Holly is getting much better at identifying emotions. She’s frequently asking “Are you sad, Mummy?” and we’ve taught her to say “I’m frustrated!” when she’s having trouble with something and is on the verge of having a tanty (sometimes it works, other times we have to remind her). Anyway, Sven decided to see if she could pull the appropriate face for an emotion and here is what we got…
“Show us your happy face”:
“Show us your sad face”:
“Show us your scared face”:
The last one cracked us both up when she first did it. She wasn’t holding anything at the time and she pretended to bite her nails on both hands and go “oooooh!” I have no idea who taught it to her but it wasn’t either of us :) So cute!
In other news, the bathroom is all but finished. We’re using it for baths now but we’re waiting for me to finish painting the ceiling, door and door frame before we can have showers (don’t want to steam up the room too much). The builder only has to put some kind of face plate in front of the doorways so they look nicer and put the handles on the vanity and we’re all done! I can barely believe it.
Oh yeah, turned out the vanity didn’t come with any handles so I had to go back to the annoying bathroom shop and get some more. They didn’t have any in stock so they had to order more in (despite the fact I thought I was staring at, at least, two dozen of them on vanities on display). Got them home and found they’d only given us ten screws for the eight handles and, not only that, they were the wrong length anyway. Now we’ve got a further problem that we’re having trouble finding screws that fit so that’s why we’re leaving it for the builder to work out 
Only two weeks left until I have to go back to work. Please refer back to the “Show us your sad face” photo above.
And here’s a cute pic of Simon (please note the stack of blocks in mid-air to his left - good timing).
Today Holly had her very first swimming lesson! It was very exciting and Holly was really good. I was a bit unsure about how she’d go as she kicks up such a stink at times trying to give her a bath or shower (she doesn’t like getting her face wet). But when it came time to do it and everyone else was doing it too she went ahead and stuck her face in the water and blew bubbles. She even walked across a floating mat and jumped into the water for me to catch her! It was so inspiring I looked into having classes myself but alas they’re a bit too expensive for us at the moment.
Holly’s just starting into a new phase, something I’m sure anyone who’s come across small children will be familiar with, the “why?” phase. Suddenly she’s asking “why are you doing that Mummy?” about things that we’ve done everyday for ages. Unfortunatley, she loves getting an answer so she asks the same question over and over. Heehee 
Simon’s going really well. He’s 6 months old now and, during our quick holiday up to Cairns the other week, popped out another tooth. He also has started daycare on Tuesday of last week and the girls there all love him. He smiled all day and went to sleep with no problems. When he woke up after his morning sleep they didn’t know who it was because he hadn’t cried until that point. And yesterday when I took him in for his 6-month vaccinations the doctor didn’t even bother to weigh or measure him, he just said “I have NO concern about his growth” heehee
The bathroom renovations are still moving at a snail’s pace. I’ve started painting the ceiling and door frames (only the top coats to go) but we’re still waiting on the builder to come back and fix a few things and put the doors back on. I gave up waiting for everything to be finished though and once the plumbing and electricals were finished I quickly cleaned up the bathroom as best I could and gave the children A BATH!!!! How exciting! We can’t have a shower ourselves yet until two days after I’ve finished painting (so the anti-mould paint can set properly).
I’ll post up some photos once I’ve finished painting… they’re not to different to the last ones Sven posted.
Well, the bathroom is almost done - tiles are in and grouted, plumbing is complete, and all that’s left is the shower screen and mirror installation, the electrical work, and some final tidy-up stuff. Hooray!
The taps are the same as the downstairs renovation from last year:
… as is the shower head…
Matching bath spout:
It looks like a bathroom!
The cornices and ceiling are done, and just need painting (V will be doing that)
And we have a toilet now. That was a bit of a drama. Yesterday morning, the builders said to me - “This new toilet you have here is an S-trap, and you need a P-trap…” So, much rushing around later, I had returned our original toilet, and bought a new one, all before the plumbers had finished the rest of the work, so nobody had to wait around or come back later.
Oh, and we also have new cisterns on the other two existing toilets!
So, that’s all for now. Veronica, Holly, and Simon are in Cairns for the week, but will be back the day after tomorrow. Simon has two teeth now! Holly says he’s a big boy now
