Jack and Katrina's Place

Guy liked swimming so much we took him back to the Karori pool. This time we stopped in at the Warehouse and got him one of those little lycra body suits. Designed to keep sun off little bods at the beach, they also work a bit like little wetsuits and Guy stayed warmer for longer. The pool was busy this Sunday and there were lots of not so little kids yelling and squealing. Guy didn't seem at all worried and kept trying to climb over the railing between the wee baby pool and the kids pool where all the laughing and splashing was going on. He seems confident and relaxed in the water. He crawled about in the shallows and when the water got a bit deeper he switched to crawling with his outstretched arms touching the bottom and his feet kicking the water.

P.S: This Blog entry has been delayed about 48 hours while our wee man had a trip to Accident & Emergency. He was playing on the double bed just before dinner and before I could stop him he twisted around and crawled right off the far side of the bed. He landed on the crown of his head and somersaulted onto his back. When I carried him down stairs he vomitted, and three more times before Katrina could call Healthline. While talking to them he went quiet and then suddenly vomitted again so we went to the Hospital. He seemed to recover enough to eat dinner but it came straight back up so we spent a few hours down there getting stuff checked out. An anxious night followed that none of us want to repeat but he seems Ok now. He is so active and agile now that watching him has become so important.

Here's an interesting photo, courtesy of Krista.

These three men are brothers, The eldest is 6 years older than the youngest. One man is 35 and a father of one. Two of these men are engineers. Two of them work for the government. All three men are engaged. The one who races kayaks doesn't own one, the one who owns kayak doesn't race it and the other owns a yacht. How well do you know them? can you figure it out?

While Jack was jetting over the Pacific, we were very fortunate to have help from both of our next door Neighbours during the busy evening feed-bath-story-bed time. Here are two photos of Guy enjoying his bath with Judy (in red) and Carolyn. Rosemary our neighbour across the road also looked after Katrina and Guy, as she has done in inumerable ways since Guy arrived but I don't have a photo of her. Possibly this is because she helps us out during the most stressful moments, and they are not the times to mess about with the camera! Cousin Amy was also stayed over to keep them company so yes, it does take a village sometimes. Our thanks to you all.

Small Boys and Model Planes.

Mt Ranier and the Cascade Mountains

One Rolls-Royce RB211 on each side -check.

Ready for Inspection

This week Guy has been really good at sleeping through the night, even though Katrina has cut out the 9:30pm 'dream feed'. He goes down at 7:00pm after a story or three and sleeps right through until 06:00 or thereabouts. Jack and Katrina wish they could say the same this week.

Jack had to go up to Seattle to inspect Air New Zealand's latest B777 airliner at the Boeing factory and issue it's certificate of airworthiness. While Jack was away Katrina didn't sleep well, and for Jack it was 22 hours of travelling to arrive on a rainy Sunday evening in Seattle. Depsite being compeltely tired, at 9:00 pm Seattle time your body thinks it's 5:00pm NZ time so sleep is hard to achieve. There were three days to carry out the inspections. Getting up at 06:00 in the rain and dark of a west coast autumn was quite disorientating after the nice long spring days we have been having.

Anyway apart from being tired all day and awake most of the night the inspections went well with no significant problems and at a breakfast meeting on Thursday morning we were able to sign all the certificates and purchase agreements and shake hands and make copies of everything. Then we loaded all the fuel and all the dinner and climbed aboard, 25 people in a 319 seat airliner. We took off just after 12:30 Seattle time climbing up through the misty rain and out over the brilliant endless blue of the Pacific. Travelling with the sun at 850 km/hr the afternoon seemed timeless as we coasted over Hawaii at 40 000 feet between towering thunderstorms. Some of them were billowing up past our cruising level and into the stratosphere with icy caps of wispy pannus cloud as the crew manouvered us through the great canyons between. Jack was watching all this from the middle seat on the flight deck. The crew kept explaining the aircraft navigation systems to him, in return for him keeping them supplied with cups of tea and smoked salmon sandwiches from the galley.

