FEDS

Emma has an Operation

2010-02-25T21:38:00.000+02:00

Emma had a minor operation on her eye yesterday.

For several weeks, we've been battling to get rid of what appeared to be a sty in her eye. After two doctor visits plus eye drops every day, we ended up at the Opthalmologist on Wednesday who said that two of her sebaceous ducts on her eyelid had got blocked and needed to be cleared before the infection got into the eyelid tissue. Normally they do it with local anaesthetic in the doctor's rooms but as she is a little too young to understand, he said he'll need to clear the ducts under a general anaesthetic.
What a brilliant doctor - he used all sorts of games with his light to get her to relax and cooperate with him so he could see what the problem was.

Well they went to the eye clinic in Sandton yesterday, and at about 10:30 (after a three hour wait - try do that with a child who could not eat until it was all over), he put her under and cleared the eye out. Every patient and nurse at the clinic showed an interest in her and all said good bye when she left. She soon woke-up and Mom and Emma spent the day at home sleeping and recovering.
We went through the procedure with her verbally the night before and so she was very calm and relaxed when things happened just as she expected. Quite nice as there were older children who put up a great show!

Anyhow, we took the bandage off this morning and the doctor checked her out at 12:00 and all seems fine. A bit of oitment and cleansing of the eye for the next week and all should be back to normal.

She is being an absolute star - giving us no issues when we need to clean the eye and put in the rather "gluppy" ointment.

Otherwise, Daniel's drawing ability is really taking off. He is beginning to serve up drawings of people that have clearly defined features. So nice to see. They absolutely love drawing at the moment.

interesting to see how they are also handling abstract comments and jokes. They have worked out that we fool around a lot with words and now we are sometimes the recipients of word games and incorrect statements that we used to catch them out with! Nice to see.

Otherwise the first slight chills of autumn can be felt at night. The weather has been really wonderful with little rain except for today.

We finally got tickets to the World Cup after every bid for lots of other games were turned down. Got tickets to see Denmark vs Holland at Soccer City which should be quite a good game as Holland are one of the better sides. And with my Dutch ancestory, we'll even know which team to support.
Interestingly, there are not many soccer jerseys/shirts for sale in the shops yet. Many people are wearing Bafana Bafana shorts on Fridays which have been designated "Football Fridays" at most places of work. But many people can't afford them so there is a market for cheaper copies.

Daniel and Fiona have not got rid of their dry coughs which seem to catch them unawares especially at night. So it looks like it'll be back to the Doctor on Saturday.

Our big project at the moment is preparing for the Expectant Multiple Parents seminar which Fiona runs for Samba every quarter. So nice to see how willingly all the companies donate prizes of their products for the seminar. I do the Expectant Father talk.

Come on weekend!

Monday 15 February 2010

2010-02-15T21:53:00.000+02:00

Faces painted at Spur on Friday night.

Painting by Daniel of a rainbow and person - his first of a person

Picture by Emma - significant as she has clear legs
(a little advanced for her age)

More face fainting at Spur.

Our plan with Daniel not weeing in his pants has worked. We have about two accidents in the last two weeks - fantastic compared to five incidents a day not so long ago. This morning he woke up with a dry nappy too.

Emma is also conquering new heights - she now does not wear a nappy at all - not at night nor during the day. Fantastic!

Otherwise we all have colds - nothing too serious except for Fiona who has a very dry cough. we're having typical Highveld summer weather - massive thunderstorms alternating with hot, humid days. Lots of rain is always good!

Achieved!

2010-02-02T21:06:00.000+02:00

Well, we are pleased to announce that Daniel no longer wets his pants. He has sustained the habit through the week. As a result, we hired a jumping castle on Sunday morning which they seemed to really enjoy - especially when their friend Andrew arrived in the afternoon to join them. We all had a lot of fun throwing the balls from the jumping castle pool at each other (they were those soft plastic balls so they did not hurt). Emma certainly laughed a great deal. interesting to see how quickly they moved through the castle - keeping their balance and not falling out. Really enjoyable to watch.

Otherwise Emma's tummy is just not sorting itself out- it is not hassling her at all. Just the smell is industrial strength! anyhow, we handed a sample of her poo to the lab which will now culture it and then give the results to our doctor. We think it may be an allergy or maybe something like white bread for lunch at school.
The flu is also going around - Fiona was pretty sick last week, and today Daniel had a temperature. I'm also getting a sore throat.

Talking of school, they both are reacting really nicely to the teacher. Emma produced some nice art in which she showed perspective - something that children of her age obviously don't do. She now has a great love for colouring in which made our visit to Spur on Friday night very easy as she spent her time colouring in every inch of the children's activity sheet they give you.
Daniel is, according to their teacher, above average in his mathematical ability and his attention to detail. She also says they are both very creative and their fine motor skills are well developed.

Now that the weeing in their pants issue is behind us (touch wood), we are focussing on getting them not to attack each other so readily. So it is a lot of encouragement to ask nicely for desirable items instead of grabbing them or having a tantrum. Still a work in progress although it is interesting how reasonable they both are when the other asks for access to the new most popular toy in the house (changes hourly).

Good news on the neighbours front - the house is beginning to resemble a house again as the front porch has been unblocked (there was someone living there) and there seem fewer people around. The owner is now going to have to evict the laggards who ignored his legal notice to move out by the 1st.

Today is an interesting day as 20 years ago today, the political situation changed when the ANC was unbanned. This led to the release of Nelson Mandela a few days later. Quite a momentous day - interesting to hear many politicians stories about where they were and how things were received. One of those days that you can remember what you were doing when the news came through. I remember looking up at the Giants Castle in the Drakensberg Mountains knowing that things were going to change but not comprehending what it actually meant. What was so amazing how people seemed to take everything so positively and in their stride. Maybe that is why it ended up so well instead of in civil war. I think civil war was not far off at times. Quite a priviledge to be part of really amazing history - not many get to experience such momentous times.
Interesting to contrast those times now with the news that our president has fathered his 20th child - and in a extra-marital affair with a women almost 30 years younger than him! The media and opposition parties are having a field day.

Otherwise, it rained very heavily last week - probably the heaviest rains in 12 years which is a relief as it means that ever present spectre of drought is put off for a bit. On Friday night, on our way back from Cresta Shopping Centre, we were genuinely worried about our safety as there were floods of water coming down the roads. anyhow, we got home safely and the rain started easing up on Saturday - just in time for us to enjoy the jumping castle on Sunday.

Wee Update

2010-01-24T19:41:00.000+02:00

Well, we have a major event on our hands - Daniel has managed not to wee in his pants for five days straight. Quite a thing!

He's met his side of the deal so now to find a jumping castle for next weekend!

Let's see if the habit is now retained.

Sewerage and Wee Problems Diminishing!

2010-01-24T11:22:00.000+02:00

Well the good news is that two of our big issues are getting sorted out.

Daniel's weeing in his pants is being sorted out through the use of a bit of psychology.

Fiona's poster for Daniel (four days complete)

Fiona drew a picture with a road leading to a jumping castle (the big incentive - we've promised that if he keeps his pants dry for five days in a row, we'll hire a jumping castle for a day). She then drew five cutouts of cars and trucks, one for each day he keeps dry. We also then positioned a blank outline of each cutout on the road to show how far we are and how far he has to go. The idea is that he gets to stick a car on the appropriate outline on the road. When all five are on the road, then it is jumping castle time!

Initially he lasted two days before have a bad day at school (they say it was due to the stress of starting a new school). Anyhow, after lots of encouragement, he embarked on the journey on Wednesday again, and today is day five of our consecutive dry days! So it seems to be working well. He does occasionally have a small leak in front which we ignore as he genuinely runs off to the toilet thereafter. Progress!

And then our neighbours had a plumber in last Sunday to clear their line so we don't have a sewerage pool building-up on the other side of the wall. Thank goodness as we've had a lot of heavy summer rain this week.

Otherwise we had John Thatcher from Stellenbosch visit is for dinner on Thursday night. All went well until he phoned us five minutes after he had left to say he had broken down at the end of our road. He thought that he had run out of petrol so we got some from a nearby garage. This made no difference, so we called the AA who arrived at midnight. The technician said it was the fuel pump which he managed to get going by connecting it to his portable charger. Anyhow, John stayed in our hastily cleared spare bedroom. On Friday morning, the AA towed the car to a dealer who undertook to fix it. Well, John waited until the end of the day before they told him it was ready (he spent the day walking around Hyde Park Shopping Centre which must have been quite boring after an hour or two). Anyhow, when it was time for him to pick up the car, they asked him to wait again. Turned out they had cleaned the car and got water on the coil so it had to dry out overnight. Anyhow, he ended up staying with us on Friday night too. On Saturday, we said goodbye for the third time and he got on his way! Quite an episode!

John before his first goodbye!

Fiona and I saw Avatar last night (Granny Jo did the babysitting). Well, what a movie. It blew us away - a new era of film making has arrived. Imagine sport in 3D. Hope the TV people are looking at the technology.

Emma has had an upset tummy for a week or two. She is not troubled by it so we've been giving over-the-counter medicine to remedy it. Anyhow, yesterday, she also developed an infected eye, so we decided to see our doctor who consults on Saturdays (thank goodness). Anyhow, the tummy is just something out of sync so we're giving her probiotics to get everything back in sync. Nothing to worry about. Her conjunctivitis is quite bad and we're applying medicine 4x daily and putting warm compresses on every hour.

Now just for this rainy weather to stop!

Settling In

2010-01-14T21:49:00.000+02:00

So far, so good. Emma and Daniel have fitted really easily into their new school. According to the principal, they stick together quite a bit, with Emma only really playing with Daniel and their friend from down the road, Andrew. Daniel, on the other hand, has been a little more outgoing and played with a few other children. A pretty seamless change.

Daniel has reduced his pants wetting but has the odd off day still. Latest BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for him is that he needs to stay dry for five consecutive days for Dad to hire a Jumping Castle for their exclusive use in their garden for a day. OK, we might invite Andrew to play along too. We are still on day zero!

We're trying to get Emma to reduce her whinning and screaming if she does not get her way by reminding her to negotiate rationally. Is working quite well as Daniel usually allows her a limited time with whatever she wanted from Daniel. So slowly but surely, hopefully the screaming will stop and the talking will begin.

Otherwise, it is the rainy season and our neighbours drain has done the usual January thing and got blocked up by all the leaves etc. that they have failed to clean up. As a result, there is a pool of sewerage laden water building-up on their side of the concrete fence that is beginning to seep through onto our driveway. I came home early tonight to build a temporary earth mound along the fence to stop the water coming any further into our garden. Luckily our compost heap has turned into a lot of nice soil. They've undertaken to sort it out (two messages to the "madam" yesterday were seemingly not delivered as she denied knowing anything when I spoke to her) tomorrow. So we'll see.
Good news is that there are "For Sale" notices at the entrance to their house, and we're told that all the residents were served with eviction notices today so hopefully we'll see some positive changes. The risk is of course is that the 40 plus people living in the house have damaged it so badly with their modifications for additional rooms that nobody in their right mind will buy it. We then could get another "slumlord" buying it with the resultant chaos. We'll have just wait and see.
Next week is the inaugural meeting of the Blairgowrie Residents Association which has arisen due to situations like our one with our neighbours. Lets hope that we'll see some pressure on the Council to regulate all the practices that are not fitting for a suburb.

Tomorrow is Friday which is great after the first week at work. We are all tired! Fiona and I are hoping to have a movie and dinner night this weekend as there are so many good movies out at the moment - at least three: Invictus (we have to see it as it is about something that we actually experienced), Avatar, and Julie and Julia. We worked out that we last went to movies about a year ago!

First Day At Nursery School

2010-01-11T21:47:00.000+02:00

The FEDS household developed a trend of getting up after 08:00 during the past few weeks (our children understand the meaning of holidays - thank goodness). Wll, this morning we had to reverse the trend with a 06:00 wake-up (ok we tried for then and it took about 15 minutes to deal with the fact that it felt like midnight).

Actually, the wake-up went well with nobody really complaining (compared to the screaming matches that resulted late last year when they got woken up early). The verbal preparation for the big day paid off!

We have to feed them breakfast before they go off to school - quite a challenge as they can take up to a hour to eat breakfast. Anyhow, we prepared nice Bacon and Cheese Muffins and gave them Apple slices to try and spped things up. Well, a few slices were eaten before everything was rudely rejected. In the end Emma had Cornflakes and Daniel had to wait until his mid-morning snack as he was just not eating anything! It'll take a few days for them to learn to eat when it is given. The teacher said they demolished lunch!

The shool was very quiet as most children only come back when the school term starts on Wednesday. Quite nice as it gives our two time to settle in without the stress of lots of strangers around.

The day seems to have gone well - they even had a noon sleep - something that they are also have been refusing to do lately. Anyhow we had two very tired little beings at dinner tonight.

The weekend was quiet. We visited the Brightwater Commons for a milkshake, a ride on the merry-go-round and to look at the enormous Goldfish they keep in the ponds ( a highlight as with a bit of imagination some look a lot like Nemo).
So we did at least three running rounds of the "Nemo Ponds" in the midday sun! The Merry-Go-Round is a child's delight as you can ride as long as you wish - something that just does not happen!

Early to bed - there are another four early starts ahead.

Xmas at the Fullers in Durban

2010-01-08T09:05:00.000+02:00

On the phone to Emma

On the phone to Daniel

Attitude!!!

Swimming!

Learning to work his way back to the step

(in case we have an accidental fall-in)

Caitlin and the Airplane

Caitlin and Erin

Up in the sky!

Granny & Granpa

Caught hiding

ready or not, here we come ...

Bombshell - no boys allowed until she's 40 years old

Watching cricket on TV

Dressed up

Daniel loves giving performances of his own original songs

Playing with new toys

Look Mom, I can blow two whistles at once.

Granpa stop talking about the merits of using

Nivea on your face

(actually everyone was releasing their streamers and pulling crackers)

Mom and her daughters

Lauren, Erin, Mom, Caitlin, Fiona (Left to Right)

Sisters

Daniel on Terry's new bike

Thanks to Leona, Lauren and Fiona for the pictures.

2010

2010-01-07T23:22:00.000+02:00

We decided to get our Blog going again after an invitation from Amber to view her twins blog. Thanks Amber - could you give us the necessary permissions as I think we tried to comment after your closed down the public access. If necessary post your contact details on our blog (via a comment) so we can give you our login name. We won't publish your details.

Well it is 2010 - the excitement of a new year - especially one in which we host the World Cup. Quite exciting as all the construction work is beginning to look like something.

We had a great summer holiday, spending the first few days down in Durban with the Fullers for Xmas. The weather was a little off (in opinion) as we only got to go to the beach one very hot morning. It rained or was overcast the rest of the time. Anyhow, the twins had a fantastic time as they were the recipients of many presents, and they got to swim in a pool for the first time in about two years. Took a bit of getting used to but they were soon floating across the whole pool and demanding to be caught when they jumped in. A really enjoyable day for all.

We bought them each a peddle bike which they seem to need time to get into as they are largely ignored. They need to learn how to peddle a full360 degrees (Emma does little 180 pushes before stopping her feet from going forward). We're not pushing them too hard as they will hit the bikes on our driveway when they are ready and then we'll battle to get them off.

On our return to Johannesburg, we then have spent a few days with them in our own pool which they have enjoyed enormously. Emma has really taken to the water but Daniel is a little more hesitant as our Joburg pool is a little colder than the Durban pool as it is shaded by a few trees (which we need to cut down but cannot yet as the local Weaver bird has several nests in the tow big shade ones). The Jungle Gym that they got for their birthday in September is still being used a lot - mostly the slide although Daniel loves swining on the swing - but only if it is at it's maximum swing - which will scare everyone watching!

Joburg has alternated between being really hot and humid, and rainy (currently more rain than sun). Today is the first day this week that has been hot enough to swim. On sunny days, the twins played a a lot with tubs of water and the sand from their recently filled-up sandpit (the last sand was redistributed throughout the garden). We put up an umbrella (over the sandpit) and a big Gazebo over the lawn to protect them from the sun as it is so fierce (they do wear sunblock, hats and costumes that cover most of their bodies).

Rainy days are taken up playing puzzles, the game snap (with a set of cards), jumping on the couches and our bed, and playing various mother-child games throughout the house. We also play wrestle a bit to get them used to a bit of rough and tumble. We've also gone to see the Barney Show at Sandton City (they seemed quite intimidated) by the massive crowd of people and Barney and Father Christmas), the zoo, and at Lifestyle they rode on the train and the other rides.

Fiona went back to work on Wednesday and I go back on Monday next week. So I've had them for the last three working days of my leave. Yesterday we went to the Brightwater Commons Shopping Centre to draw money to pay the gardener. They had a ride on the merry-go-round and had a milkshake at the local wimpy before chasing around the large waterway complex after the massive goldfish that live in the ponds. Every fish that was reddish was called "Nemo" and excitingly pointed out to the many people passing by. Eventually Emma needed to go to the toilet (she is experiencing a runny tummy at the moment) so I decided to hit off home as I had no change of clothes and did not feel like doing a public toilet with two kids who don't understand where not to put their hands. What a mistake, Daniel decided that he wanted to watch fish and eventually had to be carried out screaming to the car followed by his sister whose tummy was getting very sore and was moaning too. An interesting sight but most people gave me knowing glances. anyhow, it then took her a hour to deliver the so-called "poo" but that is another story.
Daniel then undid all his great work in learning to wee in the toilet and proceeded to wee in his pants five times in the next few hours. In the end, I ran out of underpants for him! So it was back to nappies for the rest of the day. He knows how to use the toilet but seems to get so engrossed in things that he just doesn't get there in time. So after trying stickers to reward toilet visits (which worked initially) we are now "parking" his most treasured toys and books. At first he pretended not to miss the toys but after a day or two was doing the toilet visits each time. So he got everything back and now we're back to "parking" everything.
Grrrrrrr! Emma has mastered the art of going to the toilet as she is very extrinsically motivated and loves getting stickers on her star chart. She is now beginning to sleep without a nappy at night.

We've also had the cricket (SA vs England) on every day (to give us a break from CBeebies). Wasn't the Third test exciting. Sad that SA could not get the last wicket. The Australia vs Pakistan gam this week was also really exciting - good advertisments for test cricket.

Well, the traffic volumes are beginning to increase again (after the quiet of the holidays), and it looks like next week everything is back to normal again.

The Roberts family are looking forward to some new additions soon: Twins expected by Gavin and Sam in London at the end of the month, and a girl for Craig and Alison in Durban in March. Always such a priviledge to have children.

Happy New Year!

End of the Weekend

2009-03-15T18:49:00.000+02:00

The time goes so quickly - the weekend seems to be about a minute long.

