Garden invasion

Simon found thousands of these beetles in our back garden one day after Christmas. They were everywhere - all over the grass, on tree branches, bushes and in the air. Everywhere! I didn't witness this personally, I was too scared to go outside! A 'sample' was taken and we were going to take it to the garden shop and find out what we could do but google saved us a trip. Apparently, these are 'green soldier beetle', they can form 'mating' swarm in large numbers in a short time but tend to move on after mating. And they are harmless.

True to their words, the number f beetles in our gaden decreased in the next couple of days and they are all gone before the new year. We have our garden back!

Holiday swimming lessons

I am so proud of Sam. The 40 minute lessons were a little long for him but he didn't cry at all and seemed to enjoy himself. He didn't put his head in water yet but I'm sure he will soon learn if we continue the lessons.



Lara learned breast stroke during the holiday swimming lessons and seemed to be more comfortable diving from the deep end.


I got Lara and Sam swimming at the same time. They were in lanes next to each other. (Lara'se swimming in the left lane and Sam's on his back in the right lane in the picture). They often waved and said hello to each other mid-lesson. I'm sure Lara provided the extra comfort that Sam needed to be at the pool without me.

Christmas break

We didn't host Christams this year (only hosted a smaller family meal on boxing day) so there were minimum grocery shopping and food preparation during Christmas for me (yeah!). Chrsitmas was spent at brother-in-law's new place (he moved in 3 days before xmas) in Collaroy. It was a little different to the other x'mas we had as there were people from his girlfriend's family whom we did't know, come and go. Sam and Lara had lots of fun running around with another kid in the apartment, which already had over 20 people in it. It was raining so we couldn't spend time at the beach as planned. We did manage to go back to the beach a couple of days later and spent a nice afternoon soaking in the beautiful sunshine and breathing in the fresh sea breeze. We also spend a nice afternoon at this little picturesque beach called Bilgola and two other afternoons at swimming pools. When the days are hot, there is nothing better than spend it near water.

Ballerina

Roast dinner

Mother-in-law's pre-new year roast pork with nice crunchy potatoes.


We don't get invited to in-law's for dinner as much as before because of Sam. Sam is not a lover of roast dinners. He refused to eat it most times and looked like he would throw up if we forced him. This has caused some frustrations and unhappiness. The solution- give him vegemite sandwitch or sushi and we get on with our roast dinners. All happy!

Wiggles concert

One of the fun activities we did just before Christmas was the Wiggles concert (we watched their second last show with the original wiggles). It was surprisingly fun! The highlight of the day was that Lara and Sam high-fived Jeff (purple wiggle) when he came around to collect roses and bones for Dorothy and Wags (oh we forgot to do roses and bones!). Sam couldn't stop talking about Jeff afterwards and Lara couldn't get over how long Jeff's hair was. Keeping Sam on his seat was a little challenging, he wanted to get closer to the stage. Lara danced to most songs and talked about going back next year even before we left the concert. But the wiggles are not the same without the original members!!

Water-related picture diaries

Oct 3 - It was school holiday. Lara watched a show in Opera house with some school friends, had a yummy $5 pizza meal (with unlimited drinks) and played at Darling Quarter.I joined her just before the Darling Quarter play. What a fun day for Lara!


Oct 5 - Lara spent a fun morning at Collaroy beach with Evie and Ruby. As it turns out, we will probably be spending our Christmas Day this year at the same beach!


Oct 28 - We spent a good part of the day in the zoo. The seal show was a real winner (we were waiting for it to start with Lara's class pet Spottle in the photo). The kids spent the next few days pretending to be seals and performing tricks like the seals did.


Nov 2 - Lara started during-school and after-school swimming in term 4. Friday was a great day for lessons- it seemed to be quieter than the start of the week, Lara received more attention in the class (only 2 kids in her class).  Lara's progressing well and almost swimming, but she is still scared of diving at the deep end. She didn't swim last winter but I'm considering letting her swim through winter next year.

New violin teacher

Lara played 'minuet 3' at her end-of-term concert and played twinkles at the end with all the kids.

We changed violin teacher in the middle of the year, so technically she is not new anymore. I knew the ex-violin teacher was young and not very experienced, but it didn't bother me until she went away for 3 months with little notice and the substitute teacher didn't even play violin regularly. After ringing around looking for a new teacher,I realised finding another Suzuki teacher would not be easy as eveyone knows everyone in this small Suzuki circle. And it seemed that most experienced teachers have long waiting lists. So luck must be on our side when we found the new teacher and made the switch in such a short time.

