Going ons

Daniel just loves helping out at the moment with anything and everything. It is lovely to see but also challenging at times... It takes a lot of patience.

One way Daniel loves to help is doing the washing up. He grabs his stool, uses an old washing up brush and washes in the rinsing sink.

Washing the colander

Helping Daddy do the washing up

 He also loves helping cook in the kitchen. He is eating less while he is helping cook which is good. He absolutely loves peeling carrots.

Even though sickness has been around with all of our family (including the Howies and Mum and Dad) we have had a chance to see them at different times.

I just love seeing Oscar with Eliza. He's very sweet with her.

And I love how much Daniel adores his Auntie Jenny.

Daniel and Eliza have had a great time playing together. Daniel is pretty good with sharing but also has his moments. Here Daniel wanted to sit on the couch with Eliza. Eliza wasn't so keen on the idea.

When around at Mum and Dad's place for dinner Daniel had a wonderful time outside playing cricket/tennis/tee-ball. His co-ordination is pretty good. I can't wait for him to be old enough to get into different sports.

Playing cricket

Smashing it

Playing tennis

Eliza came to watch (and Daniel went back to cricket)

He then continued playing tennis at home and was getting pretty good at hitting the ball.

Eliza is also joining in on the fun of throwing and catching. She had fun throwing the ball to Daniel and Daddy one evening.

Sadly, James' Boompa passed away recently which saw Malcolm and Julie come to stay with us for a little bit for the funeral. It is always lovely to see them and the rest of the family, even if it was for a sad time. The day they arrived was Boompa's (Malcolm's) birthday so we made a cake for him. Daniel was pretty excited about having some cake.

Singing happy birthday

Helping blow out the candles

The next week it was Great-Grannie's birthday and it was lovely to have her come around with Malcolm for lunch. Even though it is a bit hard with her dementia getting worse, it is still creating lovely memories for us and the kids.

Great-Grannie opening her card and present

Eliza just loves necklaces

Chatting with Great-Grannie

 When Eliza wakes up from her naps Daniel loves to go in and say hello to her before I go in. Often I hear him telling Eliza 'I love you Eliza' which is so sweet. (even if he is pushing her head back down to continue sleeping).

Something that Eliza does a lot at the moment is a sniff. I can't help but laugh at her gorgeous face while she does it and I love that she mostly does it on cue.

She has also started to blow kisses. Here she is doing the kissing action but also noticing that her voice changes while she does it. The time she always blows a kiss is when she says night night to Daniel which I think is just beautiful!

This is also the sound that Eliza makes when giving kisses.

 
Eliza has continued to enjoy standing and is just starting to pull herself up on things when she wants something up high - crayons on Daniel's table, my keys on the coffee table, the remotes on the couch. I helped her stand here but she was very comfortable and sturdy on her legs on her own.

Today I finally got video of Eliza pulling herself up to standing. She's a very clever girl.

As Daniel loves riding his bike around, we have sometimes put Eliza on the little horse and pushed her around. She just loves it! Unfortunately it's a bit rough on our backs so we don't last long. Daniel has been a good help at pulling and pushing her around though which is very cute and Daniel seems to enjoy it. Eliza absolutely loves it for the meltdown we get at the end is anything to go by.

 When the horse doesn't work, we try brother piggybacks. They don't last very long though.

Daniel has stepped up his breastfeeding of Christopher. He has found my feeding cover a couple of times, put it on then pulled up his shirt and fed Christopher. I do love the things he is taking in and how they are done.

At the moment when Eliza wakes up, Daniel is often wanting me to feed her in his room. He also enjoys reading books in his bed with Eliza and I which is a pretty nice time. I really do love these 2 together.

Last week Daniel became quite sick (out of the blue) with a virus that gave him quite high fevers - highest was 39.9. He was very out of sorts and very clingy. While feeding Eliza he just wanted Mummy cuddles, so I had to adapt - feeding while hugging - much like the early days.

