Theo has Beth's cold now, poor fella. When I got home he was proper chucking up. Which is OK because it's still just baby spew. But still.
He can also say "Hello" or something very close to it. He's so happy, even when he's chucking up he's happy and grinning.
When Beth and I sat down to dinner we had a little chat. She asked me "Did you have a nice day at work?" and then randomly "And did you eat some lunch?" I guess the lunch thing is because sometimes her, Theo and Sarah come into town and meet me for lunch. It was pretty funny anyway, she's always thinking ahead and asking lots and lots of questions.

And now they're both asleep which is also wonderful.

Tim

Last weekened was a long weekend, so on Saturday morning after swimming (the first lesson of a new term, Beth loved it) we all jumped in the car and drove down to Akitio. The last time we were there was ages ago, back when the bach had an unsafe front deck and there was no cell phone reception at all. Things have changed! Adrian has since put a new deck on the bach and Spark have put up a huge cell tower on the other hill so everywhere you go to get 5 bars of signal. Oh and there's a free Wifi hotspot too. Even the most remote places are connected these days
The drive there was a bit painful, it seems that Beth is prone to getting car sick on the windy roads, which thankfully is only the last leg from Danniverke to Akito, a drive of about an...

Theo's first tooth came through yesterday. It's only just there, you can see it and feel it when you run a finger over it. He seems determined to use it, having fun biting and chomping at everything he can get his little hands on. It must also be causing him some grief because he had a very funny sleep last night, slept for an hour but then woke up (hasn't happened since he was born pretty much). So I took him for what I thought might be a quick little walk, turned out to be an hour's walk because the little fella just didn't sleep. Enjoyed the trip to the supermarket, enjoyed the lights of the cars as they drove by (it was getting dark by this stage). Bought him home and tucked him into bed and thankfully he did nod off to sleep.

Beth's been much better with her...

Sarah ordered Beth's new big bed last year and it's been upstairs in the spare room for a while. But it didn't have a mattress. After how well she did in Australia sleeping in a big bed and how excited she gets when she talks about a big bed, we decided it was time to buy the mattress for her and to set up her big bed. The mattress arrived yesterday and Sarah spent the afternoon (in the stinking heat, ugh) putting it all together. When I got home last night the first thing Beth wanted to show me was her Big Bed in her room. It's lovely and yellow and, well, big! A proper bed for her. I can't believe how quickly she's grown up the little tacker.

Last night in it was a bit of a mission for her, mostly I think because of how damn hot it...

I got home last night at about 5:45pm, after having waited for 30 minutes at the curry house for our dinner. Not sure why it took so long seeing as I was the only person there, maybe they were still heating up the curry vats or something. I walked in and said hello to everyone, Sarah said to Beth "What where you going to ask Daddy?" so she wandered over to me to say something, tripped over and smashed her face in the side of the coffee table. Really hard. Instant screaming, then, ugh-oh, blood gushing everywhere. I took her in the bathroom and blood was just leaking the poor thing, took me 30 seconds to realise it was in her mouth and not her nose like I thought it had been. She was freaking out, I was freaking out. Sarah got some ice for her, I rang the medical...

It was a really hot day yesterday! It was something like 27c at 9am, which is pretty crazy. We spent the morning at home, after having spent the night before unpacking most of the boxes from when we packed up the old kitchen. The new kitchen is finally in full production mode, we have all our pots and pans and food and bins and this and thats all sorted. Pretty much anyway, there's no more boxes of stuff upstairs. We found the paper towel dispenser, so now it's really serious! Anyway Saturday morning we didn't do a lot, Sarah went out for a little while and amazingly Theo didn't wake up the instant she drove out the drive, which is what he usually does when I'm looking after him. It was a pretty rough night's sleep though, Beth woke up 3-4 times screaming, which seems to be a new phase...

Christmas Eve: Sarah cooked two ducks in the "Little House" oven. It was an oven from the 60s or maybe the 70s, but in surprisingly good condition apart from the fact the oven door needed to be held closed with octopus straps. It did a great job though. While it was cooking I took Beth for a walk in the pram, I thought she'd want to walk but she still really enjoyed sitting in the pram itself and being pushed around. I looked all over Blackheath, huffing and puffing, for a playground until finally I found one which we played on for 30 minutes or so until it was time to head back home.

Christmas Day: We took everyone around to Granny and Bilby's for breakfast. Sarah and I were on breakfast duty, though again Sarah really did all the work. She heated up the croissants we'd bought a few...

We're back. We got back yesterday after a long day of plane rides. We checked out of the hotel and got to the Airport (a 10 minute walk with the trolley) to find a massive queue for Air New Zealand. Except it wasn't even, it was the queue for the bag drop. So Sarah had to go and fight with the robo machines to get the boarding passes printed first while I stayed in the line with a very uncooperative Beth. It wasn't really her fault, we hadn't really had any breakfast and she was fed up of being dragged all these random places she didn't understand. Theo was a champion of smiles and hurping at exactly the wrong time.

Once we fought off the Air NZ baggage drop line we made it through customs and onto the plane with no issues. The flights were not too eventful, Beth was...

Oh dear. We've just come home from seeing Jeremy for the first time in a very long time. Poor Beth. We put her to bed and she seemed fine, but 30 minutes later she woke up. Started to hiccup a lot. That's never a good sign these days, the hiccups. Sure enough after about 10 minutes the flood gates opened. Poor little thing, she really doesn't understand what's going on so it causes her a lot of upset. "Don't want to spill anymore Daddy"
We're home now at the Little House as Beth calls it. She's in bed and hopefully asleep after some medicine, that is lemonade and water mixed together. Today has been a bit of a drama with people being Ill.

Tim
(I wrote this with the intention of finishing it off, but that obviously never happened...)

We went to Scenic World today. Had a great time, worked really well. We went via Dad's motel on the way and he drove his car behind us and tagged along too. First we went on the Skyline/Ziplink thing, which goes out over the canyon. The floor turned from being frosted to being transparent, Beth seemed to think that was amusing as she looked down on all the trees below. Theo didn't seem to mind what was going on. Then we went for a little walk around the other side, took a couple of photos and then Skyline'd back.
Next we went on the other zipline thing which took us down into the forest. Beth, Dad and I walked around down there to the next ride, but Sarah took Theo back up again, the reason being because the third ride were going to go on, the one taking us back...