puff and huff

Lots of time this week where the kids were spending time together, and we managed to gather some photos. Puff is occasionally too rough with her on this see-saw, but she was excited enough to complain when the rocking stopped.

New to us – not sure if they’re new to Bunnings – were these Puff sized trolleys. He was loving having his own trolley to walk around with.

Huff is only just small enough to fit in the trolley (we had to be pretty careful to get this photo).

Huff is getting more mobile – she’s starting to explore her surroundings, and has a much better grasp on how to move from one toy to the next. She’s still dragging her legs around for the most part, but is just starting to lift herself up a little more so she can crawl.

Though Huff didn’t understand much of what was going on, Puff enjoyed giving Dad a birthday present, and posing for a few photos. It’s great to have them around, and be able to spend the time with them.

We even made it down to Grind, where Huff and Puff had babycinos.

Playing on the swings is Huff’s favourite thing at the moment: – they’re still both small enough to ride on the same swing for now.

Puff has put some effort in this week to learning how to ride his bike. He’s still getting his head around pedalling, but he’s liking it so far.

On the weekend, we went to Stanwell Park on the way to Wollongong to watch the hang gliders – Huff and Puff had a lot of fun watching people fly around, and didn’t seem to have any inclination to copy them (which is a good thing at his age).

Sunday saw a visit to Grandma’s house. Huff and Puff were very interested in Aunty S’ puppet theatre.

Puff has had a good week for phone games – here he is playing one morning.

It’s been a busy week, especially for Dad, who trekked down to Melbourne and back today, leaving Mum to look after Huff and Puff.

The highlight of the week would have to be the #nnYoplait family fun day: we had a number of activities to enjoy, and started to think more positively about a certain French-themed dairy product.

We all made bracelets or necklaces.

Dad took some photos with the “good” camera: Huff and Puff had a great time playing with her horse, and moving around in general – she’s getting really competent at moving around by dragging her legs – we’re hoping that she’ll either improve her crawling, or start showing interest in walking.

She has a ride-on horse toy that lets her practice her balance in a standing position: we’re trying to get her used to the idea of walking.

At the #nnyoplait day, Huff had a great time playing in the ball-pit.

Huff also had her face painted for the first time, and really enjoyed munching on a balloon animal. 

Puff was even more excited about having his face painted as a green cat. He had a great time jumping around and saying meow.

While Dad was in Melbourne, Puff and Huff had a chance to play at the park.

It was very tough for Dad to be away for a day: he sent through some pictures of giant numbers from where he was visiting in Melbourne and was quite excited. This particular photo was taken earlier in the week with the big camera.

We’re still trying to work out some behaviour issues with Puff: nothing seems to be getting through to him at the moment, but we have a couple of other things left to try.

Huff is making some good progress with moving around. She can sit on a horse and walk forward (and, accidentally, backward) while sitting on the horse.

When we went out for coffee this week, Huff shared Puff’s babycino.

At a trip into the city, we stopped in front of the newly renamed “The Star” for some photos. Here’s Huff starting the alphabet.

The main reason for the trip to “The Star” was to see the Zumbo store and pick up some macarons. Puff was suitably impressed.

We worked out that the best place to take a photo of both of them was in the middle of the definite article. They’re continuing to get along well together (as long as neither is playing with the other’s toys).

In this week’s city trip, Mum and Dad managed to relive the laksa-eating days of their courtship while Huff and Puff amused themselves – at least for a few moments.

Saturday morning was some father-son time. Puff and Dad headed out for a toast picnic and then a walk – Puff was even sufficiently worn out that he opted to turn home rather than explore another park.

One last highlight: over breakfast this week, Puff told me what started out as a simple story, and then became more and more elaborate about a monkey (Miss Monkey) who couldn’t open a peanut, and then along came “Cornelius the crab”, who opened the peanut for the monkey and made the monkey happy. It was fascinating to see what Dad thought was his imagination at work, and turned out to be a story he’d heard. Still, impressive story-telling.

Back to a normal sort of week. Church at our regular church, a return to Eveleigh Markets for a quick visit, and the obligatory trips to the park.

We also tried Huff out with an iPhone game. She really liked it.

Huff is liking parks a little more now that she’s stable enough to sit on a swing, and almost okay to go down a slide. Much of the time she’s off on the sidelines looking dotingly across the park at her brother.

A rare trip to a toy store saw us meet the duracell bunny, who was handing out balloons. Puff was okay to meet the bunny, having experienced such things before. Huff wasn’t even remotely sure, but overcame her fear to have a balloon.

Huff is getting more confident in playing on the floor, or on a seat – she spent quite a while looking through this bag for the toys she wanted to play with.