Daniel and myself have the beginnings of a cold so we're not too well - lots of sleep today.

Last night, the twins went to Granny Jo while we had a evening out - movies and dinner. We wanted to see slumdog millionnaire - along with the rest of the world - so we ended up seeing "The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button." Wow, what a great movie. Slumdog must be bloody good as this was fantastic!

Emma and Daniel have become serious TV addicts - we allow them to watch the Cbeebies channel on BBC - which they love. Their most favourite programme is "in the Night Garden." We're restricting their viewing to about an hour a day as otherwise they'll spend every waking moment in front of the TV. They both are also dedicated Barney fans - Daniel insists on having his Barney blanket draped over the end of his cot so that he can see Barney's face while he lies in his cot!

We've developed a nice bedtime routine which involves singing a variety of songs. Interesting to see how they love to change the tunes using the same words. The shouted version of some of the songs brings about a great deal of laughter. Really very enjoyable - and it means that bedtime is relatively painless.
We're going to experiment with getting them to sleeping on their mattresses (out of their cots) - in preparation for our trip to the coast next month. Could be interesting as they will try and sleep in our bed. We think we have enough discipline in place to prevent this from becoming an issue.

Talking of discipline - we have been using a discipline corner which has really worked very well. Their behaviour changes 100% after a session which is really nice.

Still in the land of the living, but only just!

2009-03-12T23:24:00.004+02:00

OK, so it has been forever since you heard from us, but it was a tough start to the year! At work we were launched into the news with all the Competition Commission investigations, which was incredibly hectic and then the following week my boss told us all that he had received a promotion, so since the third week of January we have all wondered who the new MD will be, and we finally heard last week. It hasn't left me with a lot of time to arrange hand over meetings, and introductory meetings with everyone, but that is how it goes!

From the third week of Jan through to about the end of Feb, one or more of us were sick, and there were a couple of days where Steve and I had to juggle being at home and also had totally sleepless nights. We had tummy bugs, croup, tonsilitis and general colds and coughs - wonderful!

I have also taken on a different portfolio at SAMBA, so am no longer the Samaritan support, but am now co-ordinating the seminars and doing general PRO. I had my first seminar this past weekend, so spent nights and days sorting and arranging. It was great fun, but very exhausting. I will make sure I am more organised next time around!

Steve has been busy studying most nights, so last week we both took a day off work to spend some time together. We went to breakfast and then a Hobby expo which was interesting, but it was astounding to see the way some of the woment there grabbed stuff as if it was the last sale on earth! They all bought so much stuff, they were wheeling around these huge trolleys full of beads, paper and other odds and ends! Quite a site to see.

The kids are now fine, and their little personalities are so cute! I obviously say something quite a lot in the car while driving, but didn't realise it until I heard it repeated from the back seat. While stopped behind a car at stop street the other day I heard from both of them "Go Dude!" Well, I guess it could have been worse! Also when I take them to school, we look at various things and discuss them. The craze at the moment are busses, motorbikes and purple cars. Whenever we see those, I obviously say "Look, guys at the ...". So, now they say that too! 'Guys, look!" It is too funny for words!

This past weekend was Granny Lesley's birthday, and two little ones blew out a candle and sang Happys to her via skype - oh the joys of technology!

Time to go for now, but I promise it won't be that long til the next one!

2009 - No 1

2009-01-07T21:59:00.003+02:00

Happy New Year everyone - we hope that 2009 is full of happiness and success for everyone.

I went to work on Monday and Fiona and the twins started today. Not fun for anyone, although the air conditioned offices were quite welcome after the heat that we are having.

New Year was spent pretty quietly at home. We had a leisurely braai before deciding to raid the games cupboard for Chinese Checkers which we played until well after midnight. This year we are going have a games evening at least once a month as we have virtually every board game in existance and it is plain FUN!

The twins were beginning to suffer from cabin fever, taking each other out quite a bit every day. Today was quite exhausting for them as they couldn't sleep until the usual 8 am and they had to cope with so many more stimuli at school. Nice to see them tired after a great day.

One of the big themes has been water. They have acquired two old pots plus two potties (we are introducing them into the fray as they are getting ready for them) which are filled with water. They then put in old shells (brought up by Lesley and John from Hermanus), flowers from the garden and non-toxic bathwater dye (red, yellow, blue) in the water. The day is then spent playing in the water, emptying it out and manipulating an adult to refill the bowls for one last time. Actually it has worked nicely as they play for hours. A new favourite after listening and dancing to music (preferably Boney M Christmas Carols).

Their speech is getting easier and easier to understand, and they are putting together bigger and bigger sentences virtually by the day, often using words that they have heard only a few times. Daniel is good at noticing and remembering detail whereas Emma is more global in herthinking and will often take a complete flier to answer a question that Daniel will often think about before answering.

As a result, the questions are beginning to come. Emma asks where different people and things are virtually all day. She has a wicked sense of humour and turns it into a game - seemingly to try us. Anyway we now often turn the questions on their head which results in klots of smiles. Daniel is also starting to question everything but not at the same frequency as Emma (thank goodness).

Daniel is still making his bedtime a nightmare as he only allows Fiona to put him to bed. He then invents every excuse and tantrum in the world to avoid going to bed - so things are quite tedious at bedtime. Emma on the other hand often goes to bed without much fuss (but not always).

Fiona had her birthday on Monday. We had a nice dinner at Adeja in Bryanston. Nice prawns! Granny Jo looked after the babies which was a great break for us all.

I hope you watched the cricket today. South Africa came within 10 balls of beating Australia and causing the first whitewash of an Australian side for 120 years. Graham Smith was magnificent, coming out to bat with a broken hand - unfortunately, he just couldn't do it. Made for some heart racing moments (I was standing in a queue at the licensing department listening to the cricket via the radio on my cellphone - anyone watching me must have had a quite giggle as it was very tense). Hasn't it been a great test series. Now for the 20/20 matches and the one day internationals!

Oh well, only two days to the weekend. Lesley and John fly back to England on Saturday night so we're doing a final dinner on Friday night.

At least the Joburg traffic is still nice and light. It should change next week when the schools go back.

Momentous Win

2008-12-30T12:35:00.004+02:00

Today, the SA Cricket Team won the test series against Australia in Australia. A first for SA cricket. Quite an achievement for a young team. I stayed up all night to watch history being made (as did many other cricket lovers judging from the calls to the TV studio at 06:00). What made it really enjoyable was the gutsy performances in that we came back from the dead in both tests. Bodes well for the future - now we need to win the third and final test in Sydney to be ranked the number one test team in the world (we beat England at home and drew with India at home earlier this year).

Our Christmas was quite hectic with the twins getting piles and piles of presents, and Christmas dinner.

They got some really wonderful presents from books, educational puzzles, cars. blocks, a fairy set, clothes, crayons, teddy bears, a drum set, a shopping trolley, handbags, a play table and a dolls bedroom set. So there has been lots of playing and a few nights of not wanting to go to bed as they are too busy having fun. We also got some great presents - a new printer/scanner/photocopier for our computer and a new camera for Fiona. Also got some new CDs and an MP3 player for Fiona to use at work when the boss is away.

We were joined at our Christmas dinner by my mom, Judy and Caroline. The dinner started early with present opening in the garden (it was too hot to sit inside), followed by drinks and starters (camembert phyllo with cranberry sauce, and garlic prawns). The cranberry sauce came from Highgove, Prince Charles' estate. The main course was turkey and gravy, pigs in blankets, potato salad, macadamia butter nut salad and green salad. Everyone then had some Christmas pudding with custard or brandy butter. A nice meal that everyone seemed to enjoy. A very cold wind came up after starters and so everything was moved to our dining room before supper was served.

We then spent the rest of the week digesting the meal, eating left overs and I got up early every day to watch the test. On Day Three I got up late as it appeared that we were going to have another whitewash by Australia. What a surprise to see that we were still batting after a day of cricket.

John, Lesley and Caroline left very early on Saturday morning to fly to Cape Town, and then drive onto Stellenbosch and Hermanus for a few days. They return tonight.

Today, I'm hopefully going to finish putting a second coat of paint on our bathroom walls and put on our new bathroom accessories.

Now, where is that left over Christmas pudding ... Or should it be a slice of Christmas cake?

Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T16:50:00.005+02:00

Some pictures from the last few days (courtesy of Lesley). It has been very hot and so we have been playing a lot in water just to cool down. Luckily. we have had thunderstorms every evening which cool things down, but not before having a nice supper in the garden. Today it is overcast - a welcome respite!

Daniel got stung by a bee yesterday and his foot swelled up today - so he may have an allergy to bee stings.

I think Father Christmas will be overloaded when he visits our house tonight as the twins are getting a lot of presents. Mommy has made Christmas stockings for everyone - we've hung them over the fireplace. They'll be very full tomorrow!

As usual, they love the Christmas lights - we have a set on our tree plus two sets around the house. Lots of Xmas carols being played too so hopefully we'll have a nice Christmas feeling.

We're planning dinner tomorrow night with Caroline and my mom and Judy.

Daniel is quite attached to Granpa John - he often asks where "Bunka" is

Daddy and the twins

Daniel in his pool of balls.

Daniel splashing Lesley as she takes a photo of them. Emma loves it!

Mommy and Emma blowing bubbles in the garden

- thank goodness for our big tree which gives lots of shade

Emma explaining the origin of Christmas

The nude thing is quite in vogue - it was certainly hot enough.

They undress each other. Emma is standing on the sprinkler.

Daniel on his much-loved bike.

Mom and the twins

Emma giving Daniel a wash or is that a cool down wipe?

Great Victory

2008-12-21T09:35:00.003+02:00

We need to record the result of the first test between SA and Australia in Perth. What a fantastic match and victory for South Africa. Until late yesterday afternoon, we were out of it and then our guys buttoned down to give us the second best run chase ever in the history of cricket to beat them. Ali Bacher, captain f our last series victory against Australia in 1970, said it was the greatest match hwe has ever seen. And people say Test Cricket is boring!

John and Lesley joined us yesterday after a long flight from London via Doha. Had a nice braai with great hot weather. Emma and Daniel changed their behaviour from attacking each other ever ten minutes to absolute angels which made their arrival even more pleasant for all of us. Caroline also joined us for the braai.
Lesley brought an entire case of new clothes - many from the closing down sale of Woolworths, UK. So today, they are wearing nice new clothes.

Otherwise it is nice hot Sunday - rain is forecast for tomorrow -we need it!

2008-12-18T23:33:00.002+02:00

Time has this habit of catching one out - especially at this time of the year when one is trying to do everything before the big cut-off, and then plan to do so much more in January. As a result, we have both been washed off our feet. Our cameras memory card also decided to stop working and it took a few days to figure how to reformat it.

The twins are both well. Daniel is going through an extremely difficult stage in which he only allows Fiona to dress him and to get him out of his car seat etc. He also wants to do everything himself at his pace and in his way which leads to lots of tantrums and unhappiness as we often just cannot do everything the way he wants it! Not easy - but one realises that there is light at the end of the tunnel as Emma is now so cooperative after her doing exactly the same.

They both went through a stage of wanting to sleep in our bed which just does not work as they take over the whole bed within seconds. So after some very long nights and very bleary days, we put up with comforting the apparently unhappy/scared child (read manipulator) at his/her cot and then putting them back down instead of doing the easy thing and carrying them through. The problem seems largely solved (although Emma still gets us up at 06:00 - she is like an alarm - to snuggle up in bed with us for the last few minutes before getting up).

Their language ability is developing extremely quickly - which makes communication so much more easier. They also now lead us to whatever they are trying to tell us about which makes things easier. So those marvellous moments of understanding are becoming more and more common. A great experience after so much crying because we just could not understand for so long.

An interesting event is the resurrection of many of their toys. Many of the toys are now being used as they should have been months ago (they were too young to do so). Nice to experience the enjoyment of getting things right.

Interesting to see how Daniel is very detail-orietated - even needing his supper arranged in a specific way. He has a phenomenal eye for detail and can remember the names of many of the stranger, hard-to-remember wild animals on our chart - Emma can't - she just takes a full on guess. She will do well in sales!

Emma is losing her shyness and so going out is easier as she does not cling to mommy and daddy for too long. A visiting friend from England, Clare, remarked that she looks just like Meg Ryan.

Emma showed an interesting streak the other day - a boy at creche bit her - not badly but enough to cause a bit of distress. A few days later, she bit him - and only him - in exactly the same place on his arm that he bit her on. She remembers and then waits her turn so watch out!

They are fighting quite a bit now - quarreling over virtually every toy that the other has. This is driving us quite mad. The best way is to distract them with a game but our energy levels are not always there!

We have put up our Xmas tree and a few extra lights. Boy are they loved! After my experience last Xmas Eve, in which I could not find Xmas carols on any of the 100's of TV and Radio stations that we have access to, we bought some christmas carol CDs. On the first night, we played Boney M's album which ended up with lots of mad dancing and laughter from the twins. Ever since then, they have been asking for the TV to be turned on so we can play the Christmas Carols through the DVD recorder. Really nice to see them loving our culture almost instinctively - although our enthuisiasm for the much abused Boney M CD may have helped (we went wild!).

Fiona is on leave and ran herself into the ground trying to do too much all at once so today she is not feeling well at all. I go on leave tomorrow which is a very welcome break from what has been a tough year. However, things are looking up with the low oil price and the interest rate on a downward trend.

Lesley and John join us for almost three weeks on Saturday.

Is anybody watching or following the cricket? Hasn't the match been superb so far. Who ever said test match cricket is boring? Unfortunately, I think we blew it today but still it has been a fantastic experience. My office is forced to endure the saga as I have Radio 2000 going while the game is on.

We'll try put more news and photos on the blog more often now that it is holidays (well almost).

Photos

2008-11-27T23:29:00.005+02:00

A rare picture - Emma just does not swing!

Notice her legs ready to run.

Emma with a balloon from Spur

Daniel in the same boots -

these may be shown in 19 years time at his 21st

Wrestling on the armchair

Pick me up - NOW!

Daniel J. Roberts

Eating and singing on the armchair

Emma R. Roberts

Wearing mom's wedding shoes

(to viewed at his 21st !)

The ultimate photo for use at his 21st

Sorry about the long silence - we have both been sick and the twins are exhausting us by waking up virtually every night. The objective seems to be to get into our bed which we are trying to resist unless they are sick and need comforting. Life is also busy as everyone tries to get everything done by year-end.

Joburg is very hot and with all the recent rain we seem to suddenly have lots of hungry mosquitoes around.

Tomorrow Claire (Fiona's friend) joins us from the UK for a couple of weeks - it'll be nice to see her again as we last saw her at our wedding.

Well, wasn't the Springbok vistory over England one of the best matches of the decade - so far. So nice to watch.

The Indian attacks are quite shocking to us. I've stayed in that area of Mumbai and walked the streets flat shopping for good deals. Not nice to see as the people are generally so nice and friendly. We got lost finding our way back from the Gate of India to our hotel and people were so friendly and helpful. Although I remember having a meal in one restaurant that are in which we were quite clearly not welcome (it was just after 9/11).

We've put in bids for tickets for the Confederations Cup next June. I think that one just has to attend a top-notch match such as Brazil vs Italy just once in your life. We'll be going to Loftus Versveld for that - who would have thought we'd ever see that. And then we're going to watch SA vs Iraq at Ellis Park to get a it of the atmosphere of what the World Cup will be in 2010. I think we're in for an exciting time ahead.

Happy birthday Logan!

Intermittent sleep and rain!

2008-11-12T23:02:00.005+02:00

We seem to be having some days where Daniel will go to bed like an angel and others where his tantrums are really awful! Last night and tonight he was super and waved bye-bye to his chair, motorbike, toys and the TV before pottering off to their room. Long may it continue, as the tantrums are exhausting! Emma is getting naughty and cheeky, but is ever so good inbetween all that and doesn't have tantrums anymore (hopefully they don't come back)! She has figured out what is required of her when we ask her to 'smile' but first she screws her face up very tight and only after that does she smile properly - see below some captured pics of her! Daniel hasn't got to that stage yet, and most of the time he just ignores the camera. It will be great when we can get some good ones of him beaming too!

We had a busy weekend, what with seeing our very dear friends Alex and Fred who were here from Belgium for a surprise whistle stop visit, and Caroline came over on Sunday as well. When I took her home on Sunday afternoon, I met her new baby, who is a tiny grey tabby kitten. She has been named Pebbles, and is ever so cute. I got down to her level and took loads of photos. Looking over the pictures afterwards, I was amazed to see that she is only about the size of a brick!

It has rained more or less constantly since last Friday, which has been amazing and really needed, but I am beginning to feel as if it will never dry out again and things are starting to smell damp!

Pebbles with HUGE ears!

Cuteness is...!

Fred, Alex and FEDS

Intense Emma.

Serious Daniel with a mouth full of milk
(in his pj top that caused a tantrum when we eventually took it off!)

Pre-dinner drinks at Forbes' and John's house
(Steve, Fiona, Alex, Leanne, Fred, Forbes and John)

Sitting under Daddy's desk

Gorgeousness!

Dirty Gorgeousness asleep with Daddy!

Still under Daddy's desk (he hid from me when I called him)

Wonderful Photos By Leona

2008-11-06T21:49:00.006+02:00

Fiona and Emma walking at lifestyle

Fiona and Emma at breakfast

Fiona and Daniel at breakfast

Playing with the cat and quack-quack

Looking at the pool with boats at Lifestyle

Sitting on the step of the front door

A meal on the lounge table while

perched on foam chairs

Carrying the watering can together

Swinging with Grandpa Barry

Grandpa Barry and Emma at Lifestyle

Grandpa Barry and Daniel braaing

Daddy and Daniel at Lifestyle

Daniel peeping out from the curtains

Emma "sweeping" up the balls from the pool

Emma R. Roberts

I love you

2008-11-03T23:51:00.003+02:00

Daniel is giving us lots of grief - every second night! He just refuses to get into bed and makes such a big deal of it that he alarms his sister with his extreme fit. Not easy and so we are devising pretty devious methods to avoid the temper tantrums. It is all about changing the direction of the conversation/activity or even the location of the action (he won't change on the changing table but doing it standing up is fine).

Tonight he tried to eat his yoghurt out of his shoe which caught a sharp rebuke and a quiet smile!

We're starting to have to really watch what is on TV as they are beginning to register what is going on. Daniel loved Finding Nemo on SABC 3.

this weekend it was pretty warm so Emma decided to derobe and was shortly followed by Daniel. They then proceeded to throw some stones into the soil next to a rose which were then retrieved to throw again. Well, of course, they push and shove each other while retrieving the stones which meant that Daniel landed on the very thorny rose. He didn't actually scream too much. His bum is one series of scratches as he pullec himself out of the rose. Looks quite bad but is actually superficial cuts - nothing to serious. We expected it to burn in his bath but he showed no signs of any discomfort.

