fun for free: Monte Cecelia Park

Our most recent Auckland discovery is Monte Cecelia Park off Hillsborough Road. It is a lush green, rolling hills sort of place where people picnic and walk dogs. At the top of the park is the historic and very lovely Pah homestead which houses the Wallace Arts Centre, a gift shop and a cafe. Did somebody say coffee? We all loved walking/crawling around the galleries filled with sculptures and paintings. Ada showed us her favorite piece in each room and tried out all the leather couches and seats that I wanted to take home, along with some Ian Scott pieces. Outside there is a huge sweeping veranda to enjoy some coffee and cake and lots of outdoor sculptures to explore. There is even one friendly cat to amuse the small ones. I want to go back soon! 

So much crawling to do, so little time

waking up singing

Oh hello!

This little lady has been under the weather. Home bound for 10 days under the weather. Horrible high temps overnight (and all day mind you) under the weather. 

She is feeling better. Feeling like herself. She woke up singing this morning. That feels like sweet relief to this mama. 

baby led weaning update

Olive doesn't want to be be spoon fed by us, she clamps her mouth shut and turns away. We can even put food on a spoon and she will put it in her mouth, pretty successfully I may say. She has an independent streak a mile wide this one. So I have been reading a bit about baby led weaning (pretty sue I am repeating myself, ah well). Baby led weaning seems to be about the baby being in control of what goes in their mouth, the name gives some of that away, no? The goal is for them to get used to different tastes and textures while their nutrition is still coming from breast milk or formula.

Olive loves to munch on:

• Broccoli, steamed or stir fried but really soft so the floret kind of disintegates in her mouth
• Chick peas. Yep whole. I'm not freaked about the choking thing it seems. Olive has never gagged on these, I squish them slightly so they are slightly easier to grip and slightly easier to munch.
• Peach.
• Pasta, in particular, fettuccine, So little was eaten but the tomato and vege sauce went down a treat!
• Oven fries (I added some paprika to keep them tasty). She eats the potato and spits out the skin, or you could cut off the skin once cooked.
• Carrots and lamb removed from a slow cooker meal. She chews on a big piece of meat then discards it once it is grey.
• Peas, I serve them frozen, Ada loved them like this too, those little fingers working out what they can grasp. Olive only manages to consume about four in a sitting so I am not worried about her digesting the uncooked fibre.

One idea I read about that I haven't tried yet is to peel and chop into spears apples, pears, kumara, potato, carrots and bake at about 200ºC until soft inside, maybe 30 minutes, sprinkling each with something complementary. Cinnamon on the fruit, cumin on the carrots, paprika, mild curry powder even on the root vegetables. Olive being fussier than Ada has meant discovering that interesting flavours will entice her to eat more!

I do keep trying with different foods though and strangely enough as I go to post this we have discovered something Olive does want to be spoon fed. So, swings and roundabouts folks, that's the name of the baby game huh, all that change keeps us on our toes! So I'll post a recipe for that too...

 We miss watermelon...

8 months!

Miss Olive keeps getting bigger! 8 months on the clock now! 

We have been heads down bums up (literally for Ada) with a rough virus/infection combo. So this post is a tad late.

Olive loves to have crawling races, bath time, eat noodles, giggle with her sister, say bap bap bap, reach for forbidden items. There are thankfully no signs Olive is about to take off walking, but she is balancing on her own two feet from time to time. She is a barrel of laughs our Olive and we love her so!

seven months
six months
five months
Four months.
Three months.
Two months.
One month.
Ada at 8 months.

chatterbox

Ada chirps away all day long. She has a pretty posi take on things and does a lot of nodding with imploring eyes when she is asking for something or even just telling me what is happening, I love this. Life with Ada at the moment is a combination of running commentary ("my drinking a drink bottle"), mimicry ("oooh, it lovely") and  a game of Whose Line is it Anyway? (see below) thrown in. We have taught her the all important kiwi up swing at the end of sentences, we hear a lot of, "yeah?" Or "no?" Or sometimes together like this, "No. - (wait for it) - yeah, yeah!" 'Yeah but nah but' can't be too far off. I love the my instead of I. I correct her maybe once a day and it is slowly disappearing, but no rush, the English language is a fickle changeable master, she will get it soon enough.
Quotable of late:

While playing house, "No Mama, go away!" With a stop sign hand to prove her point.

The other day with gumboots on her hands, "My is a hedgehog. With long arms. My go roar." We don't cover hedgehogs too often.

When wearing my shoes. "My is a dinosaur." I guess the clompy walking is dinosaurish?

Anytime the feeling is right: "my so happy!" I love this. A lot.

We get a lot of "no photo's" at the moment. I need to be sneakier for sure.

When a character looks sad: "he wants Mama." Awwwww, so sweet! 

"My do it myself!"