Category: week in review

It’s the holidays! The kids were super-proud of their efforts learning about clay and the world, and about game programming respectively.

 

 

Puff and Huff looked pretty happy on their way back to the car after their three days of learning was up!

 

 

We watched Toy Story 4 as a family, including Grandma, who Dad and Puff dropped home after the movie. Puff and Grandma collaborated on a crossword puzzle.

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning Dad and the two kids walked to church together, over the now-familiar bridge.

 

 

 

 Lastly, here is Huff running forward a house or two at a time, watching the driveways for cars.

 

Lastly, Mum and the kids went to the dentist today, at the end of which, Huff’s latest baby tooth fell out – never before at the dentist, at least for our family.

And just like that it’s school holidays again. Puff is half-way through his final year of primary school, with high school results coming out only a few hours after the school bell, so we’re not sure how many friends he will have at the new school.

Surely more than anything else, this should be the indicator that it’s time to take down a blog like this, or at least hide it behind a password or similar? Times have changed, but should anyone be able to walk back, week by week, and review their entire childhood? Has it been a good childhood? If Dad had his time over, what would be the same, and what different, from these 500+ weeks of parenting?

Of course, there’s no opportunity to hit rewind, just the hope that you have learned from your mistakes on the way through, built up enough of a connection with the kids to last the distance, and make the best of everything moving forward.

Saturday morning, we went out for brunch for some analog play: Dad and Huff played “Mr Squiggle”, a concept that Huff understands almost exclusively through YouTube videos and second-hand memories. At Mum’s suggestion, and after Mum had played a few rounds, Dad and Puff were playing hangman, where Puff guessed “flying circus” gratifyingly slowly enough to make for a challenge.

Huff had a babycino, which is still where her appetite for beverages remains. This was a potatohead babycino, so it came with teeth and freckle eyes. Huff has another loose tooth which will mean a further summons of the tooth fairy before long.

It’s surprising what she remembers and what she doesn’t – often asking about particular imaginative play, or about making pasta that one time, years ago, when we stayed home and cooked pasta. Turns out it was three years ago.

Hopefully she will remember making cookies with Grandma for many years to come; there was no shortage of cookie consumption on the other side of the helping. 

 Oh, and while Mum was out, Dad and the kids had dinner together and Dad beat Puff at chess (it was looking pretty doubtful for a while).

The kids are doing a three-day holiday course this week. Puff is learning coding – he was showing off the beginning steps of a text-based adventure game that he’s been writing in Python. Huff is learning about clay: she’s been making a bee, and tomorrow they paint the bee. Each of them have made friends in their respective classes, which is encouraging.

We’re heading into the last week of term, but there’s still a lot of activity. Reports coming out with the challenges of identifying the relative strengths and weaknesses of each child, and the upcoming parent-teacher meetings.

More musical performances are drawing near, and Puff’s music-related jumper (and Mum’s) arrived as an urgent delivery, to make sure it arrived before the end of term.

Dad has been balancing some late nights with some early morning drop-offs and general help with the school run.

Puff has many musical commitments at the moment; a district music performance on saxophone where they won gold!

On the weekend we had a picnic at a friend’s house.

And at swimming this week, it was safety week, where the kids have to swim wearing clothes (and even shoes). They were struggling a little to fit into their old shoes to go into the pool (is it worth wrecking the new shoes for half an hour in the water?) but once they’re in, they go okay.

To make up for working over the weekend, to help wrap up some paperwork, and to see the family a little, Dad did the school pick-up today. The kids were glad to come with Dad, went to the library with him, and even enjoyed the dinner he cooked.

By the next post, we’ll be in school holidays, where the kids are looking for a good rest, and some more learning opportunities.

A regular school week with its music practices, school excursions and incursions (pulling together a “colonial” outfit at the last minute, then finding out the kids were all pretending to be convicts), and then a somewhat restful weekend, with a couple of exceptions).

Dad spent much of Saturday resting to try and get healthy, while the kids enjoyed some screen time. Huff in particular is a big fan of Minecraft, continuing to make her own complex dwellings and interact with the various virtual animals in the game.

Saturday night, Huff’s hair was especially fancy.

Puff also dressed up. It was uncle J and aunty C’s wedding reception!

Everyone scrubbed up nicely, and enjoyed some amazing food.

It was good to spend some time with most of the family!

And then, after a late night, and some Sunday catch-up time with uncle M, we were back to normal, with Dad being a taxi for Puff heading to a day of violin practice while Mum took Huff for the usual swimming lesson.

Friday night we had a long overdue dinner with friends, including a backyard fire with marshmallow toasting. As is usually the way, Huff was way more keen to toast marshmallows than to eat them, but it was great to have some time to spend with friends.

The rest of the weekend Dad was at uni, so the kids had a pyjama day on the Saturday, and on the Sunday was church and an evening church meeting. 

Then it was back to school; the kids are making progress on their swimming lessons with technique and stamina.

