More bits and pieces

Dada left for Austria last night, prob hit the ski slopes while bubbi and I took nate to see an old police car that looks like sheriff in the movie, cars. We also got a daisy sprinkler for the boys to run in and out of as the weather heats up... and we also took them to the lonehill fire station to look at the fire engines.

Apparently all the firemen / women there are volunteers, the driver seat door is kept open so that they can run in... there is a fire pole and best of all... we can use the place for a birthday, so guess where the boys will be having their birthday party this year?! what a great theme? hopefully its not too late to book.

Here is Ike with his bag of M&Ms, Nate with fake bad teeth, I took him to the ped dentist who said the same thing about him knocking his tooth and it turning black. Just have to notice if the gum gets worse... apparently he would not clean the kids teeth till 4 1/2! they will definitely look like the one in this pic!

Nate and Ike on a ice cream truck ride... 2 rand per ride! Ikes first motion car and he seems to really like cars and big fire engines!

Ike at a toy store, pressing all the buttons and very unhappy to leave. This walking business is very calorie consuming for mommy!

Nate's saturday

is "dada is my best friend day".... where he says, "I don't need to go to school today..."

He now has karate with dada... then they go get a ginger bread man, head for a haircut, sushi together, dada rests! and then we all go out to make pizza. While dada rests, mama takes him for a walk, we see a stalk full of yellow ladybirds.

Next pics of Ike who has learnt that pizza place has very magic beans (M&Ms) he now wants his own bag and does not place premium on colors, he does have this habit of sucking it a bit, spitting it out to look at it and then sucking it again.

Over energetic kids

Between the power cuts... a max of 3 times a day and a max of 2 hours each time, ike's short naps (the last two days only 45 mins), carrying ike and their grumpiness at the end of the day, I have no energy to contribute to this blog!!!

The past week, Ike has started his classes, a very nice baby class on monday where he was introduced to some musical instruments (prompting bubbi to go out and buy some!) and where he got to put his hands into jelly, play dough, gooey stuff and paint. The other class was more a motor skill class with jog the frog at clamber hell.

Bubbi has also updated Ike's wardrobe with 2 pairs of new shoes (in case one is wet), the shoes that we have in stock from nate are a tad big, like 1.5 sizes but with the walking ike has been doing, the shoes will wear out before he gains a size.

We have had alot of rain... it was almost like being in Taipei again, the last two days were at last sunny. The electricity cuts here has caused the govt to close many mines and so prices of precious metals will soar, everyone add gold and platinum to their portfolio and not thru SA mining companies! My friend christine, being the super entrepreneur she is, will be bringing in Aussie solar technology, with german certification but manufactured in China. Apparently the Chinese have these installed and sell excess energy back to the govt to combat the energy shortage they will face!

Ike is of course happiest with his broom... of all the things to do at mugg and bean he picked the broom...

Took Ike to the lion park yesterday.

Ike's mileage

This is Ike with a big big smiley face after a good nap, we had another electricity outage but some steamed broccoli and cauliflower, here he is happy to get a big one in each hand and devours both of them.

So it was raining, I head to the supermarket with Ike, before leaving I change his diaper. We get there and finish our shopping, luckily the supermarket had generators and when we finished shopping he wanted to push his own little cart, to kill time before picking nate up, I take him to the garden shop and there was one last pair of tiny boots.

It is a bit big for him but not bad, he loved them, he went everywhere with them. Its quite a challenge balancing in them for him but he really liked them. Then his diaper smelled funny and there were no more diapers in the bag! So I head home and when we get home he parades in front of Bubbi with his new boots (she was immobile as she was getting a manicure and pedicure), change his diaper and head out to pick up nate from school.

Everyone in school said how sweet he looked toddling around in his booties and making splishy splashies. We get home, he is really reluctant to take of his boots but do and then goes down for another nap. In the afternoon, his gege, shows him how to make really big splish, splash splosh. I did not get a shot of him in his boots so I have taken a picture of all his shoe assets now. I think soon he will be able to wear alot more of the shoes that nate did not get much mileage in but knowing me... he will more likely be like a typical South African kid... barefoot! because I keep forgetting to grab his shoes on the way out!

Mother In Laws....

As I am typing this, marcia asks, "what are you writing about me...?", heh heh.... well I said I need to take a picture of her toe nails before her pedicure tomorrow as they are soon resembling bullet's and pistol's long curved claws...

Here is Marcia with the director of the Holocaust museum in Cape Town. She has also met the director here (the holocaust museum is being built). With Nomsa on break I have been experimenting in the kitchen, she has managed to stay alive by avoiding the food I make. Today I made barley water (for kids, read : frog eggs in pond scum). We also made really good chocolate cupcakes which she says she only had one, and the half that nate did not like... but loren's chocolate mint bars are disappearing at a fast rate.

