A weird family tradition

In the last week the weather here has been absolutely terrible. We haven't been able to get to a park in over a week and I have had to get pretty creative about rainy day activities. Unfortunately the copy of "Activities to keep toddlers entertained" only arrived in the post today so there has been a reasonable amount of TV time. This might explain why I have had the theme song to "Dora the Explorer" running on repeat in my head all day at work today. It also might explain why Ollie keeps saying "me did it" (as Dora and her pals are always singing "we did it").

Besides watching TV, another activity that has been keeping B amused is hiding. His favourite is to hide behind his hands or his dinner plate but he is also quite partial to hiding his food under his plate or most fun of all, hiding behind a curtain as taught to him by his Aunty Emma.

Here he is showing off his super duper hiding skills. He thinks it is absolutely hilarious when you pretend that you can't see him. Then he reveals himself. Comic gold. It is also often teamed with a recent word acquisition - "Ollie", although it sounds more like "Oddie". He is having a great time talking about himself in the third person - "Oddie do it".

We've been lucky this week to have quite a bit of family time. Thursday saw a visit from Grandpa Peter which Ollie thought was just the best, especially as we just spent the afternoon building cool train track configurations (another trip to Ikea had brought with it some extra pieces of track) and building blocks. Grandpa Peter was very impressed with what a real little boy Ollie has become and I know he is looking forward to lots of time playing with boy toys over the years. Ollie was just as impressed that his Grandpa could whistle. He also spent most of the visit with his tongue sticking out in his super cheeky smile that he has been doing lately. Too cute.

That same afternoon we headed off to Aunty Emma's as she was kindly watching a sleeping Ollie while Nick and I went off to a work function. Emma is totally Ollie's favourite person this week. He has been saying "Umma" all the time and that night as I put him to sleep in his port-a-cot poor Emma had to hear him through the baby monitor calling out "Umma Umma Umma".

Luckily we got to spend some more quality time with Umma on Sunday along with the rest of the Brisbane based family as we celebrated Luke's birthday with another instalment in the second half of the year flat meat festival. This involves us all gathering around while Hayley makes up a giant batch of the now famed 'flat meat'. Some would say that this is just a very thinly sliced schnitzel, but they would be wrong. It is so much more than that. It comes from Nick's Grandmother (I believe) and is a real family tradition for birthdays. Nick doesn't take it as seriously as the rest of us do but it doesn't stop him hooking into it too. This birthday saw Ollie getting his own first taste of flat meat and he is definitely a fan. Looks like next year we'll have to get even more to go around.

Here is Ollie playing with his Aunty Umma. Yet more of the hiding games.

And here are the two of them busting out an impromptu dance party in the lounge room. We were all jumping around to Marvin Gaye and Ollie had the wildest time of all. His dance move is a bit of a hybrid of many styles but features a fairly unique "all fall down" onto his bottom technique. I think it could catch on but probably wouldn't be as comfortable without the padding of a nappy!
While we were all together Ollie took the chance to show of his amazing use of the Ipad. He insists upon playing it every time he gets the chance, loudly demanding "ipad ipad, games games". Thankfully there are some good educational ones we have downloaded for him. He can now actually navigate the menus within his games which is pretty damn spooky. I love this photo because you can see Ollie playing but in the background you can also see the process of making flat meat. That big pile in the middle of the pic is the coated but uncooked flat meat. Think that looks like a lot of meat? There was plenty more than that. Fortunately there were even some leftovers which I'm thankful for tonight as I type this with a belly full of flat meat toasted sandwich!! Bring on Emma's birthday and the next bunch. I might even have to sneak some off Ollie's plate.