Nathan cooks

Nathan asked if he could cook himself up some banana pancakes this evening. He's always been a keen kitchen helper but this evening must have realised that if he was hungry he knew what to do! So off he went to work and mashed up the banana, cracked in the egg, mixed it up, got out the pan and spatula, turned on the element and called out for me to come and watch.

We talked about how to see when the oil was hot enough in the pan to add in the mixture and off he went.

He spooned it in...

Flipped...

Flipped some more...

And served them up...

Identify these famous landmarks...

For some reason Nathan wanted to get out my yoga mat and put on my yoga DVD tonight. As he was waiting for it to start he started doing some poses and said to me "who am I?". Can you guess?




(our own local Statue of Mary)

After attempting to make playdough the other day (by using up various gluten free flours) and ending up with this...


Today, we tried again using up some different gluten free flours and ended up with this...




So from slime to fluffy bouncy balls lol.

This evening Nathan continued to work on a story that he's copying out of one of their picture books. It seems to be work in progress.

He's also been working on copying out one of his Tintin books and has done the cover page so far. I noticed the other day he was writing out numbers from 1-20 and after asking me how to write 13, he then decoded the rest of the numbers which until now I haven't noticed him do.

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Today we met up with friends in the city to go and watch the Chinese New Year parade. The weather was fantastic and the kids had a great time.




We then headed to the museum to see the Colossal Squid on display.

Kitchen Science

Today was a beautiful, hot, no wind day. We decided to go for a walk/ride down to one of the local playgrounds, so set out about 10.30am. Wow, it was too late and it was so hot. So after playing there for a while and Nathan rode over the bike jumps we made our way home in time for lunch.

During the afternoon the kids were hot and at a loss on what to do - there were no DVD's of interest to them so I asked Danielle if she wanted to get out one of her new activity books and sit down with me and do some. So while we were doing that Nathan came over and got out a colouring book, then both kids sat side by side and coloured a page each and then would turn over and repeat - that kept them happily busy for half an hour.

Danielle must have been rumaging through the pantry at some stage and I saw her sitting up at their activity table with a bag of dried kidney beans. Normally I wouldn't really let them use our food for play, but since we're on our new diet, legumes are not to be eaten. The beans are getting kind of old, so what the heck, they can do as they wish. I provided her with some jars and she sat there for ages sorting them out.

Nathan then wanted to get in on the action and asked for a glass of water to put a bunch into. I filled it almost to the top (about 2cm down). He sat there and plopped one in at a time. I asked if anything was happening to the height of the water and got a "nooooooo" (like, you are so dumb mum). After continuing he realised that yes it did raise the level of the water. (Just writing this out reminded me of a kids story when I was little, so after a phone call to my mum we figured out it was an Aesop Fable called The Crow and the Pitcher).

So eventually he realised that the beans were making the water level rise. Danielle came and joined us and wanted to try her own experiment.

Nathan then added some PVA glue and watched as it dispersed and dropped onto the beans. The we added a few drops of oil and then some food colouring. They were busy with their concoctions for ages.


They then sat down at the computer and Nathan played the Reader Rabbit Reading game as Danielle watched. Once the day had cooled off a little the kids went and bounced on the trampoline for a while.

This afternoon the kids got busy on some fun activity books I'd bought each of them.

Danielle's really showing an interest in writing lately and trying to form letters. She doesn't recognise many letters, but as a way of incorporating her joy of art she pounces on the stands of workbooks whenever we go into a bookshop! So we came home with a new one for her and chose one for Nathan who was at a friend's house. Nathan likes puzzle style ones (join the dots, mazes etc) and today I found a Hidden Pictures one. It's quite cool and there is a complex picture on each page with various pictures to find that are embedded in the artwork on the page. He spent ages just sitting there working through the pages.

Later on after dinner, the kids were playing with a large coke bottle Nathan had acquired and I could hear the kids yahooing and laughing outside. They raced in, slammed the door and called me over to check out what they were doing (aside from the buckets of pine cones being lowered over the side of the deck and a collection of shoes, boots and things dumped at the bottom...). They had rigged up the hose into the bottle, had it turned on and must have noticed it explode off the end at some point. So they reenacted that over and over. Simon arrived home around that time, so they rigged it up and as he was approaching the steps the bottle popped off the end of the hose and gave him a fright which the kids thought was hilarious.

What have we been up to?

Well, not a lot out of the house really. It's been a bit too hot some days to get the energy for any of us to venture far and Nathan's tiredness comes and goes.

Nathan wanted to make Danielle a doll as per my last post. He wanted me to draw it and cut it out, but he then sewed it up (ended up being a flat doll lol). But it's about the process right? Danielle was pretty happy with her.

Most days the kids get out in the garden in the afternoon once things have cooled off and bounce on the trampoline and build huts and play in the sandpit. Nathan loves to investigate the vege garden to see where the pumpkins and corn are at and has been bringing me in ripe tomatoes.

Yesterday Nathan was wanting to draw a picture of his body on paper. He's been showing a bigger interest in what goes on in the body, so after cutting out a "Nathan" we got out our Body book and I asked whether he wanted to draw on some parts to the body.


Danielle wanted her own body too and coloured her in.


"Nathan" has been all around the house. Has been out bouncing on the tramp with the kids and hanging out in various places in the house.

When my mum gave us the paper for doing the cut-outs, she lent us this wee fella too. Danielle named him "Bones".

We find in him many places, doing many poses.

We finally got back into visiting with friends during the week. I think Nathan had realised that it had been about 6wks since he'd seen his old Playcentre friends, so I jacked up a couple of playdates for him which was nice.