Two Years Old

Kathleen turned two years old on Monday. In some ways it seems like she has been two for quite a while now. In fact sometimes I have to remind myself that she's still only little. Having Victoria around now and her being so little, Kathleen seems very big and grown up in comparison. But it is Kathleen's speech that makes her seem so much older. She talks in fully formed sentences now, sometimes quite long and complicated. She may miss out little words like "is" (e.g. "baby talkee on da phone") but her speech is for the most part intelligible and intelligent. She knows all her colours and is getting better at numbers, able to count to five in both English and Spanish.

Kat's birthday was on Monday. This also happened to be Wellington Anniversary Day so Peter had the day off work. We began the day by singing "Kiki's Special Day" song (from Dora the Explorer, Boots Special Day episode). She then wanted "stamps" on her hands, so we drew pictures on her hands with marker pens. Kiki and Daddy then enjoyed watching cartoons over breakfast.

Then it was time for presents. Kathleen got a bit spoiled, although we only bought her a couple of presents. There were also a couple of presents from family and friends. And a couple of presents left over from her birthday last year. These were things that she just wasn't ready for at the time (a tea-set and some Playdoh). So I put them away until she was older and then kinda forgot about them. We could have given these to her a couple of months ago but with Christmas coming up I decided to keep them until her birthday, as she had quite enough Christmas presents as it was.

Her favourite presents would have to be the set of Little People building blocks, and the tea-set. Every day since her birthday she has dragged these out to play with, making tea for the Little People or for Mummy, and stacking the blocks and toys up.

She also got a blackboard, which is great because she can pick up the chalk at any time and draw pictures without bugging Mummy to get the pens and paper out. And even better, Mummy doesn't have to supervise to stop her drawing all over herself or worse. If she wants to draw on herself with chalk she can...

After all the presents were opened and played with, we brought out Kathleen's birthday cake. A Very Hungry Caterpillar cake which looked pretty good even if I do say so myself. Neither Kathleen or I have made many friends since we moved back to Wellington, so we didn't have a birthday party for her. It was just Mummy and Daddy and Kiki (Victoria was sleeping).

Later on we took Kat and Vicky out to the park to play, and had a picnic lunch under a tree. Then that evening we went out to dinner at McDonald's and once again Kathleen had a great time playing in the playground.

To top it all off, today we took her to Little Monkeys indoor playground for her "party". Only one of the five sets of parents we invited were able to make it. But that didn't matter anyway as Kathleen didn't even notice or care. She had a wonderful time playing and didn't want to leave.

So now my baby is two years old. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was posting about her first birthday. In that year she has grown up a lot - learnt to walk; learnt to talk; learnt to jump and climb; learnt to draw; discovered Dora and Barney and The Wiggles. Some things haven't changed - she still wants to get into everything, she still loves being the centre of attention. Tantrums are becoming more frequent, and are an almost daily occurrence.

In the next year I expect she will continue to build on the skills she already has, will get better at drawing and throwing/catching, will continue learning to use the potty, will learn to dress herself. She will also continue to become more independent, and will soon be attending creche one morning a week all on her own. I will certainly miss her, even if it is only for three hours a week.

-Megz

A New Year and back to reality

Memory is a funny thing.

Peter thinks Victoria cries a lot more than Kathleen ever did. I think she cries less.

In my memory, Kathleen did nothing but cry all day long, and we spent night after night rocking her back and forth in her pram to get her to sleep, taking turns rocking while the other one cooked and ate dinner. The terms "Devil Baby" and "Daddy Walk" were not coined for nothing.

In Peter's memory, well I guess he's blanked it all out. He went to work during the day and only saw Kathleen in the evening, and only had a week off when she was born. With the summer holidays, Peter has been at home for 4 of Victoria's first 7 weeks and has seen a whole lot more of her than he ever did of Kathleen. Plus by default he has had to be a lot more hands on with Kathleen in the 4 weeks he's been at home, doing things with her so I can spend time with Victoria.

I bet he was glad to get back to work this week!!!

I, however, miss his help very much. It is exhausting looking after two little ones. It's not too bad when one is asleep, but when they're both awake ... well sibling rivalry has begun already. Kathleen is obviously used to having all the attention, so when my attention is diverted to Victoria, Kathleen will pester me over and over again for what she wants, she will start to get into things she's not supposed to, and when she doesn't get what she wants she will throw a tantrum. And if Victoria doesn't get enough attention, she will just scream and scream.

Admittedly I've only been at this for two days so I hope it won't always be like that.

Juggling the competing needs of two little ones is my biggest challenge right now (and just forget about getting the housework done or cooking dinner - even feeding myself is too difficult sometimes!). I've never been very good at multi-tasking. Kathleen needs to get out of the house and do things. Victoria needs to stay home and have a stable routine.

I'm looking forward to when the summer is over and Kat can go back to playgroup. She will also be starting at Plunket Creche for one morning a week once she turns 2.

