On Saturday mornings, Emily now goes to Kindergym that basically involves her going mad on all the gymnastics equipment - there is a bit of structure to it as this week she learned the motorbike pose - knees bent and arms out in front - so that when they land, they are meant to take this position.



One good thing about the class is that it proves that we are definitely not getting a trampoline for the back garden - Emily had three goes on the class trampoline and fell off twice!

After Adam's first day at school, Emily also had her first day at pre-school (although, confusingly it is called kindergarten here). We were very lucky to get Emily into the kindy as it is actually directly behind our house which means two things: 1. it is only about a 250m walk for Colin and Emily and 2. We don't have anyone peering over our back fence after 5 in the afternoon.

Emily is very ready for going back to a bit more structure to her week as she barely even gave Colin a backward glance before she was joining in.

Adam started his first day of Year One on Monday  - I think his school looks like a child's drawing of what a school should look like!



The school has about 350 pupils and there are three Year One classes - with Adam in Mrs Bendooli's Year One/Two composite class with about 25 other children - of which, two are also new this year so Adam is not the only one that didn't do Prep (aka Kindergarten) at the school.

As the school is bigger, they do have a small canteen that operates twice a week, an art teacher, PE teacher, basically a few more resources that tiny Orange Grove couldn't quite manage.

Whilst I have been lazing at work (), Colin has been very busy and has Emily in pre-school - she goes 12 hours a week - Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning. Adam is going to Moorabbin Primary School - it is quite a lot bigger than Orange Grove (although that couldn't be hard) but it does still offer Italian lessons.

He got the goals for Christmas and already had the (Socceroos) ball but he got the gloves, shinpads, shorts and shirt for his birthday.



Adam was a little confused on the morning of his birthday as he wanted to go downstairs to see if there were any presents (as that is where Santa left the presents!!).

You can also see that this was about the only clear space in the house as we had started to packing as the move to Melbourne was only three days away

is to try her best to torment Adam by trying to give him as many hugs and kisses as possible - Adam finds it amusing at first but then he gets more than a bit annoyed and no matter how many times I tell him to ignore her and she will go away he still screams Emmmmmmillllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy

As we were not busy enough, we decided to have a little going away party and combine it with Adam's birthday. Unfortunately, as it is the school holidays not so many kids could make it, but we still managed to have fun, not least of all with the food:


Adam with his pineapple and cheese echidna!!

The most popular entertainment was the pinata

This picture may look adorable



But for this one picture we had to take about 15 of these:



Just in case it is not obvious, Adam is dressed as Santa and Emily is a Christmas (peach?) tree

Adam and Emily were, as ever spoilt for Christmas with Emily getting the baby high chair (and baby) that she asked Santa for.



Adam got football goals



They both also got enough Lego to stock any toy shop



Emily also got a fabulous Fifi (the flowertot) outfit



I was also very pleased with my Christmas pavlova

Adam had his first ever school disco which he seemed to enjoy although I didn't find out if he ever did dance.

In the middle of December, not long before the end of term Adam had his end of term BBQ. Unlike Glasgow, this was at the beach :).

Emily and I were persuaded to go by one of the other parents. So we nipped home and picked up our cossies and some picnic lunch. Adam had already left from the school with all his mates in the bus.

We got the directions and plugged it into the satnav.

View Larger Map

It took us to the above bay. When we got there, the kids were already in the water. Each age group got 45mins in the water and then an hour or so playing games on the grass.

It was a ton of fun. While the kids were in the water the teachers and some parent volunteers formed a ring of people around them so that it was nice and safe. The waves were getting up a bit so the kids were getting thrown around.

The view was great, you can see in one of the photos the Sydney to Hobart ships that were sailing by.

Before our move to Melbourne, we are having a Sydney holiday so we went to Ryde swimming pool (ironic isn't it that we go to an indoor pool in the summer - it was a bit too hot to be outside).

Ryde has a rapid river, wave pool and big flume - that Emily was very excited to go down, we had to go down with her but she made us promise not to hold on and then she was off, flying down the tube!




As you can see, Emily takes after me and has no fear of the water and also doesn't really understand that she can't actually swim.

Just in case you are worried, the times when Emily is waving her hands in the air are not her drowning but that is her swimming with her windmill arms!

The other weekend, we decided to brave the crowds and went to see Santa at Meyer (aka Grace Brothers!) We thought the cue queue (oops- mental slip as Cue is clothes shop here!) wasn't too bad and as they also have a Santaland with a train, computers (so you can email Santa!) and other distractions - unfortunately they didn't have any grown up distractions so Colin and I took it in turns to stand in the queue.



Thankfully it was all worth it as, after a little bit of reluctance, both Adam and Emily were happy to talk to Santa and even sit on his knee (once we find the scanner, we will put a copy on here!)

