Fatherhood Friday 21: Amanda Makes me Smile
No pics of kids this week back to that next week 🙂
While I was cleaning up the kitchen this morning I spotted a note between the cleaning products…
On closer inspection this is what it said…
Not sure if it was for me or for those hiding in plain sight that I possibly can’t see… Either way it made me smile so I took these images and then put it back 🙂
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8, ISO 200
Fatherhood Friday 20: Amanda and Sam Go South
This week Amanda and Sam spent most of the week in Dunedin visiting Amanda’s Nanna who was in hospital.
All I can say is WOW! how easy is it to look after one kid not two 🙂 Me and Emily ended up going to the beach and having a picnic on Wednesday and then going swimming at the pool after Playcentre on thursday.
It might have also helped that Krispin (a friend currently living in Aus) came to visit (Amanda flew out in the morning on Tuesday and Kris flew in in the afternoon) and Emily really enjoyed playing with him.
All in all it has been a pretty cruisy week 🙂
Sam has now advanced from walking to running and apparently had a great time with her cousins in Dunedin
Emily had a pretty good week at home probably feeling like an only child again with all the attention she got 🙂
Rollieflex 2.8E with 35mm Rolliekin Adaptor, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film.
FatherHood Friday 19: More Conversations With Em
Yet another week draws to an end. We have had a pretty good week with everybody being well for a change (although Amanda seems to be coming down with a cold again)
Samantha is up and walking around now and seeming to be a lot less frustrated as she chases Emily and the cat Luc (next door neighbours cat who comes to hang out most days) around the house. Teething has also taken a bit of a break this week 🙂
Took the extra wheel of Emily’s running bike and took her to the bike track across the road (still not finished). After a few near crashes she got the hang of it pretty quickly and was racing round.
Conversation with Emily:
“Dad…we had a good day today riding my bike at the bike track and then at the beach didn’t we?”
“We sure did Em”
“Mum didn’t have as much fun as we did, did she?”
“Probably not”
“All she had was “Crap! Crap! Crap!” Cause she forgot her cellphone charger didn’t she”
“<Speechless>”
Emily Monkey.
Sam on a Slide
Amanda helping me out with a lighting setup…
Fatherhood Friday 18: The Return of Wild Hair
Another week down. This week has seen the return of colds mostly all round and continued teething from Sam.
Conversation of the week with Emily:
“Dad, dad”
“Yes Emily”
“Dad…Do you remember when Sam was sick?”
“Yes I remember”
“And the Doctor was closed and we had to got to the other doctor and Sam was crying lots and lots?”
“Yes I remember”
“And we had takeaways for lunch… I liked that, can we have takeaways for lunch today?
“No Emily” 🙂
Teamwork. Emily taking Sam down the slide… It doesnt seem very long ago when kids were doing this with Em 🙂
Emily at Playcentre with some wild hair.
Kinda hard to see but Sam fell asleep the last time we went out street shooting. In hindsight I should have gone into a shop and asked to use their mirror to get this shot because its kind of hard to see here.
Fatherhood Friday 17: Ummm Make That Saturday
Been busy for the last couple of weeks so have got a couple of oldies from my camera phone… Both are a few years old now
Wow looking at these I can’t believe how much she has grown up 🙂
No pics of Sam this week but she has started walking a little bit and decided to do it when Amanda was working late for the first time since Sam has been born 😦
More recent pictures next week I promise.
Fatherhood Friday 15: Teething…You Want Sleep With That?
Samantha is currently working on a couple of molars as well as a coupler of eye teeth. She has pretty much stopped eating solids and is relying mostly on breast milk. This means that she is waking every couple of hours at night because she is hungry and mostly grumpy during the day because Amanda is at work and only feeds her once at lunch time.
Emily is excited about going to see her cousin Alex this weekend after missing her birthday last weekend due to a vomiting bug.
At least no-one is sick…Touch Wood!
Luc the cat comes to visit on rainy days… Not sure why.