It’s great to see the fruit of all the lessons after so many weeks of Mum taking them along every week.

Puff had colonial week at school; it turned out they were all going to be convicts, so perhaps the costume was a bit too casual.

And Huff continues to read The Twits to Dad as a bedtime story.

Next week we’re excited about seeing Uncle J and new Aunty C’s wedding reception.

Unusually busy week, with Winter Camp, Vivid, plus the usual school activities.

Dad and Puff went to see the Vivid light festival in the city with Puff’s boys group – they handed out glow sticks to help make it easier to find the kids… it was fun to play with, but not that helpful to spotting one person versus another!

One of the highlights was seeing the firefly field, but mostly for Dad, having some time to walk around with Puff and tell jokes to each other (he managed to figure out, when we were talking about memes, and Dad mentioned a song in Toy Story about memes, and Puff figured out it was “you’ve got a friend in meme”. Proud moment).

Huff had a good time at camp with Mum at Junior Camp while Dad was working at the different camp sites. Huff had some extra time with her cousins as well over the course of the weekend.

Sadly, Huff managed to roll her ankle, which necessitated a trip to the physio – she should be fine in a week or so.

Cousin T wasn’t so sure about climbing up here – it was too “lobbly”. Cousin E was happy to do a bit of climbing.

Oh, and Huff is continuing to read “The Twits” to Dad as a bedtime story.

Though worried about being away from the family, Puff had a great time at camp.

Next week: hopefully some wedding photos.

This has been an busy week with a limited number of photos to document it. We draw ever closer to a major camp for Dad, and a very busy season with work and study, but this was a week to try and fit in some family time. This isn’t necessarily the best photographic capture, but Dad did part of the school run on a day when our blue car had a somewhat overdue service. Here he is getting some work done while waiting for Huff’s violin lesson to finish.

Dad managed a quick babycino one morning with Huff too.

Saturday we drove to Mollymook and back for Aunty A’s 80th, and then back for Huff’s friend’s 10th birthday party. The next day, Dad was preaching at church the next morning.

After church, Dad and Puff walked home, stopping to grab some food and play some chess.

Once home, we went to visit Doc for his birthday: it was good to spend some time together, and Dad enjoyed working on a crossword puzzle with uncle J (and Grandma, who is highly skilled at such puzzles).

Tuesday night, Dad took Puff out for yogurberry to see how he was going in preparation for the camp this weekend; he’s expressed a bit of concern about it, so Dad wanted to be reassuring.

Every now and again looking through this blog I notice that I don’t take as many pictures of Puff as I used to. Here’s a bit of an update.

On the way for some day surgery this week, Puff was reading a new book Dad bought him about equations that changed the world.

He was happy enough waiting and watching the TV in the waiting room.

It was Dad’s turn to go into theatre to reassure Puff that everything was going to be okay.

And just like that he was back, and back home. From dropping him home, Mum rushed to Queensland to visit an ailing aunt. Dad looked after the kids for the weekend.

Dad and Huff walked to school one morning this week. It was great to spend a bit of time with her, and a good trade-off for working back late into the evening.

Back at church on Sunday, Huff iced some biscuits, including one for Mum.

Reunited with Mum again on Sunday, the kids finally had their promised yogurberry.

Sunday afternoon, another Huff-Dad walk, with enough time to spare to try a local playground.

 

Dad trying to make the most of the gap between uni subjects and spend some time with the kids amongst some late nights. 

Friday was “Walk safely to school” Day, so Dad and Puff hurried the 4km to school – it was a fun journey.

Friday night Puff had a school concert he was playing in, so we went along. Huff was patiently listening.

It started to thin out as the different items were played; we stayed until the end.

Saturday was election day, so after some time slicing up bread rolls at Huff’s school, Dad was joined by Huff and Puff. We went to the petting zoo, and Huff fed some alpacas, and Puff patted some ducks.

From there, we went down to the planetarium to meet the swag boys. Both kids had a great time – Puff played a harp of sorts, with light sensors instead of strings.

Sunday after church, we went to have lunch with our friend E, who brought flowers for Mum, and paid attention to the kids games. An enjoyable catch-up.

Dad went to take Grandma to see a movie while Mum and the kids spent a little longer catching up with E.

Dad finally has a break from uni assignments and reading for a little while, and we had the chance to celebrate mothers day. Big week. Huff has been experimenting with more complex hair braiding (or Mum has).

On the weekend, Dad took the kids out to see a movie – Detective Pikachu. Puff was encyclopaedic in his knowledge of on-screen creatures, not entirely to the enjoyment of those around us (although they didn’t say anything).

Huff had picked out a “family” photo frame from the mothers’ day stall, so Dad took an updated photo of the two of them to go inside it.

We also had the cousins come over for dinner and play on Saturday night, saw Grandma and Dad’s side of the family for Mothers’ Day, and Dad tagged along for swimming lessons for the first time in three months.