Emily now has a slightly different view of the world  - she asked if our Christmas decorations of sparkling snowflakes where spider webs?!?!?!?

You can now keep track of how Adam is doing at Little Athletics from the weekly results on the club website.

Adam has his first ever wobbly tooth - tooo exciting

Ever since Colin has given up work and been at home, Emily has taken to announcing when I come home that she missed me so much.

Last Saturday when I left to go to the ball (more on that story later) she also announced that she would miss me soooo much and even added the trembling bottom lip.

As the rugby season is over, and along with it, the cold Sunday mornings on the side of a rugby pitch (yeah!), we have moved onto the summer sport - athletics.

Both Adam and Emily are now members of the Balmain Little Athletics which meet every Saturday morning (8.30am, urg but at least it is warmer now).

Emily does tiny tots which is lots of games to prepare for athletics (or Olympics as we like to call it) - lots of throwing, jumping and some running.



Adam is in the under-6 group and they take it VERY seriously. Every week, every race is timed and distances measured, with the wining child in each race being double timed to verify the win!!



As you can see from this picture, Adam also takes it quite seriously. Having said, that we are quite happy as we have decided that Adam is the next Usain Bolt, but, you know, not black or Jamaican. He can do the 100 metres in 20 seconds.


The great thing about athletics, apart from the fact that the kids love it (and it tires them out!), the last two weeks have been gloriously sunny.

Emily is very sweet whenever anyone hurts themselves as she announces that lots of hugs make everything better!!

 

In case you ever wondered what the Leichhardt Wanderer's song sounds like - this is at the end of season "awards" night. Adam has been playing rugby for about six months and in the process he has accumulated two trophies, two medals and a penant - we may have to invest in a trophy cabinet!!

Last Friday was Adam school's 125th anniversary and there was a whole program of events. It started first thing in the morning with an are exhibition and open day with everyone having a good look around the school.

After that it was the Dance Nova   with each age group giving a performance - Kindergarten did a Croatian dance (!), the next group did a Korean dance and the final group an Italian dance - all the kids were dressed in "costumes" that the parents association had made (from coloured bin bags) - Colin and Emily spent Tuesday morning in the school library helping out.

After morning tea, there was a round of traditional children's games - including skipping, which I didn't think was that traditional (aka out of date) until I realised that nearly all the children didn't know how to jump rope!!!

Then there was more entertainment with another dance exhibition and Adam's kinder class performing a play

After lunch was the official portion of the day with an official ceremony attended by loads of local dignitaries including Uncle Max an elder from the tribe that are the original owners of the land that Orange Grove is built on (I know this as every time someone made a speech they acknowledge them). Uncle Max performed a smoking ceremony that apparently cleanses the people and the land - Emily, it has to be said, was not very impressed with this  but she did calm down enough to have her picture taken with him later.

After that, the oldest ex-pupil (94) and the youngest current pupil (4) cut the cake

If any pupil forgets their hat (even in winter) this is the GIANT fig tree that they have to play under - Orange Grove, like every other school in NSW has a no hat, no outdoor play policy (also, in case your are wondering, the teachers are dressed in Victorian costumes for the celebrations).

In a sign that I maybe wear a bit too much black, Emily decided the other day that I couldn' t be going to work as I was not dressed all in black

Emily, who will only stand wearing her hair in a pony tail if there is some serious bribery and corruption offered (sweets) otherwise she will pull it out, watched me put curlers in (don't ask - it involved having seriously bad hat hair) and was then patient enough to let me do this to her

Adam at his swimming lesson

This is Emily at her swimming lesson - she tries hard and looks the part in her hat and goggles but is not quite there yet - see if you can pinpoint the moment when the instructor lets go of her!

This afternoon we went to the car park of the (now closed) insane asylum (aka psychiatric hospital) at the end of the road so Adam and Emily could have a better go on their new bikes. Emily's bike is everything a girl good dream of - it is pink, has a basket, streamers, a bell and a baby seat in the back which she puts "baby Adam" in - baby Adam even has his own bike helmet. The best thing about both their bikes is that when the kids peddle backwards it acts like a brake so no more holes in the toes of their shoes!

We decided we would see whether Adam would be okay without his stabilisers - it would appear that we should have tried months ago as it only took about 5 seconds for him to be off on his own. We had a few wobbles - his old bike's stabilisers were a little squint so he tends to cycle at an angle and at one point he ran into the back of a ute in the car park but he did well.

On Saturday, Emily and I went to one of the most civilised birthday parties - mainly because there were only about five children invited!! Kai from Emily's old nursery had a pirate themed party with some extra guests - lizards, snakes and a baby crocodile.



Not only was Emily very brave in touching all the animals, but I even managed to touch them all too!!

