puff and huff

A bit of a week for selfies. The struggles of weaning Puff in particular off the screens continue, but the kids play together so much better with the screens out of the picture. It’s great to listen to them (and watch them) playing together in a generous, considerate way, though that only makes up a fraction of the week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday Dad had some time off work: there was a cafe visit where he and Huff snapped this picture.

There was some time one morning watching videos in the early morning, so Puff was still wearing pyjamas. In the background you can see the Mother’s Day flower he made for Mum.

We visited Grandragon to help with a few things. The kids enjoyed some time running around.

On Sunday Dad was helping out with church youth group, but we still had a window of time for a lunch out as a family. It was fun reading some stories to Huff, who paused here for a drink of water (in a glass).

Puff just reads his own stories now, though on occasion he’ll still sit and be read to.

And a couple of food-in-trolley shots. Huff testing out some (cooked tuna) sushi.

And Huff, very much just testing the waters with this giant dessert.

Puff and Dad walked to church together on Sunday. The conversation was mostly about video games, with some brief sidebar conversations on other topics.

See you next  week!

A sad week this week with Mum attending a funeral for a friend and an Aunt in hospital for most of the week. We managed to fit in a few happy things as well. Mum and Huff visited and old friend and a new friend respectively.

We thought that it wasn’t going to help to have the kids attend the funeral, so Dad spent the day looking after the kids. There was the school run, Huff’s Kindermusik class, a trip to the library, some time at the park, but we managed to fit in a quick coffee break.

Friday night after work we went out for dinner – we were hoping for a Japanese restaurant, but ended up having some delicious pizza instead. Afterwards, we took the kids to Enmore for Gelato. Huff was dancing to the music there, which was very cute.

Saturday we had breakfast together then went down to Wollongong so Mum could visit Aunty C. Dad took the kids out for a run around in the park, then up and down a big hill. It should be noted that she wasn’t a  fan of the static electricity zaps from the playground in Wollongong, refusing to go back on the slide after a while.

They were very resilient, but were soon asleep in the car.

The next day, after a big week of late nights, Dad had a rest at home while Mum took the kids back for another visit. It ended up being another time of playing the screens.

Huff is building up her personality and confidence – she’s learning how to jump, and even play on a trampoline: not sure quite what happened to her hair, though. 

One last photo: Huff cuddling with Mum while waiting for the school pick-up.

A bit of a quiet week in terms of photos. Puff had his follow-up visit with the specialist after his tonsillectomy: all clear. Lots of conversations about video games still, and trying to broaden the topics of conversation that are on offer, but always good to spend time with him.

Saturday morning we put the different mums together for an early Mother’s Day celebration.

Huff was the flower girl of sorts for the occasion. On the way home, after bumping into J&C at a cafe, Puff and Dad ran and walked over the Sea Cliff bridge, which was lots of fun. Huff, who had walked over the bridge with Dad before, knew it was not her turn, and was philosophical about it.

On Sunday, after visiting Grandma and Doc for Mother’s Day, we had just enough time left to have a go at flying a kite. It did not fly, but we had fun trying.

 

Huff also visited Dad at work, and stopped in for one of the largest babycini I’ve seen yet. 

See you next week!
 

Back at school again now, and getting used to a different pace of life. Also, it was Dad’s birthday this week, so we had some birthday celebrations. 

Huff came into the city with Mum and Dad for a quick coffee. They had some cool tables that made her look like she was floating. She was watching a TV loop of old DC super heroes with no sound – it was very compelling.

Puff’s obsession with video games continues, but we’re trying to channel it into more analogue pursuits, so we came up with some other games he could play instead. Here he is playing the Monty Hall game with Dad.

Huff spent some of that time enjoying cuddles with Mum.

On Dad’s birthday, we headed to the Blue Mountains. First stop was a cafe in Glenbrook Dad had wanted to visit for a while. They had an outdoor playground, and a couple of outdoor cages where we could see roosters, chickens and piglets.

For lunch, we went to Blackheath and Dad had soup. The kids also had soup. Dad’s soup.

After lunch, we went to a nearby park where there were a lot of autumn leaves.

After being in Glenbrook and Blackheath, Huff asked when we were going to get to the mountains. When we asked her, she wanted to see “rock on top of stone”. We took her to a look out, and she finally understood we were in the mountains.

We went to an Apple orchard, and the kids picked an apple each. They were pretty excited about it.

One last thing. Puff had his school cross-country (a 500m fun run), and had a great time running, though he was pretty keen to have his ice block after the race.

We’ve had some challenges with the kids getting used to the cooler temperatures, and being up in the middle of the night. We’ve given Huff a sleeping bag to sleep in, and had to coax Puff back to sleep a few times, but it seems to be settling down.

Puff has bounced back from his tonsillectomy, at least enough to be able to go to school for the first day of term 2, so we’re getting to the end of that chapter. All we have to show for it is a doctor’s bill, and a freezer full of lemonade ice blocks.

We ventured out of the house a little more often in the second week of the holidays. Huff wore her dress with the fairy wings on the back of it, which she identified on sight as fairy wings, and enjoyed wearing the whole day.

Puff and Huff both have their own ways of expressing themselves in chalk. From the “happy easter” method below, Puff went on to draw representations of various iPad games he’s been playing in the last week.

