We had a our first overseas family holiday last week to Vanuatu, a 3 hour flight from Sydney. I picked Aquana resort because it was voted the best family resort, with nannies and lots of kids activities, though we weren't able to take advantage of the nanny service because you refused to stay with any of the nice nannies there. We did lots of fun activities though, like kayaking around the bay. You were happy to walk around in the life vest and then almost fell asleep on the water while Daddy paddled around. Photos below are from the SLR, I've got more photos and videos on our small camera, will upload in another post.
Here is a video showing the resort and the bungalow we were staying in.
The lovely view at the resort.
The resort had the biggest cat I've ever seen!
You loved wearing the Thomas swimsuit and playing in the pool in the inflatable police car.
You weren't so keen splashing in the lagoon though!
We have an entire box of alphabet books that I bought a while ago. We play with it on and off though not consistently. So imagine my surprise when I randomly tested to see if you knew your alphabet and you correctly pointed to the right letters! You don't know all your letters but you remember 'T' because there is a picture of a train in the book, you also know A, B, K and sometimes M.
Here are some videos when I was trying to prove to Daddy that you knew some of the letters.
You also know some of your colours too. I was changing your nappy, which is a real challenge these days as you always try to wriggle away. So I grabbed the closest book which was one of colours. In a bid to distract you, I asked if you knew where blue was. You flipped to the right page! I then asked for red and yellow and you got them both right. We've been testing you more and you also know green and orange. I'm quite impressed at how you've picked these up. I haven't been able to get videos of you with the colour book because each time you see my phone, you try to grab it to watch Thomas youtube videos on.
Here's a video of your 3rd haircut. I've got a Thomas video on my phone to distract you from the hairdresser.
And yet another video of you with your new Thomas remote control toy. You are so obsessed with Thomas!
Aunty Mandy bought you a lego Thomas train set on Saturday night, so of course all Sunday you were obsessed with the lego train. Everytime you pulled it apart, you would say "uh-oh".
I have a funny uh-oh story of you. On Friday, as I was putting you in the bath, I noticed you were straining to do a poo so I called out to Daddy to grab a nappy so we could catch it before you did a poo in the bath. Daddy came just in time and we managed to catch one of your little nuggets. We thought we were safe. The entire bath you kept saying 'uh-oh, uh-oh". We couldn't figure out why. As we drained the bath, you put you hand into the water and fished out a lump of poo! Daddy and I both went, "Ahhhh" and I quickly grabbed you out of the bath to rinse you in the shower. Daddy had the job of disinfecting the bath and getting rid of the HUGE poo you did!
While I was dressing you after the bath, you went "uh-oh" again and proceeded to do a wee right on the change table, without a nappy on. I got so scared hearing your 'uh-ohs' after that.
Daddy and I decided to head back to Deckhouse for lunch. This is the place where we got married almost 3 years ago. After a yummy lunch, we went for a walk along Woolwich Dock and enjoyed the beautiful view of the harbour bridge.
You're a very confident walker now but still fussy about getting dirty. When we put you down to walk along the dirt track, you asked to be picked up again. When we put you down to walk along the grass, you would lift your feet up high to avoid touching the itchy grass. So high maintenance! haha
It's Spring now and the weather is so lovely. You love going out to the backyard and playing with your trucks and cars. I put up a sand table for you today so you have more to amuse yourself. It was a lovely day to take your sticker photos.
You can understand and communicate so much more now. You even follow our instructions and are learning how to be patient (especially when an app takes a while to load on the ipad). You're also not shy when you like or don't like something. With your recent Thomas obsession, you've been quite vocal about wearing clothes with Thomas on it. I don't even have time to take the clothes down from the clothes line - you want to wear them as soon as they are dry.
You have so many funny expressions. Your most recent one is making what Aunty Mandy calls the "Sharkface". You think it's hilarious and do it all the time!
Shark face!
Here's the sticker video and more photos after the link:
I took these photos last month and had to squeeze it in during a rainy weekend so the lighting in the photos isn't great. You had also just woken up from a nap (hence the bed head) so you weren't the most alert. Your sleepy expressions really make me laugh.
So these past few months you have been OBSESSED with Thomas the Tank Engine. You've been very lucky to have been gifted lots of Thomas toys, books and more recently, clothes. I did take a video this month as well but you kept looking out the window and refused to turn around so I won't bother uploading to the blog.
Here are a few photos of you - you're growing up into such a handsome boy!
We were lucky that the rain cleared up during rainy August and we got a beautiful Sunday to take photos at the local beach with photographer Rebekah Schott (http://www.rebekah-joy.com/)
I did some research for props and fell in love with some family photos with a teepee so I scoured the net and as luck would have it, a teepee that I had my eye on went on sale the week before our photo shoot. I LOVED how the photos turned out! You had a great time playing on the beach and we had a very relaxed session, which I think shows in the photos.
