Almost crawling

Bub is on the verge of crawling and has been for weeks. His older brother hated tummy time and didn't show any signs of crawling until he was 8 months old - then he decided to make a determined effort. Junior started rolling then rocking and within what seemed like a week he was off on all fours at a tremendous pace. He hasn't looked back.
Bub is an entirely different little fellow. He has never minded being on his tummy and started rolling front to back at around three months - although he still hasn't managed the reverse manoeuvre very well. He has been up on all fours rocking for several months and much to his frustration he has been going backward ever since.
He now has at least mastered changing direction (even if it is often going backward) and seems to move around the floor quite a lot with a combination of rocking, backwards crawling, sitting up and then changing direction so now at least he doesn't become jammed in corners or under the sofa quite so much. This has made him much happier with himself.
I took these photos on the weekend because he has finally managed to make a few proper forward crawling movements although not at any great speed yet and he often gets frustrated and lurches himself forward or tries a commando crawl type action instead.
I was thinking he would be racing around the house by the end of the week but alas a lurgy (cold / flu type bug) has taken hold and the poor little fellow is too exhausted to do more that shuffle around the carpet a little before giving up and needing a little nap.
Hopefully he will be all recovered and back to his usual happy self very soon. In the meantime I think I should finish baby proofing all those corners of the house which I had forgotten about until now.

Non-Newtonian Fluid ... or Cornflour Goo to you and me.

We haven't done very much science for a while so today was a good day for a little play. I found this link for Cornflour Goo at Kids Make Stuff some time ago but I have been putting it off for fear of the mess. However, it is a nice sunny day today so I though we would try it outside.

I only made a small batch (half a cup of water, a little food colour and a bit over a cup of cornflour but we managed to have lots of fun with it any way.
It took a little while to get Junior to give it a prod but once he got his hands in there I couldn't get them out. There was lots of giggling, poking, squeezing, squelching and mucking about and a little discussion about solids and liquids. Not sure if he learnt much but we both had lots of fun. Have a look at the following You-tube clips if you want to see what the goo is like.

Buzz Boy

The dress-up box is a big hit with many of the three year olds in our playgroup and Junior has been quietly interested in its content for a few weeks now. He started out with a fireman costume and tried a couple of the fairy dresses which are a big hit with the girls but he was pretty nonplussed with it all until last week when he discovered the Buzz Lightyear costume.Now he is a changed boy. For the past two weeks he has dug this costume out from the bottom of the basket and when he puts it on a strange transformation take place. He doesn't just looks like Buzz, he takes on the character as well and rockets around the place with a new found confidence which the usually Junior doesn't always express in larger groups!
Imaginative play is such a joy to watch and this week I managed to capture a couple of photos - alas a little blurry in places because Buzz doesn't sit still for very long!

A bit more painting

Apart from the marble painting mentioned in my previous post we have also been doing a bit more painting this weekend. We tried some stencilling using paper doilies.We painted some Liquid Amber seed pods collected from the front lawn. They look a bit like Christmas decorations so it might be time for Christmas in July...
and we finished painting a treasure box we started at a friend house a couple of weeks ago.

We're all marbles here

Yesterday was a nice sunny day so I thought it was a good day for some painting on the patio. We decided to try some marble painting. I put a circle of paper and some paint in a plastic plate (paper plates would have been easier but we didn't have any) and popped some marbles in for Junior to roll around and make pretty patterns. It was also a good opportunity to talk about mixing colours.
This was a big hit with Junior - so much so that I have been unable to retrieve most of the marbles which are now a current favourite.
Out came the marble tower pieces, which entertained both Junior and Aussie Dad for quite sometime and lead to an in-depth discussion of the rules of the game of marbles. All this was very foreign to Aussie Mum who obviously doesn't appreciate the subtleties of the game - but enthralled Junior.

Quick to make and quick to bake...

This week we were a little pressed for time and a little short on ingredients so we settled on an old favourite to feed our play-date visitors - scones.
These reminded me of Zooarchaeologists post on fruit crumble, another staple in our house, because anything that you can cover in cream always goes down a treat with Junior.

A busy week

Well it has been a busy week for Aussie Mum and my boys. Bub had his first experience of day-care with two short days on Monday and Tuesday. He was way too interested in his new surroundings to do very much sleeping but apart from that he seemed quite happy and managed much better than his mum.
Wednesday was play-group and then we all popped into the Kindy Open Day where Junior is enrolled for 4 year old kindy next year. Junior could have stayed all afternoon but we were eating into Bubs nap time so we had to leave early. I also had a Mothers Group dinner in the evening. It was a lovely night out but a late night on top of 7 months of regular night time waking means I'm still trying to recover!

Thursday was playdate visitors and a trip to the park and Friday was Juniors swimming lesson and an early evening pizza at the local Italian with the neighbours. Sigh .... a nice week but sometimes it feels like my little family is growing up so fast that I need to slow down a bit. Looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend.