No dummy again?

Long time visitors will know we had Ciara dummy (pacifier) free for about 6 months last year before she started up with it again (Z gave her one trying to comfort her while she was sick). Since then we've had phases where she wouldn't go to bed with out at least 3 dummies in bed with her, one for her mouth and one for each hand.

Unfortunately she took up chewing on them and refusing to give them up after she got out of bed, so they gradually all went walkabout or got holes chewed in them. We had one last dummy which I saw yesterday also had a hole in the latex, I mentioned this to Ciara and she then went to the bin and threw it away herself. I repeatedly told her that when she throws it away, it's gone and that we have no other dummies but she still wanted it in the bin. She only asked for it once last night but was satisified when I said we had none and reminded her that she'd thrown it away earlier. Today just before naptime she went and got it out the bin but allowed me to chuck back in the bin when I showed her the hole, she has also gone down to sleep with no fuss.

I think we may finally be dummy free (and we will definitely remain as I'm not buying anymore dummies). Now we just got to convince Enya that milk from a cup tastes just as good as milk from a bottle, so I can get rid of the last bottle and then we are free of all baby equipment!

Ladies out for a drive

I love these shots of the girls.

Now please believe me there is nothing staged about these shots (except maybe the fact that they are still long enough for me to get a photo). They go into the bathroom and help themselves to the "gloves" (face clothes) all by themselves, they even sometimes use them as socks. Fantasy play is definitely another tick on the developmental scale!

England vs Germany

Lets just say we had an intra family dispute this afternoon, despite my recruiting the terrible two as back up, we (England) lost. The traitorous two kept getting caught up in the excitement and cheering with all the others, everytime Germany scored a goal (and unfortunately that KEPT happening!).

Enya was all eyes


The kiddies all dressed up

our public viewing studio (the carport)

Wordless Wednesday

Strawberry fields

Guess who has finally decided to eat strawberries




Ciara, not so much! She won't even bring the spoon near her mouth, in case the strawberry leaps off it and in to her mouth.

Just back from visiting a new baby boy in Muenster, looks like a little cute yellow old man, an incredibily well behaved old man though. I find it hard to believe my big girls were once even smaller than him, he seemed so tiny and fragile. The girls were fascinated by him and kept wanting to stroke his head and hands (thankfully this is third healthy child and the mom is very relaxed about the whole thing) although we drew the line at them wanting to pick him up!

That being said for the first time in a long time I wasn't filled with envy for the new mom. I'm actually enjoying the fact that I won't be changing nappies for the next three years or waking up multiple times during the night to feed a baby (just to soothe a restless kid) and that I'm going back to work in 2 months so will have more adult conversations/discussions again!

Second day of kindergarten tomorrow!!

NRW Garden Show

WARNING lots of photos

During my break from blogging Z and I took the girls to our state's garden show and had a brilliant day out. Not so much for the gardens and flowers but rather as the show had fantastic entertainment options for kids.

First of all they had the woodland playground- all the equipment was made of wood and one off constructions, it was set under huge trees so had the feel of a woodland grove (as we went on a hot summer day, it was wonderfully cool in the shade).



You can't see it in this photo but under the metal frame in the backgound is a sand pit with buckets and hoists, access to the sand pit is via tunnels



Next we went to have lunch and right next to the eating area they had a water garden, for some reason I didn't get a lot of photos here but we probably spent a couple of hours here. The girls were fascinated by the water way and I don't think climbed out of it while we were there. There were however lots of other fun equipment in this park: pumps; hoses and fountains, perfect for getting absolutely soaked!




After stripping the girls (thank goodness I had extra clothes because of potty training with), we then moved onto the actual garden area. It was beautiful but only covered a small area. By this time the girls were exhausted and they were shrieking up a storm to the delight of the other visitors!


We finally got the girls to sleep by me pushing them around and around the cool flower hall for about half an hour- it wasn't that big to begin with.



While the girls were sleeping we had to keep on the move so we walked over to the other side og the showground to the rock sea gorge, with it's wooden walkways in to the gorge itself, which was lovely. The girls woke up in the midst of the gorge and enjoyed the fresh greenery with us.




By that time it was getting late so we headed back to catch our bus back to our car (our girls love bus journeys, they cry everytime when we have to get off!).
We made a slight detour to crack the labyrinth before we left though

Needless to say after so much fresh air and movement it didn't take long for the girls to fall asleep on the long drive home. We woke them up to gobble a yoghurt down when we got home but then they were out for the rest of the night. Ahh, I love summer days!

Kindergarten

First day in Kindergarten (for the Americans: In Germany kindergarten starts at 3 years) was on Monday. The girls had a blast, there were bobby cars and slides and did I mention the BOBBY CARS! I think the girls spent 2 of the 3 hours we were there riding round and round the building on the bobby cars. The grounds of the Kindergarten are even better than I thought (we visited in winter so didn't do too much exploring then), lots of up and downhills and plenty of shady spots with playground equipment. I think Ciara and Enya are going to battle with choosing what to play with first as there are lots of "new" toys there.


The best part about the day was they were taken under the wings of older kids (happened spontaneously with no adult orchestrating the shepherding) who then looked after them while everyone was playing outside. After the outside playtime was over, there was a circle time with songs and sitting games, unfortunately by this time Ciara and Enya were fairly wrecked so they didn't really participate- Enya actually laid herself down on the ground cuddling her Cuski and sucked her thumb, she was so tired. After we got home they both slept nearly 3 hours which is a long nap for them now!

We also had a trial run with their kindergarten rucksacks and they both suddenly love them. So much so that even after kindergarten the girls refused to take them off the rest of the day.



I can't believe my babies are getting so big! Ciara in particular looks like a little girl now, she has lost the toddler look completely now!

Summer

I've been very absent this past week and a half, partly because I can't download pictures right now and partly because we've finally had a run of wonderful summer weather and I've spent most of it outside with my two sun loving daughters.

Poor teddies

Now that we are no longer using them the girls are fascinated by nappies. They keep going to the nappy shelf in the bathroom and helping themselves to the disposables and cloth inserts and then trying to put the nappies on themselves, or more recently on their teddies.