Post 206

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.