I was flicking through my photos and saw these photos of Aaliya and wondered why I hadn't blogged them! They were taken in the first week in May. We were at Sonia and Trent's engagement/housewarming party. In these pics she's a few weeks off turning two :)
* At two, Aaliya says "peanut budee" for peanut butter. For a while there, anything with 'er' on the end, she would say 'ee' - like water was "wadee".
* I remember when Owen learnt the word 'tree'. Soon after he learnt the word 'treat' but would sign the word 'tree' because to him they sounded the same (this is when he was using baby sign instead of words).
I'll add to this as we think of more.
This is how I grew strawberries last year. I ordered 20 plants off ebay (I got 28 in my package) and planted them in this vertical garden. It is a good example in recycling as it is left over PVC pipe that we cut a horizontal line is half way through, then used a hot air gun to heat above the cut and push it in.
We got a really good batch of beautiful strawberries. Not that they lasted long - as soon as they were ripe, the kids got them.
The other great thing about the strawberry pipes was that they were easily watered (water in the top) and that they are easily moved. During winter, they were moved to the sunniest, warmest position next to the driveway which would be too hot in summer.
My baby boy is 5 months old! He's starting to move around, commando crawling of sorts. Now I have to make sure there is nothing on the floor that he can get into that he shouldn't - great! He's waking a bit more at night and wriggling a lot during the day. He's very strong so all the wriggling is really tiring me out! He's also at that age where he just wants to TOUCH EVERYTHING!
He's still the most placid member in the family. He's happy to go down on the floor and play (explore) for a little while and sit in his highchair and check out whatever toys we put on there. He hasn't started on solids yet, I'm kind of avoiding it cause that's extra work for me in terms of preparation and cleaning up and I like the fact my boobs are on autopilot! 
Aaliya and Owen have a lovely high school girl come and entertain them for a couple of hours a week so I can run around and get stuff done. She comes from Japan and often does origami with the kids. They love it.
We were at a family dinner one night and Owen was showing his origami skills to his Nanna and Grandad and Aunts and Uncles. Owen made something (usually random folds and then calls it a dog or something). Aaliya proclaimed she was doing origami too. We asked her what she was making..... She scrunched up the paper and shouted:
Origami Ball!
so funny and so cute at the same time :)
