Birthday Boys!!!

What a hectic few weeks!! Both my sons had their birthdays, and we've had celebrations for about 4 days straight, LOL. It just didn't work out to have their respective parties on their birthdays, so we had 2 days of birthdays, and 2 days of parties. Gosh, poor Peanut! She handled it great, but I felt so sorry for her at times. We just had to be out of the house so much. And she's getting to that age where she mostly wants to sleep in her place.

Poor thing also cut her first 2 teeth! On Valentine's day, LOL. She was moaning quite a bit, and I just assumed it was from tiredness. I tried for hours putting her to bed, but she wanted nothing of that. After a few hours, I asked daddy to take over for a short while so that I could get something to eat and drink. After a while, he called me, exclaiming that she has a tooth!! Wow! She sucked on his finger and he felt it. Earlier the day, she also sucked on one of my knuckles, and there most definitely was nothing yet. So it clearly cut during that time when she was being miserable. I gave her something for the pain once we realised it's a tooth, and she fell asleep immediately. I felt so guilty! I would never have assumed tooth, because all 3 my other cut their first tooth around 9-10 months. Peanut wasn't even 7 months yet! So so sweet. The 2nd one came out two days after the first tooth.

So back to our hectic life. My oldest took some friends to a children-friendly restaurant for his birthday. They had an absolute ball. I can't believe he's 12 now. So grown up! We had some hickups with him backchatting a while back, but we've been very tough on him, so he's now back to being our lovely, obedient, empathatic boy. But I guess that was just the start of what's to come with the teenage years, LOL.

Both boys had a lovely time at the restaurant. They treat birthday kids really special. Then, we also held a school-party for Monkeyman at his school with all his little friends. He felt so spoilt! Got gifts, was made king for the day, everyone wanted to be his friend, etc. Such a lovely day for him. I also baked a tart for the adults, which they all loved.

Then, we started exams. Urgh. It's Boeboe's first exams ever. It's going as expected in some ways, and better than expected in others! She's turning out to be a fast learner! But still makes lots of mistakes when writing things down. She's average, it seems, as we've expected, but able to learn fast. This will be a great trait to have. Coupled with her hardworking attitude, her "push-through" and perservere personality and her will of steel, makes me worry so much less about her than I used to. I don't push her as much as I did Mr N. Because she's putting so much stress on herself already, and the homework inbetween is killing her (and us)! So I find I just cannot subject her to the same rigid schedule I did with him. Pity, because it most definitely would've helped her get better marks. But we just can't do that to her just yet. She works so very very hard. Some days her homework takes her 3 or 4 hours to do! That's after being in school for more than 6 hours, and sometimes having after-school activities as well. Which means, her day is sometimes up to 12 hours long. :-( Impossible for anyone to keep up, let alone a small 9-year old. How sad is life for them these days. And so unfair. Fortunately, this isn't every day. Most days she has about 2 hours of homework. But still, that leaves us no time to study for the tests!!

In between, I've been to doctors and procedures just about every day the past week or so. It's been horribly busy. One visit was for Peanut's 6-month checkup. She was declared healthy and developmentally on par (yay!!). The pead spent alot of time listening to her heart, I almost got worried! But she is fine. She did give us a script for reflux medication. Even though Peanut doesn't get ill, sleep apnoa or looses weight, I complained that her reflux is bothering her these days (painful). So we got the medication for a week to try. She weighs 7.2kg! I'm astonished, because she's a very short little girl (about Boeboe's length). She weighs close to what the boys weighed at this age, far more than what Boeboe weighed. And her head circumference is towards the upper percentiles! It doesn't "look" as big, fortunately. And it grows steady, no sudden jump in percentiles, so I'm not worried.

Here's some pictures of the birthday boys, and how big Peanut's gotten:

Sitting independantly age 6 months

Loving her first doll from her aunt!

Loving Monkeyman

And loving Boeboe

Helping Mr N open his gifts

Opening his own gifts. His face still dirty from the facepainting at the restaurant.

He always wanted a little soccer table

A train cake for his 5th!

Very happy about his cake!

King of the school!

Opening gifts from his friends and teachers

Two sisters in pink dresses

Up to mischieve - she always tries to get the angelcare unit.

My beautiful babygirl

Spider bite at around 4 weeks - sorry it's a bit out of focus

And just for good measure - Boeboe got stung by a bee she stepped on. Not the best of
photo's either. The bite was under the toe next to the little toe - the one that's
swollon and a bit red. The redness spread over half her foot in the end.
And it hurt and itched for about 2 or 3 days, poor thing.