Another busy week for the Sealy-O’Donnell clan. After our lovely long weekend Jack managed to get another dose of Bronchiolitis and this dose was particularly bad. We had to take him up to the hospital in the middle of the night and once he deteriorated further we gave in to giving him the steroids to make him better quickly. He’s now picked up again and managed to go back to Crèche on Friday but it meant a week of Adrian and I alternating days off to take care of him. The boys do miss each other a lot when one is sick and it was nice to have Jack back to normal so he could play with Tom again this weekend. We took the boys swimming yesterday which they love and it was such a nice day we played in the park afterwards until we were all exhausted.

Thomas had a great week with his talking, he made his mother very happy when he came home with the best word you can say to a mummy – he looked up at me and said “gorgeous”. Apparently he’s been wooing all the teachers at Crèche with that one! He has also managed to chip his front tooth (picture right) during his usual boisterous activities (I’m sure it won’t be the last).

Adrian has had a calmer week this week and has been working on the opening of the ballet (Nutcracker). I am getting ready to change over to my new job and moving offices in the next few weeks so it’ll be pretty busy for a while. We’re still trying to get some painting done on the house and have managed a second coat on one side and the front door so it’s getting there very slowly.

As it's a long weekend here it's a lovely relaxing Sunday night. We took the boys to "Diwali" today ("Diwali" is the Indian festival of light). There were free concerts which fantastic Indian dancing and puppet shows which the boys loved and lots of yummy curry for mum and dad. Adrian has been busy packing in the shows for Diwali this week so it was nice for him to relax in the sun and watch it all unfold.

The boys have had a great week dispite having colds which has meant lots of wiping noses and coughing in the night. Tom has been trying to copy lots of new words and focuses very hard on trying to get it right. Jack adores Tom at the moment and is constantly cuddling him and giving him all his toys and treats. They have discovered each other's belly-bottons this week which is hilarious as they pull up each other's t-shirts and laugh histerically.

We have managed to put one coat of paint on one side of the house this week so it finally feels like we've started a huge task. The weather is starting to feel a lot more summery after a bit of a cold snap so it should help to get things moving now.

Sunday again already!! It’s been a bit of a crazy week for all of us, Adrian has just returned from Nelson after working on the Nelson Festival. Nelson was of course beautiful as ever (picture below taken from the venue), it is a place we both love to visit so he was lucky to get the chance to go for a few days. It was a relief for Adrian to have one job to concentrate on, as he has been so busy in the last few weeks with too many jobs on at once. I was busy with looking after the boys on my own and trying to do budgets for work (yuck). We’ve had a lovely Sunday now Adrian's back with a family picnic in the park. Tom and Jack had a great time on the slide, Tom showed absolutely no fear diving down head first while Jack liked to crawl down slowly. It was a lovely day but very hot and the boys are so confident running around with mum and dad chasing behind that we’re all pretty exhausted tonight. With all that’s going on we still haven’t made much progress on painting the house, Adrian sanded and prepped the front side, only to come across some mildew that needs to be sorted out before we put the paint on.

The boys have had a very eventful week. They are still doing really well learning new words and Tom has nearly mastered “cat” and “orange” this week and yes Jack is till obsessed with “octopus”. Thanks to their cousin Elise they also know the word “Poopaloop” which they manage to say as “poopy”. Tom is trying to say the word “Elise” while looking at her picture but only manages “Eeeessss”, he also grew another front tooth to go with all his back teeth.

The boys favourite things at the moment are: cuddling teddy, books (all books, but this weeks favourite is a book called 5 little monkeys that has old fashioned nursery rhymes with movable pieces), driving on their push cars, playing peek a boo with each other and chasing Monty the cat (who has realized that if he lets them catch him he might be fed some of the boys milk), Animals are also high on the list and they love the Animal book from Aunty Liz that has realistic pictures of animals and they are mastering the sounds of most of them now. We recently learnt about lizards with mummy showing them how a lizard pokes out his tongue which didn’t go down well at crèche when the boys spent all day poking their tongues out a the staff! (Picture left is Tom in the car - he has to look at everything!)

