The Dower Family

It has been a very busy week around here. Thursday saw us spending the afternoon with Nanna Carmel and Aunty Emma which Ollie always gets such a kick out of. My favourite part of the afternoon was watching Ollie shaking his hands at the dogs and saying "shush" to them, just like Nanna! Friday was Ollie's first date. Well play date at least. B has a girl friend at daycare called Maddy and apparently they love each other. She calls him "Ollie-ba" and tells other people that he is hers. Even the daycare teachers are joking that they will have to be invited to the wedding since they were the ones who introduced them. Not wanting to stand in the way of true love, I organised a playdate with Maddy's mum (who has recently moved to the area too) at the little library. It was quite funny seeing the difference in Ollie's behaviour when she was there. For some strange reason Ollie is a bit shy at the little library (as opposed to the boy who jumped out of ...

There has been a fair bit of bread around this house in the last few days thanks to my belated mother's day/credit card point redeeming purchase of a breadmaker. I've been looking into it for quite a while so I'm over the moon to finally be able to bake my own bread with the greatest of ease. I'd love to have a photo to show you some of my efforts but they keep getting gobbled up. It probably isn't conducive to a low carb diet (not that pregnant ladies should be holding out on carbs, or chocolate, or danish, or brownies...) but it fits in well with my gradual efforts to try to make more things at home in an effort to limit the amount of processed foods we consume - which was fairly limited anyway. So far I'm making yoghurt each week (truly yummo), now bread and I've tried muesli bars with limited success but continued enthusiasm. Next on the list is to bottle some delicious pasta sauces using up the overwhelming supply of basil and oregano I have growing...

Well I have now been lucky enough to have three mother's days and they seem to get even more fun as Ollie gets older and is able to understand the concept a little bit. This year it started off with a lovely morning tea at Ollie's daycare on Friday. There were lots of mummy/Ollie activities for us to get involved in but my favourite had to be making me a beautiful coloured pasta necklace. I may have had to finish it off myself when his interest waned but that didn't make it any less special. I actually have been wearing it quite a bit however had to finally take it off on Monday after I kept finding broken sharp bits of pasta in my shirt. We also embraced our own mother's day craft at home, making some lovely photo frames for Nanna Carmel & Nanna Freddy to give them over the weekend. Obear was much more enthusiastic about this task, possibly too enthusiastic as the painting wasn't restricted to the intended area. Thank goodness for water based paints. On t...

You might recall about 18 months ago we set up what was known as "Camp Ollie" on our back deck at the old place. It was the perfect play area for a much younger Ollie to roll around while I could relax a bit as well. This was the idea behind our latest DIY project around here, a new and improved Camp Ollie, and Evie!!! So with our downstairs previously unused deck as the location and the desire to create an area that gave us a bit more variety of play options on the many days we will have at home in the near future, we have been trying to figure out how to tackle this for a few weeks. Ideas of expensive outdoor furniture gave way to a great ebay find of some very old cane chairs and a bit of vision, a trip to Ikea, a few nights on the sewing machine sewing new covers and an afternoon of Nick spraying the chairs (well most of them) and this is what you get, all for the grand total of $200 (including some green tubs for toys which you can't see). I'm pretty happy ...

It never rains but it pours - unfortunately for us, all of Ollie's grandparents have been residing in far flung places since he has been born, so it is not that often that he gets a chance to catch up with them. Well this past fortnight has been a grandparent bonanza with Nanna Carmel and Grandpa Rob back from Canada, Nanna Kaye & Pa visiting from New York and then a day later, Nanna Freddie from the not so glamourous Cloncurry. So as you can imagine it has been a pretty hectic time. Not surprisingly Easter has been the big focus around here, and as you can tell from the top photo, Ollie LOVES chocolate. He has received way too much of it and has eaten a lot more than I anticipated. But thankfully it only happens once a year. Another thing we have consumed a fair few of is hot cross buns, although Ollie has given them his own name - window buns. If you've got any leftover have a look at them, they totally look like a window. I think he might be onto something. Here i...

