The Cheeks Family

Ella loves her glow baby that Jason, Karen and Lauren got her for Christmas. She sings to the baby and gives her a bottle.

Ella and Baby

Jack received a great big surprise on Monday. It was a big box from his Mimi (and Papa Pat, Robyn and Josh). It was a big box of pirate stuff that he LOVES. He has new pirate pajamas, a pirate pocket watch, placemat, plate, coloring book, and I hope I didn’t miss anything. He has kept his pirate watch with him and amazingly did not leave it on the two trains or ferry we were on today. He likes to look at the pirate watch and then check his power ranger wrist watch to see if the time varies.

And YES, you know I will let him wear the pirate pajamas out and about during the day!

Jack and Pirate Pajamas

Jack so rarely takes a nap that I had to get evidence for Ben to believe me.

Sydney has many, many parks. We go to a park at least three times a week and more than not try to go to a new park once a week. We take lunch and a snack. It is best to feed these two out of doors as I spend most of the time in the apartment trying to keep the suede couch clean or the white walls free of hand prints. Their favorite lunch is peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, cheetos, raisins and chocolate chip cookies.

Pictures from Sydney’s Centennial Park Playground:

Centenniel Park

Pictures from Fitzroy Gardens Playground:

Ella’s New Jewelry and Playground

Ella received a necklace and bracelet in the mail from Nana Wene and has not taken it off yet:

Ben and I were able to find a nice babysitter to watch the kids one night. Well, she just watched Jack as she came at 7:00 and Ella went to bed at 5:30. It gets dark here a little after 5:00 and it causes Ella to not keep her eyes open. So, the nice babysitter, Alex, and Jack watched a movie, made popcorn and played the new card games he got for his birthday. Ben and I went to eat at Raquel’s Spanish Kitchen for tapas and then to an Irish Pub. We asked the band at the pub to sing, “I’m Leavin on a Jet Plane…” It was good, we knew most every song he played.

On Sunday, we went to the Primo Italiano, the Italian Festival that was just a few blocks from the apartment. There were booths with food, stages with singing and lots of people.

This is titled, “how’s it going” because I haven’t heard a “how are you” yet. The colloquialisms are easy to change. We will slowly adapt to the terminology differences, such as saying “the loo” or “the toilet”.

Hello, we started celebrating Jack’s birthday on Saturday, the 17th. We were out and about and he saw a bike with training wheels in a store. The plan since he was three was to get him a bike for his fourth birthday. But since we are living in a high rise, we had decided he may just have to wait for the bike. Well, back to walking by the store with the bike…he saw the bike, he got on the bike, he rode the bike in the store, he rode the bike out of the store…

It is a perfect bike for Jack as it has training wheels, his Dad could move the seat to the perfect height, and it was dirty. If you did not know, Jack loves to wash things. He loves to wash the dishes, the windows, and the more wet he gets, the better. Ben thinks he may be like Papa Wene, Uncle Neil and Doug of his attention to detail on matters such as these…

Sunday was the official “birthday party” as that is when we sang Happy Birthday over chocolate chocolate-chip muffins, one of Jack’s favorite chocolate foods (and his Dad’s and his Mom’s and yes, Ella’s too.)

Jack had wanted to ride the paddle boats in Darling Harbour since he first saw them. So we took Jack and Ella to Darling Harbour to the playground, to ride the paddle boats and to eat at “Pancakes on the Rocks”. The Royal Australian Naval band was playing in Darling Harbour and if you can believe it they had a vocalist singing “Georgia”. It was quite strange being by the South Pacific Ocean listening to a song about our state on the Atlantic Ocean. The band also played Waltzing Matilda and Frank Sinatra songs. Ella was in her stroller tapping her knees and kicking her legs and Jack watched them in a trance.

Pictures of the paddle boat, playground and pancake house…

Jack’s 4th Birthday

We had a packed weekend for Mother’s Day. We all got in the hot tub on Saturday. Don’t worry Grandma’s, the water is not as hot as it is in the States.

Jack and Ella posing before the hot tub… Ella was checking out her new princess shoes from Nana Montine.

Hot Tub

They were exhausted and fell asleep together in Ella’s pack ‘n play.

Ben took us to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney for Mother’s Day. The Three Sisters rock formation is in Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia. We enjoyed getting out of the city for the day and seeing country similar to North Carolina.

Blue Mountains

There were telescopes you could look through that Jack did not get to parktake in and so this was what he looked like for awhile…

And Ben wrote this poem for him to remember the moment…

I went to the blue mountains
The three sisters I did see
I needed to see them closer
To use the telescope I did plea
The cost was 2 dollars
But no money was to be had
I had to look with only my eyes
And for that I was so sad.

We ended the day on the couch - Ella is in a new nightgown from Nana Wene and Jack in his Superman shirt. He still wants to wear his pajamas all day long. And yes, I have let him wear his SpiderMan shirt out and about so everybody can see his web.