Historic moments

Warning: the following entry contains scatological details that some or our more sensitive readers may find confronting. Zoe is out of nappies (that's diapers for our friends in North America)! We took Auntie Sarah's advice and put her on cold turkey the weekend we came home from our trip. She wasn't given a choice but stripped off her old nappy the moment she woke and had to wear undies instead. Every half hour or so we asked her if she needed to use the toilet - and it worked. Her first real emergency, as in pooing her pants, happened two days later at day care, where they probably forgot to remind her in time. But since then not even a wee-wee gone astray. About time, I hear the grandmas sighing. Apparently back in our days we were out of nappies by 18 months, whereas these days kids stay away from toilets for years. I suspect that wasn't only because of our super-mums but also because disposable nappies weren't quite as ubiquitous as nowadays, giving parents more of an incentive to toilet train.

We are family, all my cousins and me

We're back from the big family extravaganza in Canada. In terms of clan gatherings 12 is probably small fry, but for us Sydneysiders it was by far the biggest ever family holiday and I'm sure it has set a benchmark for quite some time - not only in terms of numbers. Zoe hit it off instantly with her cousins Eric, Megan and Abby and she is still somewhat wistfully asking why they aren't around anymore. I'm hoping the grandparents on the other hand have recovered from all the noise and exuberance... We met in Vancouver, where Vivien and I were playing yet another ultimate tournament (the last World's, we are pretty sure...), and then headed off together to the Okanagan Valley, supposedly Canada's hottest and driest place (it was dry and got hot) four hours east of Vancouver, where we spent nearly a week in Kelowna, mainly just relaxing, hanging out and doing a lot of swimming and eating. Good times (check out the pics: http://picasaweb.google.de/Myjens/FamilyFiesta). "We are family", by the way, has been Zoe's favourite song for a couple of weeks now and she loves - sap alert! - rounding Vivien and me up, hugging us and then singing it, loudly adding "Papa, Mama and me...". So in Okanagan we had many variations on that tune from her.