This week saw the double whammy celebration of baby Henry's 1st birthday and christening. I think it actually might have been heathen Ollie's first visit to church in over two years. Nick and I had some concerns that he may start melting upon entering the church doors but turns out he was alright. Alright, but definitely not on his best behaviour. Within two minutes of being in the church Nick was chasing Ollie up to the altar to retrieve him from under the table thingy (alright so I'm a bit of a heathen too) and getting in trouble for eating the snacks I'd prepared to keep him quiet during the ceremony (who knew you couldn't eat in church?). So quiet he was not. But fortunately there were a bunch of kids and all seemed to have forgotten their church manners so it wasn't like Obear was the naughtiest one there. Actually he managed to even stay relatively quiet when he came up to the microphone with Nick and I while we did a reading. I'd had all kinds...

Defiance seems to be the word of the week around here. Ollie is all about testing the boundaries at the moment. It doesn't matter what the context, he just wants to see how far he can push it. This is especially evident in his latest saying, "not yet". As in: - it's time to go home - not yet - it's time for dinner - not yet - it's time for bed - not yet You get the picture. He still isn't anywhere near a naughty boy, but it is a bit of a shift to see him trying it on. We've had lots of fun stuff going on this week with a trip back to our old hood for a morning of play with the neighbours. And then another trip back that way on the weekend to spend some time with Sam, Alan, Audrey and Henry. Ollie's love affair with Audrey hasn't dampened any lately and he is always asking if he can go to her house so I was happy to use this as some leverage for a few days in the lead up to the trip to try and wrangle some good boy behaviour out of him. ...

We were long overdue for a catch up with the Brisbane based aunties and uncles so we all headed down to our favourite park just a few streets from our place for a laid back Sunday evening early dinner. The weather managed to hold out for us so Ollie was able to have the best time tearing around the park with his Aunty Hayley - I'm genuinely not sure who had the best time but judging from the look on Ollie's face in this picture, it might just have been him. After all the running around that took place we had to carb load (with a fairly hefty dose of fat too) with fish and chips all round, except for Aunty Em who thoroughly enjoyed world's best and biggest burger (Em, you owe me one - I decided against including a pic of you eating it!). Mind you, Obear would have happily just eaten tartare sauce with a spoon. Once home he entertained Hayley and Emma with his antics in the bath and then put both of their reading skills to the test with lots of pre-bedtime stories. Needle...

Well last week we finally had our big scan for Dower baby #2. The main purpose of the scan is to check all of the baby's measurements, organs etc to make sure that everything is as it should be. Thankfully for us everything was absolutely perfect. The other exciting thing about this scan is it is when they can tell you the sex of the baby, if you want to know. Of course, we definitely wanted to know. We found out with Ollie and were really glad that we did - it is still a surprise, just a little bit earlier. I was 100% convinced that we were having a little boy while Nick thought we were having a girl. However he did change his mind on that when the technician asked what we thought we were having. Turns out that wasn't a smart move as we ARE HAVING A GIRL!!!!!!!! Have a look at how beautiful she is... Mind you I'm still not convinced that it isn't a boy but Nick keeps pointing out that not one, but two technicians looked at it and told us it was a girl. But if...

We were lucky enough to have a little mini-break over the weekend up at beautiful Kings Beach. Our good friends Sam & Alan (along with Audrey & baby Henry) were heading up there to catch up with some other friends who are visiting from Canada with their two little boys. We thought it was too good a plan not to get on board so we enjoyed a nice long weekend up there. We may have enjoyed ourselves but there are not words to describe what a good time Ollie had. He is so madly in love with Miss Audrey and just adores baby Henry so much (read: lots of kisses and cuddles/headlocks for him) so any time he gets to spend with them is wonderful. But throw two lovely little northern hemisphere boys into the mix, a bit of beach time and just generally tearing around the place and you have quite possibly stumbled onto the mix for Ollie's perfect weekend. Ollie actually started off the weekend declaring that he did not know Will and James but he warmed to them instantly and before lo...

I seem to be starting this blog a lot lately with apologies. This week it was illness that has delayed publication. One of the real joys of daycare is that kids seem to pick up every single germ that is going around, and unlike most things, are more than willing to share them. So it came to be that all members of this family found themselves off work/daycare early this week wallowing around the house in our tummy bug related misery. But all is well again and I appear to have made it to my Friday in record time this week! Perhaps our illness was related to a busy weekend? Friday night saw Nick going to the Chemical Brothers along with Aunties Hayley, Emma and Uncle Simon as well as pretty much everyone else in the entire town. I felt completely left out but no one really wants a pregnant chick hanging out at these types of affairs. Plus the weather was pretty awful so I was probably better off sitting on the couch watching trashy wedding shows on TV and eating ice cream. Saturda...