The Dower Family

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.