Tonight they insisted on being spun on my office chair until they were wimpering from the dizziness. The thrill was then to climb down and somehow lie/collapse on the ground while feeling quite badly disorientated. Took quite a few demanded spins for the enjoyment to wear - or the sea sickness to kick in.

Otherwise did you enjoy the Grand Prix? What a finish. One wonders what kind of reward Glock will get for letting Hamilton through. We felt for Massa as he did nothing wrong although ferrari were not as consist this season (remember the fuel hose incidents and Kimi's crash into Hamilton). Now to countdown to next year.

Bedtime!

For Callum and Logan

2008-10-31T21:45:00.007+02:00

Baby Elephant next to Crocodile River

Adult coming up from the river

Youngster wanting to cross the road at dusk

Close-up of giraffe skin

Blurry Buffalo (in 42 degree heat)

Zebra

Giraffe - Daniel's favourite animal

For Lesley : A Lilac Breasted Roller

(we spent one trip to Kruger, a few years ago, stopping every five minutes

so Lesley could photograph these beautiful birds)

Bushbuck

This Lion was roaring outside our camp all night - a nice feeling.

We found him at dawn sunning himself

There he goes ...

Ok so Lion are quite nice to see

These pictures are for Callum and Logan, faraway cousins of Emma and Daniel, so they can see some of the animals that we saw during our trip to the Kruger Park about a month ago.

Daniel = NO!

2008-10-30T23:05:00.004+02:00

We had Granpa and Granma Fuller for the weekend (on their way back from a break at Sun City). What made it special was the fact that we watched the Sharks win the Currie Cup for the first time in 12 years. The Fullers had tickets to the game and instead chose to spend it with us - special!
On Sunday, we had breakfast at Lifestyle. Nice to get out and to see the children marvelling at the children's fairground (they're still too young for the children's rides).

Daniel has hit another serious teething streak, combined with a strong focus on NO! In fact his first word in the morning is usually No!
So getting him up in the morning and getting him dressed is full of "no!" plus a massive performance.
And then he has taken to waking up in the middle of the night and demanding to sleep with Mommy and Daddy. This of course wakes up Emma who climbs on the bandwagen - or is that into the bed? Anyhow on Tuesday night, we decided to break the habit. I think we woke up the neighbourhood when we denied them access to our bed as they were not sick and in fact there was nothing wrong. And so they screamed blue-murder while one of us sat there and watched them (great stuff in the middle of the night).
Interestingly Daniel fell asleep first with Emma following (he woke her up).

Tonight Daniel just point blank refused to go to bed and kicked up a massive tantrum everytime we tried to get him into the cot. Not so easy as he is getting big and strong. anyhow, after lots of soothing, we got him to fall asleep (alas still crying). This time, Emma slept through it all.

There has been another lice breakout at school - not our children, but now we are having to take preventitive measures to ensure they don't get them. So it is shampooing of their hair every morning - great fun!

Well we are back to the Joburg of old - the recent rains have knocked out the robots on key intersections which has meant big traffic jams. Not fun.

Now we're looking forward to the Brazilian Grand Prix this weekend - I'd love Massa to win but that is unlikely.

Today's Photos

2008-10-23T22:49:00.002+02:00

Daniel pointing out the arrival of Daddy at home

Dummy happy boy

Emma

Daddy's little darling

Smile for the camera or is that at Daddy's stupid antics?

Rain

2008-10-21T21:06:00.003+02:00

The great news is that we have had the first rains of the summer - a welcome relief after the dryness and heat of the spring. Everything is suddenly green and all the sneezing has stopped. Nice!

On Friday night we celebrated my sisters birthday which was nice. The twins were relatively well behaved and of course dominated our conversation (as they always do). They had a late night (one of several over the weekend) which meant they wake up early.

Granpa and Granma Fuller arrived on Saturday for a short visit before their week at Sun City. The twins really appreciated the present of two small sponge chairs which they sit in a lot. Of course - who dominated all our conversation? The twins!

On Sunday, the twins slept late (very nice). We had lunch with some family friends of the Fullers. It was interesting to meet total strangers and to find so that we have so much in common in that we have so many common friends.

As Sunday evening was beautiful (and not raining) we had a nice braai before putting the twins to bed - (quite a battle) as they were having so much fun with the Grandparents, and they had not slept at midday as they normally do.

And then the Fullers went off to Sun City and we went off to work - not much other news. They return on Friday.

We're looking forward to the Currie Cup Rugby Final on Saturday - and of course a Sharks win, and then we're hoping for a Massa victory in the final Formula One race on Brazil in two weeks time.

Notice that we have had 5,000 views of the blog (since we have been counting).

Post 245

2008-10-16T22:41:00.003+02:00

It has been a bit of a rough week so far. Daniel's cough has really hassled him during the early hours of the night. To ensure he does not wake up Emma, we normally bring him through to our bed - not nice when he performs - as he did on Tuesday night. In fact he had an episode of complete loss of temper which was not nice to watch (there was not much else we could do). He did calm down after a while and had a nice deep sleep after that. Unfortunately it disturbed our night and so we were walking zombies yesterday.

Both Fiona and Daniel have upper respiratory tract infections - Fiona presented herself and Daniel to the doctor yesterday. Both are beginning to get better (with the help of antibiotics, cough medicine, eye drops and a nose spray!).
We've also restarted our winter muti regime of Viral Force for the children and a vitamin pill called "Hot Toddy" for Fiona as they seem to work really well. In fact the only remedies that had an impact.

Otherwise it is getting very hot (over 30 degrees) and dry. They say it will rain over the weekend - not a moment too late. Gauteng is not nice at the end of winter.

We live in momentous financial times - one wonders what the impact of the last week or so will be on the world for the next few years. Interesting to see SA banks being rated higher than Swiss banks! The world as we knew it has changed forever - so have the rules!

Interesting to see where this blog is being viewed from. During this week, we have had hits from Australia, the USA, Canada, and the UK. We have also had almost 5000 hits since we have been counting them.

The Fullers arrive on Saturday.

Tough Weekend

2008-10-13T23:43:00.003+02:00

On Friday night, we decided to eat-out at Spur. Well, within 15 minutes we were ready to go back home as we had two terrorists with us. On reflection, we should never have taken them out as they had a birthday party at creche and were on a sugar high second to none.
Anyhow, we decoded to stay and have our dinner which was marked by a glass of water being knocked down - all over the table, Daniel pulling down the divide between us and the adjacent table and our neighbours being terrorised. Anyway, it was a short dinner and we were home early.
The visit was a landmark one as we left the pram at home and walked the twins in. Daniel was wearing a harness that we bought at a Baby Shop - he loves it but not so much the other visitors to Cresta - many stares of utter disbelief were received. Obviously not the done thing but it works for us as he likes running! Emma holds a hand although she soon also wanted to run off and enjoy things.

On Saturday, I worked on our pool fence (in the blazing sun) while they played in my car (a top attraction of the whole house as the radio is turned on and off and the hazards are put on). Daniel discovered an apple that had fallen behind my seat on Friday and proceeded to eat it. They then ate a pear each too.

That afternoon, they went to Andrew's birthday party which was enjoyed by all. On Saturday night, our social continued with the 6-th birthday of my Aunty Eileen. A nice occasion with the twins having free reign of the house which they loved. Daniel was everywhere, running and shouting with joy and over-excitement. They went home nice and tired after a long, hot very social day.

Early on Sunday morning, Daniel woke us with a terrible cough that had him panicking as he seemed to be battling to breathe. Took an hour to calm him down and give him Panado and cough syrup. He then took over the bed. About two hours later our alarm went off (for no reason) and two hours later, Emma discovered that she was alone and demanded to join us in bed. Well, we were both completely wiped out for the rest of Sunday. Daniel was also very "off" until he had his sleep at midday.

His cough is of concern although it seems to have reduced in intensity. t was only showing itself late at night after several hours of sleep. It sounds like whooping cough which is not nice - they have been vaccinated against it. Anyhow, today it seems to be more normal.

Everyone started recovering towards evening and we had a nice braai in the warm evening - this is such a nice time of year - balmy evenings and no thunderstorms - yet. Daniel had panado, cough syrup and we put on the nebuliser to ensure we had a full night of sleep - which went to plan.

Daniel continues with his Dad fixation - saying "my Daddy" with everything that disturbs him and I'm not visible. Emma has also started reciting the days of the week which is quite fun to listen to and play along with. Their vocab is growing by the day. Nice to see although it also allows for plenty of one-sided arguments - which we lose!
They are both getting quite independent - Daniel insists on climbing into the car himself now, and he must have the cot down so he can climb into bed - no mommy or daddy picking him up into bed.

Emma is getting a little braver with the swing - now climbing in for very gentle rides. Daniel enjoys the wild rides (to maximum swing height).

Otherwise we are looking forward to seeing the Fullers this next weekend.

Its Thursday

2008-10-09T22:16:00.004+02:00

It is already Thursday - time is flying.

Daniel has gone into a very clingy stage which can be quite tedious as he wants to be held all the time. Emma is less clingy now but still likes a good carry and a hug.

They are given a small tub of yoghurt every evening while we eat. During the last few evenings, Emma has asked Daniel for some of his yoghurt (she had aleady gobbled hers down). Well he responded by giving her several spoonfuls which were met with a "thank you Daniel." Very sweet to watch. Daniel is also getting a little wiser to the "more" demand and tonight he called a halt so he could enjoy his.

Everything in Daniel's vocab is either "no" or "mine." Quite tedious when he decides to dig his heels in. Luckily he has such a nice nature that there is still lots of giving - tonight, he decided that he wasn;t going to bed before he had a certain car in his cot. when he returned to the bedroom, he had also collected a car for Emma to play with. Nice.
To get around the "no" issue, I've been taking the time to show them their clothes before getting dressed in the mornings. If one makes enough fuss, they become very willing to wear whatever we have chosen for that day.

The weather is beautiful - about 26 degrees - all t-shirts and shorts. Every few days it threatens to rain but nothing significant has fallen yet - we desperately need it. Only enough drops to dirty our cars!

The swing has gone down well with Daniel but not really with Emma who seems quite scared of it. However, I have seen her sit on it at least twice when she thought nobody was watching.

We are putting up a fence on the driveway side of the pool to ensure nobody gets to the pool. On the weekend, I was able to work on it for about two hours while Fiona was out. went well with the twins pottering around but not going near the pool (which has a pool net on it). they are beginning to entertain themselves which makes weekends a little easier although their is regular contact still needed.

Well don't we live in interesting times. Governments nationalising banks etc. Interesting to watch. Fiona has spent most of her bonus buying shares at the current low prices.

Ooh yes - one thing that Fiona didn't mention in her post about Kruger was what fantastic accommodation we had. We had a bungalow next to the camp fence which was next to a dry river bed that runs down to a waterhole. Well, were we lucky as you could literally lie in bed or sit on the verandah and watch the animals go by on their way to the big waterhole (Kruger was very dry) or to the smaller one that was located in front of our house. The one night, we had Elephants right next to the fence (very noisy stomach gurgling and crashing of bushes) and a hyaena. the next day, we were all sitting at breakfast when a small herd of elephant walked right passed us - 10 m away. Great for the children to see as the elephants were not hassled by our presence. They now get very excited when they see wildlife on TV (which to our surprise is relatively often). Great to see especially Daniel really react to all the different animals as this is so close to our hearts.

Fiona has just brought me a sweet Baby Melon to eat. Bye bye!

Sad

2008-10-01T02:58:00.002+02:00

A post to remember two colleagues of ours at Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. Mark Coetzee and James Wakelin were killed in an aircraft crash in Mozambique on 20 September 2008.

Two guys that I certainly worked closely with. I spent many happy hours in the "White House Pub" with Mark - in fact he played the fateful Elvis song that got Fiona and myself together (finally) in the Whitehouse. I also travelled through India and Nepal with him and two other friends.

Our thoughts are with their wives and children. Julia and Mark were one of those couples that were just made for each other.

Mark was buried yesterday in Pietermaritzburg.

Hambani kahle abafowethu.

Kruger and Parties

2008-09-29T23:02:00.006+02:00

Kruger was great! It was hot, and on the last day reached 42 deg C by 10am! We were quite relieved when we hit the highveld on the way home and it started cooling down. The children were so good, and although we only strapped them around their waists (left their arms a bit free) they stayed in their seats the entire time, and we only had relatively minor squabbles over toys.

They loved the animals, and really got so excited when we saw things. We obviously started teaching the words and showing pictures before we left, but a small picture just doesn't do the real thing justice! Now that we are home, they can go up to the poster and identify them, which is lovely to see.

They know impala, giraffe (pronounced 'a-wup' by Daniel), monkey, baboon ('a-boon'), elephant (eletint), kudu, hippo, rhino, bird (referring to all from sparrow to ground hornbill), lion (accompanied by a roar), zebra and bushbuck (bu-buck).

Our accommodation was lovely, and although we all shared a room, they slept really well.

The next big event was the party! On Saturday we went to a friend of theirs (Kylie) party, which Daniel in particular loved. He was on his own mission, and although didn't know any of the other children, he happily pottered about among them. Emma was stuck to my lap for about an hour, but then relaxed, and also pottered off. When she plays, she is far more interactive, and needed to find someone to play with, while Daniel found a bike, and rode around on it on his own. Emma came back about every 5 minutes for reassurance though!

Their party was on Sunday, and we decided not to have a big 'do'. The theoretical guideline is to invite one child per year of age, and it worked out unintentionally with 4 children coming to play. Andrew was there with Sharon, Kylie and her parents (Colleen and Gareth), Erin and her big brother (Jarryd) and parents (Nadia and Gary). We all used to go to Mums and Tots together when we were on maternity leave. My sister Caroline was also here, as it is also her birthday on the 30th.

We worked hard getting this place ready - with Steve tidying up and setting up outside (luckily the weather cleared, as the day started out very mis) and I made cookies, cheese puffs and a choc cake, which Caro iced when she arrived.

In the morning before everyone arrived, we unveiled their swing, which was a joint present from us, Granny Lesley, Granny Jo, Aunty Judy and our family friends Ed and Kathy. Thank you to all who contributed! They loved it and squealed with delight when we brought it into the garden. Daniel immediately jumped on it, but Emma is a still a little hesitant. She did, however have a go later on her own.

Bed time for now, before it is really their birthday! We are going to Granny Jo and Aunty Judy for supper tomorrow night so that they can also celebrate with us!

'A-wup'

'Eletint'

Waterbuck with the paint ring from the loo seat

My most favourite bird - Ground hornbill

A beautiful fever tree

A calm dam at Berg-en-Dal camp

Emma 'just checking' that the can is empty!

CAKE!

Emma waiting for her guests to arrive.

Daniel licking the icing off the little cakes.

Look Granny - no dummies!

The birthday girls and boy!

Us 4!

Wednesday

2008-09-17T22:38:00.003+02:00

SPAR South Rand launched their Women’s 10/5km Challenge at the

M & A Restaurant in Johannesburg on Tuesday 2 September.

From left to right: Sonja Laxton (Grand Master Top runner), Peter Stentiford (Purchase Manager: SPAR South Rand), Edith Venter (Cansa), Fiona Roberts (Cansa), Irvette van Blerk (Top runner), Snow Matthews (President of Central Gauteng Athletics).

A certain percentage of proceeds from race entries will go to the CANSA association which is the charity for the Challenge. The SPAR Women’s 10/5km Challenge takes place on 12th October at the Old Parktonians Club in Johannesburg

A picture from the event that Fiona gave the guest speech at a few weeks ago. We are soooo proud!

Today the Paralympics ended. we were amazed at (and humbled by) the performances that we saw. Really great stuff. Of course, South Africa's great performances gave us all a bit of hope, following the disasterous Olympics. Nice stuff.

The next big global event is the Soccer World Cup in SA. Quite exciting and one can already feel the hype with construction around and on every corner. Very painful in terms of the traffic but once it is complete it will be fantastic.

The twins are both doing well. Daniel seems to have recovered from his near bronchitits, and Emma, who was never really sick, is seemingly overcoming her minor eye infection.

With everyone on the mend, and spring causing the dusk to be delayed, we have had lots of fun in the garden and around the house. Lots of running around and laughing. Last night, we had a "Find Daddy" game which was great fun - for all. At one stage, I hid behind a curtain and managed get a good reaction out of everyone, including the cat, when I jumped out. Of course, that meant more playing which just before bedtime was not such a good idea. Luckily, our two generally go to bed with very little bother.

We have been asking them how old they are. Within a remarkably short period, they both now respond that they are "two." This is usually accompanied by a seven finger gesture (copying our two finger cue that we used to get the initial learning happening). So nice to see the levels of "sharpness" growing on virtually a daily basis.

Tonight we had the movie "Grey Owl" on TV. Well their reaction to the two baby beavers was spectacular. Both were engrossed with the movie. Nice to see. Of course, this makes the upcoming trip to the Kruger Park even more exciting as we should see something nice. Both can now recognise some of the more common animals like Elephant so we are expecting great screams of joy when they spot their first live Elephant and Giraffe, or even better - a Lion or Leopard! We depart on Saturday.

NO!

2008-09-09T21:27:00.006+02:00

Daniel calming down after a refusal to get into his pajamas.

Notice the blue shoes that he insisted on wearing to bed.

Duck is about to be thrown in our direction from behind his head.

Daniel copying one of us putting a screw back into one of their toys.

Daniel's vocab has decreased to one word: "No!" This comes with a health warning as it is often accompanied by things thrown in all directions and a good old fit.

A trying time indeed as he is really asserting himself - everything is met with a very clear "no." Dressing him takes twice as long as it takes quite a bit of negotiation and games to get him calm forst. I've done the odd "you'll now get dressed" which is not fun but the choice is be late or get dressed now.

The situation is not helped by the fact that he is sick. He went off to the Doctor today who diagnosed chest, ear and eye infections. We got it all before it got ugly and turned into bronchitis. So now it is an antibiotic, cough mixture and eye muti before bedtime and before creche time every day. Luckily they love muti and are always very willing to take whatever is offered. After Fiona picked up the eye ointment at the chemist, she asked Daniel to lie down on the floor so she could immediately administer it (his eyes were rather red). Without any fuss, he complied - much to the surprise of the chemist. So we can count ourselves lucky.

We've developed the habit by giving them Viroguard every day and making it a nice experience. almost as loved as yoghurt time!

Emma is doing fine - she poured sand into Daniel's hair this evening while they were playing outside in the garden.

