water, water everywhere

....and not a drop to drink. not for the big people anyway. mom is eeking out a limited supply of bottled water for me to be able to have my milk in the morning and evening, but landslides into the reservoir caused by severe rainstorms means the water coming out of the tap is distinctly yukky. my bath was rather brown, and not even the bubbles could hide it. on the plus side there are some extremely good puddles just outside our back gate. i think i'll be spending some considerable time out there in the next few days

enthusiasm

it's good to be enthusiastic about the finer things in life. i've recently moved on from "oh yes!" as my standard response to a good idea, to "yeah, great". while mom understands this when she offers me an outing to the park, or perhaps a cookie, she always looks a little surprised when she gets the same response to a cup of water or a piece of bread or perhaps the suggestion of doing some colouring. personally i think its good to be grateful for even these things.

doel dit

contrary to the received wisdom of child psychologists, rather than regress in my development with the arrival of oliver, in some areas at least i'm coming on in leaps and bounds. i guess that makes sense considering the amount of leaping and bounding i do. my vocabulary is increasing daily. not only can i now correctly identify and pronounce a number of colours: red, black, blue, pink, yellow, green, i'm also getting more specific about 'bob'. as of yesterday for example, the picture in my last post is a 'digging bob'.
my best friend Hobbes finally has a name other than 'this', as indeed do i myself : doel. one phrase that's becoming increasingly useful is 'doel dit' (joel do it). this might apply to making toast, spreading honey, taking a photo with the digital camera, putting on a dvd.......i'm quite technologically minded - or is it that i just like pushing buttons?

bob!

"bob!!!" I exclaim loudly. this is one of my favourite things. in fact all things bob are my favourite, sometimes we see them in the neighbourhood. i'm such a boy

olly's here

mom kept asking me why she had such a big tummy. I always said "baby", and stroked it gently. I know what babies are, I see them around on the street. now we have a baby of our very own. he's called oliver, and I love him.

daddy showed me this photo on his camera and said who's this. I pointed and said "baby", then pointed at me and said "dole". it's kind of fun having another little guy around. although I have to say he can be a little noisy when I'm trying to watch my favourite documentary about tractors. Julia the midwife came in yesterday to take some blood out of olly's heel – bluuurgh. olly wasn’t really excited and cried quite a bit. I went in and looked all compassionate for a few seconds, but eventually enough was enough. "bye guys" I said, shut the door and got back to watching farm trucks and tractors.

here's the oliver blog

normal service required

when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is rattle the bars on my cage (well, actually the gate across my bedroom door). if it's before 5.45am, this rapidly summons a parent who sends me straight back to bed to do more sleeping, if it's 7.00am a somewhat amazed looking parent emerges with a bottle of milk remarkably quickly. this might have something to do with the whole night's sleep they just had. more normally there is not much response at all. at this point I shout a little to remind them I'm here, Greg and Andrea love that, as their bedroom is just above me.

this morning I was somewhat surprised to discover it was Donna who answered my early morning call. I think I led her through the routine pretty well. my bottle leaked a bit, but tasted good, and she was happy to respond to my call for 'book'. we unloaded the dishwasher, and I told her whose mug was whose, and where stuff went. I got the milk for her for her cup of tea, we played trains and she did pretty good for a girl.

it was kind of weird mom and dad weren't around. Roxanne soon appeared to take me out for the day. being a fully qualified mom, she remembered to take all the things I really need for a good day out. a change of clothes so I could go puddle jumping (I taught Katrina a thing or two), my sleeping bag and Hobbes so I could nap, and my bouncy castle was already installed at her house. we had loads of fun – I was far too busy to talk to dad when he called, and even went to Science World in the afternoon where there were loads of buttons to press and things to play with.

when we finally got home, mom and dad were back with baby oliver. they all looked almost as tired as me, so they must have had a busy day too. oliver had got me a couple of presents – he must have known it was my birthday.

thanks for looking after me Donna and Roxanne, you're my friends.

yuk.......gone

the latest challenge at bathtime is to see just how much water i can bail out of the bath, using the very unpromising implements i'm currently allowed in there with me. despite the moratorium on pots, buckets, scoops etc mom and dad generally take their socks off before entering the bathroom. actually mom doesn't usually have to bother since she can't reach her feet to put them on in the first place, but dad was really kind today and put her socks on for her before we went out into the frosty park this morning.

so there's mom, balancing on one foot, trying to reach the water in the bath to check if it's the right temperature, and i'm patiently waiting beside her - stark naked and getting chilly, i might add - when all of a sudden mom notices her foot is getting remarkably warm and wet considering i'm not even in the bath yet. she looks around to see me grinning at her happily, saying 'yuk'. was it my fault, oh yes!!!!

later, mom comes to check on me before she gets into bed. she opens my bedroom door, and leans over the gate. the gentle sound of snoring emanates from.....well, i'm not in my bed, nor am i on the cushions carefully placed beside my bed in case i fall off the mattress, nor am i on the floor by the door. somewhat confused, mom turns the kitchen light on in order to shed some light on the situation. am i in the corner by my drum kit? no. behind the door? no. ahhh......there appears to be a body in the sleeping bag sprawled out across Bob the Builder in the middle of the big double bed. is this the first episode of sleep walking, or just a small boy looking for his daddy in the middle of the night?