Goodbye Leicester Street

One of the playgrounds in our area is about to change forever. It is the park where our twin group has met fortnightly over the past 18 months. This dear old steamroller which has stood the test of time is to be removed 'for safety reasons'. It is to be replaced by a brand new state of the art kiddy-gym. It is a big park. If only the changes could have retained a little of the character of the old park.

The boys climbed all over the steamroller for the last time.

Oliver always liked to hide bark chips in the front part of the engine, pretending that they were fuel.

Leicester street Park is also the home of a large colony of garden snails which William is apt to explore.

It also has this tap which is another great attraction!

Once again William is practising using his force to push the button to release the stream of water.

He is fascinated by what he has accomplished.

Friends

This afternoon we met up with my friend Gina and her two children, Ella and Jacob. Here you can see William demonstrating a new-found skill of his: how to turn on a bubbler in the playground. He has been practising this skill and then been jumping full-force into puddles. This afternoon both boys did this over and over until they were both completely soaked and happy.

Swimming

Today was another one of those landmark days which signify the end of babyhood. Oliver and William graduated from Waterbabies to Kindergarten in their swimming lessons. They have been having lessons from the age of six months but we have always been in the pool with them. Today they went into the pool with their floaties on, assisted only by the teachers.

William coped with the change very well but was understandably very tired by the end of the class. Oliver was pretty stressed throughout the class- a reaction which the teachers said was much more common than the one that William displayed. Hopefully they will both gradually adjust to another big transition.

Good Morning Boys!

Yesterday we took a drive up to Nairne, a pleasant 45 minute meander up into a small village in the Adelaide Hills. I wanted to visit a Waldorf shop called Head, Heart and Hands to buy some craft materials. I bought the boys some vivid, soft chalks from Germany and drew them this picture of Dorothy the Dinosaur from The Wiggles. The chalks are equally effective on a blackboard or on paper.

Last night I made these Window Stars from kite paper after seeing some on a blog by Hind's Feet. These stars are the most simple eight-sided ones but I hope to progress to some more complex ones. They looked so colourful in the afternoon sun.

I picked our first bunches of broccoli today and look forward to cooking them. I am marinating lamb shanks in red wine, garlic and onion, following a blog called Zucchini and Chocolate. We will have our lamb shanks with the broccoli tomorrow evening.




Oliver is a master of opening locks and doors. He was very happy to find that we had moved the chook tractor and let the chooks free range while we cleaned the coop and put in new straw. It was just the opportunity he needed to investigate the tractor further.


I wasn't quite expecting this role-reversal though! Isobel looked quite bemused!


Here is Stella enjoying some of the stimulating play equipment we have provided for the chooks!

When I let the chickens out today they all headed for a mulched area of the garden. They all banded together and started scratching the ground with obvious pleasure. Dirt was flying everywhere. They all then formed a sort of chook-scrum, huddled down in the earth and had a little nap.

Poor Dragon is still very much the outsider. She remains at the bottom of the pecking order and can only watch such scrums wistfully from a distance.

I have to say that Ines is a very forward chook. She is a very friendly and engaging girl and follows me everywhere. I was doing the washing up and before I knew it she had come through the window and onto the kitchen sink.
In a flash she was off to make herself a cup of tea. My long suffering husband Inger thought we should draw the line at chooks in the kitchen. He was not all impressed that I reached for my camera rather than the chook!! No more chooks inside!!

Thursday at the Playground

I think that Thursdays are usually the best day of the week for me. I have just finished my two days of work for the week and face the prospect of five days with the boys. This Thursday after getting a few jobs out of the way we set out for the boys' favourite park. We spent a delightful few relaxing hours there. The boys played with other children in the park. Oliver took a fancy to the sunglasses that this boy was wearing.

Oliver was standing dreamy-eyed at the top of a play structure.

He has just started to become interested in the colour of everyone's eyes and likes to comment on this.

William found another little boy named Seth to play with. They took turns in building and demolishing birthday cakes from sand. They decorated the cakes with twigs and the three boys sang Happy Birthday.

William loves to mimic the words and actions of older boys.



Here he was just gearing up for a sand-flinging contest.

I could see him poised with a handful of sand but he smiled at me sweetly and let fly with the sand.


Both he and Seth ended up covered in sand.

They all had a lovely time.

After the boys sleep we went to Mothers' Group at Nicole's house for the afternoon. She had made a divine Claudia Roden Orange Cake which was moist and delicious. All of the mums sat lingering over a glass of wine, chatting while the children played. It was a relaxing afternoon.

Edible Playdough

This week I found the answer to William's continuing tendency to put everything in his mouth...........edible playdough. No longer do I have to worry about the possible toxicity of the commercial tubs of dough that we have bought up till now. I found the very simple recipe in a blog about children's craft. It consists of 1/2 cup of smooth peanut butter, 1/2 cup of honey and 1 cup of powdered milk. You knead it for a while and it becomes quite elastic and pliable. Here you can see that both of the boys have taken very happily to the new dough. They didn't even eat that much of it.

Oliver was concentrating very hard on stamping his dough.

