FAMILY UPDATES

I had a few pictures in my camera that I thought I had better download and show you "for the record"!!

Mind you, these are specially designed for the New Zealand members of the family, who just don't get to see the progress of the little ones nearly enough. But I hope everyone else will enjoy them too.

This is a rather dark one of our latest baby "Ruby" who is nine months old now and probably fully grown. Here she is sharing a bed with Digby. But if you though that meant they were friends, you are completely wrong. Digby continues to ignore her existence!

 And here is Cloud, our "grandcat", whom we have been minding. Cloud is somewhat psychologically "challenged", probably as a result of having been run over several times, as well as experiencing a number of other mishaps. While her owners were away she lived on the table outside the back door, and would spend almost the whole day looking through the window to the inside. Mind you, she could come in through the catdoor right next to her, but chose not to.

 At night she insisted on sleeping on top of our microwave.

 And here is William, who comes to us every Friday afternoon, when we pick him up from his Montessori school. He has some Nutrigrain, a few stories, and then he usually goes off to sleep. He is still suffering the effects of glandular fever, poor little man.

 But he always has a smile for us, and he never complains!

 And here is his younger brother Nathaniel, who is discovering the pleasures of food!

 Now he is crawling he can find all sorts of toys for himself, including the cat food dishes...

 And the cat door!

The family went off to Rarotonga for a couple of weeks

Here they are at the airport on the day they left.

 Nate has some fun with Grandad. He has a wicked sense of humour just like his father.

 And here are a couple more pictures of Ruby. She is probably fully grown now, but is still not much more than one and a half kilos!

MONDAY IS GRANDAY

Mondays are special to us, because that is the day that William comes up to spend time with Granny and Grandad.
Usually the first thing we have to deal with is his "I'm hungry!!" plea. This is normally satisfied with the provision of a few dry crackers! We would happily provide something more tasty and tempting, but he just loves these!!
His next request is "Can I do some painting?"

I am very happy to oblige here! I have very happy memories of being allowed to paint and create as a child. I just loved my paintbox, and names like "Scarlet Lake", "Crimson", "Turquoise", "Burnt Umber" and "Viridian Green" were etched on my mind at a very early age.

William loves to play with colours and textures. He will often load two colours onto his brush side by side, and take pleasure in the resulting effect when he blends them. He also likes to play with textures, varying the weight he puts on the brush.
One thing he does not really like, and many other children would agree with him, is when people ask what it is! His pictures do not necessarily represent anything - they are just wonderful  experiments with colour and texture and design.

He has obviously had experience of making "butterflies" by folding the paper, so we had a go at this, folding in both directions. This something I recall doing in my first year at school. We would paint one page in the first colour, and the second page in another colour, and then press them together. I remember  using the resulting patterned paper to cover a board, onto which we glued a little calendar, as a Christmas present for our parents.

We also played with letting the very wet paint dribble over the page.

While the paint was drying, William read some of his books. Bob the Builder is, of course, very "in" for three year olds!

But Hairy McClary is also much loved, and fortunately I have quite a few of those, being rather fond of them myself!

Next week, I think we may try some collage. I have plenty of bits and pieces he will enjoy gluing onto paper!

And I will enjoy it too!