On Sunday night after the cubby house was dropped off (more about this later), Aunty C and Uncle J called in with Pixel. Huff was a even motivated enough to try crawling forward.

Saturday afternoon amidst the playing in the park and errands we called into Grind. Puff still seems to like it there quite a lot.

We’ve started teaching Puff how to play Uno, but his first love remains Trouble. Here he is re-reading the rules.

Puff and Huff get along quite well most of the time, but one car trip this week saw Puff hand all the available toys to her at once.

Huff is getting better at supporting herself on her feet – if you prop her up suitably, or help her balance, then she will take a few steps, and look very pleased with herself.

 

Big week. Huff’s first trip to the Easter Show, Puff’s second trip. Huff still hasn’t worked out how to move forward, but she’s giving it more of a try than in previous weeks. We’re getting to that time of life where it’s going to be necessary to keep her restrained rather than sitting safely in the middle of, say, a bed.

She’s getting more interested in playgrounds. In general, the swing is her favourite, but she’s not terrified of a slide, as long as a grown-up is close by, making sure she’s sitting up.

We all had a great time at the show – the baby dragons are getting big enough to start posing in these odd photo stands.

Huff’s favourite thing at the moment is being on a swing. We’ve found the one swing that they can both swing together: – Huff was on the swing, and Puff ran up and asked to share the swing. It was a great moment.

Here are Dad and Puff on the way to the Easter show. You can see the enthusiasm and anticipation as we ride along in the bus. Going to the show on the first day was a good idea – the public transport was nearly deserted.

At the end of the day, Huff and Puff compared their temporary tattoos.

Puff’s favourite part of the day was the smoothie workshop: we missed the first one, and waited around to participate in the second.

Probably second favourite was the farmyard nursery. It was pretty crowded, but we had fun taking pictures and feeding and patting animals.

In the farming section, Puff had the opportunity to grind some oats into rolled oats, and then roll out some dough: Dad learned a little bit about farming, and where porridge comes from.

Here is a tired dad and Puff on their way home.

One of the traditions for Dad and Puff is going together on the biggest slide we can find: this was a new record.

Puff and Huff have been having a great time with their Kindermusik harmonicas. Here’s a short video of them playing together.

With a party, a trip to Wollongong and another father-son pizza breakfast, it’s been another big week.

For future reference, this is what Huff does when she wants something.

 

It’s pretty clear that Huff’s ability to understand what’s being said to her exceeds her ability to express herself – she can nod her head ‘yes’ and bobble her head ‘no’ in answer to questions, but hasn’t worked out how to point to what she wants accurately. Here she is bouncing around on a piece of playground equipment.

 

Huff has her mum’s smile: it lights up her whole face, and sometimes Dad is fortunate enough to be given one of these giant grins.

A trip to the other side of Sydney for a birthday party saw a shy Huff sitting with Mum and Dad for the first little while before she found her confidence to play with some toys on the floor. She had a great time.

Mum, Huff and Puff came to Dad’s work this week for a coffee. There were no babycinos on the menu, so Puff had a piccolo hot chocolate instead. It’s great to watch his confidence with cups and drinking come through – there was a time when we’d be really anxious about giving him a glass, but he’s pretty stable now.

Saturday morning saw Puff and Dad walk up to the local shops for a breakfast pizza. It was good as ever to spend some time with him one-on-one. Dad managed, for the most part, to avoid the temptation to check his smartphone while he was out, but did take this photo.

Compared to a trip to this playground around a year ago, his confidence at climbing has come along in leaps and bounds. The real success this week, though, was seeing him climb up toward the top of this spider-web:

Puff is a big fan of the Guide Dog calendar in last week’s free show bag, and also of the dog mask.

Tired from the tough work of being at a party, Puff enjoyed a quiet moment eating a cupcake.

Dad and Puff worked on a little craft project this week – a milk bottle converted into a pig. While we were making it, Puff coined the word “Pigglesome” to denote something that looks like a pig (and is awesome).

We haven’t worked out what we’re going to do to explain the Easter Bunny to him – it’s not likely to be part of his annual methodology, but when a person dressed as a bunny is in a shopping centre offering your mum chocolate, it’s tough to turn down.

See you next week!

We managed to fit a few different things in this week. There was a family day at Riverwood that we went to, a chance to catch up with friends on Friday night and on Sunday afternoon.

Huff is not at the point where she understands how to socialise, but she’s pretty happy when people bring her toys to play with.

Here’s Huff looking elegant in her sunhat and sunglasses, snacking on a dried apricot.

She’s getting more interested in moving around, but not all the time. We still have opportunity for the occasional, carefully staged photo.

At a friend’s house on Friday night, Puff had a chance to learn how to use a toy tool bench – he was told it needed goggles to use toy power tools, and he obligingly wore them.