This was a little while ago, and Leigh has been pestering me to blog this for a while, so here goes.

Emily's first party with Natalia's (a friend from her old Bambini nursery) 4th Birthday at a house in Annandale.

It was a fairy party so Emily wore her princess dress that she has been wearing since she was very small. She is now way to big for it and it is a tad on the tight side.


You can see that a rather larger Fairy also came along and got them to do lots of games including face painting and hunt the magic fairy.

While all the kids were playing a few of the guests got a tour of the house. It was a 4 story, (potentially, 20 bedroom) house that the couple bought when it was pretty much a shell and have been doing it up.

There are 3 houses build beside each other which are pretty much identical. They were built by Henry Parkes  ( One of the original founding fathers of Australia) for his daughters.



By then end Emily was a delightful mixture of being very tired and being full of sugar.

Adam's School held their own Olympics with each of the kids assigned to a country.... Can you guess what country Adam was?



Emily and I went along to watch.. The whole school recreated the opening ceremony, with the countries marching, the music and speeches.

They then rotated round 8 different events including the traditional Olympic events of Jungle Jim climbing, Vortex throwing. Soccer target practice then the bench balance beem.

It was all very cute and they all seemed to have a lot of fun.

As Adam's rugby league (the Balmain District Junior Rugby League) don't track results for any teams until the Under 10s, there is no way of knowing who has "won" every year so they have a tournament to decide the winner and give out medals.

The competition started with controversy as some of the clubs amalgamated their age teams instead of fielding their normal side so put all their strong players in one team and the club that was hosting arranged the draws so their teams were not in the same pool as the amalgamated teams - some of the Dads were quite seriously unimpressed.

The kids were pretty oblivious to it all and just seemed to be having fun playing - although even some of them noticed when one team encouraged their substitutes to run on from the side to tackle whenever our guys were running down the side line - another controversial item - they hadn't painted the lines of the pitch just put about four cones out and expected four-six year olds to visualise the sides and try lines - one poor team lost out on two trys as the boys put the ball down too early.

Unfortunately our team didn't make it past the pool stage but we did stay to support the other U6 teams who met in the semi-finals with the whites unfortunately defeated in the final.

Adam really loved playing and the extra practice has really improved his tackling so much so he got most improved player of the week. In the last match against one of the other Leichhardt teams he managed to bring down Patrick who is six but also about a foot taller than Adam and also managed to chase down Cougar who lives up to his name (seriously, that is the boy's name - Adam also has a teammate called Hunter). 

Last Saturday, Emily decided to show that she is my daughter by getting herself lost in the market - she was lost for only a few minutes and I was about thirty seconds away from some seriously undignified shouting in the middle of the market when Colin found her.

 

For those that don't know, I am quite famous for getting lost - once when I was 10 in Harrods and another, more spectacularly, at the age of about 2 or 3 walking the streets of Pollokshields with Dad calling the Polis to try to help find me - I could have my own series of Without a Trace!!

On Friday, Adam's school had their annual sports day - although apparently this is the first time in about three years that it hasn't been rained off. Although we managed to miss his age race - they started the races earlier than we had been told - I did see him trounce his friends in the sack race - he had his own technique of going sideways which worked very well!!


Unfortunatley the end of the day was "blown" out when the wind got a little too much - the sports oval was right beside the water. Colin and some other parents did stay and contintued with the BBQ - now that Colin has nothing better to do , he has been roped into more and more events at the school!!

Daddy Day Care starts today and we did a bit of face painting :)

This Sunday the match was a mate's grudge match - Wanderers Black (Adam's team) v Red!!

Adam's team was playing against the Reds, many of whom are in Adam's class at school including Josh and Maddie. The game was good fun with both coaches trying to give a few more chances to those that hadn't during the rest of the season. It did mean at one point, one of the boys was holding another boy's foot to show him how to play the ball (roll it backwards).

After a good run and try by Patrick, Adam was called up to kick the conversion and he kicked a blinder - it was a brilliant conversion and he is VERY proud



At the end of the match, there was the usual team song, except this time there were twice as many kids singing, althogether now:

We are Leichhardt Wanderers, how 'bout you?
We are Leichhardt Wanderers, through and through
We are Leichhardt Wanderers, Leichhardt Wanderers,
We are Leichhardt Wanderers, how ' bout you?



Amusingly, during the match, Emily asked the question we have been waiting for: "Why does Ethan have two Daddies?"

Emily has been invited to her very first party and is SOOOOO excited. The only unfortunate thing is that it is next Saturday and, being three, Emily does not understand the concept of time so has to ask every day whether it is time for the party yet!

Adam has his first report card this week and has done well, although, he apparently doesn't listen (I could've told them that).

Amusingly, he does play well with others (there was actually a box on his report card for this!)