We are having trouble getting Huggy nappies number 5's. They are sold out everywhere and the stores are saying that it is a factory problem. So we have been buying Pampers which are a little more expensive but not as good as the Huggies ones. We have now found that Springbok Pharmacy delivers a no-name brand of nappies that cost R1,75 per nappy instead of R2.50 (Pampers). Usually the cheaper nappies are just trouble but these seem to work really well - they fit the twins well and so far no leaks. So now we send them to creche in the cheap nappies (let them worry about the leaking) as they also use quite a few a day and then we use the Pampers at night to make sure don't become victims of a leaking nappy. So far so good.

With the decreasing petrol price and a reduction in Nappy costs - we're in boom times!

2008-09-04T21:39:00.002+02:00

A pensive Emma

Yellow Clivia in the garden

Emma dabbling in the sandpit

A rare photo - no dummy!

Daniel

Emma has a temperature yesterday - we thought it was something going around the school as six children came down with temperatures. When she ate all of her supper, we knew that it was not too serious. She then did a lot of coughing before joining us in bed at about midnight. she kept Fiona awake with her struggling to get comfortable but then slept through the night. Thank goodness.

This morning she was fine although she had another temperature at 16:45. she is drooling a great deal so now we've concluded that she is just teething.

Tonight we played hide and seek in the house which everyone seemed to enjoy. Then we did a bit of spinning in our desk chair before everyone went off to bed.

Enjoy the weekend - we certainly plan to!

Another Week

2008-09-02T23:09:00.005+02:00

I think I've said this before: each day seems like an hour, each week seems like a day and each month seems like a week. Where is time going? Is life really getting faster? The net result is that we have not updated the blog for a day, no hang on a week has passed already.

A good place to start is the weather - man is it nice to have warm spring weather. Except over the weekend, the wind got colder and colder and yesterday morning it was winter again (until 11am anyway). So now it is back to spring.

Well today Fiona was the guest speaker at the launch of the Spar Ladies 10 km race to raise funds for CANSA. she shared the podium with Edith Venter. Quite a big thing for someone who a few years ago would not speak in public! Anyhow, it seems to have gone very well with an offer to do an article in a magazine in January. She is becoming a real celeb. We are very proud of her.

The twins are doing well. Both are drooling very heavily which means more teeth. Tonight Emma was very tired and listless - playing very little and preferring just to lie on my lap until she fell asleep just before bedtime. Daniel is his usual self - full of fun and action. Hy well - going exactly round corners at top speed. Of course the falls happen but they seem to be part of the game now. Daniel has discovered apples and will happily spend an evening chewing on half an apple. Nice to see.

The big treat every night is a tub of yoghurt - while we eat dinner. Man do they love that. Emma has quite a ritual going - she eats most of the yoghurt herself before handing it to me to help her clean out the last remnants. The tub is then taken and banged upside down on the coffee table to leave a nice yoghurt imprint all over the table. This is then cleaned up with great vigour before banging the tub again to repeat it all. Quite funny to watch.

We bought them a cheap, junior scaletrix type toy on Saturday. It amounts to set of squares which can be put together in a number of configurations to give you different tracks. The cars (which are battery powered and have a pilot wheel) then run in grooves. Well Mom and Dad loved the toy when we saw it, and gave it to them when we got home. Daniel immediately grabbed the toy airplane (he has a fixation for airplanes) and the toy car and pushed them around the floor for the rest of the weekend. Later we showed them how the grooves work and they showed about a minute of appreciation before grabbing the car and airplane to play with again. Oh well, at least they are getting joy out of it.

On Sunday, we went to my aunt and uncle's for lunch to see my cousin Gavin who is out visiting with his wife Sam and son Thomas from London. Thomas is about two months younger than our two. Gavin has just handed his Masters Thesis for Philosophy at the University of London - very interesting career change for a qualified CA! He is now hoping to work three days and do some more studies in the remaining two or so days a week. Anyway, it was nice to see everyone. Daniel was out and about virtually immediately and Emma only warmed up and got off our laps just before we left. She gets very shy in crowds whereas Daniel is the exact opposite. Interesting to watch. Oh a tea party was the thing that finally got her going - typical girl!

Ooh yes! One thing I'm really enjoying is the ability to bond with them Often in the morning while getting dressed I look up to see some loving eyes watching me and I'm immediately rewarded with a grin. We often also get grins from across a room or while sitting together which also warms the heart.

On Saturday afternoon, I was watching the Boks finally beat Australia. Mom gave Emma and I chips - each in our own bowls. I casually moved my hand into Emma's bowl and stole a chip. She of course objected, and I returned it with a big grin (ok I lie - I ate it with a grin). Anyhow, a few minutes later, a little hand quietly wonders over the edge of my bowl and steals a chip from me. When she got caught, it was a big grin. Soooo nice!

Speaking of that - we are just so amazed at how much a boy Daniel is and how much a girl Emma is. They are attracted to such different things without much prompting. Daniel loves cars and things that fly and go round whereas Emma shows interest in far more girly things. Interesting.

This week they are doing spring at creche and so we had leaves drawn on their faces when they came home last night. After this week, they get into a clothes theme. Nice to see such good teaching happening - we can certainly see the difference in their behaviour as a result. Quite scary though as little undesirable things (nothing yet) also come in from the other children - although nothing significant yet.

Congratulations to Kevin and Beth on their new house. Looks really fantastic. Enjoy!

Good night! I'll get Fiona to put some new photos that we took over the weekend on tomorrow night.

Post 235

2008-08-25T21:57:00.004+02:00

This is the time of year that living inland is to our advantage as the cold fronts veer off to the south before they can make us cold. As a result, we're pulling out the t-shirts and shorts again. Such a lovely time of the year.

I found the Olympics absolutely spectacular. I've always thought that we had reached the very edge of human performance and from hereon in, great performances would be measured by minute increases on the existing world records.
Well, then came Beijing and Bolt and Phelps who seem to have taken in all the smog they could to put in performances that were spectacular. Watching them both break world records by such large margins was a treat that not many will see again. Bolt's 100m was the greatest run I've ever seen. We just loved all the coverage and watched and enjoyed almost every sport. A real celebration that one can only admire.
We are real gymnastics affectionadios - watching every event including the rhythmic gymnastics. Also really enjoyed the table tennis and the archery (especially seeing Korea land two bulls eys at 70 m in a pouring thunderstorm). The volley ball was nice to watch (the Polish women's team should produce a calendar) as was the water polo. What a great 16 days - our house seems to be missing something tonight.

In contrast wasn't the rugby a big disappointment. For the second week in a row, we've stopped watching and gone and done something more interesting.

Well, we took the plunge today and decided to hit Kruger Park for a break in a month's time. Got in at Berg 'n Dal for three nights which should be spectacular. Cannot wait to see Emma and Daniel's reactions to the animals as they can already recognise some of them in pictures.
I've had two spectacular leopard sightings in the Berg 'n Dal area so here's hoping they get to see one of those spectacular cats from close-up. The Kruger booking certainly sorted out the Olympic blues for mommy and daddy.

They were both in brilliant moods today - a nice change from the tantrums of last week. Lots of playing and laughing tonight. There was a bit of opposition at bedtime but that soon faded when they realised how tired they were.
Daniel seemed to have a nightmare last night which took quite a long time to sort out. As a result he joined us in bed and shortly thereafter Emma insisted on being included too. So we are pretty tired today after trying to sleep with two bed hogs for what seemed a long night.

Good night or as we say to the twins "byebye time."

Sunny Days

2008-08-24T23:45:00.004+02:00

After a terrible week of being awake at all hours of the night, many high temperatures (which were all due to teething problems for Emma) and temper tantrums (courtesy of Daniel) we have had a really good, happy weekend!

Daniel decided this week that what ever he was wearing and doing was the way it had to stay, irrespective of dirty nappies and pajamas! So, each time we had to change his nappy or his clothes, we had a nightmare of a time, with one marathon tantrum lasting 90 minutes the other night! However today he was back to his sunny self, so hopefully that small phase is just that!

Word of the week for him is 'butter bike' (motorbike) which he calls his little black bike that he rides around on. Also umlella (umbrella) from both of them and 'hum-dumpty' from Emma. She is starting to construct 2 and 3 word sentences now, which is great, although one of her favourites which we are squashing is 'naughty Daniel'. Not acceptable to us when he is clearly behaving! 'Emma up', 'nother one', 'mummy nose' are also being said.

We had nice weekend lie-ins on both mornings, with them waking up at 7:30 on Saturday morning and 7:50 this morning. They both also had very long day sleeps of about 3 hours each day.

Daniel is attached, as can be seen in the photos below, to a duck that Granny and Grandpa in Durban gave them before they were born. It has sat in their room un-noticed until the other day when he chanced upon it, and has taking a serious liking to it! It seems to be called quack-quack and has been everywhere today, even to the park this afternoon! He cuddles it at night too, which is a first for him. Emma has had a teddy in her cot at night for some time now, but he usually takes a car or six to bed with him.

We are sad that the olympics are over, and have decided to try and make it to the London ones, as we really want to attend one and that seems like a logical option.

Contrary to popular belief, Emma does have a mouth behind that dummy!

Baby Daniel trying in vain to fit into a carry cot!

Mouth has gone again.

'Me 'n Quack-quack.'

Teeth galore!

A bird in the hand...

Learning how to smile for the camera.

Yay!

Life is OK

2008-08-13T22:37:00.002+02:00

Greetings from a warm JHB before a big cold front hits on the weekend.

Emma is getting to a stage of being understandable (in the most part). Last night she recognised a yoghurt advert on TV - saying yoghurt. Quite nice to see.

Tonight they seemed to be on one big natural high. Lots of jumping and laughing on the couches. Of course it resulted in a mess but no falls which is a nice change.

Daniel continues to love collecting as many cars as possible before he goes to bed. We then remove them before we go to bed so we are not awakened by a boy who is sore from lying on his cars. the Ferrari and Porsche remain a strong favourite.

Notice the map of who visits our site - nice to see where people are logging in from.

Otherwise it is olympics, olympics and olympics - so much to watch. Does anybody know why there are so many world records being broken in the swimming. We heard someone say that swimming has changed completely in the last nine months - what has changed?

Lets hope they don't increase the interest rate tomorrow.

Quiet Weekend

2008-08-11T22:13:00.005+02:00

The weekend was pretty quiet - okay the Olympics drowned out anything else!

On Saturday morning Daniel decided that he wanted his mommy back and so proceeded to scream (demand) to be let outside so he could stand at the gate and wait for her. After about fifteen minutes, he had calmed down and proceeded to greet everyone who was walking passed. Quite nice to watch how virtually everyone just melts and greets him.

There was much celebration when mommy returned from her trip to Grahamstown. Daniel is definitely a mommy's boy!

Both were so well behaved while Mom was away. On Friday afternoon we watched bits of the Olympic opening ceremony which was great. The fireworks were watched but were not admired as I think they could not comprehend.

We did Spur on Saturday night (for a change) which was a nice experience as they both sat on a bench next to us. We then ordered some kiddies food for them which they ate whilst we enjoyed our Calamari (Fiona) and ribs - as many as you can eat (me). After a while they got restless - luckily it was time to go so we went.

On Sunday afternoon, we took them for a long walk to the park we visited the weekend before. Again it was the jungle gym that was most popular. The slide was approached first, and after a wide-eyed slide down (into Mommy's arms), it was not approached again. During our visit, Daniel kept on running off to the bottom of the park - possibly after a loud ice-cream truck that could be heard from that direction (at one time). He was after the music as he spat out the icecream that we offered him (Dad did chase it). A banana was more agreeable to both of them - to our relief.

Emma has taken to saying "I love you" which is very sweet. Daniel is now also repeating words regularly. And so communication is improving virtually day-by-day.
One always wonders about the undesirable language etc.that they pick up at school. But it has a positive side too as they pick up so many good words and developmental experiences too. Sometimes I feel a twinge of jealousy as someone else taught them something

Tonight, both Emma and Daniel seemed to really enjoy watching 50/50 with us. Both loved seeing the Chimpanzees featured as well as the bird inserts. Nice to watch as it is our dream for them to enjoy watching wildlife (as we love it so much).

Otherwise, I'm looking forward to a quite week (last week was very hectic). The Olympics is proving to be the usual great event that it is. Loving the volleyball, archery, gymnastics, fencing and swimming.

Wasn't the mens 100m swimming relay final phenomenal. Breaking the world record is not a usual event. Something to be treasured. Our recorder is going to be working overtime as we record thingst to watch at more acceptable hours.

Wasn't the Boks vs Argentina phenomenal. A nice warm-up for the All Blacks in Cape Town on Saturday.

The Greatest Show On Earth

2008-08-07T21:41:00.003+02:00

It is the day before the Greatest Show on Earth - the Olympics - starts. I certainly can't wait.

Fiona jetted off to Grahamstown this afternoon to attend Debbie Dalton's wedding. And so I'm looking after the twins.

Her plane took off 40 minutes late due to some air conditioning filter not working which meant that the drive from East London to Grahamstown had to be completed just before dusk. She got in just after dusk - lots of roadworks and very windy meant things were tough. Anyway, she is currently enjoying dinner with the Daltons in Grahamstown. Caroline was supposed to go but had her leave withdrawn by her boss at the last moment - a big disappointment to Fiona. Anyway - Caroline's boss will be reimbursing her for the costs (and hopefully some of ours too).

All is going well - they have been like angels all evening. We read two new books before bedtime which promised to be a screaming affair but after two minutes turned out not to be. Thank goodness.

Daniel started counting today which was nice to listen to.

We gave him the toy Ferrari that Fiona bought me many years ago (to stop me always asking for a Ferrari). He loves it and does not it out of his sight.
Both of them have got good taste as their preferred cars are a Porsche and the Ferrari. Interesting!
The weather is suddenly warming up which is so wonderful - trying not to get too used to it as there is always a last cold front that knocks the stuffing out of everyone. the winter has been relatively mild - we have had lots of days in the teens but no nights below zero which is quite unusual (and enjoyable).

TGIF tomorrow (and Olympics too).

A few more photos

2008-08-06T10:02:00.003+02:00

Well this is a rare event for me to be at home during the day. We are having a huge taxi, train and bus driver strike so none of the ladies who work at creche could get to work today. I got there this morning to drop them off and there was a sign on the gate!

What with me coming home early yesterday as my cold that Steve mentioned is actually really bad sinusitus, and not being there for most of Thursday and all of Friday, I can't afford to be at home today too! So, luckily for me, Granny Jo and Aunty Judy have agreed to take them from about 11, so I will get all packed up shortly and take them there. My life savers!

Here follows a few photos that I took on the weekend. I put a cloth nappy on Emma's head, and she felt so special, and then Daniel also wanted one. They walked around with 'doeks' on their heads for ages. Sorry about the filthy faces - it was just after they had lunch and faces hadn't been cleaned yet!

All doeked up!

A rare photo of Emma without her dummy.

Congratulations!

2008-08-05T22:35:00.001+02:00

Our congratulations to Terry and Lauren on their engagement at Edinburgh Castle today. A great surprise that was long overdue!

Best wishes from FEDS.

The Beginning of Spring

2008-08-04T21:53:00.004+02:00

The blossoms are out and the temperature went above 20 degrees this weekend. As a result, we had a great weekend.

On Saturday, we went to the airport to say goodbye to Lauren and Terry on their way to England for three weeks. Nice to see all the development starting to look like something. The parking was much improved with each parking bay marked by a light that indicated if the bay was full or not. Quite nice as one can scan a row from a distance for the green light. There were lots of green lights.
The twins were good for the first hour or so while we drank coffee and enjoyed some cake. They then needed to walk around which was a little more hectic. Luckily it was time for Lauren and Terry to go through and so we bundled two very unhappy children (they wanted to keep on roaming around) into the pram to say goodbye.
Afterwards we made our way up to the International and then the Domestic Viewing decks to watch all the planes landing, moving around and taking off. Both really enjoyed seeing the planes, with Daniel letting out loud screeches when he spotted a new plane. The various cars on the tarmac also attracted lots of attention.
Quite a day, and everyone including mom and dad, collapsed for a nice sleep when we got home.

Later on Saturday afternoon, we did a walk to a nearby park where we proceeded to play on all the equipment. The swings were a little scary but the round-about was popular. Mom and Dad enjoyed the seesaw. Emma also climbed up the jungle gym. Again it was tears when we had to leave to get home before it was pitch dark!

On Saturday night we watched he live open-heart surgery on SABC 3. Quite interesting to watch. Seemed so easy but then there were no complications and the doctors were very experienced.

Wasn't the SA Test series victory over the English just great? Nice to see us getting through all the pressure.

On Sunday, we spent a bit of time outside enjoying the warmer weather. We have bought them a second "black bike" and so lots of time was spent going up and down the driveway, calling out to passing strangers (to everybody's delight).

After watching the Grand Prix (wasn't Massa unlucky), we walked to another park where we proceeded to give the slide a run for its money. Interesting to see the bravado until one was about to slide down (to be caught by mom). Each child did the slide twice - both times voluntarily. They also climbed up the jungle gym which has a platform on top. The walk home (again in the dusk) was accompanied by both children singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Old MacDonalds Farm." Interesting to see how energised they both were as a result of the outing.

Today, Emma recited the numbers up to ten - we don't think she knows what she is saying but she has got the sounds more-or-less right.

Daniel is wonderfully outgoing - greeting everyone on our walks and even saying goodbye to the jets flying very high overhead. He gets very excited when he sees birds flying around too.

Daniel is making bedtime quite interesting as he tries to take as many toy cars and other toys to bed as possible. Bedtime is characterised by little or no opposition at the moment - quite a relief. They are generally very tired by then which helps a great deal.

Emma is obsessed with cleaning up the messes that she and Daniel have made (often on purpose just so they can wipe up the mess). She then tells us that there is a mess and then wipes it up. Often, if there is food involved, this gets scattered far and wide.

We're sad as our favourite programme "Men in Trees" (which made an unannounced comeback a few weeks ago) has suddenly been replaced by yet another series of ER. We were really enjoying the series. Anyhow, I suppose it means we are reducing our viewing habits which is needed as we'll watch a lot of TV during the Olympics. Can't wait to see the gymnastics and the athletics. The Olympics are so very special.

Otherwise Fiona is not well - she has a cold. Nobody else has it yet so here is hoping it all stays that way.

Fiona and Caroline are off to a wedding in Grahamstown on Thursday (they come back on Saturday). So I'll be alone with the two for a few days. Should be interesting!

Some Photos

2008-07-30T21:41:00.002+02:00

Emma wanting up on Daddy's Lap NOW!

Now listen to me, this is how you do it.

Okay, now lets get this art thing going ...

Yay!

Emma with art from creche and Daniel eating a Provita

HellOOOOO!

2008-07-21T22:58:00.007+02:00

Daniel in his usual happy mood

Emma feeding Andrew

Has she got teeth?

A pensive Daniel wearing the hood of his jacket.

