A lovely holiday

Apologies for the lack of blog last week. We were lucky enough to be freeloading off Nanna Freddy & Poppy Mick down at the coast for the entire week. It was actually quite a full house of family and friends throughout the week with Alicia & Guy coming up from Sydney for the weekend, Peta, Zoe & Jackson joining us on the same weekend and dear friends Jean & Ian popping by for a couple of nights too.

By far Ollie's favourite visitor was his uncle Guy and he talked for days in advance about how he was going to splash Guy in the pool. Of course he gave it a shot but Guy is in a slightly higher weight division that Obear so naturally Guy's splash packed a little more punch - you should have seen the "death stare" he through Guy's way, totally priceless. Luckily all was forgiven and much more tomfoolery was engaged in.

Alicia and Guy endeared themselves even more so to Ollie by bringing him back presents from their recent Fiji trip. O's favourite by far was the ukelele which just looks like a regular sized guitar on Ollie. He doesn't seem to have any natural flair for it but he certainly has a knack for picking it up in the style of rockstars who are about to embark on some hotel room trashing. I can't believe the guitar is still in one piece. Probably just a matter of time.

One of our loveliest days was a trip to Seaworld spent checking out dolphins, sharks, penguins, seals and stingrays. It also marked Ollie's first actual ride on a monorail. As soon as we sat down he started saying "wheeeeee" and totally loved the whole experience. The other passengers in our carriage also got a bit of a kick out of Ollie loving it. They also had a Sesame Street dance performance which I thought would be a big hit. Turns out it is quite scary when you are Ollie's size but he eventually warmed up to it and was sad to see giant red elmo leave the stage.

Another nice activity down the coast was a playdate with an old friend of mine Heather and her lovely almost 3 yo boy Finn. He and Ollie had the greatest time wandering around free range (thanks to a totally fenced off park) for a few hours. They got into all kinds of mischief but happily shared their toys with each other and were extremely sad to see each other go at the end of it.

The rest of our holiday was spent just splashing around the pool and the beach, walks with Nanna in the morning, a bit of shopping and lots of relaxing. It also saw the implementation of my latest attempt to keep Ollie in bed until 5.30am (is this too much to ask, really?). I've been rewarding (bribing) him with little toy dinosaurs each morning if he can abide by a few rules - which he can now rattle off "stay in bed till the sun comes up, no kicking the wall, head on the pillow, quiet as a mouse, no crying, get a new dinosaur!!!". It is very cute to see him reiterating my requests. And many mornings he actually gets it right. We are now up to 13 dinosaurs which is fantastic, but a little concerning as he counts all of dinosaurs in the morning but he can only count up to 13 - so I'm not sure how he will go if he gets one tomorrow morning. But seriously, he can count up to 13!! I am so proud of him. He does such a great job of it now and is really enjoying counting anything he can at any opportunity.

Not such a great development is the introduction of lying. I think I mentioned the other week that he had a fairly active imagination, what with the large number of tigers and bears that are living in our house. But now it seems he is capable of outright fibs. Examples include asking him who knocked over his drink, "daddy" and telling me that he had been in bed when the sun came up when I knew he was standing at the end of his bed. I guess it is just a normal developmental thing but it is still so weird to see this sweet innocent little angel trotting out great big dirty lies. What is next, will he be telling me he has a playdate when really he is going to hang out with his friends??

And here is a sweet little movie to leave you with. This is Ollie rocking out his ABCs- obviously his alphabet is a little shorter than the standard 26 letters but nonetheless I think it is pretty impressive and clearly so does he! Enjoy.