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.