Emma reading the riot act to Daniel

Now where did it go?

The postars singing a duet into their microphones

Emma the Popstar!

Daniel the crooner

Yes we are still here! Life seems to be passing in a flash.

We are all doing ok - nobody is terribly sick at the moment - a very rare event for 2008.

The twins are doing really well - except that they turn very clingey the moment I come home which is very painful as all one wants to do is drink a cup of coffee and rest. Impossible with two beings manouvering to be on top of you!

Daniel has shown an interesting amount of sharpness - more than Emma. We put up a poster from the newspaper that depicts various forms of transport. Interestingly, Daniel was able to remember more than Emma although he cannot always vocalise them (Emma can vocalise a few more). Fiona says my explanation is very long-winded!!! Of course it is, dear!

Both are coming up with a lot more words - the best being that Daniel calls Emma with amazing clarity. Interestingly, they are becoming a lot less selfish and are often quite willing to share things and will even give each other items when one is distressed.

Emma is learning to jump. When we ask her to jump she bends her legs in preparation for her feet to leave the floor. She now just has to learn to get her feet off the floor. Very funny and enjoyable to watch.

Daniel has got a very fine taste in music - often stopping what he is doing to listen or dance to a tune. He likes the female singers such as Leona Lewis. They both still stop what they are doing when the Isidingo theme tune comes on.

They have great fun racing around the lounge on their little motorbikes. They reach some nice speeds and are learning to corner at speed - but they don't always get it right. Daniel sometimes does not even cry after a fall - he's having too much fun. Another trick is to go full tilt into the couch.

They are also now feeding themselves - Emma is quite good at getting the spoon to her mouth but Daniel still gets everything everywhere. He then uses the spoon to scrape it up and eat it. They often feed each other or transfer food from one another's bowls. Daniel generally eats half of Emma's supper too. After supper, we often give them a small tub of yoghurt each. The lounge table is the ONLY place where yoghurt can be eaten. They have to sit on the table to eat it. Once they have eaten the contents, they then put their hands in to get what remains. Lots of laughter follows as their yoghurt covered hands are then licked (with plenty of yoghurt going every where).

Fiona continues on her celebrity ways - she will now be giving the speech at the launch of the Spar Ladies Race on 2 September 2008. Quite a change from a person who just a few years ago would never do anything in public.

On Friday, we are both taking the day off for our "date day." Life is just so hectic that we just don't spend much time together - so we are now going to take off a day every so often to enjoy. We'll do a movie after a nice breakfast. Then it will be lunch and we'll do something nice that afternoon before picking the twins up.

Fiona is the Samaritan Coordinator for SAMBA. Well, are South Africans a bunch of givers! Our house is full of prams, clothes, tins of baby food. Quite nice to be able to link up with people who really need help. Some horrific stories too - one women in Hillbrow has just had twins (to add to her triplets of a few years ago). All her men are gone and she has such bad asthma that she cannot hold down a job. How will those children make it? Scarey stuff.
Quite a few people just go out and buy a whole lot of new stuff which is then given out.

And then there is some good news too. The Boks beat the All Blacks, we won the cricket against England, there are no power cuts likely, Mugabe is talking to the MDC and it looks like the petrol price is going to come down next month. Two weeks ago, nobody will have forecast any of these things!

Lets hope that the worst of times are now behind us. It has been a very tough year so far.

Flying Tired

2008-07-10T23:13:00.003+02:00

The weeks are flying past. Already we are into the third quarter of the year. Scary stuff.

Emma and Daniel have both developed dry coughs at night which is not fun to listen to. We're dosing them with multi-vitamin syrup plus cough syrup and honey which seems to work for a bit. Otherwise we are both exhausted as usual. I have a lingering sore throat.

This weeks trick is that we wake up at about 06:00 and ask to sleep with Mom and Dad - Emma will only sleep if she is lying on top of me and Danel settles for a half on top position. Quite exhausting as we are not really used to getting up at 06:00. And it is really cold in the mornings which makes it so much harder.

They've also developed a likeness for long cuddles at night - in fact until they fall sound asleep (NOT almost sound asleep please!!!). Anyhow, we decided that this was not a good habit to get into and so we've had some screaming after we've put them to bed at night. Last night, we got back to normal with very little of a performance.

The challenge is to keep up as when they start causing trouble due to boredom (cold weather means less exploring). Trouble means they start destroying.
They have developed a great love (even greater than before) for opening and emptying the drawers in the kitchen. As soon as you turn your back for a minute, they are into the drawers which is becomng quite stressful.
The video drawers below the TV were last weeks attraction with videos being unpacked and packed every night. Interesting to see Daniel doing things that Emma did a few weeks ago.
Then other night we had a dustbin with mostly old post being unpacked all over the floor. The mess was solved by giving them a container to unpack into and so nothing was left lying all over the floor. Luckily they are very willing helpers in clearing up messes.

Daniel is starting to say and remember far more words than was the case before. Quite nice to see (and hear). Emma continues to gallop along. If one listens very, very carefully, you can pick out understandable sentences. The pronunciation needs lots of work though!

They seem to enjoy looking at the moon and the stars every evening (we have a family expedition out to the front gate every night to collect the post and lock the gate).

Emma loves books and I've often mistaken a request to pass a book for a request for biscuits - much to my shame! Anyhow, I now pull out a new picture book in the evenings when their behaviour goes into destruction mode (as they are probably bored). The impact is fantastic to watch as all the behaviour that stresses us disappears.

Good news is that the days are beginning to get longer and spring is a matter of weeks away. Yipee!

Tomorrow night, Fiona and I go out with her boss and his management team to dinner. A nice night out. Sharon and Tim are going to look after the twins.

Enjoy the weekend - it looks as though we are going to be cold again.

More and more sport!

2008-07-06T22:40:00.002+02:00

What a weekend of sport! The grand Prix was fabulous and the Wimbledon men's final was riveting! We are both Federer fans so are sad he didn't win, but at least he put up a big fight and made it worth while to stay up and watch. The rugby wasn't even really worth a mention with disappointing results for both South Africa and The Sharks. Oh well! Now Tour de France starts, so we have something else to watch for the next couple of weeks.

The weekend was quite chilly, with day temps only reaching about 14 deg. We did go for a walk yesterday afternoon, but apart from that, pretty much stayed inside where it was a bit warmer.

Those teeth of Daniel's that have been threatening for weeks are almost there. The gums are very red and swollen, and we are smelling the acidity at the business end too! Emma has her 8 and seems happy enough with them, as there are no more breaking through at the moment.

They have been on and off. Some days they are little angels and play nicely, and don't winge and moan, and other days they just won't stop moaning! Emma was having a good whiney day today which was driving us crazy. Eventually we decided that these little tantrums are a bit much, so each time she threw herself on the floor, we took her to the sun room and put her on one of the chair cushions on the floor. Each time she lay there for a while, wailing, but very quickly realised it wasn't much fun on her own, so stopped and came back to the lounge and played.

She counted to five today. A couple of the words are still a bit off, but it was clear what she was doing. This morning Daniel was stirring his porridge all over the place, and I was beginning to get a bit annoyed, as although they feed themselves, we still need to hold the bowls otherwise the contents ends up on the floor. So, I asked Dan if he was going to eat his breakfast. He looked at me with big solomn eyes, nodded and said 'Ja!'. How can anyone get cross at that?

Emma droped her lunch bowl a few times today and I kept threatening to take it away from her if she wasn't going to eat. Then she dropped it again, and as soon as she had (and before I could say anything) she put her hands over her face in an 'Oh no' gesture, and started walking away. It was such a grown up gesture, we both found it really funny!

Anyway, hope you all have a good week ahead. No pics this time I am afraid, will post some next time.

Momentary Semi-lull

2008-06-26T22:00:00.005+02:00

Dare I say it, things are not too bad? We have still been getting up at night, but it appears to only be once (unless we are just starting to block additional disturbances from our memories?).

We have been experiencing lovely JHB winters, with cool nights and gorgeous warm days - sometimes reaching 20 deg which is pretty good! Steve has been making wood fires in our fireplace at night to try and cut back the electricity bill so we don't suffer too badly with the electricity rate hike which is to be implemented from next week. Emma and Daniel are both fascinated with the process of lighting the fire and now know that Daddy needs newspaper, so they drag it all over the place and finally give it to him to scrunch up. After the fire has been lit, they show no interest at all, which is good. See below.

Daniel sharing a joke with Daddy over the weekend.

Watching the tumble drier.

Emma helping to bring newspaper.

That infernal dummy!

'I know the answer!'

Pulling faces.

Exhaustion is not so bad in relation to where we are!

2008-06-23T22:31:00.004+02:00

The day after our last blog, Daniel went onto antibiotics, yet again for tonsilitis! He made a speedy recovery and within a couple of days was back on his food, and full of nonsense as usual! But it was not without sleepless nights, and boy in our bed, and general misery. Then, no sooner was he almost back to normal (by the long weeeknd), Emma got sick, and moped around the whole weekend. She managed to fight the infection, with loads of sleep, and by the time school started again on Tuesday she was feeling a lot better. This week she seems fine again. I have also been sick, yet again, but one of these days this will all come to an end, and I can go back to being the healthy person I used to be!

Daniel and I have both got terribly dry coughs, although the humidifier in their room seems to have done the trick to sort Daniel out, as he seems to be sleeping better again. Last Friday night he coughed all night and was in our bed from about 11, as he just battled to stay asleep. As we had already given him cough syrup, we couldn't give him more and eventually after we had all been awake for hours, I gave him some panado. That really relaxed him, and finally he fell asleep. Needless to say we all had a pretty rough start to our weekend, hence the title, as I think we were both past exhaustion at that stage.

It got better, although there was a chilly breeze blowing, we were able to sit out side quite a bit and soak up some sun. Daniel is learning how to build really tall lego towers, and at some point when we were building together, he had to stand up to get the top pieces on. He is also pointing our a lot of things, but for the most part is still muttering incoherently, with the very occasional understandable thing. Emma is still mimicking us very well, and last night we went through the contents of her supper bowl, with sosach (sausage), peeez (peas), cor (corn) and ta-toes (and then says 'shoes' as toes live in shoes!) all present!

Here's hoping the week ahead is a little easier on us. Steve has lots of work to get through, so sadly he will be spending a lot of time in the evenings working, but hopefully that will all go smoothly, and he meets his deadlines.

Have a good week. Viva Wimbledon!

Daniel playing 'bye-bye time' on the cushions

Emma, not to be out done, doing the same

Daniel enjoying eating his lunch like a big boy in the grown up chairs

Watching Daddy making a fire in the fireplace

Lounging on the coffee table (note Emma's teeth for those who haven't seen them)

Waiting for Daddy to come home from work.

Poor Dan

2008-06-08T22:51:00.003+02:00

It has been yet another tough week with us waking up at least once a night for someone. We have been guessing that the next round of teeth are moving about, and keep waking them (and us) up!

This weekend started on Friday at lunch time with the creche calling to say that Daniel had a temperature and they asked if they could give him panado. After his 2 hour nap, they called again to say that it had gone back down to within the normal range. At 4pm they called again to say that it had shot up again but they couldn't dose him as it was too soon. They took most of his clothes off though, to counter act the effect of the temperature. When I got there, he was still very hot, but his little hands were blue. As soon as the six hours were up since the last dose, we gave him some more.

This has been the recurring pattern of this entire weekend! He is drooling terribly, and has been sleeping fitfully. Today he hardly ate a thing - which as you all know is very unlike our Daniel. Today he woke at 6am, but after a bottle and some panado, he drifted off to sleep again in our bed. He had a long noon nap, and no sooner had he woken up, he fell sleep again on Steve's lap. He was asleep again tonight quite early, but has woken three times since he went to bed, so I can see a potential rough one ahead of us.

Yesterday he also spent the day moping around, and at one point he just lay down on one of the cushions from the outside chairs which was on the verandah.

He did have a bright moment this morning when he finally woke up again at about 8:30 and was full of life, but that didn't last too long. We gave them their bottles and carried on dozing, and I woke with a fright when Steve said that Daniel had cut himself as there was blood everywhere. We looked at it all over his head and down the sides of his face, but the little blighter has learnt how to open zips and had opened a pocket on my handbag that I keep my lipsticks in. He has a fascination for my lip ice, so when he saw that, he couldn't resist. He destroyed an entire lipstick (luckily it was almost finished) and two more are missing in action - somewhere! But he had smeared the now destroyed one all over his head!

Emma has been full of beans, and is adding to her vocab by the day. Her latest trick is to fill a plastic container with a few bits and pieces, sling the handle of it over her arm and then wave bye bye as her bag is packed and she is off somewhere! It is very sweet. She is a very loving little thing, and willingly gives 'loves and kisses' when ever she asked to do so. I also received a donation of some tins of formula for the Multiple Birth samaritan families which are currently sitting in the diningroom and which she spent a lot of time shuffling around the house this weekend. It kept her occupied for ages, as there are 8 tins!

Have a great week!

Bath time after a dirty day playing outside

Emma and Daniel hugging (note Daniel's new shoe - one of mine!)

More hugs

Lipstick all over! And to add insult to injury, he was wearing one of Emma's baby grows!

A Tough Week

2008-05-30T21:42:00.003+02:00

The week has been another tough one - the twins are doing okay except for Daniel waking up approximately twice a night with an apparent nightmare - although it is quite cold at night too. To combat the cold, we have put a timer on the heater so it goes on for 60 minutes every second hour to keep the room warm. The heater has reduced his wake-ups to once a night which makes it a little easier.

We are both pretty "off" as we just can't get rid of these colds. Exhausting! Anyhow, the last two nights have been easier and so we are beginning to feel like humans again. The weekend can't come quick enough.

Tonight they were both in fine moods and were running around chasing each other and playing together. Quite nice as it leaves us a little free although one inevitably ends up on our laps for a quick cuddle after a fall.

Big news is that Fiona will be on Great Expectations on Monday morning at 11:30 on ETV. This time the programme is on cancer, and she has been asked to share her story. We're very proud of our TV star!

And congratulations to Caroline who found out today that she has landed a job with the catering company for the Sandton Convention Centre. Well done! Sounds like a company with potential for a career too.

Enjoy the weekend.

The Two toothed wonder has left the building

2008-05-27T23:10:00.005+02:00

So, we had a lice-free weekend and continued to do mountains of washing to make sure we didn't have any in the linen, and creche called me yesterday morning to say that Daniel had lice again! Oh horrors! They kindly bought some spray and sprayed the 3 infested kids (2 of the original 4 and one new one) and said we could leave them at creche. We did the whole hair washing, combing, washing linen thing all over again last night to catawauls from both of them! Anyway, they (again) seem to be lice-free! Lets hope this time it lasts for more than a few days.

They had their class and individual photos last week Wednesday and they went up on the walls yesterday. The pics are super, so once we have bought them, we will scan in a couple and post for all to see.

Emma is no longer a two-toothed wonder as we noticed all of a sudden yesterday morning that she has one pre-molar and her two top eye teeth! Not sure what has happened to the 'normal' tooth order, but there we go! Daniel has stalled on his 8 and has no new ones yet.

We asked Sharon and Tim if they could look after them for a couple of hours on Friday night and we went to Spur on our own for a change! It was such a nice break from the routine. We also bought them a couple of new picture books hile we were out as they love looking at them all.

The words are coming slowly but surely, with Emma doing very well with identifying: bird, cat, dog, duck, star, moon, flower, wow-wee, mummy, daddy. Daniel has a word for flower; it is 'gowgar', but he emphatically points out every 'gowgar' that crosses our paths!

It is starting to get a little bit chilly, and our thanks go to Granny Lesley for the nice thick fleecy baby grows and also to Aunty Beth for the lovely stripy fleece ones too which are being worn every night! I so wish we could get bigger sizes in baby grows in SA, as I think they are the most practical sleep wear for winter as toes and tummies don't get cold. They stop at 18 months here, and they are too small for Dan.

They seem quite well at present, apart from the periodic creepy-crawlies in their hair. We on the other hand are not faring so well. I am almost finished my course of anti-biotics for a really bad bout of sinusitus, but I am not really too much better and am still very bunged up and coughing. Steve has now also started coughing and is very congested. Oh dear! I do hope it ends soon, as it is really becoming quite tedious.

Daniel wearing one of Mummy's shoes

Enjoying their juice bottles

Daniel driving his bike

Our little musicians!

Post 217

2008-05-20T22:57:00.006+02:00

Daniel got tired at the furthest point away from home base during one of his walks.

Notice the flat sea and deserted beach.

Emma learning to write - notice the tongue!

Our 217th post is marked by Lice, yes you read right, we all have lice!

The creche phoned Fiona today to say she needs to pick-up Daniel as he has lice in his hair. turns out Emma and their friend Andrew plus another child had lice too. Seems there is very little that you can do avoid lice as the adults jump very easily to new people - it is not an issue as regards cleanliness etc. Anyhow, so we have all had shampoos and hair combing to get all the eggs etc. out. All our bedding and clothes have been washed and dried so hopefully we've nipped it in the bud. The various sources on the internet say it is quite difficult to eradicate. We'll see.

Both Fiona and I develop itches everywhere when we heard we may have lice - not a nice feeling. We probably missed the signs as we could not identify one if it fell into our hands with a big label "lice."

To change the topic, I hope you are all watching Amazing Race! They're in Vietnam and are visiting some of the places that we have a great affection for, namely the City of Hanoi and Halong Bay. Nice to see it all again - very special places and memories.

Tonight Emma found out how to walk down the steps into the lounge without crawling or holding onto things. We first noticed this after an attempt to go down resulted in her falling. Well, after that she did it like a natural - with lots of laughs to accompany each successful attempt. she always leads with her left foot. Daniel watched but made no real attempt - he'll be there in a few weeks.

Thank you for the messages of concern about the xenophobic attacks. We are quite safe as they are happening in the squatter settlements where more foreigners live as they cannot really get into the more established areas such as Soweto etc. Hence the conflict as the poorest of the poor live in these places. What is interesting to see is how ordinary people are helping the displaced foreigners. Ordinary people are contributing a great deal to help out. Maybe there is a heart out there!

Fiona is going to be contacting the various organisations so she can identify any baby twins etc. that could be helped on behalf of SAMBA - we have so much stuff that we have received from SAMBA that is waiting for a request.

Enjoy!

We're Still Around!

2008-05-19T22:36:00.007+02:00

Jessica and Dave

The passing airplane

Emma with sand in her mouth

Our set-up on the beach - usually the only people on the beach

The married couple flanked by the bride's parents

The MC David Roberts

Barry and Emma reading

Daniel on the beach after his little bit of chocolate on our evening walk

Caitlin, Emma and Erin

Fullers with FEDS on our evening walk at SeaPark

Barry took over carrying Emma on our evening walk

Lets hope Leona supports the Sharks and not the Waratahs

(looks like an Aussie jersey)

We have been back from holiday for a week, and to be honest, it took a whole week to recover from the holiday.

