The Dower Family

I am loving the small town feel of the area we live in. I've always loved that sense of community you get in a country town, and the more I explore this area the happier I am that it has that vibe. This was particularly evident last week when the local footy team made it to the grand final. All of the businesses had signs up wishing them well, but the best show of support came from the local baker who made the coolest bread I have ever seen - with green and red swirls!! Unsurprisingly Ollie thought this was pretty awesome too and happily devoured all that was placed before him. Speaking of football, the mighty Geelong Cats played in the preliminary final last week against some other team whose name is not worth mentioning. So we busted out the Geelong onesie that Pa Chris gave to Ollie when he was a baby. Thankfully the Cats rose to the occasion and it looks like the onesie will be getting busted out again this coming weekend. Evie was clearly not impressed at being dressed l...

It has been a big week (alright week and a half!) of firsts around here. The first of the firsts is that we have official smiling!! I've endeavoured to capture it for you but Evie is still pretty stingy with the smiles. This is the best I could do. You can see a hint of a smile. She reserves the good smiles for when I poke her on the nose and she even throws a few in the direction of her lovely big brother (although clearly not in this photo). Other firsts include: - first efforts by Evie on her baby playmat. She figured out that if she kicks some things they make noises. Always very cool to watch them make a startling realisation such as this one. And then go on to repeat the same action. - first bath in the big tub. The whole baby bath thing gets a bit tedious after a while so I jumped in the big tub with her and she just loved it. Like Ollie she adores floating on top of the water with her ears submerged and all the sounds of the world muffled (I do a similar thing whe...

One week into being at home on my own and it is starting to feel more normal. I'd like to say we hadn't had a repeat of last Monday's debacle with sleep but unfortunately we did on Friday. And it isn't like I had success on the days leading up to it - Ollie had daycare on Tuesday and Wednesday and then had a fabulous day at the library and the park with Nanna Carmel and Grandpa Rob on Thursday, so he just crashed out in the car. So basically my second attempt at putting them both down to sleep was just as big as a failure as the first. I may possibly have found myself in the midst of a mummy meltdown and next thing I knew I was removing every single toy, book and other item of fun from Ollie's room and piling them up in the hallway. Maybe not my best behaviour but then again, Ollie was equally as awful, using pure strength to push his gate open at the bottom so he could get out. sigh, trying times. But we both got through it (eventually) and thanks to Nick...

Well Sunday was Nick's first father's day as a daddy to two. So of course we had to honour him with twice the love. Present wise he scored some lovely framed photos of the kidlets to take back to work with him, a Darrell Lea dad's bag (a father's day must!) and some cool cufflinks made out of scrabble tiles - the letters "O" and "E". Ollie even helped Nick out with his gifts, saving him the trouble of having to unwrap them himself! We rounded the morning out with pancakes and ice-cream at home before wandering down to the foreshore for the sunday markets. Ollie was lucky enough to have a go on the jumping castle again which is pretty high up his awesome scale right now. He starts his turn out a bit nervous, making sure we are in his sight at all times but before you know it he is tearing through it at breakneck pace to get to the slide, and even better, clambering up the slide rather than going around the long way. He has quite the monkey skill...