Her consumption of salads rival loren's and the worms... and the dogs are happy that they have someone to cuddle with in front of the TV. Until she learns to input on this blog or her own.... there will yet to be an entry on "daughter in laws (from that hot hot place down south)"

stray pics

ok I pinched these off our friends that were also in cape town... the penguins in Simon Town... drinks at Relish and the new year eve dinner.

What 2008 has brought so far...

1.) lots of electricity cuts or "load shedding", we sometimes get as much as 2 cuts and for several hours... loren is looking into providing all staff with home electricity generators, I am beginning to feel like I live in Indonesia. Every day we have to cook our meals while we have electricity. Today I spent 45 mins getting to a place that should take no more than 15 mins because the traffic lights are out.

2.) a mobile ike - which keeps our eyes and toes in shape, he can push hard to get out of your bear hug and head in directions he wants to go... he wants to look like dada (sunglasses and all) and copies nate's actions alot. My strategy was to have a model first child that will show the second child how to be a model child but nate has hit the "independent three's" of "I, I, I, me, me, me, want, want, want...."

3.) a more communicative ike, instead of uh's and simple pointing I taught him the hand signal for "more" unfortunately he thinks its the signal for "yummy chinese new year cookie" and "MORE yummy chinese new year cookie"

4.) lots of rain (I call it cloud shedding), this year is a lot wetter than last year, we have had 5 days of nice sunshine and today, nate's first horse riding class of the year... it rains from 1pm to 6pm, big thunder show, at least so far we have not had a lightning bolt that has taken out our electronic equipment like Christine.... all electronic good need to be replaced. From my swimming pool, it looks like we got 2 inches of rain, I hope they did not drown my worms.

Even the crabs are wandering out beyond the pond, nate and I spotted this one in our rain gear at least 20 feet away from the pond.

5.) Nate and nightmares, he has hit the nightmare age, says that there are monsters under his bed, I said that could be fun since Mike (Wakowski?) and Solly will be visiting him, worked for a day... last night the nightmare was someone taking his toys. He wakes up twice a night and if not.... then he did a 4:45am and not go back to sleep. Between the dogs, his waking up and the birds.... I now am developing eyebags, its like deja vu of Jan 2007, waking up to breastfeed, well actually not as bad because I don't need to burp and change someone's nappies.

Gruesome Twosome

Well the cape town holiday is feeling further and further away like a dream, we hit the bird park, and also Constantia a wine region for a lovely lunch. Photos all on loren's phone...

Since coming back, nate has had a hard time adjusting to his bed, or rather sleeping alone again. Today was with the least of fuss. When Ike wakes at 6am nate would wake at 445am (today), when nate wakes at 6am, ike does the 5am, so its really a loooong day.

Nate seems to be adjusting well to his new class, there is a hamster called einstein that he likes take care off. He even wants to take einstein back for the weekend (allowed) but our dogs will have him as a snack. Initially he thought einstein is a hedgehog too, maybe if we gelled its fur he could somewhat resemble one.

Ike is starting to run... even though he is walking less than a month. he even wants to get on his bike (nate's old black bike) to practice.

The weather is nice and warm again, for a week when we got back it was rain rain and more rain, it felt like taipei. Now we get electricity cuts twice a day (thinking of buying a generator...) and that impedes on computer use time.

Nomsa is on break for 2 weeks.... we have Mercy but I have taken up to cooking again... today I made a haloumi cheese, egg, green pea and brown rice fried rice. With (lots of) ketchup it was quite a hit.

Marcia and I signed up for a mosaic class when nomsa comes back.

Nate in Ike's clothing, a bit tight... but I didn't get a chance to run up to get his clothes, we took it off later and had 2 naked kids running around, we just bought the crazy daisy sprinkler and waiting for a sunny hot day.

Franshhoek - 30 hours of bliss.

On christmas eve, we got to escape to Franshhoek, which is 40 mins away from Cape Town and is a small quaint wine region. We got there at about noon and had a great yummy lunch with wine (we did not have to deal with kids!). The town is kind of like a smaller version of Stowe in Vermont (am not sure why I did not take a picture of the town). I did however take a picture of their herb garden, which sells plants and educates people about herbs but is strangely manned by two rastafarians, that smelled like they have been very involved with "herbs".

We tried to hit a few vineyards but everyone had more or less closed early for Xmas (we'll have to go back!!), the only place open was a new champagne grower. So we went back to our really nice hotel, Le Franshhoek Hotel (again no picture!) and we went for a full body massage and got ready for dinner. It was starting to feel like the days before kids.