Fortunately the fever went down on its own but it was pretty full on. One night he woke up so distraught and disorientated he didn't know what he wanted. I went into him and he kept asking for his other Mummy. Hmmm... not too sure about that one. Poor poppet.

Eliza has started to be very animated in the bath. She is at that wriggly stage where she doesn't want to stay sitting. She's so cute!

Daniel has enjoyed copying the different things that Eliza does. When she gets grizzly while I'm making something in the kitchen, I stand her up holding onto the draw handles. Daniel then copies.

 Eliza was getting into different things so I put her into a cardboard box with some toys to try and contain her. Daniel then pulled toys out of another box so he could sit in it too.

The difficulty is that he like to copy things that she does wrong, even though he knows he shouldn't. The main thing at the moment is touching the oven. Ever since Daniel was little we have pulled him away, sat down with him and explained that we don't touch the oven because it can be hot and it can hurt you. He is very good with it. But Eliza has no idea and just loves looking at her reflection in it. She crawls over to it and pulls up on it. Daniel then copies. I'm not too sure what to do with it. I gave him thinking time today and I think that will be the process just so he has time to think about why it is wrong and he can then model to Eliza the right thing to do. Hopefully.

He does then melt my heart doing this though!

When Eliza turned 11 months old I decided to try putting her hair into a ponytail. It worked out ok. Very fiddly but so worth it! A couple of days later I tried again and still think it's adorable.

On my way home from dropping Daniel off with Auntie Jenny at a play date, driving home I saw a toy car on the road at council clean up. This car is one that Daniel absolutely loves yet I could never justify spending over $100 on it like most places do. I stopped the car and looked at it - all wheels were attached, steering wheel, horn, door that worked. I couldn't see anything wrong with it. I decided to pop it into the car (with great difficulty - it is a lot bigger than it seems!). I brought it home and hid it until after nap time. When Daniel woke up I told him to put on his shoes and hat and I'd have a surprise for him. Here is his reaction.

 He then spent 1hr 30mins driving around, going to the 'shops' to get some milk, heading home, etc. It was great because it gave me a good chance to garden while he played with the car and Eliza sat in her high chair.

Winner!!!

Each week Nana and Poppy come around, Daniel and Eliza get 50c to put into their money boxes. Grayma also gives them 5c coins when we see her. Daniel decided this week to see how much money he had (away from Eliza of course). He has a lot of coins!

Today I had some fun with Daniel after lunch time taking fun photos. Even when he drives me crazy, he does bring me so much joy.

He was interested in the dolls house in Eliza's room so I moved a few things around, got some of the little people toys and Daniel had fun playing with them in the dolls house. This is very special for me as my Grandpa made this dolls house for me. I look forward to the kids playing with them a lot like I did. I hope that it will be passed down to their kids too.

We also had a lot of fun playing chasings and crawling games in the hallway. It is amazing how much fun you can have doing the simple things!

Just Dance

I thought this was pretty cute. Eliza has started to dance on cue. It's so cute to watch and cuter when Daniel joins in.
Enjoy :-)

 

Daniel's 1st Drawing of a Person

This morning, Daniel decided to sit down and do some drawing before breakfast. Eliza and I were next to him doing some drawing (or more trying to stop Eliza eating the crayons) and Daniel was telling me what he was doing. He started by 'writing his name'. Then he said 'And here is Naniel'. He drew a body. Then he said 'Here are some legs and feet.' and drew some lines for legs and feet. He then said 'Here are arms' and drew them. And then he added eyes and hair. I was so very proud of him! He hasn't shown much interest in drawing things besides a brief scribble so this was very exciting for me.

Here is his picture of 'Naniel'.

He then wanted to do some more drawing so I videoed him doing it. Here he is creating Daniel in the garden. The finished product isn't as clear as his first one but there is definitely a person there and I love his running commentary.