Victoria is growing well. She now weighs just over 4kg. I haven't quite worked out her personality yet, but I expect she's going to be just as big a handful as Kathleen is, when she gets older. She's been through several different phases so far. The first few weeks she was very sleepy and would sleep anytime, anywhere, through any noise. That phase passed and then she went to the opposite extreme and wouldn't sleep and by evening would just scream for hours. Then we started working on teach her to self-settle in bed. It has been going ok and I have had more successes than failures (although once again Peter would disagree). But now we're into a new phase where she understands the bedtime routine but just doesn't want to go to bed and will scream and scream as soon as you even go into her room. I wonder what her next phase will be - sleeping peacefully for hours on end? Yeah right. ROTFLMAO.

Over the summer break we have been rearranging the house again. Victoria now has her own room, the room off the kitchen where Kathleen was sleeping. Kathleen has moved into the biggest room in the house and has lots of room for her toys and to play and even has her own couch for snuggling up on to read. Kat's room is the room which we were using as the study, and the study has now moved into the front room. We've got it set up like a proper office, with Peter and my desks facing each other in a cubicle style. There's even a computer just for Kathleen set up there as well.

We hope to now start looking into renovating/redecorating the house again soon.

And finally, because comparisons are inevitable, here are a few photos of Kathleen and Victoria ...

Kathleen age 6 days	Victoria age 7 days
Kathleen age 6 weeks	Victoria age 6 weeks
Kathleen age 8 weeks	Victoria age 7 weeks

-Megz

Merry Christmas

Christmas 2005


Christmas 2006


Christmas 2007



A big MERRY CHRISTMAS to all our friends and family all over the world.

Love Megz

Thirty-something plus Two Years and One Month

Today is Peter's birthday. It also means Victoria is one month old today. And Kathleen is nearly two (and acting it).

Peter ... The name Peter means "rock" and you certainly are my rock. Thank you for all your help and support. I couldn't do any of this without you. I want you to know I love you very much, even though life is so busy and stressful these days that I don't often get a chance to show it. Happy Birthday.

Kathleen ... Kathleen is almost two years old and at times it certainly seems like the "terrible twos" have arrived. She still loves her little sister, and still loves to give her lots of cuddles.

But there are also times when she can be a big handful and ignore whatever I say. Things like "don't touch that" are met with her instantly picking it up, or "come here please" just encourages her to run in the opposite direction. I don't know if it is just because she is almost two that she is behaving this way, or if she is acting up because of Victoria. Often she will do these things when I'm busy with Victoria and can't run after her.

But then there are also times when Victoria is crying and Kathleen will sit down quietly and not bother Mummy, or will try and give Victoria a cuddle to make her happy. Or if I'm busy feeding Victoria, Kat will happily play around my feet.

She's really grown up lately in a lot of ways. Most noticeably in her communication skills. She has started talking in sentences now. Pretty coherent sentences at that. Things like "Kiki squirt Kiki self" when playing with the hose. Or "Baby seestah wakey up". Or "I busy playey". Or my personal favourite (NOT) "I busy pooey". Every day she amazes me with just how well she can communicate. Her pronounciation is pretty good although sometimes I don't always understand her. She still insists on saying "Uncle Runkle" instead of "Uncle Richard" and "Eddie" instead of "elephant". LOL.

Victoria ... But while Kathleen has entered the terrible two's, Victoria has lately become the real difficult one in the house. She seems to have a very unsettled time every evening between 7-10pm. She can't sleep and gets over-tired and starts screaming and screaming. I know it's common for babies to have an unsettled period like this so I'm not too concerned, but it can be very hard to listen to the constant screaming. Obviously part of the reason she can't sleep is because it is a busy time of day with Peter home and us eating dinner and Kat having a bath and going to bed. Which is also what makes it all the more difficult to deal with a screaming baby.

We've also had a couple of bad days recently where Victoria hasn't had much sleep during the day either and has therefore spent a lot of the day screaming. Just like Kathleen used to do at that age. I thought second babies were supposed to be easier?????

But we have survived the first month and I'm sure we will get through the next month as well. Hopefully the first smiles will come soon.

In the meantime we have Christmas to look forward to. Kathleen's second Christmas but the first one she will understand. She is excited by all the decorations and trees everywhere, and even met Santa the other day (which you can read about in her blog.

Cheers,
Megz

Mimi

Mimi is Peter's mum. That's not her real name (actually her real name is the same as mine!), but her 'title' aka Grandma.

In July her husband and other children went back to Texas to live, but Mimi stayed on here to help us out with Kathleen and the little one when she came along. We were supposed to move in with Mimi while our house was being renovated, but when that got called off, she rented out her house and came to live with us instead.

A week ago Mimi left to go back to Texas to join the rest of her family. All I can say is WE REALLY MISS YOU.

Thank you so much for your help, especially in the week or so after Victoria was born. We really appreciate your help with all the little things - cooking meals, going shopping, doing dishes and feeding the cats. It's amazing how two little people can require so much time and attention from big people, that it takes three people at least to run the household. The cats REALLY miss you and were wondering if they could come live with you instead. They haven't been fed nearly so well since you've been gone.

We're all looking forward to seeing you (and everyone else) again when you come back to visit next year.

Love Megz