Lets say that being away from it all, for a little longer than usual, was very refreshing. However Emma and Daniel increased, as opposed to decreased, our exhaustion levels as they battled to sleep from their new emerging teeth.

They also found their legs on the beach which was interesting. There was a day, in which the parent's bag of things to do on the beach, was not even opened as they just kept us going!

Anyhow, on the positive side the weather was phenomenal, with several absolutely calm days and the other days, except the long weekend, were sunny. We actually reached a stage of saying we had had enough of the beach - very rare for me to say that!

One remarkable aspect of the holiday was that both children jumped up several rungs in their development. What an absolute pleasure to see Daniel doing things at a higher level - often a repeat of what Emma was doing a few weeks earlier. And of course Emma, is becoming a rocket scientist (joking) - but she has also gone to a much higher level.

Daniel developed the habit to singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on our walks which was great to witness. He has a ear for tunes quite clearly. A few creche games emerged spontaneously - we were taught to sing "one, two, three, yay!"

Both were not so keen on the sea unless it was to chase us in the direction of the sea - Daniel was completely fearless in these circumstances. So we had some quick helicoptor rescues from an incoming tide.

We did spend a little time in the Southport Bathing Pool which has changed quite substantially since the big waves last year. It is now a relatively small pool with a long beach going into it instead of stairs and retaining wall. Actually, I hope they don't ever repair it as it is ideal for children a little older than ours. Anyway, they were a little dubious of the pool at first but Daniel soon got his act together and was stomping all over the shallows. Emma took a lot longer to join him - but she did in a far more hesitant way. Looks like we'll be camped on the beach to the pool for the next few years ...

Daniel also developed a love for going for very random walks all over the beach, beach car park and if he could, the local restaurant and railway line. Of course, he always had an attentive parent trailing closely behind.

Both children loved the large open expanse that Lagoon View represents and spent many happy hours running up and down the long passage with the push cart, plastic motorbike, and in Emma's case whilst chasing a variety of ping-pong and golf balls. We also had a few enjoyable games of "chase" around the pool table. Both also enjoyed the garden. We actually found Lagoon View much safer than most houses in terms of needing to watch the children every minute of the day.

Interestingly, both children travelled really well with barely a complaint between them. They were full of smiles and songs on both journeys. What a pleasure. Their joy at being at the Coast House was clearly discernible (understandable after such a long trip), and when we got home they were equally happy. Made things a little easier for us.

We attended Jessica's wedding at Botha's Hill on the Saturday before we returned home. It was a nice intimate affair with one big round table for all the guests at the recption - a nice touch. The two absolutely loved the dance music with their tired parents having to drag them off for a rest every so often.

It was also great to see the Fullers who came down for a night on the first weekend, and we joined them at home in Durban on the next weekend. Some memorable pictures from our evening beach walk are above (thanks Lauren and Leona).

We had some enjoyable shell collecting too. Every morning and evening we put on the back backs and scoured either Southport or Sea Park. We found a very large cone one morning (very rare to find one whole) and a very big "Big Shell" on another morning. Quite special finds that we haven't equalled in the last 10 years!.

This last week was marked by our being absolutely exhausted and Fiona was diagnosed with Pharyngitis. I got sick on Friday night with a sore throat and the sniffles. Fortunately, both toddlers have started sleeping through the night again so we are recovering.

Great news is that "Two Tooth Wonder Emma" is no more as she how has half a molar out too. If all that was just for half a molar, then we are in serious trouble! We think, rather hope, that the rest of her teeth will now arrive very, very quickly.

And for the Roberts family, the new entrance gate is phenomenal - it adds greatly to the entrance and look very solid too. I must admit that we did not feel vulnerable once during our stay. The new lounge suite is comfortable and adds to the place a great deal. We did a bit of maintenance - changing locks that had rusted closed, replacing string for fans with chains (involved a serious balancing act to get to the roof of the main rondavel) etc. We also found a plastic grid to put over every airbrick to stop the geckos running riot in the house. Will install on our next visit.

We'll put more photos on tomorrow night.

Everyone is Well

2008-04-29T23:12:00.003+02:00

Well are we having fun or what? Everyone is well - a rare event in our household. As a result there is lots of playing and laughter. One realises how "down" we all were when you are on the other side of bad health. Fiona was especially tired and run down. All these public holidays are definitely helping! Three public holidays in one week must be a world record. Fantastic!

Thank you for all the birthday greetings. We had dinner on Friday night at a nice steak house in the Firs of Rosebank that is styled to be like a "Gentleman's Club." Nice to sit back in the soft leather chairs and enjoy a good meal. Fiona gave me a copy of Jake White's book and one of our favourite movies "Lagaan" which I will treasure.
We had lunch with my Mom on Sunday. She outdid herself with lots and lots of food. Really nice. Everyone is well. Judy has an operation to put in an artificial elbow joint in the second week of May.

Daniel has put on a kg (11.6 kg total) in the last three months and Emma 900 g (9.6 kg total). Really nice to see the development. We can now see them developing mentally from weekend to weekend - quite special.

Daniel has wet all his bed clothes for about four nights in a row now, so we went out and bought him the next size of nappies which seem to be cut differently (for bigger babies) and should thus cope with the large amounts of urine he produces at night!

He is also going through a "Total Tantrum" stage which is not fun as anything that he is denied results in him holding his breath until he turns a blue tinge. He then does a a backflip (no matter where) and screams as loudly as he can. Anything in reach is grabbed and violently thrown away. Emma did a similiar thing a few weeks (or is it months) ago which now seems to be reducing nicely. So we use a combination of strategies ranging from being there to protect him from hurting himself, to ignoring the tantrum to finally designating him to his cot to scream it out.
A good thing is that he is starting to stand up to Emma taking things from him - he pulls a very serious face before saying "no" and pointing his finger at her. We obviously get the treatment too.

A great thing is that they are starting to play together a lot more. They still fight too. The play usually involves laughing and chasing each other. Nice to see, especially after their evening bottles.

Emma is beginning to say lots of words - often copying us and forgetting the word shortly afterwards. Tonight she identified lights in different parts o the house over about an hour which we enjoyed. Daniel has his standard words but is not going forward yet. He usually follows Emma about three to four weeks later - he is just too relaxed to worry (we think).

On Saturday, just before the lights went out - Emma fell quite hard while climbing onto her little chair. She managed to bite her gum where the top tooth is - must have really hurt. Anyhow, her gum was quite bruised for the next few days - only noticed by us - she does not seem to be concerned at all. Nice thing was that the lights came on after an hour (instead of four hours).

On Saturday, we also went shopping for new shoes and clothes for them. They needed pants for winter. Battled a bit with shoes for Emma as she seems between sizes. Got two pairs for Daniel and a pair for Emma.

Yesterday we started on the fence to cut off the pool area from the front of the house. Lots of work - it should take a bit of time.

Today, Fiona and I were both on leave (to take advantage of the two-day working week). We decided to have a baby-less day and so we deposited the twins at creche before going off for the day. Had a nice breakfast at Doppio Zero before seeing "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" in Rosebank which was a great movie - our first in over a year. We then had a great lunch at Keith Kirsten's old nursery in Rosebank before coming home to relax before picking the twins up. A nice day with lots of great conversation.

This week is great as we go off to Lagoon View on Thursday morning. We are spending almost 10 days there which is going to be great - we normally spend so little time there - it is usually over before it begins. The Fullers will also be joining us for part of the holiday which will be nice.
And then we are attending Jessica's wedding next Saturday. A rare Roberts family get-together.
The only sad thing is that the weather is more like mid-winter weather instead of early May. Anyhow, we are taking our trailer and so we can take all the comforts that we need. Sitting in the sun on the beach will be quite nice.
We are not sure how the far sharper twins will now react to the beach. Daniel will definitely spend time playing with the sand (we are planning to sit on the sand instead of our prime position on the grass above the beach). Lets hope they don't go wild and constantly try and run to opposite sides of the beach. We are hoping to get them to enjoy some of the rock pools at least. Could be interesting - lets hope Mom and Dad get to rest too.

Aren't these times that we live in really interesting - have we ever had a global financial, oil and food crises all happening at the same time? It will be interesting to see how this impacts the world in future.

So we'll put a new entry on the blog when we return - sometime after the 11th of May. Hopefully with lots and lots of photos.

A Sad Day

2008-04-23T23:03:00.003+02:00

Today is a sad day as we learnt of the passing away of Great Grandpa Cedric while visiting his family in New Zealand. Great Grandma Jacqui, Leona and the Fullers are in our thoughts and prayers.

The End of Summer

2008-04-22T23:24:00.006+02:00

It is that sad time of year when you can declare that it is the end of summer. On Sunday the skies darkened and it just got colder and colder. This morning there was frost on the neighbours roof although not on our lawn.

We had load-shedding tonight from 6pm to 10pm. So the twins faded nice and quickly due to the dark. Fiona soon followed as she is not feeling well - she can't seem to shake off the cold she caught earlier. Anyhow, lots of sleep should help things get better. With the two day working week next week, getting an appointment with the doctor was difficult - she'll see her tomorrow to get an antibiotics prescription.

We are a little concerned as the twins both had red cheeks today. Another kid had red cheeks earlier this week and is now down with German Measles. They have been vaccinated against it but you never know. They have also still got horrible coughs.

Today Fiona got a nice little salary increase from her boss. I had one last month - just in time for the steep increases in petrol and thus everything else. Thank goodness as things seem to be getting expensive very quickly. Interesting times.

The weekend was pretty quiet. We needed it to recover from the lack of sleep of the week. Anyhow, things have quietened down nicely, although they are both drooling a great deal.

Emma is starting to come out with lots of little words - often in response to things. And Daniel is completely fixated with anything going round. As soon as he sees something going round, he points in the direction and makes circles with his forefinger. All this while saying "w-ound, w-ound." He even picks out things on TV going round and then tells us about it.

We put on BBC with Barney on Saturday morning. Both seemed to identify with the characters. Nice to see them suddenly notice what is on the TV. Now we have got to start watching what we watch. At least they'll get a good rugby education ...

Next week we go to the coast - can't wait. And tomorrow, they get some more vaccinations.

Teething!

2008-04-16T22:56:00.005+02:00

Granny Lesley with Emma and Daniel

Daniel can spend hours just watching the washing machine going round and round.

Enjoying Provita biscuits.

Granny Lesley and Daniel

Granny Lesley and Emma

Thatcher girls with the twins

Thatcher girls

Our lives are rather tough at the moment. Both Daniel and Emma are teething. Emma's face is really very swollen as it seems all her teeth are moving down/up to their proper places. On Monday she moaned and cried all day. We have been getting up several times a night to placate one or the other so their screaming does not wake the other which will lead to more complications (i.e. less sleep). Emma had a temperature yesterday and today both had temperatures after their day nap. All teething related.

They also have very dry, horrible sounding coughs that only make an appearance when they are stressed.

Anyhow, things are getting better. last night Daniel only woke up once - or else we both too tired to hear any other protestations!

Daniel has also suddenly decided that going to bed is not nice and tends to scream. For a few nights we indulged this behaviour and went in and picked him up until he calmed down. Last night we did the tough love thing and left him to scream for a bit - he soon went to sleep. tonight we had 30 seconds of screaming before he realised we were close-by but we were not going to help any further. He then went to sleep.

Liz - a colleague at my work gave us a plastic kitchen set with a sink and stove etc. Well, Daniel pushed it around for a bit before losing interest. Emma then took over and proceeded to pack the stove/cupboard with plastic plates etc. before unpacking them again. This she did several times last night and tonight. She seems to really enjoy this - evidenced by the fact that she does not demand any hugs etc.

The planned power outage on Saturday night went well. Last week, when it happened on Thursday night, the twins really performed. So we learnt and turned off everything while it was still light. So when the lights went out (they did promptly at 6pm), it was not even noticed. We gave them each their own hand-held LED lights which they used for a bit but soon abandoned as they quite clearly were not bothered by the dark. We used headlamps (LED) which worked really well as it meant we had both hands free to do whatever was necessary. Nice thing was that both faded quite quickly in the dark and so we had freedom a little earlier than usual. Got some great reading and sleeping in!

Tomorrow night is our next outage so we will be coming home a little earlier to ensure a smooth transition. Woolworths pies will be going down (again). Hopefully another early night too.

Otherwise life is pretty busy with everyone trying to get everything done before our two day week hits at the end of the month. looking forward to the long break. I've got a new staff member starting on the 28th which may mean I'll have to go in. Otherwise we are on leave for a whole two weeks - bliss!

Winter is coming - Joburg is getting cold at night.

Sniffles

2008-04-10T21:18:00.004+02:00

Well it is a double set of sniffles - everyone but Emma has a cold and someone left a comment on our post (now deleted for all of our safety) that contained a link to some virus.

As a result, we have put in place some restrictions on comments - including that they will be checked by us before they are displayed.

Daniel seems to be getting sicker - tonight he has the famous "Daniel is sick look." Not a pleasant sight. Anyhow, he is now in bed with some cough syrup and panado. Last night he slept through, which after the previous 2 am feeds, was a big relief. we think he may be scared of the dark - and so a bit of the blackout curtain is now left open so some light gets into his cot. Seems to be helping.

Emma is her usual self - doing lots of singing to herself and arranging things. A very busy little girl. As I said in the deleted blog, she has the first millimetres of two teeth finally appearing - one on each gum. quite exciting. Last night she managed to fall and actually bit her top gum with her tooth on the lower gum.

Quite a few people at the Creche and fiona's boss are all coming down with the tummy bug that hit us last week. Lets hope we don't have a re-occurance as that was quite tough.

We had our first planned power outage on Tuesday night - for four hours. We used the occasion to take granny Jo out to Rosebank (where there was power) for her birthday dinner. Had a nice time although emma and daniel discovered the delights of running on a smooth mall floor - so there were lots of not so short walks to meet their expressed - rather screamed - need to walk. Daniel was interested in the escalators and had to be steered before he went over to touch them.

Our next outage is on Saturday night - we've bought some nice headlights so we can do things with two hands free - both twins were quite scared in the dark on Tuesday night - and thus had to be held - which made packing to go out very difficult. We'll probably do take aways from the wood-fired pizza shop or a braai using the copious amounts of wood in our compost pile.

We have replaced virtually all our globes with energy saving ones as part of our contribution tp energy saving. Yesterday we forgot to turn the geyser on in the evening - to our surprise, the water was still hot when we showered despite the geyser being off for 15 hours. It was cold this morning though!

Otherwise things are fine - our good sleep last night meant that today was a little easier.

Pictures By Lesley

2008-04-06T21:07:00.004+02:00

Saturday Morning Walk Around Zoo Lake

Emma at Parkview Shopping Centre

Daniel and Mommy

Watching the Geese Approach at Zoo Lake

Emma wondering if we are serious ...

Daniel enjoying his bath.

All Going OK

2008-04-01T23:17:00.003+02:00

Should I tempt fate by reporting that all is going well - no vomit or other products since last night? Thank goodness. I did not know that vomit can smell different to the normal run of the mill vomit. Today we stuck to the blandest possible food and lots of rehydrate - it seemed to work. Everyone was in a fine mood tonight with lots of sliding down chairs and laughter and singing. And our favourites made it to the final of the Apprentice.

Big congrats to our cousin Craig for saving a guy's life on the plane to Australia. Lets hope that the incident is a good omen for the Sharks tour.

Fiona has just gone out to get petrol before the big increase at midnight which is in 40 minutes time!

Thursday night we hit Swan Lake on Ice at Montecasino, and tomorrow night it is a Thatcher supper at our house - Lesley, Fiona, Caroline, Garth and me.

Good night! May the flu bugs not bite!

Sick

2008-03-31T23:22:00.003+02:00

We are all sick with some kind of bug that gets the stomach going plus makes you bring up everything.
Emma brought up first on Saturday evening in the study and then later in her bed. Daniel joined her on Sunday morning and both repeated their performances at Granny Jo's that afternoon. And then at 2am this morning, Fiona and I joined them! What a nightmare night - we had both twins plus ourselves in the bed. Daniel moaned and moaned until we eventually worked out that he was hungry. By this time the birds were calling!
And so today, we all stayed home - and everyone seemed to get better until about 10:30 this evening when Daniel and Emma then brought up their supper etc. within about 20 minutes of each other.
The doctor says that it is a bug going around and there is not much that can be done except to watch their hydration etc.

Otherwise, Granny Lesley arrived late last night after a day flight via Amsterdam. She spent the day with ourselves and Caroline. She also brought lots and lots of clothes from the UK winter sales so we are fully equipped for the winters ahead (note the plural). Actually very much appreciated. The rumour that the Terry's Chocolates that she brought did contribute to my bringing up are totally false!

Speaking of winter - there is a definite chill in the air. All the leaves are falling. Looks like the cold will be with us sooner than later.

Oh - Emma's tooth seems to be retreating from its first appearance! A long process ... She has now beaten my own record of producing teeth very late.

Lets hope we can sleep tonight.

The Week After Easter ...

2008-03-27T20:32:00.004+02:00

The week after a four day weekend (Stephen) and a six day break (Fiona) is so busy that we both just did not get to the blog.

Easter was very quiet - a nice break.

Both twins marked it with very stinky, very fluid, very large poos! Not the greatest news to start with but these were BIG! It wasn't diarrhoea but due to teething. Emma's first tooth is now threatening to break through - it has caused minor bleeding under her skin. So we're expecting a sparkler in her mouth soon ...

The weather on the weekend was cool for the first three days and so we stayed inside for most of the time. On Sunday, the sun started coming out and we spent some time in the garden before thunder sent us scurrying inside. On Monday, we had a wonderful sunny day which was spent at a braai with our friends Nadia and Brett.

We have not really exposed them to sweets and chocolate, and so we were pleasantly surprised when they both preferred fruit to a block of chocolate on Easter Sunday. Dad and Mom had to finish the rest - a very tough task you must understand.

We are doing lots of walks around the garden - after work to collect the post. The highlight being a sighting of the dog across the road. A sighting is characterised by lots of "woof, woof, woof." Emma said "dog" yesterday but today said nothing besides the usual "woofs."

They are both looking a great deal sharper with them noticing things far quicker, and often from a distance. Our chief means of communication is to point at things and Emma has a special little moan if she wants her dummy retrieved after she threw it out of the cot.

The evenings have recently been characterised by one of them have an absolute fit - last night Daniel's fit was initiated by us taking a plastic hammer away from him when he tried to break one of the windows. They refuse to be lured to another activity and will just throw away everything given to them. We tend to just offer lots of love, hugs and dummies until the fit ends. If it goes on, life carries on around them as if nothing has happened.

