James and Christie

I am slack. There has just been a lot going on with work and projects and things and stuff…and my (fictional) dog ate my login, teacher, I swear!

I think I need to fess up to the fact that with Twitter and Facebook making it easy to provide short, txt-like updates, the longer form of this blog is a bit harder to keep up and maintain.

So, maybe what I’ll do is make this blog a monthly, mega-update where I re-cap the highlights of the month, rather than trying to keep up with all the weekly updates. It’s funny – when David was born, I was taking thousands of photos and making updates every week religiously for nearly three years. At the time, I had a few people remark to me that I wouldn’t keep that up with the next child, and with each subsequent child, coverage would be come even more sparse.

Ha, I laughed to myself, I’ll show them! However, I’m sad to admit that there is an element of truth in what they said. It’s not that I don’t have plenty to write about with little Sarah, or that David has stopped being interesting (far from it!), but I do seem to have less time available to catalogue my thoughts than in the past.

Oh well – we’ll see how things go.

So, now for my February update. It’s been a lovely, hot, summery end to Summer this year. We’ve had plenty of outings to the parks and beaches around Auckland – so many to choose from! We have tried (and succeeded) to get the kids out of the house on a regular basis. For David, this is crucial as he has all sorts of extra energy and testosterone to burn off. He’s in a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde mode of late: switching between saying “you’re a lovely mummy” to “silly daddy smelly stinky!” – which means he’s also had a lot of time in Time Out to contemplate the great paint job we did in his room.

The only problem I can see with providing monthly updates is that I might forget all the funny anecdotes from the month. I can only think of one right now, and that’s from Friday! We went to a Fun in the Park event, where the local council puts on free toys in a park around the region. This particular evening was at a local park with a flying fox. I had come straight from work, and met Christie and the kids there.

“Take me on the flying fox please Daddy” came the request, and I happily obliged. I took the little adventurer up the ride, put him on it, and then ran and flung the fox down the track. “Hold on, Daddy! Too fast” came the cry. “You’re alright mate,” I responded as I ran alongside, “just hold on and you’ll be fine.”

Sure enough, after a couple of runs, he was addicted, and we repeated the game a few times over. It wasn’t until we got back to Christie that I found out that each time she had taken him to the ride, she’d held on the whole time. Good for toughening him up, I thought.

That is until later that night, while Christie and I were relaxing upstairs, we heard David call out in his sleep: “no Daddy – that’s too fast, no, no, no!” I think I’ve broken him!

Sarah continues to impress everyone with her vocal range. The little princess holds court from her bouncer, singing and blah-blahing away to anyone who will listen – Mummy, Daddy, Chair, Lamp, Carpet – which is very cute. We think she’s starting to teeth, so there are snail-like trails of dribble as we carry her through the house.

So, summer draws to a close. Autumn brings promise of puddles, leaves, and crisper evenings to take some of the madness of the heat out of the day. Let’s see if the madness in our house is even remotely related to the weather at all!

Bets are it aint.