Praying Mantis

Thanks to the hours Stella spends exploring Nana's garden, she has become very interested in bugs of all shapes and sizes. We have come across a praying mantis family that live in our roses and Stella loves to have them running over her hands. She is very gentle and only freaks out occasionally (see video). The only way we can get her to put them back is to tell her that they want to go back and "see their Mum," this obviously has some resonance with where she is in her life at the moment. Still working on the transition to her new kindy but she is able to spend longer and longer there on her own which is great. Meanwhile, Celeste is enjoying playing with that baby she always sees in the mirror.

Learning to Smile

This post is about Stella, we have many pictures of her with her mouth open wide which is what she does when we ask her to smile for the camera. We have been practising camera smiles, here are her recent attempts...

Play time

It has been great fun introducing Celeste to Stella's toys, she loves the tent but does have a tendency to get tangled up in it after a while. She is sitting up well and can get into a crawling position on her knees before collapsing and doing a caterpillar crawl in the direction she wants to go in. She doesn't seem content to work on the caterpillar crawl, instead she spends a lot of time on her hands and knees complaining and frustrated. Once she starts moving I have a feeling she will get into everything, the gates may have to go back up this weekend.

Also a nice pic of Nana with the girls and Celeste looking coy, just waking up after a nap.

Indoors

Stella came down with a nasty cold late last week that developed into a wheezy cough requiring ventolin. We have spent the last 5 days inside and have had to get creative in order to avoid continuous watching of DVDs. We moved the car out of the garage which has provided a whole new room for Stella to play in. She has used the garage to ride her new trike (photos to come, currently only nude pics) and putting up our shade tent and decorating it with the Christmas decorations. As you can see, Stella likes to get close to Celeste so it was only a matter of time before she got sick too. It doesn't seem to have hit Celeste as hard which is a relief but we'll wait and see...

The last two pics show Celeste having a good time with one of Stella's fairy dresses. Depending on naps, Celeste often goes to bed after Stella so this is her time to get her hands (and mouth) on some of the things that Stella can be a bit possessive of.