Our 'fit and healthy' lifestyle

Luke in our backyard

Luke enjoys some parts of learning to read but not others.  Like most he memorises the phases and then tries to get by on that.  He also refers to the pictures to give him hints.  His school provided reading books are OK but when he's in French class we have the same book for a week.  We all hate that book by the end of the week.  Clearly he has a competitive spirit as he does quite well on the Reading Eggs program on the computer - no doubt mixed with a bit of loving the computer.  Alex is keen to learn and pushes to make sure he is getting a prime position to be part of any reading.


Playing games together, trying to scare each other

Poor Alex is well and truly in second child syndrome.  He's had about 1 friend over to play - ever!  And so recently I invited Lucia, one of his "beautiful girls", to play.  The fact that her brother - same age as Luke - came as well was a coincidence.  I have always suspected that Alex is equally capable to play girls games as boys and now I know.  He insisted we get his tea set down and they spent most of the play date playing tea parties whilst Luke and the brother spent the time with Ninja Go's and wrestling.


Alex with Monnie's coffee grinder, it continues to be a favourite with both boys

So disappointing is that the word "fat" is embedded in the boys lingo and used quite frequently.  Luke taunts Alex for being "fat" even though we focus on Alex being muscular (which he is) and Luke being lean.  Alex gets particularly upset.  The right thing to do seems to be to have the focus be on being "fit and healthy" and I use that expression a lot.  Last Sunday morning I wanted to be fit and healthy and we finally had a break in the miserable wet weather so I suggested the boys rode their bikes to the park whilst I walked/jogged.  There was so much resistance that eventually G had to be roped into coming along as well so no boy could be left at home.  As I knew would happen once we were at the park they could have stayed all day and we all had such a great time.

Luke preparing his defences

When Alex can't sleep at night we give him a pile of books to read.  He goes through about a book a minute just turning page after page.  The he calls out "Mummy, I need more books".  I think it makes him feel very grown up.  For us, it keeps him in bed and not popping up every 2 mins to complain to us.


And now with reinforcements

I think I had hoped that the new ideas of keeping guns from kids meant that you could distract them to play with lego instead.  Over the years I've decided that boys will in deed be boys.  At barely 2 years old every stick is a gun and goes "pow pow" and then they craft guns out of any building material they come across.  My concession is that I keep them in my wardrobe and the boys have to ask for them to be able to play with them - and that means that for weeks at a time they forget they even exist!  It also means they are not lying around when other kids come to play.  This lessons the rough play (and ultimately tears) as well as avoiding any siutations where guns are banned in that kids house.