At the Riverwood family day there was a giant Guide Dog, and Guide Dog show bag – complete with mask.

Dad and Puff went on all the free rides, including the giant slide.

Mum, Puff and Huff went to IKEA a couple of times this week, some of the time for food, where Puff had a great time.

Puff is definitely growing up – he had his first go at the giant ball pit at IKEA smaland this week.

Huff is spending more time trying to vocalise – she’s been trying to say Puff’s name, something that sounds like “done”, something that sounds like “up”, and she’ll cheerfully wave and gesture at the things she wants. She’s had a couple of nights this week with 11 hours of sleep, and other nights where she’s been up at 5am for an extra sleep. She’s fairly proficient with a spoon, though only for soft foods like yoghurt. She is very keen to eat whatever the people around her are eating, to the exclusion of any food that we might have given her.

Another week, another series of photos. Huff is still teething and her sleep is all over the place.

She’s doing better with a spoon (though she does get bored halfway through a meal, with messy results).

We opened one of her birthday presents this week: an activity chair. She loves that it makes noises, and has things to play with, and will happily sit there until her legs start to bounce around (her involuntary dancing to the music) and she gets worried that she might fall off the chair. Still no big progress on the moving around front, though she’s getting more confident with crawling backwards.

This one was staged (Mum is just out of frame on the left), but gives a sense of how small she is, even as much as we’ve seen her grow already.

We had a trip to the zoo this week, and sized up both kids against the penguins. She’s bigger than a Little Penguin, but not by much!

Puff is almost at emperor penguin level.

Puff forgot – at first – to ask about borrowing Mum’s glasses: he found wearing them very funny.

At the zoo, he asked if he could climb up on the statue (and then if Dad could climb up on the other one).

Puff also had a great time feeding the different animals at the zoo.

Sunday included a trip to Cronulla. It was odd to see him walk around the same playground that had given him so many challenges a year or two ago, and effortlessly climb up the play equipment, slide down the slides. He’s growing up so fast.

On Saturday night, we went to a family birthday party, which made for a late night for Puff. He spent the whole duration of the speeches sitting on Dad’s lap, saying “can we find a bed where I can lie down and sleep” and then, after the singing of happy birthday, changed his tune to “we should stay and have cake”.

 

A few challenges this week: Mum had a few different solo adventures, so Dad had three days in a row of looking after the kids by himself. Dad has a much better understanding of the challenges that Mum faces in looking after the kids.

In unrelated news, here’s the aftermath of a too-tired Puff using the whiteboard marker that goes with his new write-and-erase book, but not on the book.

Huff has been learning a lot at her Kindermusik classes: – surprisingly, she’s worked out how to play the harmonica – a little ahead of time.

She’s also been showing a dramatic level of interest in learning how to blow up a balloon. She has some of the elements of the technique figured out, but hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

Huff and Puff are getting better at playing together: here they both are on the swings.

Huff is very attached to her big brother – she will often point in his direction and make gripping motions with her hands.

At a trip to IKEA this week, Huff had a chance to try out some child-sized furniture, which she loved.

At a separate trip to Costco, Huff and Puff were travelling along happily in the stroller when an unexpected friend came along with them for a while.

We don’t have a lot of documentation for it yet, but Huff is in the throes of getting 4 new teeth: two have come through (current total: 8), and two are almost done.

 

We made a trip to the new Grind at Cronulla. Puff had a great time with his babycino, and Huff (who was already in a bad mood) remained grumpy. Here’s the happy half of the situation.

On day three of the Dad-minding, Dad taught Puff how to play boxes on the blackboard. He’s getting good at writing; not so good at keeping chalk off his hands.

 

 

Another big week, with the Grandragon heading home after a long visit.

To celebrate Huff’s ongoing weight gain, we have been dressing her in an outfit that might be better suited to Halloween. She’s had an up-and-down routine of sleeping this week – mostly sleeping through the night, but occasionally waking up, giving Mum a couple of poor nights’ sleep.

Mum, Puff, Huff and the Grandragon went to Warragamba dam during the week to see the raised water levels – it was going to spill for the first time in 14 years, so it seemed a good piece of history for the kids to be a part of. It was pretty quiet at the Dam mid-week.

We went back again on Sunday, and it was much busier: hundreds of people had come out for a look!

Saturday saw Puff and Dad make a trip to the library, with a special treat of pizza for lunch on the way home. Taking him to the library now that he can read is a different experience – he has higher expectations of what kind of books we borrow (though we haven’t read all of them – he seems to have forgotten about the trip).

Puff has moved on from staying quiet through playing with sticker books to playing with cards. He managed to make all the way through the church congregational meeting without making an unhappy sound.