We also went out to dinner at a friend’s house. Huff enjoyed playing with their cats.

And lately she’s been quite interested in taking photos: they’re not necessarily selfies, but she is very fast on the capture button, taking as many as 30 copies of the same photo before we can stop her!

The above photo-of-photo-taking was in our quick refreshment break before the kids saw the LEGO movie (with Mum and Dad). Everyone enjoyed it, though Huff pronounced it “a bit scary, but not scary at the end”, and Puff noticed a few scary parts, but coped pretty well.

We found this promotional sticker in a phone booth, and stopped for a couple of pictures:

After the movie, and a lot of singing “everything is awesome”, which Huff had understood to be “everything is awesome, when you want to be be part of a team”, we went home to play LEGO.

The next day Dad was back to work, but Puff had a day off school, so everyone came in for lunch. We went to a place that had a table-top video game, which – despite a forthcoming supply of coins – both kids wanted to play.

The kids have also been enjoying some reheated soup, only noteworthy here because Dad cooked the soup.

It’s been a very quiet week; we’ve been taking it easy for the most part, trying to let Puff recover from last week’s tonsillectomy.

Dad took Huff to church on Good Friday; she spent the majority of the time drawing.

There has been a lot of screen time this week. Here’s Dad playing Peppa Pig swimming race with Huff and Puff.

On Saturday Dad and Huff headed out on a train for an adventure together. Huff spent a lot of time asleep in the ergo carrier, but when she was awake we had a good time.

When Dad was younger, his Mum used to take him into the city, and we’d come home with a new book, so Dad thought he’d try this out with Huff. She spotted this Octonauts cushion. We ended up with an Octonaut book for the trip home (which we read three times on the way home).

While we were waiting for the train, Huff took a lot of photos of other trains, and this “selfie”.

After that adventure, we settled in for much of the Easter weekend (though we saw Grandma and Doc on Easer Sunday after a quiet rip to church) – Huff was a fan of the eggs.

We managed to fit in a trip out to see Grandragon and Bandit.

Today we took a bit of a trip out of the house. Puff tried to have some hot chocolate, but Dad ended up going off in search of an ice block for him instead.

Hoping that by the end of next week, everyone is back to normal.

It’s been the final week of Puff’s first term of school, and the first few days of the school holidays, and eventful: all leading up to Puff’s tonsillectomy. With Easter and Anzac Day both falling in the school holidays, there was a school Easter hat parade on Thursday, and the Anzac Day ceremony on the Friday, so very busy times.

Here’s a picture of Puff’s long awaited Easter Hat; he had a friend at school from another grade work on it with him, so it was a big surprise for Mum and Dad.

So far we’ve had a bible study dinner which Huff and Puff went along for – Puff has a new LCD-screened hand-held game to play, which is a bit more educational and a bit less engrossing than other forms of screen entertainment as we keep searching for the game that he wants to pay but is happy to put down.

Saturday we headed down to Wollongong for Aunty C’s birthday lunch. Dad and Puff walked the long way, and saw some giant waves.

After lunch, where Huff doted on baby E, there was a chance for the bigger kids to play on the beach – they had a great time running around and drawing in the sand, and Dad had a chat to Puff about looking at the positive (time to play on the beach) versus the negative (not being able to go barefoot and run in the water) which seemed to help.

We’ve seen Huff starting to show more interest in photos, both appearing in them and taking them. She’s starting to think about framing the photo more carefully: here she is with (current favourite toy) Tweak.

Monday was the last day of active play before Puff had to take things easy for a while, so Mum (after dropping Dad at work) took the kids to Monkey Mania for the day. Huff was much more engaged with the play equipment, and Puff did a good job protecting her from disagreement with the bigger kids.

Tuesday morning we didn’t need to be at the hospital until the early afternoon, so we let Puff pick his choice of breakfast cafe location. After some deliberation with an even further away favourite, we settled on a place in Cronulla where we had colouring in and kid-sized pancakes. Dad helped with the colouring in a little.

One last stop for coffee (anticipating a fairly broken night’s sleep for Dad) gave Puff an extra chance to pose for photos.

From there, we went home to grab our packed bag “paste”, and parked at the hospital to go and be admitted.

We had a while in the hospital room for him to get changed into the provided pyjamas and then wait to be called down. It was a positive experience overall: he didn’t have much of a sense of any potential downsides of having his tonsils out, so he was in good spirits. He looked very tiny in the full-size hospital bed.

Dad went down with him to the pre-op space, and then into the theatre. With small kids, they don’t put a cannula into their hand in the theatre, but rather they put them to sleep with gas, and then tape them up.

Sadly, this meant that after the 25 minutes of surgery and a few minutes’ recovery time, Puff was awake again with a bandaged hand and not sure why his throat was hurting. It took a little while to resettle him, but once the staff offered him an ice block, his spirits picked up again.

Not long later he was back in his room, sharing dinner with his sister.

Dad stayed overnight with Puff: there’s lots of broken sleep between waking up to take him to the bathroom, talking to the nurses who were in once an hour or so to check his vitals, and to make sure he wasn’t wrapping the drip cord around his neck (only a problem once).

The next morning he was in much better spirits, and it was time to drive him home. Expect a much more home-centric update next week!

If you’re looking to take a small child in for a tonsillectomy, drop Dad a line: happy to share further insights.