TEDDY EDWARD UPDATE

Further sighting of the infamous Teddy Edward in the company of Jack Sealy-O’Donnell have been made this week. Teddy Edward’s PR team made the following statement earlier today “yes Teddy Edward is currently under contract to Jack, they to remain the very best of friends”.

Well after a few teething problems trying to post more to this site I finally managed to annoy the support people enough to get back to posting more news….






It’s been a really busy week for all the family. Thomas and Jack have both had a bad case of conjunctivitis which they passed back and forwards to each other for a few days so Adrian and I have been on and off work wiping gunky green eyes….yuck. Adrian’s been working really hard on the opening of the opera which was a great success but pretty exhausting (see picture). I have been really busy at work trying to organize 3 different delegations from viarous countries coming to Wellington this week.

We decided that we are going ahead with the house (at this stage) and will be talking to banks and mortgage brokers this week …aaahhhh….because of this we had a busy weekend working on the house as it needs to be painted and bits and pieces done around the place. We still managed to have a lovely weekend especially Sunday which was lovely and sunny so we all played outside in the sun.

The boys are exceptionally lovely at the moment, Thomas is determined to learn more words and tries to copy everything he hears “dog” came out tonight for the first time (he’s had “woof, woof” for some time now). Jack is still working on “Octopus” and is getting pretty close. Jack is also learning to run and has to go all the way into the kitchen before running arms out, shouting aaaahhhhhh all the way into the lounge and into mum or dad’s arms. Tom loves dancing with his teddy at the moment and so mum, the boys and teddy's all have a dancing session in the morning before creche (heaven help them if the end up dancing like me!). Both boys are now feeding themselves (extremely messy business) but at least have started eating grown up food which is great.

NEWSFLASH…TEDDY EDWARD FINDS NEW LEASE OF LIFE

Well known toy “Teddy Edward” was found at the bottom of a wardrobe this week by one “Jack Sealy-O’Donnell” of Wellington. Seemingly unwanted and unloved, Jack decided to rescue said teddy with the intention of cuddling, loving and generally dribbling all over him. Jack was last seen feeding Teddy Edward his dinner and giving him a bottle before tucking him in. (Previous owner was seen looking a little sad).

Well, welcome to our first attempt at a website for keeping in touch with you all on our lives here in NZ. We will try to update this as often as possible with what's happening, I am sure it will be dominated by the boys antics but we will try to think of "interesting" things that we are also doing.

Jack and Thomas are having great fun at the moment learning to talk and especially like reading their animal books and making the sounds like "ba ba" and "mooooo", they love the pictures of monkey's and gorillas and make great noises and beat their chests like the real thing. Tom's mastered the words "ball" and "car" this week, while Jack has been working on the word "octopus" so that might take a little longer!

We had a lovely weekend and managed a picnic in the park with the boys climbing trees and exploring everything on the ground that the boys could pick up.

Adrian has been working really hard this week on the World of Wearable Arts Party (photo below) which meant he has been working through the night and got home just in time to feed the boys their breakfast at 6:30am this morning so he is pretty exhausted today but after I cooked him a nice spicy hot curry and gave him a beer we cooked tonight so he is happy. I have been really busy at work and waiting to find out if I have a new job this month so will need to be ready for a few changes and a move of office.

We are meeting Jeremy tomorrow to make some final decisions on whether we will buy the new house so if all goes well we will be able to get excited about a big move (all that packing is not so exciting however). The picture shows the house that will be relocated (would you believe they will be putting it on the back of a truck and moving it to another suburb) the land we are hoping to put it on is around 1400m2, so will have lots of flat land for the boys to run around in and lovely veiws of Wellington harbour, fingers crossed X.

Hope you enjoy the site :)