This new teacher is musically-trained (ie has a university music degree or two) as supposed to someone who teach because they can play the violin well. I used to think it wouldn't make much difference, however, after experiencing both, the difference is enormous. The new teacher spends a lot of time teaching correct postures and proper bow hold (this is very important if you dont' want RSI!). She teaches rhythems, note reading, and uses a variety of materials in addition to the Suzuki repertoire. She plays with Lara, on the violin or the piano as an accompanist, holds student concerts every term and gives very detailed home practice guidelines. She pays for an accomplished teacher to conduct a master class for her students every term (Lara would need a few more years of practice to be able to go to these master classes). The friend who recommended her called her a "true" teacher. Simon joked that I was in love with the new teacher because I couldn't stop talking about Lara's lesson afterwards. I was simply amazed at the difference Lara played after something she said or after she adjusted a finger or pointed out an error.

Home practices are also much better and less tears. I think the reason being the new teacher breaks the songs down into little managable steps. Rather than diving into the new songs, Lara would listen or sing to the music in the first week, doing shadow bows during the second week then play the first two bars in the third week etc. Lara is a perfectionist and she doesn't like challenges. This style of teaching reduces her anxiety and makes practice happier.  I am so happy we found her!

Hunter Valley again

We have been to the Hunter Valley twice in the last 2 months. Everytime we go, we discover something new..

We stayed at the Littles winery last month. It was very interesting to actually sleep next to the tasting room inside the winery and the view from the dinning room table was beautiful and serene. The kids loved the winery manager's dog Gypsy and loved tasting the chutneys, olive oil and cheese. We also went to a nice little deli that served yummy hearty food on cushions under trees, the food I still crave when I think about it.

This was before Sam had his first haircut.


We stayed at a 4-bed house this time because we had the Grandparents with us. The house was quite basic but the setting was very relaxing and tranquil. We didn't get to visit many wineries as it was very hot while we were there (there was a heat wave). I counted us very lucky though because if I booked one week earlier, the kids would have been too sick to go. We all enjoyed the swimming, we had the whole pool to ourselves. We had barbecued steaks and sausages plus the yummy goods we collected along the way, including the smoked trout and octpotus legs from the Lovedale smoke house, a new-find this time.  We also went to the Hunter Valley barn and stocked up on sweets.



Kids were on a high singing just before a swim.


We will leave Hunter until the weather cools down but we will be back!

Cheeky monkey

Sam is quite a handful at the moment. He is quicker and cheekier than Lara was at the same age. He doesn't listen as well and changllenges 'authority' more (seond child +  boy?). He has chucked toys in the toilet, put his hands in the toilet. He got out of his pram and ran to the jumping castle (not free) and didn't want to get out in our last shopping excursion. I took him to an indoor playground once, he went straight to the 5-11 year-old section (2-5 yo section is too boring for him) and stayed there for the entire 2 hours. He thinks he's older than Lara, often shouted 'instructions' for Lara to do. He likes to open and close lids, doors, windows. He also like to chuck things into illegal' places, like back of couch, toilet, out of the window, into small holes.

This is me trying to take a video of the kids while we were picnicing at the local park.



Sam is being toilet-trained at the moment (3rd week). He's doing very well with wee, but only started to poo in the potty. I am busy washing dirty undies, shorts and shoes!

Sculpture park

I have not posted anything here for some time. I even forgot my password and took some time to try to get back in. September was a busy month for work, and somehow I am still catching up on cleaning, cooking and playdates and generally don't feel like doing much.

We did do a few fun things as a family on the weekends, including rides in Galston model railway, the zoo and Hunter Valley.

We also spent one Sunday morning strolling around the sculpture park in Macquarie University during an art trail weekend. It was a beautiful sunny day and lovely to watch the kids enjoying themselves - they played 'spot the next sculpture', 'watch me climb in and out' and 'run around like crazy'. Here are some pics:

Suzuki Spring School

We spent a whole day at Abbotsleigh today attending Suzuki Spring School. The program was more intensive than I thought. Lara was in Group V8 (Book 1 up to etude). She had a tutorial lesson at 9.30am, repertoire lesson at 10.20, enrichment lesson at 11.30 and 'play in' at 12.20. We had a short 45-minute lunch break before the closing concert tuning and the concert itself at 2pm. We left home early this morning and didn't get home until 4pm!! I am exhausted and I didn't even play any violin!