A nice feature is that they are prepared to walk to their bedroom after supper when it is "bye-bye" time. They then generally go to sleep relatively easily.

We've put up a kiddie gate between the kitchen and the passage- given to us by Liz - a colleague at work. We used to close the door which brought very loud protests. They now climb onto the gate to watch things going on in the kitchen.

Liz also gave us a box of her son's old toys which went down really well. They got a whole lot of megablocks plus a set of plastic food (all sorts of food and fruit) which gets played with a great deal. The house is a complete mess!

Tonight we swapped cots for about 20 minutes. They however then made it very clear that they had to sleep in their own cots.

Its weekend tomorrow night! Yippee - and then on Sunday Granny Lesley arrives for a weeks visit (yippee)!

Our great discussion point is alternative energy to get around the Eskom issue. Quite a lot of exciting options available. One thing we have realised is that South Africa is energy rich and it is all free (i.e. the the sun). Strange thing is that we just don't use it, and instead pay for energy to be supplied to our houses at ever-increasing cost.
Anyhow, we have decided that a generator will just make us reliant on a high fuel price and will not actually solve anything! So we're looking at getting a solar heating system for hot water, and solar panels for electricity for our lights and TV. I've also read some interesting work being done on biogas - seems that it is the chief energy source for many houses in India and Japan. A restaurant and some houses in the Cape have installed systems which seem to work very well. they don't seem to be too expensive to install either. So ultimately, I'm thinking that we should get a biogas system installed as it will make us independent of energy prices - but that is a pipe dream. We'll do some more research this weekend.

Enjoy the weekend.

Post 206

2008-03-19T21:49:00.008+02:00

Daniel & Emma - notice her haircut!

Daniel playing the drums (a box) with mom's egg beaters.

Madam!

Man playing drums is fun

Daniel on the phone (I mean mouse)

Long conversations ... Just like a .... nivea man!

Johannesburg has been unseasonably cold and rainy for four days. The average temperature has hovered around 15 degrees and we are all wearing jerseys and the gas heater is on at night. Very unusual for early Autumn.

Luckily, we seem to be missing out on Eskom's load shedding (last night Blairgowrie was on the roster). The flats next door were out as were the houses down the road - but not us. We must have someone important living in our midst. We'll take that as long as is possible as we are on the scedule to be out for four nights a week (not really true as two of those nights are on the weekend when demand is much lower - so it is maybe the worst looking schedule but in reality is the best one to be on.

Our plan for the two nights that we could be out is to hit the wood-fired pizza place one night and to go to a part of town with lights for our weekly supper on the other night.

The load shedding is having an impact in that getting to and from work can take much longer now as all the robots are out. They are busy putting in a system that leaves the robots on to prevent this but it will take a few more months to be operational. Today at Makro I saw some panic buying of gas heaters - people were piling two heaters in a trolley and then all standing in line to pay. One guy I spoke to said he had no choice as the electricity is out at night. This all means that we'll soon have a gas shortage.

We phoned to have pizzas delivered last night and were told that they would take over a hour to bake as everyone was buying wood-fired pizzas as they had no electricity. We had soup from the freezer.

Anyhow, we have a nice pile of wood (from the garden that our gardener cut up) for the fireplace, and we have a full gas canister.

Emma kept us awake on Saturday night with a bad cough which Daniel now has. Her cough has

cleared up bow but Daniel is still sore.

Daniel is falling quite a lot as he masters the art of walking and running. Today he fell and cut his lip with his teeth. Lasy week we also had a few incidents. He does not make a big fuss of it all - such a nice boy.

Emma has the faint beginnings of a tooth on her top gum.

They both enjoy taking our cell phones and pretending to talk on them Interesting as we don't spend much time on the phone. Something they have obviously noticed. Of course, we have the usual arguments as to why someone can't hold both phones etc. Interestingly enough, they are both quite willing to give us stuff that they have - often offering a toy to us completely voluntarily. Of course, this makes things not so nice when you are offered a piece of food that is half-chewed and full of slobber.

On Saturday we took them for their first haircut - much needed by Emma and not that much by Daniel. Overall it went well.

Otherwise, our lives are pretty boring. Our DVD recorder has decided it cannot transfer recordings onto a DVD (from the hard drive), so we sit with Fiona's TV appearance on the hard drive - along with some really good movies - and we can't move anything. So we'll transfer as much as we can onto memory sticks before taking it in for repairs. Of course, the year guarantee on the recorder ended 10 days ago! Grrrr - but we have got fantastic use out of it - not a bad buy at all.

We're spending a quiet Easter at home - a much needed rest is necessary for all - and some sunshine! We last saw it almost a week ago.

Happy Easter! We cleaned out Makro's supply of chocolate hen and marshmallow eggs. Mmmmmm.

Mozart?

2008-03-12T22:33:00.004+02:00

Our sweet little musician at work! Often when I am playing he comes to sit on my lap and plonks along with me. This time I got up and left him on the stool and he sat and 'played' for ages before climbing off the stool all on his own.

This week they are being so sweet with each other and have spent loads of time wrestling with each other while giggling their heads off, and the new thing in the car on the way home is to laugh. I am not really sure what is so funny on the back seat, but is wonderful to have two such happy little beings. Obviously that doesn't mean that tantrums and squabbles don't occur, they just seem to be few and far between in the past few days.

Thanks, Steve, for letting the world know about my TV appearance! I must say though that I was not as nervous as I imagined I would be. Sam Cowen is a very easy going person, and puts one at ease quite quickly. I actually really enjoyed it, although it was rather brief, and look forward to further chances to perfect it! I think live tv is quite scary, as there are not really any second chances, but all 9 of us who featured on the show did well, I thought! It was really strange though, watching myself last night (we recorded the show) as I seem to display mannerisms that I wasn't even aware of!

We are noticing the first signs of autumn, as some of our trees are beginning to lose leaves, and it is getting dark quite early now. The temps are still fabulous however, and I am trying to get as much use out of the toddlers' summer wardrobes as possible before they outgrow them completely. I am sure they have recently had a little growth spurt, especially in their feet, as they both wore size 2 shoes in January (I bought them some new sandals in December). By the end of Jan I had to go and buy size 3 for both, and told Steve that they would see them through winter. Well, one of Daniel's pairs that I bought only got worn once and I have now bought size 4 for them both! Amazing! There's the method in buying shoes from Ackermans, as they are lovely and pliable, and cheap too, so it doesn't feel too bad if they don't wear them too much!

Remember Emma's fashion accessory of the old computer mouse? Well, Daniel uses it as a phone. He often holds it up to his ear and holds long conversations with someone on the other end. He will then pass it to us for a chat, and then wants it back to continue the natter! I gave it to Emma as a 'phone' this evening, but to her it is still a necklace / scarf, so she didn't talk into it. The other day Emma was dancing all on her own, and there was no music playing, but she was grinning and swaying and having a blast. Lovely to watch the little imaginations taking off.

Saturday morning, nice and early we will be taking them for their first haircuts. Steve is coming with us, in case we have two freaked out children, but my hairdresser is a very gentle lady, and she has said she will take it easy with them. Will report back on reactions to that! I have trimmed Emma's fringe a few times, but she is really starting to look a bit shaggy!

Fiona On TV Tomorrow

2008-03-10T13:26:00.002+02:00

Fiona is going to kill me for this but I thought I'd tell you that Fiona will be on "Great Expectations" tomorrow morning on E-TV.

Long awaited photos

2008-03-08T11:18:00.006+02:00

So, I am back after a very long absence on the blog! I just never seem to find the time to post anything, and Steve has been covering that recently.

Emma and Daniel have had a good week this week, which means we have too. Emma's teeth have still not put in an appearance, but we think that they were just decending when she was causing havoc last weekend. Still the real thing to go.... The past 3 nights they have slept through again without us needing to get up, so we are feeling quite good!

Yesterday we developed a new game, which had them both shrieking with laughter. They were sitting next to each other on the lounge suite, and when one leaned forwards, I pushed them back against the back of the chair. Then it was repeated with the other one. We did that for ages, and they loved it! See photos below!

Emma's hair is so long, hence the hair band now. I have tried clips, but she pulls them out, and eventually yesterday at creche, someone put a band in her hair, so it stayed like that! I have an appointment next week for them to both meet my hairdresser, who has very sweetly said she will charge me a nominal amount, and might not give them a proper cut, but they need to start getting used to it happening. Up until now, I have been trimming Emma's fringe when it is necessary.

It is Granny Lesley's birthday today -so happy birthday to her! We would so love to be able to spend it with you, but are all thinking about you and hope you have a good day.

Daniel's walking has progressed in leaps and bounds, and he now favours it over crawling which I am so happy about. Interestingly, for all of Emma's confidence, she is very good about holding my hand when we walk together, but Daniel is Mr Independent, and refuses to hold our hand. It could be a problem at creche when we walk in together, as we have to cross the car park. But for now I still carry him in, and Emma walks in.

They are so happy at creche, and have three more weeks before they go down the passage to the 'big toddlers' group of 18 - 36 months. I can see that it is time now, as whenever they are down that end, they are so happy. We have a new teacher for that group who is Montesorri trained, which we like. She is very young and her Mummy still picks her up from creche too! But she is very sweet, and it is clear that she absolutely adores chidlren.

The speaking of words is slowly progressing, and Emma is trying to say everything from pen, flower to button, when we point something out to her. But their understanding is far greater, and they will point to things if we say the words. Good progress I think.

Enjoy the pics below and your weekend!

Hilarity is...

...killing ourselves with laughter!

...being so weak at the knees we can't stand up!

Raindrop gazing

Glamour-girl

I think, therefore I am..... (a toy?)

Long FEDS Weekend

2008-03-03T22:01:00.002+02:00

The weekend was one of those tough weekends. Only the Sharks won out of the Super 14 teams and Emma had one of those weekends!

Emma was not feeling well and as a result demanded to be held virtually every second of the day. We think she is continuing with her slow version of teething. For the first time, we gave her Panado every six hours to preserve our sanity.

On Saturday night, both children were in our bed during the night. Emma, in her unwell state, had not eaten and found herself at 2am and very hungry (with sore gums). So it was gel for her gums, Panado and a small bottle of milk. She fell asleep after a while and was unceremoniously returned to her cot. And then at 5am, Daniel had his moment, and so ended up in our bed.

They developed a small habit of waking up at 6 am during the latter part of the week. This was carried through to Saturday morning. After an hour of listening to Emma complaining, we decided to take a walk around Zoo Lake, followed by a light breakfast at one of the coffee shops at Parkview shops. well, the walk did wonders for Emma's mood. She seemingly remembered the word "duck" everytime we saw some (strictly speaking they were actually geese) which was nice.

Daniel was an angel compared to his sister this weekend, playing quietly by himself while we tried to comfort his distraught sister. He is beginning to walk a great deal more. The change in his balance and length of walk has increased dramatically in the last three days. Nice to watch as he begins to get really mobile.

Today, Emma was a lot better - much to our relief. Tonight she was running all over the place as she moved things from one side of the lounge to another. So nice to see her happy. Daniel obviously had his moments at creche - he does a flip-flop whenever someone tries to take his toy etc. His fifth tooth s making an appearance on the top right hand side of his mouth.

Fortunately, last night was quieter than usual - we each only got up once and the burglar alarm decided it saw an intruder in our kitchen - even though that sensor is turned right down. I think an ant (we are overrun with them at the moment) must have walked directly over the sensor. First time for a long time. Grrrrrr!

Sleep time ...

Wonderful February Evenings

2008-02-27T21:53:00.002+02:00

February is proving to be it's usual special self - nice hot days followed by wonderful evenings with the odd thunderstorm. As a result, we are able to spend each evening walking around the house as Daniel practices his walking. Highlight is a stop at the front gate to wave at all the passerbys and to go 'woof-woof' at the dog across the road. Interesting to see how virtually everyone reacts to them just standing there. Now if I'd known about this trick in my single days ...

Nice thing to notice on our walks is that Emma does not try and take the Toddle cart over from Daniel anymore. She instead walks with one of us. This does not mean that she gets out of the way of the cart - and it does not mean that Daniel stops pushing if she is in the way. She might have a bruise on her shins tomorrow - her own fault - the learning curve continues ...

We changed our sandpit arrangement - we have been covering it up with a plastic cover before putting the other half of the clam shell on. This was to keep the rain out - which failed. Anyhow, with the hot weather, it must have got very clammy inside and as a result, we found mould growing on the sand when we opened everything up on the weekend. After throwing the bits of mould out, we have changed strategies with a piece of birdnetting now covering the sand pit (to stop the cats using it as a toilet) and the other half of the clam shell has 200 coloured balls now permanently in it - both children loved playing in them.

Yesterday, we threw out the DSTV decoder of about ten years, as it was delivering a picture full of lines. Got a new one - my goodness what a beautiful picture! Tonight we watched reruns of "Green Card" and "Bridget Jones Diary" - two of our more favourite movies. The DVD recorder is working overtime!

We've discontinued their evening meal as they are just not hungry. We usually throw it all away. They eat so much at Creche that there is no need to give them a second big meal. Instead, they now get a banana each which goes down really well. The usual bottle follows a little later.

Emma was absolutely exhausted tonight - she could hardly stay awake to finish her bottle. Daniel wasn't too tired and spent the evening playing - coming to each of us periodically for a quick love.

The News

2008-02-25T21:40:00.007+02:00

Andrew, Daniel and Emma

Andrew & Daniel

Over the weekend, in an effort to get Daniel to walk more and crawl less (we're of the opinion he is a bit too lazy to walk), we got him to start pushing the little toddle truck in the garden. Well, what a difference - we went around the entire garden four times before Dad decided he needed some refreshment!

Later on he did another round with Emma in close attendance pushing a toy wheelbarrow. Anyhow, the toddletruck seems to have awoken an appreciation for walking and so he is beginning to walk a lot more. Nice to see but politically difficult when both of them want to push the toddle truck.

Daniel has also decided that he is incapable of falling asleep without an additional ten minute cuddle and rock (they get a great deal already). So when we put him to bed, it is met with a great deal of very loud protesting until he is picked up and cuddled. He immediately goes to sleep after this. We are trying to avoid this but what do you do with an hysterical baby - after leaving him to complain for five minutes? We hold his chest down - as instructed by the sleep expert, and this helps - usually after the cuddle though.

Nice thing is that both move voluntarily to the bedroom when we tell them it is "bye-bye time."

Daniel has developed the habit of acting like a little Prima Donna in that he holds out his hands to anyone who is not holding him as if to say take me now please as this person just has no clue. Interesting when he is passed between us!

Emma on the other hand has a quieter week in that she has been going to bed very easily. She occasionally finds it funny to hit one of us or Daniel with a toy which immediately gets a verbal rebuff. It has not yet become a habit though.

Ooh yes: Emma fell in the pool! We were doing our round the house thing for the first time, and Daniel and her decided they wanted to put their hands in the water and splash - as they do in the bath. Well, Emma fell into the pool - well almost as the pool net caught her. They both got quite a fright - even though she was rescued immediately. After that, both have stayed far from the water which is a situation we'll stick with - thank you. The pool net makes it very hard to go wrong but we'd rather be ultra cautious.

A nice thing we've noticed is how they are starting to try and help each other out. Both of them will often bring the other's dummy, if the other is having a meltdown. They also seem to be willing to share toys a little more BUT not all the time! Nice to watch.

Now we're watching the Oscars - which are great as usual.

Congrats to Jess on her impending marriage in May. We have the invitation and will be there.

That is about it!

Post 198

2008-02-19T21:20:00.002+02:00

Yip it is two posts short of 200!

FEDSland is pretty quiet. With the beautiful hot weather, we are spending the evenings out in the garden which is really special after all the rain we have been having. On Sunday night we had a braai to burn up some of the branches that have had to be cut down during the summer. A nice evening - the perfect end to a weekend.

Over the weekend, we hit our favourite discount fruit store and bought a mountain of fruit - pears, nectarines, apples, bananas, prickly pears and grapes. So it has been a giant fruit fest ever since then.

Daniel's face repaired itself very quickly. By about Wednesday, the scabs had fallen off and everything looked nice and new. Just a slight discolouration is now visible. Vaseline helped to keep everything moist.

Daniel has another four teeth about to arrive - two on his bottom jaw and one on each side of his current two. He takes about three steps regularly before collapsing onto his bottom.
Tonight he is looking a little sick again - round two of the flu coming. I've been sick since Sunday (for the second time).

Emma has started running instead of walking which makes monitoring her a little more interesting as she moves so fast. There is still no sign of any teeth.

We are getting up a great deal every night - three to four times. Luckily it usually amounts to moving a baby (still sleeping but screanming) out of the corner that they have wedged themselves in - so the sleep deprivation is not too bad. Daniel has wanted comforting a few times and that generally eats into our sleep as it takes a bit longer to settle him down. It is now not unusual to have one of them in the bed by morning.

Ah, there has been a big event: the completion of our gate to the pool area. It just needs a staple to hold it closed and it will be done. It took a long time with the rain and flu but in the end has turned out quite well. Fiona reckons it will keep out a rhino - which it will - that is where I learnt to build gates!

Otherwise life is quiet. Cruising to the weekend.

Another Week

2008-02-12T09:52:00.000+02:00

Daniel happy after yet another ascent of the armchair

Us fight - nevvvvvvveeerrr

Two climbers rest after the ascent of the armchair.

An ascent going back down from the armchair - not such a good idea!

Superficial facial scratches after the ascent of the outside chairs turned nasty!

We love Provitas.

Portrait of Daniel with a bib to catch all the drool from teething.

With all of us being sick during the last week, life has been interesting. Everyone seems to be on the mend now - just lets hope we have not infected each other.

On Thursday night, Fiona and I saw "The Lion King" for the second time - courtesy of Fiona's boss. We had the best seats in the house so the evening did not drag at all! We also had a really fantastic meal before the show with the whole management team that Fiona works with. Nice to meet the people behind the names. An interesting evening which did not help our recovery process. Granny Jo looked after the twins.

Danial and Emma have developed a climbing route - onto the coffee table, then onto the kisk before sliding down the arm of the armchair (next to the fireplace) onto the seat cushion. They love it. No falls yet and they seem careful - but when two do the route at once, there is bound to be an accident as they have no hesitation in taking each other out.

They have started sleeping on the seat cushions that we have spread around the armchair to catch anyone who falls. A nice advancement as it means that we may soon be able to get rid of the camp cots.

Daniel is still not walking although he stands unsupported. He has started taking three steps in a row before collapsing onto the floor.

The "premadonna" outbursts from both still occur when they don't get their way. We generally ignore them which is painful if there is a good programme on TV - we can't hear.

