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Apart from crawling, Juultje also likes to stand up. In her play pen, she can hold the rail and may pull a
grumpy or
smiley face. Piet and Emma can still play really nicely together, sharing a chair while
reading a book.
As we live in Sydney, we have to throw out the odd large
spider - we don't think this one is venomous. Piet can be sweet to Juliana. One morning, he joined her in her
playpen.
Friends from Piet's pre-school (including some from Addison Road) came over for dinner. It was the first time we made full use of our backyard. As they both had twins, they are now in the same year as Emma (with Piet's former teacher).
In the fourth school term - the last before christmas - we have taken the kids out of swimming, as they were not progressing very well, did not enjoy it much and it being an extra hassle with Juliana. We now live walking distance from a public swimming pool and intend to go there every week - don't hold your breath. Instead of swimming, Piet is doing a science class on Tuesdays from 17h30, while Emma does a 16h ballet class. In the meantime, Piet has become adept in googling pictures of animals to draw - he impressed us with his grasshopper. We will get him a drawing lesson or two this term again.
Will's third birthday
In the run-up to Will's third birthday, we baked a cakes, which Piet and Emma also helped
decorate. For the first year, his birthday was on a weekday. We took the kids out of school on Monday - a day is hardly worth mentioning; we have taken Piet out for two weeks holiday in Europe, but other friends take their kids out for a six week holiday in Sweden or a full term holiday in New Zealand. As in previous years, we went to
Collin's beach, to which we had to drive this time.
Juliana enjoys the
beach and loves the
sand. We played hide-and-seek and
tip (tikkertje). The kids had a swim in the
water, but we should have brought their wetsuits. We got caught out by the weather forecast of 31 degrees. It did get that hot in the end, but only at
5 pm, by which time we had long left the beach. Earlier this month, the day's maximum got reached at 10am, after which a turning wind got the temperature down. But this did not stop Juliana crawling around in the
sand and happily getting into the water.
At the end of the morning, it was time for cake. We lit the candles and sang Will happy birthday. It was the first time Juliana ate cake. Piet even noticed that "if Will had been alive, he would have been able to play with Juliana". We had brought some balloons on which we wrote a wish. Piet and Emma wrote their own wishes for Will on the balloon and Juliana added a scribble too. We let the balloons go at Piet and Emma's secret hide-out, some rocks that protrude into the water.
