teddy bear picnic at the pre-school

Today we met Kai for lunch at his pre-school, all the kids brought along a teddy bear and it was pretty cute. Liam loved being able to spend some time actually playing at the school as usually we are whisking him away after we have dropped Kai off. I made a cake and some of Kai's friends shared it.

littlest one...

First ultrasound of the littlest bubba...

things getting back to normal...

It's been a pretty rough month this end... I think my last post was something about the hot weather coming and hopefully we will be spared any major fires in Vic... well needless to say, that didn't happen. The fires were horrible and we were in and out of our house for about a 2 weeks. It was really upsetting for all of us, but mainly the kids felt the mood change. Liam started to wake often in the night after sleeping right through for almost a year, Kai's behavior was pretty erratic at times, he was having a hard time making sense of everything. I was feeling violently ill and Eli was becoming increasingly more homesick.
I am really happy to say things have started to settle down and our little house is starting to feel harmonious again.
Liam is pretty much back into a good sleep routine and I feel like Kai has calmed down and is able to communicate better his feelings and thoughts. Eli seems to be happy again pottering around the garden. He has planted so many veges and herbs, it's funny because I have been practically bed-ridden I have hardly even noticed the plantings, then when I took a walk outside, wow, we have tomatoes, basil, squash, parsley... not to mention all the fruit trees survived the heat and seem to be thriving.

kai and li...

The boys are getting so big...

coping with the heat...

Haven't written for a while... Life has been quite hectic lately, mainly just trying to keep everyone cool (tempers & temperatures) in this horrible heatwave. We have basically been shutting the house up in the morning and using the evaporative run-off in the kids pool in the afternoon. It hasn't been so bad and at least we have the evaporative cooling, some of our friends up here don't have any cooling and it's been unbearable for them. I have had some pretty bad morning sickness and have been laying around a lot... it's so easy to forget how horrible the first trimester is. I had to forgo my Leonard Cohen ticket last night as I just wasn't up to sitting in a hot arena even for that and I was so sad when Mart rang mid way through the concert to tell me how it was going. It sounds like an amazing event, I just couldn't do it, no matter how much I wished I could. Tomorrow is expected to be HOT again with very dangerous fire conditions, so fingers crossed Victoria gets through this one without any fire damage.

sunny day at the lake...

I took the kids down to Lysterfield Lake Park. It was pretty hot so we only stayed for a while. We met Celeste and Owen and had planned to also meet Roula and the kids. As it turns out Roula was at a different part of the lake and it seems a much nicer part too. We had been sitting in the area that was gravelly and hard, but there is a whole man-made beach area up a little way... next time we will try that out I think.

marti's birthday in the park...

Today we all got together at St. Kilda Gardens for Mart's birthday. Marti and I concocted the plan a couple of weeks ago. It was fun deciding what each of us would make to bring. I made a potato salad and mart made sandwiches and salad. There was also plenty of cake : )
I didn't get any pics of the kids because they both spent the whole time running around and having a ball. The park was pretty full with families and kids. I just love watching the way children interact... there is no inhibition and you see kids just running off with one another only to be side tracked by another game with some other kids, it seems within a playground full of kids each child has interacted with each other at least once. Anyway I think it's lovely and so sweet.

I was pretty tired all day because Liam and Kai kept us up since 3am... they take it in turns to be awake and then just both decide to stay awake if it's getting toward dawn. I plopped them in front of cartoons when it became early enough hoping to get a little more rest on the couch, but before I could get the telly on was asked by Kai "What are we made of?" and "who made us?" ... it was these big questions that made me finally give up on more sleep... I just couldn't come up with a good answer at that time, the best I came up with was we were made by the world (hey, it was still only 6am), but I will have to think about that some more, I am sure there is a better answer than that.

Tomorrow it is going to be HOT, so we are planning to take the kids swimming somewhere local.