Farewell Feijoa Tree, Wobbly Tooth, Basketball, Covid's Back Baby

Quite a bit has happened since last time I better try to remember everything!  The pool work has begun, we've been looking at designs and going back and forth etc etc.  I think we've decided on what we're going to do, the pool people are coming on Saturday (v nice of them) to talk us through the various options etc.  But yes, that's meant the Feijoa tree and the big Walnut tree out the back have had to come down.  I'm a bit sad about both really, the Walnut tree was a lovely tree but it's never recovered properly from when they dug a trench out there to give power to the water pump.  The last 3 years it's had ~10% of the leaves it should have, most branches were bare and lots of bits of wood would just fall down, and I'd examine it and it was just rotten.  Plus during last summer lots of holes opened up on it and it was weeping white sap stuff everywhere.  Poor old tree.  I won't miss all the walnuts (that we never really ate many of) and the rats that they bring with them.

The Feijoa tree is a bit different, I will miss that because it was fine and healthy.  Huge, the biggest Feijoa tree I've ever seen, and boy of boy did it drop a lot of Feijoas.  When we put them up for sale it was mostly that tree I could collect them all from, it just dropped so many.  Beth when she saw it was on the ground just froze and then burst into tears... "It's my favourite tree I used to like trying to climb it etc" which yes, she did.  She only ever climbed it about 10 times, but still it's a fair point.  So I did feel really bad about that, poor little sausage.  I tried to explain that Mummy and Daddy are just doing what we think is best and that we're sure you're going to love having a big new pool to swim in, but that didn't seem to do much to help her.  And then to make it worse we had a major fault at work just then, Rachael rang and I had to go help fix the problem, so Sarah had to come and deal with a sobbing Beth.

Anyway she seems to be fine with it now, I think it was just the shock of seeing the backyard so changed up suddenly she wasn't prepared for.  We've got so many other trees on the property to climb.  But yeah seeing her so upset really put me in a sad mood for the rest of the day, I had to spend the next 6 hours trying to fix our network (turns out it was a compromised customer device in our hosting range spewing traffic) but I always had in the back of my mind how terribly sad Beth had been that morning.

Beth started playing Basketball last week, in what might her first and only game for a while.  Now that COVID19 is back in the country with community transmission again, things like that are all cancelled.  But it was great to watch her play, she really did all the right things that both Sarah had taught her and the things her coach had taught her 10 minutes before the game.  I have some video of her playing, I was way over the other side in the stands so I had to zoom in on my phone so the quality isn't brilliant.

Theo got "Player of the Day" at soccer over the weekend.  He was quite happy with that, sadly because it was such a wet and horrid day his certificate got wet and quite mangled.  But he got it for "Great Work Ethic".  He did keep going in the face of horrid cold wind and rain, but really I also think the coach is just being kind and sharing the POTD award around so everyone gets one.  Sorry buddy if you ever read this in the future, I mean you did a great job n all...

When we got back home from Soccer Theo discovered one of his teeth was a tiny bit wobbly.  Cue huge tears and concern, worried we were going to try and pull it out from his mouth etc.  We tried to explain that we're not monsters, and who comes Theo when your tooth falls out? THE TOOTH FAIRY!  But none of that seemed to help him, anyway it's not been mentioned too much this week but I don't think he likes to eat anything too hard.

He's settled just perfectly into school, no problems at all.  His reading is coming along slowly, he still had to rely on the picture quite often to help figure out the word, but he can read letters well.  And his maths is just insane for a 5yo, he walks around telling us what 100 plus 10 is etc, Beth still has problems with those sorts of things.  But then she's just amazing with her reading.  It's interesting with Theo because we never really had to teach Beth to read, she just picked it up and taught herself.  Theo we're having to work with him to learn bit by bit, in the same way we have to do that with Beth for maths.  I wonder how Theo will go when Math gets a bit harder?

Theo bought home a "monster" he'd made at school yesterday.  After 10 minutes in bed he got back out and came to the lounge to ask me to get the monster (I didn't know about it).  He told me he might have left it on the driveway and he was worried it would blow away in the night.  Anyway I looked outside on the driveway, nothing there, but it was in the car!  So I bought it inside and Theo was happen then started to wail.  HIS MOUTH! WHERE IS HIS MOUTH??  His mouth (a glued on bit of paper) had fallen off.  I went to check the car again to see if it was in there, but no.  So I had to break the news.  He was mega sad, just in tears and so, so sad.  Beth came in from her room to tell him we can help him make another mouth, but you could tell he really wanted the other mouth it had.  Anyway got him back to sleep eventually.  So on the way to the supermarket later that night I zipped up by the school with my uber torch and had a look around and low-and-behold there on someone's lawn was a little bit of paper that's the mouth that was missing.  So I'm looking forward to giving it to him this morning, that should put a smile on his dial.

Ok so update, I gave him his mouth.  He was "Thanks" and not too bothered.  Like Sarah said probably the intense crying was because he was super tired.

There's more community outbreaks of COVID today.  What a bugger.  We were doing so well, now we're not.  Hope NZ gets it under control again, we don't want to end up like Melbourne, totally fucked.

Tim