Sunday musings

This morning was a bright, crisp autumn day. We decided to take the boys for a ride on their bikes. We walked down our street and saw these beautiful images of autumn.

The Manchurian Pears lining our street are changing colour.

This was a rose in a neighbour's yard.

A wrought iron fence at the end of our street.

After coming home I took out the craft materials and the boys and I made collages depicting the autumn colours we had seen. They were very keen on this activity-especially the liberal application of craft glue.

Tonight Inger cooked a delicious roast lamb complete with roast organic vegetables from the Co-op. I treated the boys to a dessert of strawberries dipped in melted white chocolate. The look of approval on their faces as they bit into the strawberries was delightful.

The Wacky Warehouse

It was cold and very wet again today. We took a trip to the Clarence Park Community Centre for the Good Food Co-op this morning. It is becoming a great treat for the boys because it is run in an old hall which has a battered old piano on the stage. Both boys absolutely love banging away on the keys and no one seems to mind the noise. They also get to ride around on the trolleys in the hall which is also a great hit.

This afternoon we decided to take them to the Wacky Warehouse which is a massive new Play Cafe in Newton. Being a wet day the place was packed with excited screaming children. William and Oliver had a ball. They are both fantastic climbers and Oliver in particular has no fear. He sped down this slide all afternoon. We were virtually the last family to leave under howls of protest from both boys.

One Rainy Day

Entertaining two little boys on a wet, stormy day is no mean feat! They generally like to go to the playground every day so they had plenty of energy to burn. There is only so much sticking, pasting, story reading and running around the kitchen bench that one can manage. I resorted to an old favourite........hanging sheets and towels over the dining table and and calling it a cave. They always love this game. We enacted the whole of the 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' in that cave.



To make things just that little bit more difficult William had a very high temperature yesterday so I was reluctant to take him outside. We got the doctor's bag out and role-played a visit to the doctor. here William is applying a sticker/bandaid to his arm.


William is a very sociable boy and can generally be found using one of his many telephones.


As well as the cave we erected the inside play-tent and read a few stories in there.



This would have to be the boys' favourite part of the house. They are always clamouring to be allowed to investigate this part of the kitchen. Oliver likes to open and close the microwave door and William likes the appliance cupboard.

Some things never change! What child doesn't enjoy clanging the pots and pans together?

Mothers' Day

So far it is Ines who shows the most interest in her human companions. She seems more like a dog than a chicken. She is the first in line when I open the door of her coop and she likes to be picked up and stroked. I read somewhere that this stroking is how you hypnotise a chook but why one would want to do that I'm not quite sure!

On Mothers' Day the highlight was meant to be a family outing to a puppet show called Nyet Nyet's Picnic. As you can see from the picture below, the puppets were not terribly fluffy and endearing! We lasted only a few minutes before the boys made it quite clear that they were terrified so we had to leave. As Iwas carrying a screaming William out of the theatre we ran headlong into an enormous gaunt white spectre of a bird. White smoke billowed out from under its feet. It was really bad timing because now the experience was the stuff of nightmares for the boys. It was disappointing as it was billed as family entertainment.

One positive to come out of the ill-fated puppet show was that we went for a walk and found a new playground - the Wayville Reserve. Oliver was delighted with this massive mosaic sea serpent. Here he is sitting on its tail. what made it even more appealing was that if you pushed a button on its face it spat out a stream of water and was actually a drinking fountain.

William found a mound of snails at the reserve. He studied them quite carefully. In the end the snails gave way to a wonderful game of football with two teenage boys. Oliver and William loved the experience of playing with these big boys. they ran and kicked balls all afternoon. I found myself thinking about how time had already passed so quickly since they were born. It was the best Mothers' Day present to see the boys running so happily and freely in the park.

Lola

Introducing Miss Lola, an Araucana chicken who will eventually lay blue eggs. She is quite a flighty girl and runs at top speed around the yard. She loves to scratch in the garden bed and have a lovely dust bath, eventually settling down into the hole she has made for a sleep.

As you can see she has a predilection for young vegetable seedlings. She couldn't be coaxed into smiling for this shot.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that we have a lot to learn about chickens. The first thing is that they do not like to be rounded up to go back into their coop. After a fruitless and madcap race around the yard for an hour or so trying to catch darting chickens Inger and I gave up. We then just left the door of their coop open and watched. The girls all then sauntered in quite casually as soon as the sun started to set! They obviously were working to a different timetable than us. The other thing we have learned is that home grown eggs actually taste like............well......eggs! In comparison the eggs from the supermarket don't actually have a flavour. We are enjoying such delicious cakes and tarts made from the eggs of our funny girls.

Washing the Car

My car was looking in a decidedly dirty state so I asked the boys to help me wash it. They jumped up and Oliver shouted "hooray!" William said that it was "exciting!" Here they are approaching the task with great enthusiasm.

As you can imagine things got a bit out of hand! Water was flying everywhere, sponges were being flung around and the boys were jumping in the bubbles. We all ended up soaking wet but the job was well done!

The boys enjoyed a much needed ice cream after all of their hard work.