28 Sept 2010

the danger of baking with children.....

....is that they get hold of the ingredients....

.....and spread them all over the floor.....

....OOOPS!!....

...not us mommy, we are little angels

27 Sept 2010

Fairy Tale Evening

Last week we had a fairytale evening at Kindergarten (fund raising for the Kindergarten). The kids have been hearing and learning about fairytales for the last month so it was the logical progression to have the autumn fund raising evening with the same theme.

The kids all came dressed up as their favorite characters (or in our case what we had in the closet!)as did many of the adults. As well as food and drinks we also got to do some crafting i.e. made hobby horses out of sticks and old socks. They even got some parents making elaborate wooden fence slats to replace the old rotten fence (engraved with the kids names on them), unfortunately Z and I ran out of time so we didn't get a slat with the girls' name on it.

So with out futher ado: photos from the evening
The only shot of a hobby horse

fairy princess Enya (plaster on Enya's face is from an accident at school)

Fairy witch Ciara

19 Sept 2010

lots to say today

Most important news first- the girls had another preemie follow up assessment at the Social Paediatric Centre (SPZ) last Friday and ..........






WE'VE BEEN DISCHARGED!! We're going back to see our beloved play therapist once or twice more, just to tie up the last loose ends but the doc says she is happy with how the girls are looking, they are not showing any major delays so get out and enjoy ourselves! We had the 3 year well child assessment on Monday and our paediatrician said exactly the same thing (he ran the SPZ for many years before moving back into general paeds so he's more like a developmental paed really) so we're going with the flow and will be therapy and appointment free for the first time ever. Well, except for the opthalmologist but that is a life long follow up so it doesn't count. Talking about eyes, we were at the orthoptician on Friday as well and I happened to mention to her that Ciara had had a corneal injury a couple of weeks ago, next thing I knew the prof was being hauled out of surgery to come check Ciara's eyes out- everything has healed well but how is that for service? It would never have happened at the Eye Guy's practice!!

Yesterday after a horrendous morning (Ciara decorated our lounge wall with pen, shredded our banking file and scratched Enya's face to ribbons), the sun finally came out so we took the girls out for a walk with their "babies" (the dolls don't have a name, they are both just called baby).


We were hoping to walk some of the beans out of Ciara and it seemed to work, we detoured past the park which for once was quiet so the girls had a ball playing on all the playground equipment the bigger kids are usually occupying.



I know this is a baby swing but it is just so nice to see Enya smiling on a swing especially when it is going high! She goes just as high on the normal swings as well now!!


Today (Sunday) we decided to go into the city as Siegen is hosting the NRW Day (celebrating 65 years of Nord Rhein Westfalen- the state we live in). We'd been warned that there were over 300 000 people expected to visit over the weekend (For comparison about 60 000 people live in Siegen!) and to use public transport, so we did. Busing in this morning was tedious with lots of waiting (thank goodness we had fortified ourselves with delicious choc chip waffles for breakfast ;0) or the meltdowns would have started even earlier) but when we eventually arrived in Siegen we lots to do and see.
On the blue light mile (emergency and military exhibitors)
Army helicopter up close and personal

Safety first



THW (Technische Hilfswerk) Bobby Car race course




After this I stopped taking pictures but there were 16 sound stages scattered around the city centre with free musical or kiddies acts on throughout the day, various free activities (eg. climbing offered by the German alpine club), loads of food and info stalls as well as all the shops being open.

There was so much to look at that the girls couldn't nap so we landed up having to leave around 4pm (we caught the train home- I can't remember the last time I was in such an overfilled train- thankfully the other passengers were all still in really good spirits and no one was drunk or it could have been quite unpleasant). Quick dinner, shower and the girls were fast asleep by just after 6pm and I'm heading for bed too now, sorry can't keep my eyes open anymore :0).

13 Sept 2010

Beds and eyes

2nd post today
Did I mention we had an emergency visit to the opthalmologist last week- Enya hit Ciara in the face with a piece of rolled up paper and injured her eye. Thank goodness although the cornea was injured, Ciara is young enough that it literally healed overnight, she was NOT a happy camper!!


The new big girl beds:
Enya




Ciara


The last photo is a good visual description of how the new beds are working out!!

Kettler Hof visit

Last weekend we took advantage of some (long overdue) late summer sunshine and visited an adventure play park of a different sort. It was huge park divided into various play areas with loads of slides, swings and jungle gyms- so much more suitable for 3 year olds than a huge theme park. I was amazed by how fearless and agile both Ciara and Enya were- climbing rope ladders and going down 3 storey high slides provoked only laughter and cries of "again again".

The Bollerwagen fully loaded

Daddy's girls

The above photo was taken in this "castle"

Riding the race car Enya loved this car

Woohoo WATER!!

Enya's naptime she wilts at around 1pm and will literally crawl into any possible nest to catch some zzz's

Woodland playground

Ponies Kiddies thought these were great, may have to try riding lessons at some stage in the future


More water you noticing a theme here?


Aaaaah, the end of a successful day! Although what is not evident in this photo is the 20 minute melt down Ciara had when we tried to get her in her car seat. Ciara does not do overtired very well!!

9 Sept 2010

sleep update

Got lots of pictures that I want to post but no time to download and sort through them all.

I can't believe how few hours there are in the day now that I'm back at work and sleep is at a premium now that Ciara has discovered 5:30 am. Every morning without fail she crys at this time and then we have to get her out their bedroom as quick as possible before she wakes Enya.We have tried all sorts to get her to sleep longer but now that they are in their "big girl" beds, we have no way of keeping her in bed to "rest" in the morning. (we had to change the beds as they were both climbing out their cots anyway)

Ciara has also done away with the midday nap (she flat out refuses to rest) which means we have the 4-6pm meltdown again, where she is just so tired she doesn't know what to do with herself. Thankfully they are getting a hot midday meal at Kindergarten as she is often so tired in the evening that she won't sit down and eat properly (if we try and force it she has a tantrum) so we've taken to getting her to bed ASAP when the warning signs appear. We've tried pushing the bedtime later but the 5:30am start remains constant, so instead we've opted to putting her to bed a little earlier so she still gets a decent amount of sleep overnight (11 hours)

Enya continues to need loads of sleep and still has her 2 hour midday nap (she comes and tells us she is tired). My feeling is, if the girls didn't share a room, Enya would sleep until well past 7 every morning.