Another busy month has flown by. Jack was excited by the concept of the Easter bunny, and enjoyed an Easter egg hunt at his Thursday childcare (complete with an Easter bunny visit). The Easter break involved lots of park visits - Gumbuyah Park, Jells Park, and a couple of local parks, plus Uncle Mal, Auntie Sarah and Grandma Q came to visit. After last year's reaction to soy chocolate, we decided to just give Jack small quantities of normal chocolate, which he was suitably excited by.

As usual the school holidays allowed us to catch up with friends. Jack had fun visiting Myuna Farm with Kiara, and loved going on the train ride and feeding the ducks. He is also gaining more confidence in petting animals. He insisted we go and visit the piglet pen, but this quickly turned to disaster when the pigs started madly pushing against us, so with kids screaming in our arms we attempted to leave and had one piglet escape (with 2 keepers madly chasing it). A friend has since been to visit Myuna Farm and reported that you are no longer able to visit the piglet pen! We also had a couple of fun play centre visits, firstly with Braden, and then with Damon, Dominic and Bella. Jack met Braden's sister Rhiannon (6) for first time and much to my surprise, went off happily holding her hand and climbing up and down structures and going down big slides on her lap! This gave him extra confidence to play by himself, and it was the most independent I have ever seen him at a play centre. Last weekend Jack and I also visited Caribbean Gardens, where Jack enjoyed his first ever boat ride, a train ride, a ride on a fire truck as well as looking at the markets and playing at the park.

We have also had a number of family visits in past month. Jack went to visit Auntie Shell's house in Macedon, and by the end of the day was happily playing with Cousin Tara in a room away from the parents, and just coming out periodically to report what they were doing. It is lovely seeing him start to interact more with other kids. We endured a drive down to Geelong in huge gale force winds and a dust storm to catch up with my high school friends (without their kids) at Grandma Q's house (with Jack happily occupied by the grandparents). We had an enjoyable trip up to Benalla, where Jack visited the local park, rode bikes up and down the grandparent's driveway, and had a tasty BBQ. Grandma Q was down 2 days this week to take care of Jack while I attended a workshop, and last of all we went to see Auntie Bree competing in the State selection pool competition.

Summary of Jack at 33 months:

. Jack can now drop a Footy down to his foot and kick it. Overall, we have really noticed an improvement in his ball skills after one term of Ready, Steady, Go.

. Teething finally appears to be over (thank goodness) and Jack has returned to being mostly happy Jack again. However this past week has thrown him with daylight savings ending, so he is back to getting up at 6am, and being extra tired (and prone to meltdowns) at the end of the day. He has also had a persistent snuffle for weeks.

. Childcare is occasionally reporting he is playing one-on-one with other kids. One day they reported he and another little boy spent 20 minutes after their nap staying on their mats and giggling together and whispering as if they were telling jokes to each other. Last week they announced he had spent 20 minutes pretending to be firemen putting out fires with Braden. As noted above, he has responded better with other little kids we have visited with in past month also, and gaining more confidence to play by himself at Play Centres or other people's houses.

. Jack continues to play independently at times at home also, and can sometimes be quite accepting when we tell him to play by himself while we finish a task (like the dishes). Unfortunately sometimes we can be commenting on how he is playing happily by himself in the other room only to realise he has done a dirty nappy (he habitually disappears by himself for awhile when he does one).

. Jack's bike riding skills continue to improve. He can ride his tricycle independently for quite awhile on flat surfaces, and is starting to be able to turn it around.

. Jack enjoys reading his collection of 'Thomas' books to himself at home and in the car, and loves having all the names of the trains read to him (or looking at them all on the computer).

. Jack continues to have daytime sleeps some days but not others. I now prefer the days he doesn't have a sleep (so long as he isn't too overtired by end of the day) since it is so nice to have him down to sleep promptly around 7pm and have the rest of the evening to relax. He continues to sleep better overnight generally and usually just calls out rather than getting upset when he wakes up. He sometimes walks out to the centre stairs and calls me (he finds our bedroom too dark and scary to come into). One night he called out to us and we didn't hear (and I had forgotten to put on the monitor and we were both more exhausted than usual). Doug got up around 5am and went to check on him, and discovered he had put himself back to bed in the single bed in his room (rather than cot bed he had been left in), tucked himself in and gone back to sleep. Another morning he also slept right through and I got up to find him sitting in his little arm chair waiting for me.

Posted by Al at 2:06 PM