having a long blink*

It just happened - that I've been "absent" for a week now. Okay - absent from this blog. I think I've somehow been absent from a lot of things over a lot of years. But, over the past week I've been a lot more present in the everyday of our life. Apart from feeling flu-ish (so therefore tired, unmotivated, lacklustre), I've been spending more time just doing and being with the little ones. I suppose more time living my life, less time writing about it, or reading about others' (apart from my daily update to reality here!).

Mishi had her official six-month day. It passed pretty uneventfully. IE - she didn't learn to crawl, sit, read French or run a marathon. As the days are drifting closer and closer to her not being a baby anymore, I keep thinking I'm not doing quite enough - not the things that I should be doing. She's not eating yet. Though, depending on who you talk to, that's not really any issue at all. All the other babies in our family were eating younger than six months, but the few times I've offered her a little taste of fruit, she's just turned her nose away. So, no rush for that. All it really means is stinkier nappies!

Mishi's first proper swing-sit. She loved it.

And, Ari moves closer and closer to three. Some days I feel like he's the baby; growing and learning that life isn't all about you, that while your parents do dote on you, they also have certain expectations of you! Other days I look at him, and can not remember the baby that he was. Every day he says something new, his speech patterns are changing, his understanding of things increasing.Just a few photos of our past week. More can be found here. (If you are not a 'friend contact' on my flickr account, and you wish to view my family life, then please request to be added as a contact).

A pair of pukeka** birds, building a nest. One (the male?) swam back and forth collecting twigs and things, the other one (the mama bird?) wove them into her nest.

*My sister used to say this when she was little. When asked if she was asleep, she'd say "no, I'm just having a long blink". Other times we'd pretend we were asleep, generally when we were driving home late at night, while driving up our big hill. Mum + Dad would carry us in to bed, and we wouldn't have to brush our teeth. Sometimes they didn't carry us in, waiting to see how long we would pretend. And the award goes to Sylve, who waited and waited and, if I recall correctly, she sat pretending sleep in the car for longer than an hour.

**In Australia these birds are called moorhens, but my Mum used to call them Pukeka as she lived in New Zealand for a while and liked that word more. She also used to call the child health nurses (who visit your house after having a baby) plunket nurses. Conversely, she used to call Kiwi fruits Chinese Gooseberries. I use all these words as well, simply because that's the way my Mum raised me.