We booked a spot at Le Quartier Francais - The Tasting Room, but Loren did not get a spot in the "chef special spot" as the waiting list is 3 months long. We got there and... lucky us... someone just cancelled! we got in!! Apparently they are voted one of the top 10 restaurants. Here is a sampling of our 8 course meal with different wine pairings that took 4 hours to eat, the time flew by really quickly though. They had a really nice beaded reindeer as decoration (and I didn't take a pic as well!!!)

Seared scallop, parsnip puree, asparagus, hot oyster mousse.
Chilled tomato water, black olive and parmesan jellies, liquid basil ravioli.
Pan fried foie gras, fig and yoghurt panna cotta, peach relish, brioche.
Bitter chocolate, praline and guinness log with ice cream

Anyway this meal inspired us to finally hit Auberge Michel in Joburg this Friday.

On Christmas day, everything was closed :( so we had a big breakfast (lunch was booked out) went for a nice long walk, went back to the hotel to take a nap, awoke to this big big rainbow (see pic) and then had our facials and sauna steam room to detox and headed back to reality................ the kids were fine! Ike was walking when we got back and nate was very well behaved.

Photoshoot

I will continue with the cape town entries soon, today we did a photo shoot as a favour to a yoga friend of mine, she is a photographer and does shoots for magazines, we'll be on the April issue of some mom and child magazine and with the written interview I did some months ago about the kids favourite toys and food and the parenting books I am reading.

Here's a shot from the shoot today.

So my friend gets alot of good assignments, she does for gardening magazines (maybe they will feature my worm farm next?) and women's magazines (so she gets to shoot hot men with rippling bodies - am sure those sessions are longer than the one's with moms and kids).

Sciencenter and amusement parks

No misspelling in the title, the science center is called the sciencenter, its a really well done one with construction sites and gravity and balls and kits of all sorts, we were there 3 times and the kids would want to go more times than that, luckily its attached to a large mall to do some shopping.

Dada took nate to the amusement park with oded and roni and idan. While I took anat shopping. Will need dada to transfer me the pics, will be in a later post...

At the V&A mall there was a large toy store called the Toy Kingdom. There Nate found a huge thomas the train and cars.... he could have spent alot of time staring at all the trains! Uncle Peter got him Jeremy the Jet set! Another train set!

Here's Nate feeding Ike chocolate ice cream and dada passed out... we also got Madagascar the DVD and Nate sings, New york, new york... and Happy birthday to you, you live in the zoo, you look like a monkey and you smelllll like one toooooo...

The beach and Table Mountain

The second day we woke up to clear skies and decided to go up table mountain, we were not in too long a queue for the cable car. Its a spectacular view up the mountain and visitors can walk around the table top. You also get a great view of cape town, camps bay and the V&A where they have trains (thomas!). cranes (cranky) and boats (bulstrode).

Pic of the boys on top of cable mountain. Another shot of Nate and Ikea t the aquarium, by chance they wore the same shirt. These things are never planned on my part! Its hard enough getting their tops and bottoms coordinated.

The beach has nice white sand, different parts of the beach has different sand, loren could run on the packed sand and enjoyed his 15km runs in the morning. One beach we went to had little pools where there were tiny green starfish. The water however is freezing freezing cold, I think in the single digit.

Ike loved the ocean and would head straight for the waves, my feet were numbed from the cold immediately and he wanted to go deeper! One day on the morning walks, a man shows us some triangular black objects that he picked up, he claims they are fossillised shark teeth. There sure were alot of mussel shells on the beach, almost like a big chinese feast and the left over shells strewn all over the beach. Also on morning walks were many dogs of all shapes and sizes. Bullet would have loved the ice cold waters.

On our last day we even saw a seal come close to shore, jump around the waves and sometimes see its black silloutte, unfortunately, the seal was probably looking for its baby which washed up to shore.

Two Oceans Aquarium

The first and last pic is of Ike... the 21st when we left joburg he was not walking yet, on the morning of the 24th he took his first steps or rather his first 25 steps before falling! Ike is on the move now...

Cape town has tonnes of stuff to do and is really one of the most gorgeous cities in the world. We got a 3 bedroom beach house and hit the beach everyday except on the really windy days, on the beach as well on good days are many kite surfers. The view of Table Mountain from our beach.

On the first day we also hit the aquarium, santa was feeding the predator fish, it is a great aquarium and if you plan to go twice or more times you should definitely get the yearly pass that will get you the "club" membership to cut queue esp. in peak periods like a week later.

If you don't want to dive with the real big great white sharks... you can also do the aquarium tank dive. I wonder if you can see the people like they can see the fish?

There was a rather strange puppet show too on recycling and reuse, of the three set ups, one involved a recycling plant, an exploding toilet and a talking poo poo as the main character for passing on the message. For days Nate could not stop talking about the "talking poo poo". He even announced that his poo poo does not talk! For days he wanted to go back and see this puppet show but when he got there he was afraid as he knew the toilet would explode at some point in time!