All growing up

Starting school is a very big thing and deserves lots of attention, but all of our children are growing up in very obvious ways at the moment. Bethany now eats breakfast, lunch and dinner, sitting in her high-chair, at the same time as Joss and Tobes. She can also sit up on someone's lap, but tends to fall over when sitting on the floor. The sad day has come when I can no longer put her down and expect to find her in the same position when I look again - she isn't crawling, but manages to roll and wriggle her way around. She is still very smiley, but she is not quiet. She loves to shriek, yell and squeal in a way that hurts my ears.



Toby is out of nappies! Yes, he is three years old, we thought it might never happen. After several attempts before Christmas with absolutely no success, I bit the bullet and tried again last week. He somehow just got it this time - he has had almost no accidents. Now that he is toilet trained, of course, he really wants to go to school with Jossie. When we went to pick her up on her first day he saw some much bigger boys playing basketball and was desperate to join in.



Would you believe that there were no tears on Jossie's first day? Neither she, nor I, nor Andrew did any crying. The fact that her teacher and three other children in her class go to our church really helped her feel mostly excitement about starting school. She loves her uniform (I wonder how long that will last) and can't wait for all the exciting things that will happen at school, like her turn for news, and going to gymnastics. For all of February the kindy kids have Wednesdays off to rest - I hope we all get a bit of a sleep in as you have to get up really early to be at school by 9.15!



In other news, we went away last weekend! That deserves an exclamation mark because we don't go away very often - I detest long car trips. Thankfully Tumut is only one and a quarter hours away. Our friends Steve and Jane were running the creche and K-2 kids program for the Riverina Christian Convention, and we went to help. We stayed at Jane's grandparents' beautiful house just out of town.



Andrew played his keyboard for lots of singing, I read the odd story and did painting and play-doh, and Joss and Tobes had a wonderful time learning about God. All in all we really enjoyed it and would like to go again next year.



It is SO hot here at the moment. Thanks to Alice and Andre for getting a pool, for living very close to us, and for letting us use it a lot!