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. ...

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...

Love seems to be Ollie's word of the week. It has been in his vocabulary for quite sometime but this week it seems to be used for everything. Examples of things Ollie loves: - suncream (as in "I LOVE suncream") - Aunty Emma - Trees - the cooler (meaning the air-conditioner in the car) - Groceries - Ice cream - Dora (no surprise there) - Balloons - And of course mummy and daddy We made a return visit to Seaworld this week (our tickets get us in now until the end of financial year) along with Nanna Freddy. This gave us a chance to check out a few things we missed out on the trip before like the dolphin show which was just amazing. Obear kept saying "more more" throughout the show so he definitely got a kick out of it. He also enjoyed another visit to the penguin house where they were swimming in the underwater bit catching fish and doing the most unbelievable propulsions out of the water. He also sat still for 15 minutes watching a 3D version of Happy Feet w...

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 favourit...

Ollie was lucky enough to have a visit from his Grandpa Peter on the weekend. All the sweeter because he brought Obear an awesome (and VERY noisy) police car. The two of them had a great time racing it up and down the hallway and worked up such an appetite that they had to demolish lots of pancakes with ice cream to rebuild their energy. Grandpa was very impressed with Ollie's language skills, particularly his many requests for "Grandpa come play me". This little line is getting trotted out a lot lately and is very adorable. Don't you just love the smell of commerce in the morning? Ollie does, he is quite the little capitalist since he got his own cash register at Christmas time. We've since filled it with Monopoly money (we can't use it to play the game as we always end up fighting - seems we were brought up on completely different rules - Nick is fiercely competitive while I don't care about the hotels and just want to drive my little silver car ar...

It has been a reasonably uneventful week around here which is quite nice in light of all the drama of late. Ollie and I had a great playdate with our old mother's group at an indoor play centre which was just out of control in a really fun way. We had been to this play centre in the past but it just seemed like something really clicked for Obear and he was climbing up everything, scaling the second floor of the play equipment and totally loving sliding down the really steep slides. In the past I've had to go right into the equipment with him to supervise but this time we got to be really slummy mummies and just pulled up chairs at the front of the playground and let them run wild. Bunch of big two year olds that they are. More indoor play, this time on the weekend. Nick graduated Ollie's trike to the next level, taking off the back and side support and engaging the pedals. Ollie wasn't too sure about turning the pedals himself but after some encouragement from Nic...