Fatherhood Friday 14: Back From The Snowy Mountain.
Emily and I got back from the “Snowy Mountain” on Tuesday after having many adventures and narrowly missing being snowed in for a couple of days by only 6 hours.
Emily:
She got to play with her two cousins Ben and Harry and go sledging, have snowball fights and generally romp round being a kid in snow.
Grandma and granddad were both impressed with her fearlessness in the snow considering she has never seen it before and she only got a bit scared when she got snow down her coat and didn’t like the cold.
She was very sad to leave and spent most of the two plane rides saying that she missed Grandma and granddad. To make things even more exciting our flight from Queenstown was late and they had to delay our flight from Christchurch in order for us to catch it.
Dad:
Oh and I got to go skiing for a day! First time back on skis in something like 13 years… It was awesome… 10 years of race training hadn’t gone to waste although much fitness had…I was hard pressed to keep up with my Dad who skis 70 days a year, although I think I gave him a run for his money on our last run… Was a pity I didn’t get to ski with my brother, although things might have got a bit competitive (and he would have lost) 🙂
Snow Angels on hard packed snow don’t work very well… Especially if they are in the middle of a ski run.
Emily Skiing with Uncle Jeff
Samantha:
Had a good weekend with just Amanda having some 1 on 1 time and even slept in til 8am one morning while we were away (this is pretty much unheard of).
On Thursday she came down with something and after a couple of hours of not wanting to be put down we took her to the doctor where she immediately perked up and started playing with the toys in the waiting room. By the time we got to see the doctor she way pretty much fine and he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. So of course as soon as we got home (like 30 seconds after we got in the door) she threw up all over Amanda.
Today she seems back to herself but has passed it on to her sister (and possibly me).
I’m on a Log
Fatherhood Friday 13: A Week of Random Occurances.
At last! The colds seem to be going away! Yay!
On the down side it seems to be getting quite a lot colder… yay winter… not.
Me and Emily are heading down south this weekend to go and see the grandparents who are currently living on Coronet Peak ski area. This will be Emily’s first real experience of snow and should prove to be a weekend of highs and hanging out with the whanau.
Amanda and Samantha get to stay at home and have some alone time.
Anyway on to the random occurences:
Being yelled at by a road work stop/go person (you know the ones who have the signs to make traffic stop or go) for not going even though their sign was on stop.
Being asked how old my “son” was even though she was dressed entirely in pink (and I mean pretty much all over pink).
A random log of wood rolling down a hill just as I was driving past and slamming into the side of the car (luckily it just hit the wheel so no damage done).
Customers at work trying to return Passport photos because they didn’t realise how easy it was to do themselves (because they were both “photographers”).
Sorry that kinda almost turned into a rant and kinda didn’t really have much to do with kids (except the pink one) but im done now… Honest.
Emily:
Emily has been steadily getting better after antibiotics and is so excited about going on a plane and going skiing that she is having trouble focusing on anything for very long. At her crèche they played the kids a cartoon version of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” which has led to a few nights of very unsettled sleep (admittedly they did send an email home saying that they were going to) and is it just me or does that seem a little too scary for 4 year olds?
Emily in the not yet completed “Bike Track” mud puddle.
Samantha:
Has worked out that I have been using a decoy book in order to stop her taking out my bookmark and has resumed hunting it down and me spending 5-10 minutes a day trying to find out where I am up to.
She is continuing to pick up words on almost a daily basis although her favourite still seems to be “hot hot hot”.
She is also showing a tenacity unparalleled in human existence which means that she will continually go back to something (TV, wall plugs, food on the floor, anything that is Emily’s) over and over and over again, even if you put her into a different room and tell her “No”.
Her favourite place at the moment seems to be under the table, mostly because its hard for me to get under. She sits there and laughs at me as I try to coax her out without me having to go under myself. It usually ends by her banging her head on a chair, crying and coming out in order to be cuddled.
Sam in her All-in-One ski suit…Oh and Amanda’s in there too.
