Beth is walking. Well, almost walking. She can take 4-5 steps before she decides "I'm not supposed to be floating like this up here" and sits down. But she'll walk between Sarah and I, or drift off the end of the couch towards something. She has the cutest little toddle too. It won't be long now before crawling is a thing of the past and it's all walking.

Friday night Peter and I went to Bev Ridges (that's the name of the pub, classy huh?) to celebrate with Adrian on the arrival of Isla. A number of bigbots were consumed and I spent a bit of time chatting to Chris Mooney about my vegetable patch and what to do and what not to do. We had a good night, though we zipped out of there about 7 to head home and get some food.

We finally got to try the...

Isla Mooney was born Saturday 8th November, about 10pm I think. I was alseep when Adrian rang to tell us the news! Congratulations Holly, Isla came home today and it doing fantastic by all accounts.
We went in to see her yesterday, just a really quick visit. It was strange walking Beth around the maternity ward, the first time I did it she was tiny and fragile. This time she wanted to poke everything and wave at everyone.
Isla is so small and cute! You forget just how small babies are when they're first born after a while. Congrats again Holly and Adrian.

Friday night Sarah and I ran around the property, cleaning up the garden and mowing the lawns and generally making the place look nice, because Saturday everyone was coming over for an early Danniverke Christmas. Saturday turned out to be a lovely sunny day, just perfect for...

Here's a list of words Beth can say! Probably not exhaustive.

• Duck (Very clearly - it startled me the first time she said it)
• Nigh (Short for Goodnight, she says this when she wants to go to bed)
• Go! (After hearing us say "Shall we go Beth?")
• NO! (We get this one a lot, usually before some sort of tanty/meltdown)
• Baf (Bath time!)
• PsssPsss - For Tui.
• BzzzzBzzz - The sound a Bee or Fly makes.
• Dad! Mum! MumMum!
• Naaaaaa Naaaaaa (The noise we get when we ask her "How does a sheep go?" or if she sees some sheep out the car window a we're driving)

I'm sure there's more...

Tim

This weekend Sarah and I had our first weekend away today since Beth was born! Mary very kindly agreed to look after Beth. The whole thing was arranged a few months ago, originally Holly and Age were going to join us too but seeing as how close Holly is to the new addition, they decided not to join us.
Mary came over on Saturday morning, we put Beth to bed and sped away as fast as possible. OK that's not really true. We drove to Taupo and headed into our favourite spot, the Prawn Park. This was the first time we'd been to the Prawn Park without a deadline ticking away, i.e. knowing we were supposed to be in Auckland to Napier at some time. We had a whole day (well, half) day of Prawn Fishing! So we fished and fished, and didn't catch a single prawn. Sadness. So we...

It was Hawke's Bay Anniversary day last Friday, then on Monday it was Labour Day. So that means we got a 4 day weekend which was nice! We started off on Friday getting down onto the back bit of the section and cutting back all the Feijoa trees that are there. They were so grown out that it was impossible to get under them to collect Feijoas, plus when you tried you got poked in the eyes with branches.
So I grabbed the chainsaw and Sarah grabbed the branch pruners and off we went, a dynamic duo of tree felling machines. Beth of course was having her morning sleep, so Sarah and I had to work quickly! We got about half of them down before Beth woke up.

Saturday morning we went for a walk up to Taradale, had breakfast at Tonic and then walked back home. Once Beth was...

It was pretty exciting. Though just as I started, the rain started to pour down and my safety glasses all fogged up. And I thought I'd better re-read the "how to chainsaw a tree down" booklet a few times. But apart from that, it went well. There was a dead tree in the front garden. I say was because it's now chainsawed up into little pieces and in the back yard now. Ready for firewood.
Yes mother, I have all the safety gear. I have chaps which stop me chainsawing my legs off. Gumboots (I need to get better ones though), plus safety glasses and earmuffs.

Other things we did yesterday: We were going to go the market but it was pissing with rain, so we didn't do that. Instead we hung out at home for a while, Beth and I went to Mitre 10 early in the morning, also...

As usual, ages since I've posted an update. Whoopsie. I've had this virus thing for the last two weeks, it's meant that I've felt really hungover every day. Just listless and tired, sore muscles, headaches etc. I went to see the Dr who said "Yup, it's probably a Virus" and that was that. Glad to be over it, though having said that this morning I woke up feeling terrible again. I guess it just hangs around for ages.

It didn't help either that for the first of those two weeks Beth was teething. She wasn't sleeping very well. Sarah had to put up with two sad, grumpy children.

Yesterday morning Sarah went to Spin class in town, so Beth and I walked around town for a while. Then we picked up Sarah and went to the Sthil shop (see below!!). Early afternoon we went and picked Peter and Mary up...

Sarah has been teaching Beth about her nose, ears, chin etc. Sarah say today that Beth was reading the Body Parts book and pointed to the face with the Nose and then touched her nose! And then pointed to the ears on the face and touched her ears. She's very clever. She's getting better with copying words we say too, I was playing ball with her this morning and she said "Ball!". Not that clearly obviously, but she was trying to mimic what I was saying.

We've had a feed of Asparagus already from the garden, very tasty. There's more where that come from too, I picked another 6 stalks yesterday and I think tomorrow there'll be another 8+ stalks. We're going to be sick to death of Asparagus by the end of the season! But I shouldn't complain, really I'm just hapyp that the Asparagus Bed isn't ruined, though...

So the Asparagus situation doesn't appear to be as bad as originally predicted. I took a look on Saturday and they're shooting up in a few places. I counted about 8 stalks, which certainly isn't a garden full of them, but it's some. They seem to be more down the end that I weeded a bit earlier in the year, so I guess that's helped. Also the fact we actually bothered to weed the patch last weekend would have helped a lot! Or was the it weekend before? Time flies.

On Saturday I was going to go and weed-whack Gordon Street, but then was I was walking down the back section I realised just how terribly bad the weeds were over by the side of the neighbours house! They were knee high, higher in places. So I spent an hour cutting all those weeds down. Looked much better afterwards, I...

Beth is so cute at the moment. At night, after Sarah has fed her and it's time for bed, we all have a hug in the hallway. Beth goes "Ahhhhhhhh" and hugs us tight, also sometimes patting us on the back as she does. It's so lovely, I hope she never stops doing it.
She also seems to have grasped when to wave (as soon as someone is leaving, or returning) and really loves it when Tui arrives. She says "Psssss Psssss" though the other day she blurted out "Pussy" when Tui walked into the room. She's tried a few times recently to stand without holding on, a feat that usually lasts a few seconds before she falls on her bum again.
She's also right into books at the moment. At least, she'll drag one of them over to and insist you read it to her, though mostly all she...