Hello Grass

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Will's first experience of grass....

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Hair Today Gone Today

What Will's been up to...

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Between being fed-up with Will's sleeping, and feeding him drugs for reflux, his aversion to runny food and the Flop and Push I decided it was time to try something new with Will. So we went to see Lynnette Orrell at Hobsonville Chiropractic Centre. First up she has a dog, a little Bichon so Will was automatically impressed! And then there's the fact that she's just plain lovely and seems to be really good and knowledgeable. She worked her magic on various parts of Will and he seems to be all the better for it. In particular he is getting up on his knees a lot better than he was, I just need to work on his arms (how do you get a baby to do push-ups and wheelbarrow races??).

She also said that most reflux babies scream when she does the reflux points... Will on the other hand is a grinner... he smiled his way through all three appointments. So that has lead me to give him a wee trial of not taking the Losec, and so far it's going well, he seems to be pretty much his usual chirpy self.
One of the coolest things about the Chiro was it only cost $25 a pop because she said she knows that when a family has a new baby there usually isn't much spare cash floating around... that is a very cool philosophy. I wish I could afford to go!!!


Sleep-wise we are generally still doing 3-4 wake-ups each night but I figure until I feel comfortable with him not having a night feed (around 12 months) I am just going to have to put up with it and just try and go to bed earlier.


Will still doesn't like runny food, and he doesn't like being spoon fed so is currently existing on rusks and bananas and the odd apple in his mesh thingee... he takes big bites (especially for someone with no teeth) so it's lucky he has a great gag reflex because he certainly needs it. I need to phase in some more solid stuff so he can have some more variety.


And boy can the boy talk... he's getting really loud with lots of growling and !screaming! especially when he wants something or someone or to get somewhere. He has a few words which may or may not be the real thing... he has a Pouw (for Puss) and wooo (for woof) Baba (for brother) and a dees (for birdies) but with the exception of Pouw he's not consistently using any of them so who knows???

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Change 6.21.8.08

• Where the chips are down....

Looking toward Whenuapai

Looking away from Whenuapai.

A road to nowhere.

It's been awhile since I updated these pictures the spot has been sitting like this pretty much since the middle of July. In other places around the place more change is happening, trees coming down, views are opening up and carving will begin soon I believe.

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Latest pages

I have also managed to slip a few pages in along the way.... most of the photos are back for the client album now so I'll be working on that for the next little while....

A fast album is a good album...

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Merenia and I chose the photos for this album yesterday morning and then got the printed at Warehouse Stationery (unfortunately they were out of Matte paper). I made the album after the kids went to bed. And then Merenia dictated the text for me this morning before school. Nothing like a quick album that totally does the trick....

and a good time was had by all...

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Merenia wasn't the only one that had a good time on the weekend K, L, W and I went off and had fun as well. While she was horse riding we skipped up to Puhoi on Kieley's recommendation and had some very yummy scones with blue and havarti cheese (good stuff!!). Kieran had a pastie which came with a bit of salad on the side... the salad had a superbly delicious dressing on it- which I am now currently eating on coleslaw for my second breakfast. They also had a curry dressing as well which is super good on poached eggs on toast! And of course we got some cheese... blue brie mmmmmmmm.


We stopped by an antique store on the way back to the riding place and met a crazy lady. She was telling us how we should appreciate our children because she had her husband had sadly been through the the whole infertility mill over 8 years complete with IVF. I proceeded to tell her that as we had been pregnant 6 times with only 3 living children to show for it all that we had a pretty good idea how precious our kids were. At which she laughed kind of hysterically... we left pretty soon after that... I think she may have been contemplating stealing our baby.







The road to Ti Tree Hills also goes under the bridge they have built for the new mega highway north and we got to see both sides of the big tunnel they are drilling... it looked seriously awesome.




A little note about Ti Tree Hills. If you are in Auckland and want to do some riding then I can't recommend these guys enough. They are super friendly and helpful. Merenia had a great time and judging by the non stop conversation I believe she learned a lot! It's only about 40 minutes from our place to get there (Waiwera) and there's lots of other cool stuff to check out while you are up there.

Les took some funky pictures at Ti Tree....



After the horse riding we went to Waiwera Infinty hot pools. I can't say that I was really looking forward to getting in togs for the first time since who knows when, but I just went and did it and we had a great time. I spent most of my time with "the most beautiful baby in the swimming pool" who managed to attract every woman and kid in the pool and half of the men as well... I am not surprised of course but sometimes you just wanna sing silly songs with your babe in a pool without a truckload of inane grins being thrown in your direction. We did meet some nice people too; 3 grandmother's-in-waiting who talked to Les and Will for a while. And Charlotte and her Dad who were in transit through Auckland to Christchurch from England. He is a High School French teacher who is over here to do some relief teaching for 6 months. She was totally enamoured with Will and kept putting herself physically between me and her Dad to say what she needed to say or ask questions about Will... she was really kind and funny. In the end they had to go because she got real stroppy with her Dad when he tried to stop her charming me into letting her hold Will. They had obviously had a discussion about limits before they came to say hello and she was crossing the predetermined limits. It was really quite funny.






The kids had a great time doing the hydroslides and Les really enjoyed himself too despite being on catcher duties at the bottom of the slides.

We left the pool after about 3 hours to discover Kieran had left his car door open thinking I was going to get Will out his side. Lucky for us everything was all still in the car. We grabbed McD's and headed for home. This is not a weekend that will be repeated again in a hurry as it was a serious budget blower. But Les and I both agreed it was a much cooler way to spend our anniversary than any dinner for two could have been- sweet!

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