This turned out to be a good distraction for me. I was very busy with work in the last 3 weeks that I not only neglected my motherly/wifely duty somewhat, I was in this 'work rut' that I stopped appreciate the important people/things in my life. Being surrounded by kids and violins today made me forget my 'little work problems' and cleared my head a little.

Lara didn't really want to play in another concert at the beginning of the day. But when asked what the best part of her day was, she said 'playing in the concert"!. I only managed to record half a song at the end (camera technical issue-insufficient memeory!). This song 'Perpetual motions' had great significance because it was also the song Lara played at her debut concert last week at her teacher's house (Lara's new violin teacher holds a student concert every term. I'm so glad we found her, but this is another story). At that concert, Lara 'forgot' one part of her song, luckily re-gained her composure during the variation part of the song. This is just like life I guess. Sometimes you play well, sometimes you don't. You go past that and life goes on!

Sam's birthday

Sam didn't eat any dinner and had a sudden temperature on Thursday night, two and a half days before his birthday. I took him to see a doctor on Friday and he had the first dose of antibiotics by lunch time that day. However, Sam still got worse overnight, vomited many times between 1-5 am on Sat morning. We would cancel the family birthday dinner on Sunday if he hadn't shown signs of improvement. Sam asked for bread and started to eat on Saturday night, and by Sunday was full of beans again. It was a tiring weekend for the adults, having to look after a sick child and prepare dinner for everyone. It was my birthday the following day, all I wanted to was to have a good nap!

Sam playing with new toys on his birthday. He received several Thomas presents, he is a Thomas fan!


I had learned from past birthdays that there was no point trying to do too much and made myself too tired. There is always another birthday coming. I decided to outsource the cake this year and made the family dinner as simple as I could. There was no time to make another dessert either but the white chocolate mud cake (it weighted a ton!) was enough really. There was plenty of food left without me making more varieties.
Lara and Sam loved the ballons and enjoyed playing with their cousins.
Happy 2nd birthday my little boy!

Writing, reading and drawing

I didn't really teach Lara to write before kindy started. Lara learned to trace letters in daycare but was not taught the alphabets. I was happy to leave the formal learning until school started. Lara slowly learned to write all the letters (capitals and smalls). After two terms, she now writes quite well, with most sentences started with Capital letters, only occasionally mixed up capital and small letters.On a good day, Lara writes neatly with letters in similarly sizes and the right 'finger spaces' between each word.

A couple of school mums had commented to me about how neat Lara's writings were.  I saw her improvements when I saw the 'Hansel and Gretel' story she wrote. Lara has good imagination and writes interesting sentences. She received a deputy principal's award last term for her story on "yo you and the zoo". The occasional mistakes, like writing 9 like letter P or 2 the wrong way (more like a 5) were alright as long as there are improvements.


So far I have taken a relaxed attitude towards sight words (the 100 words they have to learn in kindy?). There are so many things to do between the time we get home (sometimes close to 6pm!) and bed time, including cook dinnner (while look for food to give kids to eat, they are just very hungry when they get home!), eat dinner, get Sam to bed (usually Simon's job), practice violin (with Lara), homework (some nights), readers, bath/brush teeth and bed time story. Sight words are usually forgoteen! Lara was not the slowest, but not in the top half of the class as far as sight words are concerned. While we read readers, I noticed Lara can sound (with guesses or help from the pictures) most words, even those not in her sight words. My execuse is I'd rather her learning the words properly from a book than memorising them on a sheet of paper. Most of the time I feel Lara has enough on her plaste already and she is doing well at 5. Other times, I wonder whether I should perhaps spend more time with her on reading and writing.

We receivd Lara's first school report at the end of last term. I admit I was a little disappointed that everything was 'meet expectations' and all efforts were 'satisfactory' but there was no 'exceed expectations' or 'extraordinary efforts' in any subject. Simon reminded me that he didn't 'get it' with maths until 10 or 11. I did quite well from primary school, but we didn't start school until 7 in Taiwan. I have to remind myself that Lara is still very young at five years old, and that it is more important she enjoys her childhood than worry about the grades.