Nikon F5, 50mm f1.8mm Lens, Ilford HP5 400 ISO film.
Fatherhood Friday 12:
Still inundated with colds… Emily is now on antibiotics and it sounds like we are a house full of smokers… a coughing symphony if you will.
Emily and I are going skiing in a couple of weeks (yes I have already worked out what camera equipment I am going to take) and Grandma and Grandad sent Emily up some mittens and goggles hence the photo. Thank you Grandma and Grandad! We are both looking forward to coming down to see you.
Samantha: Seems to be the most healthy one here and is getting into as many things as possible while the rest of us are being a bit slow to react.
Both pictures from this morning
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200. f1.8 at 1/200th of a second.
Fatherhood Friday 11: We like books… Sometimes to Eat.
Colds,colds,colds, colds with a slight outlook for COLDS! Will they ever go away? Even the weather has taken a steep dive towards winter.
At breakfast this morning we sound like a household of chain smokers with pretty much everyone having a cough of some sort.
Emily: With all the bad weather we havent been able to get out and have a run round much this week so even with a cold Emily still has energy to burn.
Emily said something Hilarious earlier this week, but I forgot to write it down, and when I asked Amanda what it was she looked kinda annoyed and wouldn’t tell me so I’m assuming it was partly to do with her. Hopefully my brain will kick into gear and spit it out later on.
Samantha: Favorite place to be this week has been sitting in front of the book shelf looking at books, pulling washing of the clothes dryer and staring out the window at birds.
Has reverted back to waking up every other hour at night so we are waiting for her to get a bit better before having to “break” her sleeping habits again.
New word for the week: “ook”
“Must get more ooks!”
“Im sure there are more “ooks” in here somewhere…Wait?… is that a lion?”
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200, Nikon Sb80DX Speedlite. f4.5 at 1/30th second with Speedlite at full power bounced off the ceiling.
Fatherhood Friday 10: Sam Likes Steak
Once again colds featured a lot this week (welcome to winter) and there has been a fair bit of tired and grumpy behaviour all round.
Samantha: Still learning words at a rapid rate of fire. The current cold has made her lose her voice so when she tries to scream pretty much nothing comes out and she gets a very confused look on her face (which is amusing but also kinda a bit sad) so the house has been a bit quieter this week.
She is also attempting to stand on her own by putting herself up on things and then letting go to stand unassisted.
New phrase of the week: “uh oh”
Sam Likes Steak
Emily: Aside from having a cold, Emily has been pretty well-behaved this week. One of the highlights has been watching Emily and Samantha chasing each other round the house while laughing and squealing with delight. unfortunately the cold and rainy weather has ment we have had to stay inside and she is getting to the point where she needs a bit of a run around to burn off some energy but I don’t want to take her out because she still has a cold and something resembling a smokers cough.
Scary Emily
Fatherhood Friday 9: Emily Counts to Hungry
Survived Emily’s birthday party last weekend with only minor injuries (mostly mental ones to me) and managed to get things back to normal in only a couple of days. Possibly scared some of the kids into believing there actually were pirates in our back garden but they felt better when they found the “pirates” gold coins that were made of chocolate, I’m sure their parents probably hate me now after sending their kids back overhyped on sugar.
Colds were the order of the week with Emily bringing one home and sharing it round everyone here (not really her fault but was amusing that one day only Emily had a cold and the next day we all had one).
Emily Quote of the week: “96…97…98…99…. I’m Hungry”
Emily riding her running bike round the, still being constructed, bike track.
Samantha: Copious amounts of Snot. Has been literally getting into everything and I mean EVERYTHING! She has worked out how to open cupboards and drawers and is showing much interest in CDs and the things under the television. You can say “no” move her away and watch as she goes straight back to what she was doing.
Word of the week: “Hot” used continuously for almost half an hour after making a grab for a cup of tea that Amanda was drinking.
Samantha at Lollypops Playland on Emily’s birthday.
Darkhalide Photography 
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