As the sun finally overtook us and set near Samoa, Jack and the other two Air New Zealand engineers got the ovens working and heated up the chicken, salmon or steak dinners. The AirNZ fleet manager who was also on board did the wine service (for the 20 other passengers not the crew!) as we cruised on through the night at mach 0.85. We landed about midnight NZ time 14 hours and 11 323 kilometers from Seattle. The aeroplane weighs 140 tons (empty) and burned about 90 tons of fuel on the trip, (less than normal as we were almost empty of passengers and freight) That was about $60 000 dollars worth so you need a lot of friends if you wanted to go cruising in your private B777.

Enough techno trivia I know you only read this for the photos, here is one of Guy and Katrina the Sunday afternoon I left, some from Seattle, and my little mate when I got home on Saturday morning.

See you in a week

Last weekend we went up to Tokomaru where there is a steam engine museum. Jack's Aunty Lyn, Stephen Alex and Tessa had driven down from Auckland to spend the school holidays with relatives in Fielding. Tokomaru museum has a collection of industrial steam engines saved from factories as they closed. They are all housed in a building and this was one of the days when they fired up the boiler and opened all the valves to turn on the collection of engines. Even the little tank engine was doing laps of the track around the edge of the park. Alex Jack and Stephen share a a fascination for these sort of things. Guy interests we don't know yet, but the whistle certainly caught his attention. He was also very interested in the sheep droppings which he is showing Tessa. While waiting for the museum to open we visited Matatoa nursery and bought two small Miro trees, two Tawas and two Kohekohe for the reforestation of the bottom half of our section.

9 Months old today (Sunday 8 Oct) Guy has been on the outside as long as he was on the inside.

Guy is not only mobile on land, he is a turning into a pretty good little swimmer too. Today we took him to the Karori pool for the first time. He seemed to love it and only tried once to drink it. His little eyes were on all the other children splashing and shouting but was quite relaxed in the shallow water by himself or floating out in the deep water on my arms. Then we found a little kick board and Guy had big smiles as I surfed him through the water on it. In a few more summers Uncle Ian might have to give him proper board riding lessons. Guy was also fascinated by the fountians they had in the pool he kept wriggling towards them until we went through, I thought he might be scared but oh no! he lauged as the spray fell down on us. Another fun game to play.

Guy is crawling! Really crawling, as in chase the cat across the lounge. One day he was sitting and waving his arms like a stranded beetle, and attempting to move onto his hands and knees but chickening out, then a few days later he was off. Maybe its is his regular Fridays at the creche with all the other kids, maybe its just the stage his little brain has reached. Now Katrina's days are even busier keeping the little man from crawling off into trouble and making sure he doesn't pull himself up on things like the heater, clothes airer, couch, toybox, dining room chairs etc. . .

We bought him a little motorbike too, which he likes sitting on but his next challenge is to figure out how to push forward with his legs. Then, we can attempt the 1st descent of the driveway (while Katrina's out!) He's already slipped sideways off the motorbike a couple of times and with his knees boasting a colourful array of bruises from his crawling and crash-landing from pulling himself to standing, Jack is figuring out a way to explain them all to the Plunket nurse!

Guy has been wearing his fuzzy green Pyjamas at night but now he is big enough to wear his very groovy Thomas the Tank engine pyjamas designed by his Aunty Emma. He looks very grown up in them and they are lovely and warm and easy to get on and off, Emma can I get some of these in XXL?
It has been a little bit cooler some mornings so Guy has been into his dressing gown when he goers down stairs to help Daddy make a cup of tea. Well that's what we tell Katrina, actually we play upside down games.

Here is Guy playing in his room with some of his lovely toys. He stands up whenever he can and balances quite well, he is hanging on to the toy box and shaking the soft ball. Sometimes he completley forgets and lets go, quick hands required.