At the library checkout today Nathan happily told the librarian that he had chosen the Angelina Ballerina DVD, and then he told her he had chosen the dragon book. She looked at him and said….ballerinas and dragons, that’s a nice variety! 🙂
Archive for the ‘Nathan the preschooler’ Category
Kinder Christmas concert
15
Dec
On Tuesday night we went to Nathan’s kinder concert. It was very cute to see Nathan on ‘stage’ singing and doing actions to the songs. They sang five songs, four were Christmas songs and one was not related to Christmas but one that they obviously liked. Afterwards there was food and the kids played both inside and outside the kinder. It was a fun evening. It has been a great year at a lovely kinder. 🙂
Fun in the Water
05
Dec
Last week, ironically the day AFTER we had a 40 degree day (or whatever the temperature was, it was close if it wasn’t actually 40 degrees) I took the kids to the local outdoor swimming pool. It is a great pool for kids and we had a lot of fun. I took a few photos of the kids running through the spraying, spurting and falling water.
Science and Maths
22
Nov
Nathan (kids have just run into the lounge room to get some Matchbox cars): Now I have two and you have two.
Toby: that makes four!
Me: that’s right Toby, two plus two equals four
Nathan (to me): I’m teaching him all about maths and science.
Nathan (to Toby as they walk out of the room together): Do you want me to tell you about maths and the science of the world?
Toby: yes!
Nathan’s jeans
13
Oct
I have made Nathan some jeans now too, but I drafted the pattern for these so I wasn’t sure how well they would work. I am so very pleased with he they turned out. The pattern on the pockets was done using my Coverstitch machine and there were no sharp turns and I think it worked really well.
Brotherly friends….or not
09
Oct
Nathan (to me): do you know who my best friend is?
Me: hmmm….Toby?
Nathan: yes!
Toby: do you know who my best friend is?
Me: hmmmm….Nathan?
Toby: no, it’s Fred the millipede (the kids named a millipede and a cockroach a few days ago).
Me: oh, really? Don’t you mean Nathan?
Toby (decisively): no, it’s Fred!
So, apparently Toby likes a bug that he probably tried to squash by standing on it more than he likes his brother! Lol.
Camping on the Murray
01
Oct
Our camping trip at the River Murray was great! We ended up finding a spot near Ulupna Island which is in the Barmah State Forest near Cobram. This was after carting the trailer along a track that ended up quite rough but we couldn’t turn around, so we just had to keep going and hope we could get out again. The official camping area was on a sandy beach where the river is wide and is relatively slow moving, but we were camped on the river bank about 1 km downriver where the river ran faster. It was nice and peaceful with no one else around, until our last night when some people camped some 50 metres from us and we were subjected to listening to the Rugby commentating as well as the koala grunting.
Our first full day there was relaxing. We stayed around the campsite, and went for some walks and a short drive around the immediate area. Our other full day was a driving day where we drive in a loop through Cobram and Tocumwal. The river had been rising since we had arrived, and the road into our campsite was nearly under water when we returned. We discussed what we should do and Andrew, with much more confidence than I had, said we would be able to get out in the morning. Thankfully we did get out.
The weather, which wasn’t great the first couple of days with lots of cold wind, improved during the last two days and we had some lovely days, but a little too cool to go for a swim. We enjoyed having a campfire every night and even cooked our breakfast on the fire the last two mornings. The kids rode their bikes like crazy, and we all enjoyed koala spotting. We were camped up on the bank of the river, with a fairly steep drop to the water. The boys liked going down to the water on foot, but yesterday afternoon Toby decided to ride down but didn’t make it and ended up scraping the side of his face. He tearfully told us he would have been ok if he had pedals, so hiding our smiles we solemnly promised him he could try the little pedal bike when we were home. We had fun despite our few scrapes and spills. 🙂
the Tent Mahal
the kids making a train out of our kindling
Toby cooking breakfast
eating pancakes with strawberries for breakfast
Toby was a bit obsessed with setting the ends of sticks alight
playing on the ‘beach’
fishing
dinner, roast chicken and veggies
getting out of our campsite
4-year-old wisdom
11
Sep
Nathan talks continuously. This was the end of his talking during a short drive…
Nathan: big rocks are heavy
Me: yes Nathan
Nathan: small rocks are light
Me: yes Nathan
Nathan: so of I go running with a small rock I won’t fall over!
😀
Hospital visit
13
Aug
On Friday, about midday, Nathan was running around outside. He was going up and down the driveway (to the unit behind us) and around the car onto our front lawn. And back again. I was packing some things into the back of the car, so the back (boot) door was wide open when Nathan ran past, misjudged in his running and ran into the edge of the door. He hit the left side of his face and his collarbone/shoulder.
He was in a lot of pain, particularly at his shoulder, so I took him to see our local GP who said that it just looked like bruising and that he would be sore for a few days, maybe even a week. He didn’t think anything was broken.
Nathan pretty much stopped using his left arm, which was pretty obvious since he is left handed, and being touched on the shoulder was painful. If he knocked it, or it was bumped in play, he would be crying and in pain again.
Sunday morning, after yet another bump and an episode of crying and Nathan was really miserable, we felt that his shoulder just wasn’t right so Andrew and I took Nathan to emergency at Monash Medical Centre to be checked out. Two hours later we were out again, with x-rays showing no breaks. So, it is just a matter of waiting for Nathan’s shoulder to get better….and trying to keep Toby from jumping on his brother,
Snow!
04
Aug
On Sunday last week we decided to see if we could find some snow. Snow was forecast down to 1000 metres, and Mount Donna Buang is 1250 metres high and only 1.5 hours drive from us. We packed all our warmest clothes and headed off with lunch including some soup in the new thermos I got for my birthday.
We didn’t see any sign of snow until we were practically at the top and finally we saw a sprinkling of snow on the ground. It was quite cold, but with his beanie, scarf, waterproof mittens, raincoat with attached fleece vest and gumboots, Nathan was as warm as toast. He had so much fun and didn’t want to to get back into the car. In contrast, I was feeling pretty cold and wishing I had gloves, and Toby was really cranky about being out in the snow….until the very end when he just wanted to keep eating it.
We had our warm soup and sandwiches for our second lunch. We sat in the shelter on top of Mount Donna Buang where it was marginally warmer while it snowed. The snow showers made everything white, but it didn’t take long for most of the snow to disappear, leaving just a thin sprinkling on the ground.
We ended up going up the mountain twice, taking a trip to nearby reservoir in between. We didn’t plan to go back up until we were on our way home and it was raining quite heavily, so we went back up to see how white it was.
We had a lot of fun, but it is quite clear that Andrew and I need some gloves and I need warmer jumpers if we plan to spend any time in snow.
