smallest wave - say 1 cm deep - might scare her and make her run to her nearest parent, which makes her even more scared if that parent is standing in an inch of water. Piet happily braves those depths alone. For waves up to knee-high, he prefers holding hands, while once his father carried him closer to the surf and he was happy to be dipped into the water up to his waist.
For lunch, oma baked pancakes. Piet and Emma watched from the side and licked the batter. When not at the beach, they played outside the house with gravel and their bucket or with the wombats on the bench.
Botanical gardens
Back home, oma and mum took the kids to the children's botanical garden. Apart from the usual plants and flowers, this had a very intesting
stream. Piet started
wading through it and Emma duely
followed. At the bottom of the garden, the stream ended in a kind of
fountain, where the kids figured out how to
squirt each other. This became a
wet affair. It still wasn't the end of the visit, as mum had brought
dry clothes and there was a massive
sandpit to explore.
The weather was still nice, so after dinner Piet and Emma could still have fun playing outside and Remy brought his parents over for a swim and lunch. Mum put up the cross stitch Nijntje (Miffie) height chart. Piet surprised his father by calling him 'Jan' twice. This happened on 20th March and hasn't happened since. Earlier in the month, Emma had surprised dad with her wit. We read her some stories before bedtime and she started to insist we read all the books on her bedside table. With four books on that table, it became too much for dad, so he put two books away. Within a week, she spotted these two books on the bookshelf in the living room and carried them back to her bedside table...
Swimming lessons
Since the start of the school term, we have been taking Emma and Piet to swimming lessons. Emma goes in with mum, while Piet has lessons with a teacher and three other children. The first few weeks, there was a lot of crying by both, either in the pool or on our way to the 'special swimming pool'. Now, they are both enjoying it and Piet even accepted a change over of teacher. One of the attractions of the lessons is that they are allowed
one lolly each afterwards (lolly is
Australian English for a piece of candy). For more pictures, see
We had more fun with grannybunts, who could make better animals out of playdough than mum and dad. We still enjoy our bottles so much, that our parents have given up switching us over to cups completely. Painting is still appreciated by both Piet and Emma. We continue to squabble a lot; so much even, that our parents have separated our high chairs at the dinner table. Hence as siblings united, we have decided to do without our high chairs and sit next to each other on two adult chairs, where we happily eat our grated cheese as a snack, for example. We got a rare visit by a kookaburra close to the house; normally, they stay in the trees. Mum took us to a toy shop to select a present for a voucher for Piet's birthday. The kids declined all mum's suggestions and settled for a plastic digger and fire truck.