 

Quiet Books

The other creative thing that I have been working on since October is a Quiet Book for Daniel. A Facebook post had a picture of a Mr Potato Head page for a quiet book and it caught my eye. I looked up the site:
http://jocelynandjason.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/mr-potato-head-quiet-book-pages-10-11.html
and had a look around. I decided that I would like to have a go at making this for Daniel. The book is just so very cute that is on the site and I think that Daniel would really enjoy using it. I found a site that had a good deal on felt (MTA - Modern Teaching Aids) so ordered a couple of packs of the felt. I asked Mum for the sewing machine she bought for Jens and I and set it up in the back room. I did a couple of attempts with scrap material and was remembering how to sew so decided to start with my Mr Potato Head page.

Not too bad for not having sewed since D&T at school (probably year 10??)

Complete with pocket

My little set up in the back room

The start

Mrs Potato Head

Mr Potato Head

All the different parts

Another shot of all the different parts

Next up I made a road. I used most of the ideas from the same blog, however, I did adapt it a little bit by making garages and using stop signs, lakes, etc. I was pretty happy with my little cars too.

 Next up were 2 pages that I though would be quite simple. How wrong I was. They took forever! Using press studs and velcro really takes a lot of time. Having said that I was again pretty happy with the finished product. 

The page on the blog was just an apple tree page, but I decided to add some variety by making flowers and autumn leaves. Just makes the page a little bit more interesting.

Next up was a dinosaur page. He's pretty cute! It was my first attempt with velcro.

The 3 pages together look like this:

Next up is a farm page which included finger puppets. It was pretty fun to make and see this one take shape. The finger puppets are so cute and lots of fun to use. I hope Daniel enjoys playing with them!

Old MacDonald had a farm...

First attempt at finger puppets. Pretty happy with them

I also added doors on the barn. You can see them in the final book photos.

 The next page Mum came around to help teach me how to make button holes as I never did them in high school. The machine is pretty clever but when the stitching gets caught up it's quite painful to fix! With the flowers there are 2 layers on each one. They can be taken off and swapped around so that the colours can be mixed. Or they can be put into the vase.

Then Mum came around to help me with the zipper for the ladybug as I haven't used a zipper foot on a sewing machine for many years, and I think I've only used it once. It was a good learning curve for us both. The spots are attached by press studs so you can take them off and store them in the pocket.

I then decided to have a go at being creative on my own by making a garbage truck page. Daniel just loves watching the garbage truck come each week and also pretends to be a garbage truck while riding his bike. As it's such a big part of his interests at the moment I was keen to make it.

The garbage bins are the same colours as ours - red = rubbish (with 2 garbage bags), yellow = recycling (with cardboard box and bottle), green = green waste (with 2 branches). They are attached by a stud so they can be taken off the page and emptied into the garbage truck. I am really happy with how the page turned out. I hope he loves playing with it!

Next I made a letterbox page. Daniel also loves going and seeing the postman and getting the letters from him. He will pretend to be a postman as he rides his bike around so I hope he enjoys this page.

I started with an envelope for Daniel and a few different notes that I wanted him to get. The envelopes open and close, attached with velcro

I then thought it would be fun to have an envelope for each person in our family so Daniel can send letters to anyone. I also added a few more letters.

The last page I made for in the book was a naughts and crosses page. He has no idea of the game at the moment but I am hoping that he will enjoy using this book for many years to come so will enjoy playing it later.

Once I had completed all the pages I realised that the book is WAY too big. Haha. Oh well. I decided (with some help from others) that I'd make 2 books. 1 is going to be just for Daniel (an interest one) and the other one will be shared between Eliza and Daniel. 
I then made 2 cover pages and 2 back pages for the books.

The little boy can be taken off and played with

So here is what Daniel's book will look like.

And here is Eliza and Daniel's share book.

I have sewed the pages together and am happy with how they look. I now need to do button holes on the pages and put them together.




I have enjoyed this project a lot! I plan to make one book for Eliza too but that will happen after New Zealand.