1st Term School Holidays

I actually had this in draft mode for a while and I forgot to post it, silly me. Well, better late than never.

It was a busy past couple of weeks for us because it was the first term school holidays for our little girl. Now that both of us are working we had to manage our time well and made sure that we still spent time with the kids and have them enjoy the school holidays as well.

One thing we did try to do was have our own girls and boys day out. My wife took our girl out for a day in the city and I did the same with the boy. With our boy at daycare, the wife took our daughter to her favourite juice bar and they went bag shopping. They also visited a bead shop and made their own jewelry. We had lunch together and they went to the Adelaide Museum and made some rock paintings and boomerangs. They visited the Art Gallery and came back for me at the office and we all went home together.

And when it was my turn with the boy, we went sort of the same route. I was having the car serviced that day so the boy and I dropped it off and we took a bus to the city. Our first stop was the Art Gallery where was a exhibit of Egyptian artifacts from the Louvre that was on display so I thought it would be a good idea to visit it with the boy. Unfortunately, we didn't stay too long because the boy got bored. I guess he wasn't too interested in looking at dust old mummies. He did have fun looking at some pieces of modern art like a big green rhinoceros stuck to the wall, and some video installations.

We also visited the museum and Library for a little bit and met my wife for lunch in one of the city's food courts After lunch we visited a music store because we wanted our kids to learn piano. The girl already shows interest in playing and they've already worn out the little toy piano that they had at home. We were looking around for a good keyboard for them to use and we also asked the shop people about how to go about getting a piano teacher for them. The little boy was more interested in pounding the keys. As we left the store, he thought that we were already getting a piano keyboard and was about to get upset that we were leaving the store empty handed. We had to convince him that weren't buying that day and that he had to learn to play the piano from a teacher.

Anyway, after that, I took the little boy fresh food shopping and ice cream at the Central Market. We made our way back to pick up the car and the little girl from vacation care. We were quite happy to be back at home after that busy day...

Mother's Day at the Zoo

We spent last mother's day at the zoo. A new friend invited us to join her family for a day at the zoo. The last time we were at the Adelaide zoo was probably more than a 4 years ago and a lot has changed since then. There were still the usual animals but they had a nice rain-forest section that was exciting for the kids to explore. But despite the exotic animals like babboons and leopards and giraffes, I think the kids enjoyed the Children's Zoo section more. There they could get close enough to pet the goats, cows and deer.

At any rate, we got pictures over at our flickr page, click here.

Kid Funnies Part 20

My wife told me this story about the boy the other day. They were preparing to go out and my wife dressed the boy up in his Superman shirt. It just so happened that she decided to wear her Superman shirt as well. The boy then asked, "Where's Daddy, Mommy?"

"He's at work," she replied.

"Where's my sister, Mommy?" he asked again.

"She's at school," my wife told him.

"Then, " seeing her Superman shirt, and looking at his own, he said, "Who are we going to rescue, Mommy?"

He obviously has a hero complex. :)

Lego Star Wars

On the subject of Lego, I bought a new game a few weeks ago, Lego Star Wars. It's actually the first game I've bought in a long long time. I bought it for two reasons, one, it was on sale and two, it was rated G and therefore, I thought, OK for my own kids to play. Turns out, it's actually a fun game and the kids actually quite enjoyed playing it together and with me.

My kids never used to handle the PS2 controllers before and most of the time, when they played with the Playstation, it was always playing with the EyeToy, the PS2 camera, so there weren't really any buttons to push. This time around, they took to playing with Lego Star Wars very well. It only took them a few minutes to get used to the controls and what buttons to push and they were up and running. My kids and I actually play it now together. My wife is none too happy to see her kids just zoning out in front of video games though but it's actually a funny feeling to be able to share something like this with the boy and girl. It's like sharing some of my geekiness with them, passing on the geek gene.

Actually, it's the boy who likes to play it a lot and I would have to tell him to wait for the weekend so we can play together. He almost always wants to play with me but once in a while his mom would join in. She's not a actually a big video game player like I am. One time, the boy and her were playing Lego Star Wars and were stuck at a particular level. The boy tried his best to navigate through it and was barking orders to his mom to do the some of the moves. Unfortunately for him, his mom wasn't exactly able to follow him and in frustration he went to console, he turned around to his Mom and said, "I'm so sorry mommy, you're not good at this" and he pushed the button to reset the machine.

Needless to say, the wife and I had good laugh about it afterwards.

And by the way, Happy Mother's Day! :)

Lego!

It's always tough to entertain the kids during the school holidays. These school holidays past, we bought the kids a Lego set thinking that it would keep them busy at home and we were right. Turned out, not only was it entertaining for the kids, it was also entertaining for the parents as well. It was fun playing with the bricks again. The kids were challenged to follow the instructions to create some of the Lego constructs.

I remember having a Lego set growing up and creating little tiny worlds with it. Of course, we'd lose the bricks from time to time and we ended up having less and less bricks to play with. The wife never had Lego growing up so she got sort of addicted playing with the bricks, hence the many little houses, windmills, animals and fruit shapes around the kids play table today.

By the way, our little girl was interested in this blog post. She was reading over my shoulder as I typed this and she wanted to type her own stuff here as well. I'm just typing this for her but this is what she said:

The grownups are also interested as well. And, we also made a fruit building. First we made a fruit. The first thing we made was the banana. Then we did a watermelon. And we did a pear. And an orange. And just half a tomato, two of them. We first put the banana at the bottom. And then we put the watermelon. And we put the two tomatoes on the banana. And then we put the orange and then we put the pear. And then, I made a fast vehicle that's easy to use. It could, like, carry trees, and we could put two people on to it. And, then but before that, we made a windmill. a house, and a truck. But now, we made a different kind of truck.

We made animals. We made the elephant, giraffe and a cow but the boy calls it a sheep. I like Lego because it's also like the same as Lego Star Wars which is a video game. And the boy always wants to play it all the time. And he also likes sleeping during the television.

Naughty Corner

Once in a while, our little boy throws his tantrums. We use a naughty corner technique, we have him sit at the corner when he's intentionally being naughty. It's been sort of working so far but lately, I fear that it no longer as effective as we'd hoped.

One time, we were having dinner and the boy was being especially difficult and refusing to eat what I prepared for him. It got to a point when I tried to use the naughty corner. I told him that he was being naughty and asked him if wanted to go to the corner. To my surprise, he nodded his head in agreement! He voluntarily stayed at the corner but kept crying and waited till I asked him to come back to dinner.

I think the threat of the naughty corner has been diminished now so I guess we'd have to find another way to get our message through to this clever little boy...