Daniel has two top teeth emerging - we are trying to encourage him to brush them- not easy. He seems to have one or two bottom teeth on the way too. Emma is doing a lot more drooling - but nothing has appeared yet.

Both have been waking us up several times a night lately - long enough so you can feel it the next morning but nothing significant. They seem to be waking up due to pain from teething. We gave Emma muti at 5 am this morning after she had disturbed our sleep from about 3 am. And Daniel had his chance the previous night. Tonight is rest night (please ...).

Isn't it great to have all this great TV back - a new Grey's Anatomy,a new Men in Trees series and the wacky Weeds on late. And then Super 14 returns on Friday - the year begins.

We finally got rid of our Telkom Internet and changed our phone to a "pay-as-you-go" as we were paying for its upkeep so Abigail - our maid- could use it. Not really very cost-effective. Now we have it charged with R100 vouchers and a password before you can make a call. Should last until Xmas as we hardly use the phone. All for about R22 a month (instead of R200 before we even dailed a number). Thank goodness for Skype for the long-distance calls.

Interesting to note that Telkom did not seem too worried about our cancellation of their services. They are going to lose a few thousand rands from our lack of participation.

We had a grand Wimpy breakfast at the Brightwater Commons Shopping Centre on Sunday. Nice to sit in the sun as it warmed up after a few cold days. I think winter is coming a little earlier this year. The twins could not eat enough scrambled egg - they had two each!

We've decided to celebrate Valentines with our customary dinner - a day late as it is so much cheaper and so much easier to get a seat. Got a booking at the famous "The Singing Fig." It has a very good reputation so it should be great.

Lets hope the weather stays warm and sunny and that everyone stays well! Good night!

Sickness and Pestilence...

2008-02-05T11:14:00.000+02:00

Sorry about that! Wow what a long week! Daniels' eyes got progressively worse, and then he developed a cough. It was ok for a few days, but by Thursday it was horrid and tight. I took him to the doctor and the doc said it was an upper respiratory tract infection and promptly put him on an antibiotic. Luckily for me Melanie at creche was still happy to take him, so I didn't have to do any fast talking to get time off work. Even by Friday evening there was a huge improvement in Daniel, and he is now back to his old self, with a little cough attached. Emma developed the mucky eyes and the cough, but hers didn't seem to get any worse than that. She is also coughing a bit, but nothing serious, and there are no signs of an infection. Unfortunately, I got it, and by Friday last week was sore, had swollen glands and a very gravelly voice. I had a SAMBA meeting to go to on Friday evening and although I didn't say too much, I think that and the lateish night as a result left me with absolutely no voice on Saturday and very little on Sunday!

At least I could speak yesterday, so although I am still not feeling too well, I have been at work. I did however take this pm off, as neither of my managers were there, and I was feeling the strain of being on the phone so much. Steve appeared to have dodged this one, until last night, when he kep shivering and then taking his jersey off! Oh dear, so he spent the day in bed sleeping today, which seems to have done him the world of good as he is looking a whole lot better this evening.

As for the pestilence! We are very confused. Emma has been coming up in series of little bumps in a red area, as if she has been pricked by a catepillar. Over the weekend we put that down to us being outside in the garden, and her playing in the sandpit and on the grass. Well, it kept coming and going, and was back in full force the following morning. Steve searched in and around her cot, and found some bird feathers underneath her cot that our dear cat must have brought in. Can babies be infected by bird lice? And if so, what is the effect? Steve cleaned up the feathers and vacuumed and both matresses went into the sun for the day on Sunday. I washed all the bedding, although I had only changed it 2 days before. And then she got it again that evening! But nothing since. So it is definitely not creche, and it appears as if it is not her cot any more, so I don't know! We are stumped!

Daniel has started taking very little steps alone, but they are few and far between. He has developed a very ugly tantruming technique, that horrifies us. He arches himself backwards, which has resulted in him either almost plummeting off our laps, or if he is on the floor, he almost thumps his head on the floor, then as fast, he jerks forwards until his forehead is touching his legs! We ignored it the other evening as he was quite safe on the floor, and within 2 minutes he had stopped and was playing by himself. We don't know if he has watched Emma tantruming or if there is someone at creche who does it, but wow it is horrific!

They are also both very cute, and begin to comprehend basic tasks, with Emma blowing her nose and sitting down when asked. Daniel has discovered an obstacle course in the lounge, where he climbs onto the coffee table, and then on to the kist. He clambers up the side of the chair and slides off the arm onto the seat shrieking madly. They can both climb off the lounge suite safely, so he then climbs down, and starts all over again! It is probably not a good habit to encourage, but we will leave it for a while longer. He has also started meowing and maaing, as Steve was showing him a book of animals and making the appropriate sounds. He also notices pictures of dogs (or the occasional stuffed teddy), points and goes 'woo-woo'! So there is an understanding of different animals making different noises. There have been so many remarkable little progresses that we have noticed since they started at creche, so we are happy that we have made the right decision.

We have had the most incredible amount of rain recently and the pool is almost overflowing again. For the past few days, since Saturday, all I can think of is demoina when it rains! It has not been all day every day, but the storm on Saturday started about 4:30pm and finished up finally at around 10pm. But the rain was a steady heavy downpour. Yesterday driving home was the same, and it was quite difficult to actually see where I was going. By the time I had done two trips from creche to car and then from car to house, Iwas drenched! Today it also rained for a couple of hours, but it appears as if we can expect a nice day tomorrow.

Will pop some pics up soon...

Sunday

2008-01-27T02:36:00.000+02:00

Daniel is standing and dancing without holding onto anything. He has also taken the odd step but then soon loses his balance. Progress!

Daniel has also developed an eye infection which has left his eyes red and swollen, and pussy. Not nice to look at but it is not hassling him in the least. Emma's one eye looks as though it could be infected too. The joys of creche ... We are applying eye drops for the infection.

Emma had one of those nights last night. She kept on moaning until we put her into our bed. The moaning stopped but then she proceeded to toss and turn until the early hours of the morning. As a result, we are exhausted.

Wasn't the Australian Mens Tennis Final spectacular. Nice to see some new very talented faces. Tsonga looks like a great of the future. Can't wait for the French and Wimbledon.

Jabs

2008-01-23T10:40:00.000+02:00

Emma has decided that she can walk all the way from the car to the creche door, and feels very important after having accomplished it! It seems to take her mind off the fact that I disappear, as she hasn't cried for 3 days now when we get there. I am so pleased as it obviously means she is settling down to her new routine. They are sleeping a bit better again, after being quite painful recently.

Daniel has started balancing really nicely on his feet now, and lets go of furniture for quite long periods of time. Soon all hell will break loose with both of them walking, but I must say, we are really looking forward to the day he starts walking, as it will be a lot easier than having to carry him from car to house and creche, etc. He seems to love creche, and has made a few friends. Although he isn't walking, he has 'walked' a hole right though his lovely leather shoes from Aunty Beth, so I went today and found him some more closed shoes that hopefully he can still wear for winter this year. Although they aren't leather, they are super soft and pliable, so walking will be easy in them. Emma also got some, as one can't get with out the other also getting.... I also got them some more trousers, as next winter ones are still too big, and they have worn trousers every day for the past 10 days with all this cool rainy weather!

They had their (belated) 15 month MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) injections this afternoon, and were very good. Emma was a bit weepy, but was very tired, and cried a little bit, but it didn't take long for her to stop. Daniel didn't cry, but just looked a bit surprised at the prick in his shoulder! Emma has picked up a paltry 50g since the middle of December, and Daniel has lost weight, but the sister is not at all concerned as they are eating like horses and are very active.

When I got to work this morning, the electricity was off, but as it had gone off at 6:30, it wasn't long before it was back again and by 8:30 we could have coffee! Climbing 3 flights of stairs without the promise of coffee at the end is not, however, the best way to start the day!

Rain, Rain Go Away

2008-01-21T10:06:00.000+02:00

This must rate as one of the wettest summers in a long time. We are also wearing the odd jersey all day - quite weird. Difficult in some respects as we have not planned to dress the twins in long sleeves and long pants every day. Summer is usually shorts and t-shirts weather!

With all the wet weather, it was an indoors weekend. We did our Spur thing on friday night which was nice. Daniel managed to dislodge his baby chair from the table (it was caught by the chair underneath - thank goodness) and so he got to sit in his baby chair on the actual chair for the rest of the evening. Actually they were both pretty well behaved as usual.

And then on Saturday, Emma woke-up at 7am, had her bottle and fell asleep again until Daniel got everyone up at 8am. A nice lie-in. We later went out to the toy store and bought a big box of second-hand big "lego" blocks for R100. These went down very well with both playing with them for the rest of the weekend. Very noisy! Daniel then slept for about four hours before we let Emma in to wake him - she did an hour!
Otherwise it was a very quiet weekend with lots of sleeps for all on Sunday and we got to do some reading on Sunday which was nice.

And then today there were no performances when they were dropped off and picked up at creche - a nice sign of them both getting used to the change. However, at home they turned into screaming banshees as they were tired after having to get up early for creche. Quite tough as they wanted our attention all evening. We got them down at 8:30 - luckily they went down very quickly.

We've noticed that they are beginning to interact quite a lot - talking to each other, occasionally touching and laughing at each other and, of course, pulling and pushing each other to get their way. Emma has developed a nasty habit of picking up whatever is close by and throwing it down in a fit of temper. A new tactic as we are ignoring the screaming fits on the floor.

Liz, who works with me, gave us a brand new baby gate to install at the entrance to the kitchen. Seems they have had it for several years and never even unpacked it from its wrapping. So it will be installed during the next weekend.

The power blackouts have affected us both at work virtually every day. Today, they were a great deal more organised with pointsmen at the major intersections - so the rush hour was not too traumatic. The lower half of Blairgowrie has had outages every day but we have not had one. We think it is because we have DSTV Head office and a fire station nearby. Who knows. Today seemed to be a lot less intense than last week's virtual meltdown. A learning curve for all.

Sleeping in JHB

2008-01-16T10:15:00.000+02:00

Emma, Daniel and Andrew in the Sandpit this last weekend

Both Emma and Daniel woke up naturally at the right time this morning - the first time since they started going to creche.

When they came home, the heat and an active day had worn them out with Emma falling asleep on the lounge floor and Daniel in Fiona's arms by 7 pm - a record for us. Now lets hope they sleep through to 06:15 tomorrow morning - any bets?

We're currently using our DVD Recorder to record any movie that is worth keeping and that the twins may enjoy. Got a 1934 version of Treasure Island on TCM yesterday. Looking forward to sharing the greats with them as they grow older.

Mice and toddle trucks

2008-01-15T11:14:00.000+02:00

At least this past weekend finally cheered up on the weather front! Last week was quite challenging to find enough winter clothes for Emma and Daniel to wear to creche, as they are in between winter seasons. I think they were also beginning to suffer terribly from cabin fever! We all had such a lovely afternoon pottering around the garden, with Daniel pushing the toddle truck all over the place, quite self importantly, and Emma dragging her new favourite toy / pet around with her! She has really taken quite a fancy to our old mouse, and it has been all over, including in the sandpit.

They are both beginning to put their feet down when it comes to receiving discipline, and mild tantrums are being experienced. They are particularly bad when we need to put them down so we can do something, but they want to be held and we have had melt downs for the past few evenings!

Saturday night was a shocker for us, as Daniel woke up in the wee hours and would not settle. Eventually I took him to our bed, but he still wouldn't calm down, and kept on crying and crying. A short while later his outbursts woke Emma (all the way down the passage) and she ended up in our bed too. They then proceeded to set each other off for the next couple of hours much to our disgust. Eventually, Daniel and I went to sleep in the spare room. I gave him some panado, as tooth 2 is about to pop and is very red in that area. After lots of lullabys, humming and swaying, he fell asleep. Emma fell asleep soon after that too. Luckily they gave us a bit of time in bed before demanding bottles. I only discovered later on Sunday that they had hardly eaten any supper on Saturday night, although they had finished their bottles! We hadn't noticed because we had visitors round on Saturday evening and it has been such a long time since we have needed to watch their supper consumption as it is usually devoured very speedily! Oh dear! We definitely won't repeat that one in a hurry.

They are getting better at creche by the day, and by Friday last week, Emma was starting to play with other toddlers and was not crying nearly as much. Daniel has settled easily, and seems to have charmed all the girls there. He has however come up in a whole lot of red spots, either a very hungry mozzie ravaged him today, or there are bugs in his mattress at creche! I will chat to them about it tomorrow, and ask them to check it for me. It is definitely not from home as we have a mozzie deterrent in his room, and when we woke him up he didn't have any bites on him. This morning, although Emma was wimpering when I left, she held out her arms to one of the ladies that works there. Up to now she has been like a little limpet, and was very difficult to prize off me! I still get tears from her when I arrive though.

We had Andrew over for a few hours on Saturday evening as Sharon and Tim wanted to go to movies. He is very confident about posting bottle lids through a slot and spent ages doing that on Saturday afternoon. Emma was watching him like a hawk, and at one point she marched over, grabbed the tin with the slot in the lid and a bottle cap and posted it! That is the first time she has ever done it! We were so chuffed, and have realised that she needs competition and someone to challenge her. We don't think Daniel offers her enough competition as he is more likely to pefect a technique quietly and with loads of determination, but often backs down when she starts getting aggressive. It was an interesting learning experience for us to see, and that has reinforced that we have made the right decision about creche as in three months time they will move to the older class (18 - 36 months) and she will have plenty of older peers to learn from and keep her challenged.

I never knew walking was this EASY!

Is it proper to wear a mouse while playing in the sand?

Still walking...

Just Photos

2008-01-14T11:41:00.000+02:00

Am afraid all we have time for tonight are photos - hopefully text will follow tomorrow night!

On the beach at Christmas

Sand is my new friend!

Having a bath ride

Have you seen THE tooth?

Steve and Daniel relaxing

Have YOU got the latest fashion accessory?

Creche Day One

2008-01-09T09:13:00.000+02:00

Today Emma and Daniel attended creche for the first time. It went very well. Both didn't cry when we left to go to work which was a big relief as they are quite good at "meltdowns." Daniel handled the day in his normal quiet way, playing by himself and with another baby called leanne. Emma had the odd tearful episode but nothing too serious. So overall they both did very well.

Melanie, the owner, says that if they handle day one, they experience meltdown a few days later, so we'll see.

When we got home, the day proved to be too much with Emma falling asleep in Fiona's arms at 7 and Daniel going off quietly at 8:30. The early morning wake-ups are pushing their bedtime backwards - not a bad thing!

Yesterday at Granny Jo's went really well with no real problems - much to our relief as Saturday night was the opposite.
And then last night, both were very restless with Daniel eventually ending up in our bed as we were exhausted. A very unsettling week for them both - as I told Fiona: their most stressful week ever.

Otherwise Emma is a collecting phase - she collects things in a shopping bag which gets dragged all over the place. I found my house keys in the bag tonight and my office keys were dropped through the front door security gate last night.

We did take-aways tonight and now it is an early bedtime as we are exhausted.

Post One of 2008

2008-01-07T10:57:00.000+02:00

Well Happy New Year to you too!

We have been so busy that the blog has been a little neglected - our apologies.

So much has happened. The main events being:

the difference in the development of Emma and Daniel since we have been spending the days with them has been phenomenal. Both have advanced significantly from the extra stimulation - which makes life far busier.
they are playing more with each other, and are definitely fighting a lot too.
Emma has stopped crawling! In Durban, we suddenly noticed that her legs were not their usual black from crawling. she now walks quite quickly and is learning to avoid all the obstacles (read toys) on the ground. The obstacles have represented quite a learning curve as there have been a lot of falls
Daniel is "cruising" by holding onto everything when he stands up. On the weekend we noticed hat he was beginning to spend a second or two upright without holding onto anything.
Daniel finally popped his first tooth on Fiona's birthday - 5 January - it is just showing. Emma shows no sign of any teeth.
Both had colds over the break which was not pleasant. They are now past that hurdle.
When they first came home, we spoke about Emma-mergencies. Well these are really quite spectacular now with Emma throwing herself onto the floor and collapsing in tears. A real prima donna in the making.

This week is going to be the most stressful of their lives so far. Fiona went back to work today which means that therer is nobody to care for them until nursery school opens on Wednesday. Sharon - our friend from down the road looked after them today and Granny Jo will look after them tomorrow.

Sharon says that they weren't too bad although Emma sat on her lap the whole morning before she got over the separation. There was also extra stress as they had to get up at 06:30 instead of last weeks 08:30. Getting them awake took a bit of effort this morning.

Granny Jo looked after them when we went out to celebrate Fiona's birthday. Both has a melt down which was quite testing for granny so we are thankful that she is willing to take them tomorrow!

We think that it is the right time for them to start nursery school as they are becoming quite social and notice all the other babies and their surroundings. Other children will help deal with the aggression that they show towards each other as there will be more players to contend with (hopefully). It will hopefully also help with the clingy behaviour thyat both show a great deal.

We have almost finished making the gates to close-off our pool area from the back garden. They are made of really solid Meranti and big gum poles which have been creosoted. Fiona says they will stop a Rhino from getting in the pool as they are quite big and chunky. We'll take a photo when we finish them on the weekend.

Good luck for 2008 from FEDS!

Some Pictures from Durban

2007-12-30T10:30:00.000+02:00

The four sisters and Emma

Fiona in a familiar position

Emma enjoys her presents

Daniel getting a much needed hug

Caitlin offers a lap to a needy Emma

Fuller Roberts December 2007

Lauren & Emma

Can you see me? Daniel peering over the table

Daniel looking out over the kingdom

In the pool on a typical hot Durban day

Catch me if you can!

Now about that raise in pocket money ...

A favourite activity - roll the ball

Merry Christmas

2007-12-22T10:12:00.000+02:00

Well it is that time of the year again. We leave early tomorrow morning for Durban to spend Christmas with the Fullers. Looks like we might have to take the trailer as we have so much stuff for the triplets down there (that we are supporting through SAMBA) and all the presents for everyone. Looking forward to seeing the Painters for a day at Southbroom.

Looking forward to a bit of a break with some beach time. Hope the weather forecast of rain is wrong!

Great to see Jess Green, by chance on Republic Road, after he spent two years in Russia teaching English. Hope to see him and his lady before they move to Cape Town in the New Year.

Twins news is that Emma walks quite long distances now unassisted. She has to learn to watch out for obstacles in her way as she still trips over them. She is going through an extremely needy phase which has meant that we have to hold her a large part of the day. She also refused to go to bed without a long holding session. Quite unusual as they both usually go down very easily.

Daniel is his usual cheerful self. He has been slobbering all day long as his first tooth is about to make its appearance. It is visible on his top gum - now just waiting for it to make a proper entrance - we bet it will be on Xmas day.

Merry Christmas to everyone!