Lara enjoy drawings, painting and drafts. Her drawings of animals are more correctly-proportioed now. She needs to learn to be patient and not get too upset when her artwork doesn't turn out as she likes sometimes.

Siamanges and the goat rescue

Continuing on about our recent holiday...

The highlight in the zoo was the Siamanges. The siamanges have throat pouches that can inflate to make loud resonate sounds. Here is a short video we took while these apes howled. The mummy Siamanage carried a two-week baby on her tummy and the daddy Siamanage ran round showing his arm muscles to warn us off. The kids loved them!



The highlight in Mudgee was the goats. We spent some time in this place called 'Leaning Oak' patting goats (or more correctly, one goat in particular). This friendly goat followed us around like a dog. She had a collar on so I thought her was a family pet. We later found out that only the 'naughty' ones get to wear collars (so people can get hold of them easier). This friendly goat made an attempt of eating everything the kids thrusted into her mouth and seemed to enjoy the attention. She did some funny jumps away from Sam, other than that, she followed the kids around while they looked for 'food' for her to eat. 




After lots of patting and photos, we went inside to try the goat cheese. I bought a block of brie and some goat cheese in pesto (yummy!) and we chatted to the lady owner about her goats and sheeps (one of them had babies the night before). Just before we were about to leave, we heard strange high-pitched sound coming from the shed. The next minute, the owner lady ran out from the tasting room into the shed shouting after her that the goats are in disstress. Then she ran out and asked if Simon could go and help her. It turned out that two of the goats wandered into the shed and fell into the underground water tank. The cover to the tank broke and the male owner in fact left for town just after we arrived to get new covers for the tank. The water tank was very deep and luckily Simon was around to help the goats out. It was nice now back at home we talked about the goats while eating the lovely cheese (wish I have bought more!!).

[23 months] Talkative

Sam knows many words and talks all the time.

You have to decode what he says though. "Nanni" is 'Iin the night garden', his favourite program and "Nonni" is 'Thomas'. "Ta-tu" is thank you and "You-ee" is lolly. He was introduced to lolly during the long car ride this holiday and every 2 minutes, we heard 'you-ee?' coming from the back seat. He also asked 'why' when we asked him to do things, no doubt getting this from Lara. He is great at passing things to Lara and like all kids, will choose the biggest food item while passing the smaller potion to Lara. In the morning when I tell Lara to 'get ready to go' if we are going somewhere, and if Lara is not 'getting ready', Sam would go up to Lara and shouted 'weedy to doe wa wa'. In fact, he really like to shout 'instructions' to Lara. (probably copying me...) He calls himself 'Nam' and like any two-year-old, he likes to do things himself 'Nam do it' he says.

Sam likes to sing 'ee-i-ee-i-o' in 'Old MacDonald had a farm' and he does all the animal noises at the right place. He dances every time the volin music is on. He also knows the tune to 'twinkle', 'lightly row' and some other violin songs and humming every time the CD is on or Lara is playing. We don't let him touch Lara's violin in case he breaks it, but I'm thinking of making a 'box violin' using a ruler and a tissue box for him later. This is him playing violin with a friend's daughter's violin (a cheap one she bought overseas as a toy for her daughter)

July holiday

We just came back from a 5-day short break, a couple of days in Dubbo and a couple of days in Mudgee. It was not a great holiday because we all got Sam's cold. In fact we were all sick before we even left home. The first day driving to Orange was the worst day. When we stopped at a petrol station at 2pm there were snow pellets dropping from the sky. It was very very cold. Not a good weather for Lara who already had 39.5C fever the night before. In fact, her fever would last 5 days. Rather than going to the zoo, we took her to see a doctor the first morning we were in Dubbo.


The first night in Orange was not great. I was very tired from a day of driving with temperature and a very sore throat myself. Simon went out to get some food for us (in the freezing cold). Most of the restaurants didn't open on Sunday and the food he eventauly found was barely edible. While he was gone, I had my attention somewhere else for 5 mintues and Sam managed to get hold of a red crayon and drew all over the cream carpet in the hotel room. We spent the next half an hour trying to get the marks off.



