Today was another very wet day. We started off with the arrival of the cleaning ladies. Ahhh. Then headed to Plunket for the baby playgroup (or Mom’s coffee group I think they may call it here!). Unfortunately Quincy seems to quite dislike hanging with the other kids his age! Aidan played fairly contentedly at a table by himself – only upset when the other kid his age got too close. We left a bit early as Q needed a nap (which I aimed to give him in the car) and headed off to Jumping Beans. Aidan had a great time again and seemed to do everything he did last week only with more verve and confidence. He even was actually hitting the tennis ball with the ping pong racket this time! He will miss going – next week is the start of Term Break (for 4 weeks!). Tomorrow we head to 2nd swim class. If all goes well I might enroll him for the every day for a week or 2 weeks during break at the Y. We’ll see.

Quincy is trying SOOO hard to crawl. Today he repeatedly pulled (jumped really) his legs underneath him and had his chest and stomach completely off the floor. He can’t hold it long and just rocks back and forth. Unfortunately he ends up losing ground and going backwards a bit when he collapses out of it – hope he doesn’t give up trying! I remember hearing that kids went backwards. Aidan crawled at around 9 months if I remember correctly and pretty much just got up and then started forward. He didn’t do any rocking and didn’t really practice the position until he was ready to go. I don’t think Quincy has the strength (or coordination) yet to succeed but I think he will be much earlier than Aidan.

Aidan is going through a real physical spurt. In addition to the playground confidence since we’ve been abroad he is also doing all sorts of funny things at home. He still hops around quite a bit. He now likes to go bump bump bump down the stairs on his bum. He also likes to hop around on all fours like a frog – using knees to jump (wonder if it has given Q ideas?!). He likes to “be a bridge” from sofa to coffee table (thankfully very sturdy table) either forwards or backwards. He is also doing a lot of hanging off things. Today it was the shopping cart.

Speaking of shopping carts – I tend to shop at New World. I noticed that the local one and another I have frequented has employees dressed such that they always remind me of some 3rd world military dress uniform complete with funny little hats. I was wondering how I had possibly missed this at the one downtown we used to frequent. Well, I was there today and they dress in a much more casual uniform with a somewhat sloppy green sweater. Too weird. You would never get me in one of those uniforms!