Post 155

Well, no news is good news.

Daniel seems to have taken another step forward in noticing the world around him. He now observes everything with great interest, including his sister's bottle which he regularly steals as she takes several sessions to finish it (there is so much to do - one cannot just drink milk you know). He has also learnt to whine (copied from Emma) in their never-ending competition for our attention.

According to Norose, Daniel is mastering the stairs - both ways. However, we have not seen the great ascent and descent yet. He seems to have lost interest in the stairs which may well mean he has mastered them as a few weeks ago they were the main attraction.

Emma is also getting sharper by the day. She now greets with a "hello" which is not repeated if you ask for a repeat performance. She is on her feet quite naturally now - not long until she walks. She, of course, copies everything we do. Daniel is far less demonstrative.
At meals, she now asks for a taste of our food which we have had to stop as she was becoming a real little begger. So supper is sometimes accompanied by a wailing Emma who is being starved by her parents (no mention of the bowl of porridge and bottle of milk she has just finished).

We are being plagued by mosquitoes from our neighbours half-built and abandoned pool. So we are currently trying to buy a Zanza Mosquito repellant made by Chicco as it is the only repellant that seems to use sound to get rid of the mosquitoes. Well, it is just not available. So we contacted the people who import Chicco products into SA. Well what great service. They phoned all the stores they supply so we could get one. Pick it up on Saturday. Until then Daniel has baby anti-mosquito cream spread all over his exposed skin every night as the mosquitoes love him. They ignore Emma completely.

Otherwise, it was 30 degrees at 5pm tonight - it has got really hot very quickly. Wonderful!

We seem to be having a fest of events at the moment: the Rugby World Cup, the Cricket 20/20 World Cup, South African Survivor, Cooke Islands Survivor, a new South African Idols and an African Big Brother - all at once. Wasn't the SA vs West Indies cricket last night great? Now for SA vs England on the rugby field on Friday night - a critical game in our road to the final.

A colleague at work won tickets to Joburg day on Saturday. She offered us two of the tickets she won as she knows how much we love SA music - so it is to the music festival on Saturday. We went last year with our camping chairs etc. This year we'll have the sun tent in tow as well. We don't intend spending all day there as the babies won't cope.

And then it is Durban the long weekend after that.