Despite Lara not wanting to do much and threatened to throw up, we spent one afternoon and a half at the zoo. Dubbo zoo was big but there was minimum walking involved and it was very easy to get around in a car. It was very relaxing being with the animals. We got very close to the giraffes, heard the lion roar, witnessed the Siamanges and their baby in action. The view from the Savana viewing platform was amazing too. We were also lucky that the Mudgee wine-tasting part of the trip was at the end. We managed to taste and bought some wines and Simon managed to rescue a couple of goats on the way!

We are very glad to be home though.

A thing or two about violin

Lara is doing well with her violin. Even if some days we could only fit in a 10-minute quick practice (when I'm too tired to play or no energy to supervise), Lara is progressing well now passed the middle of book one. She is learning 'Andantino', 3 songs away from minuet 2. Bach's minuet 2 was the first violin song we heard when we sat in at a lesson back in Oct last year. I can hardly believe Lara is nearly playing that! The young fingers are very able - Lara can move her fingers faster than me now...

Lara went to a Suzuki violin funday a few weeks ago. It was for Book 1 & 2 kids, there were around 20 kids there. We met an experienced teacher Mrs Haywood (whom I was trying to get in touch with) there and saw how she taught. It was good value for only $10 one hour. Playing with other kids just made it more fun and the hour went very fast for Lara.

A small hiccup last week when Lara broke the bridge of her violin (she was being silly trying to play the wrong way). It meant no practice for 3 days, extra time spent to get the violin repaired on my day-off and $65 out of pocket (another shop was going to charge $95). Luckily there was a spare 1/8 violin we could borrow to do the lesson on Saturday morning.

At around the same time, I got a call from a teacher I spoke to earlier. She invited us to her student concert at her studio as she might have a spot next term. She has more advanced students, one of them played Vivaldi's Winter at the concert. She's located in Cherrybrook (a little far), but we will see what happens after the trial lesson.

Lots happening!

Spottle

We had the class pet 'Spottle' with us last weekend. Spottle is a fluffy 'giraffe' and he followed Lara to all her weekend activities.

First stop was violin at 8am. Lara played the two new songs - Allegro and Perpetual motions.



Secondly, we had ballet at 9.15am.
Lara stood straight-backed and tall and looked like she really enjoyed the dance.



Finally we had Lara's classmate Sophia's birhtday party at 3pm.
It was a carft party. Lara painted a t-shirt and cards, played dress-ups and had a slice of the rainbow cake.



And that didn't count Spottle going to the shops and coffee with us and had dinner with Grandma & Grand-dad on Sunday! Spottle (and us) had a busy weekend!

Recently

School started again so the days are pretty busy. Work was very busy in April therefore the lack of motivations to write anything down, not that there was nothing happening. Both Sam and Lara were sick. Sam had an awful, itchy rash all over his body and didn't want to do anything (or eat anything) for a couple of days, that was very unlike him. Lara also had temperature and was lethargic and off school sick. After that, Simon got Sam's rash and had temperature and achy hands for a few days. I also have this frustrating cough for a few weeks now. I got into 'coughing fits' at work sometimes, I coughed so much that I wanted to throw up and had tears running down my face. I think I'm feeling a little better today.

Mum was here for two weeks and left this morning. I took her for a traditional Thai massage last week for Mother's Day. Those tiny Thai ladies were very skillful at the massage table. When asked what strength I wanted, I said 'strong' thinking I can take 'tiny ladies'. But when they sat on me and dug their knees or elbows into my back, it really hurt. I had to ask them to ease off. Mum and I both enjoyed that hour of bliss.

I found I couldn't read some labels on jars recently and had my eyes checked out a couple of weeks ago. I can't believe my short-sightedness actually regressed/improved. Is this a sign that I'm getting old? The new glasses, after private health rebate will be close to $600!! I don't know if I should still have the laser surgery? (it will cost nearly $7000). Decision decision.

I spent a good part of my waking hours recently thinking about Lara's violin situation. Lara's young teacher went overseas for 3 months to further her studies, and I wasn't very impressed with the substitute teacher. I am afraid this might not be a one-off occurance. The teacher's boyfriend lives in France, and we already had her going to France twice in the 6 months we've been with her. This teacher-changing is interruptive. In the long term I need to find a teacher who stays, and that probably means someone older. I've made a couple of phone calls, but finding a teacher is not an easy task. Most Suzuki teachers in the area are either fully-booked or not experienced enough. I also have to be careful not to hurt anyone's feelings. This situation now goes into my 'monitor-for-now' list. Something to think/worry about later.