Puppy sitting

On the spare of the moment mummy's boss needed us to house, dog, horse, chicken, puppy and bird sit for the last four days. Ruby absolutely loved feeding the four horses twice a day - until they got too close, collecting the eggs from the chicken coup and playing with the 12 week old blue staffy pups....nearly as cute as Ruby but not quite.

Each morning Ruby would wake up and announce that the horses, puppies and chickens needed dinner - "ney ninner", "wow wow ninner", "cluck cluck ninner" so off mummy and Ruby would go to feed them before anybody else had gotten out of bed. The farm or resort as we are now calling it also has an olympic size trampoline which mummy and daddy had a great time bouncing Ruby around. Ruby also learnt how to do a somersault from playing with mummy on the trampoline. This morning Ruby was somersaulting all over the bedroom, one after the other.

Over the last week Ruby has started trying out more and more words and now says and knows "hot", "pink", "brown", "black" and she is also starting to say two words - almost like a mini sentence - and usually always about dinner or Ruby, "Beby ninner" or "Beby night night".

This week after only having three hours sleep the night before and working all day, mummy for the first time ever, yelled at Ruby to go back to sleep. Ruby had been mucking around for an hour and a half at 2am and had started to ask for stories to be read. This was the final straw and Ruby got picked up, put back in her cot and told very sternly to go back to sleep. If you can believe it, she went back to sleep for the rest of the night and ever since has slept for 12 hours straight. The lack of sleep we believe was due to more teeth coming and this week Ruby has been all dribbly and her nose has been running like a tap. She isn't acting like she is ill, so we are now waiting for the last two teeth to hurry up and pop through. For christ sake hurry up!

Colours

Ruby has become so very clever with her colours, her favourites are Purple and Yellow and she will scream about something that is "lello" or "Berple" when she sees them. We have a beautiful tree at the front of our house that has just started to show an amazing amount of purple flowers and when we are in the front yard we regularly have to make a detour to see the "Berple" "Berple". Yesterday when we were on our afternoon bike ride, Ruby got so excited about the "lello" tractor mummy nearly stacked the bike from all the jumping around that was happening in the back seat.

We have screaming matches now at bath time if the "yello" towel isn't used to dry her and if you ask what colour nappy she would like to wear you can be sure it will be "lello".

Other than her two favourite colours Ruby now knows "bue" (blue) and "ga" (green), and this morning said "bow" (brown) and "ra" (red).

All this learning of colours is due to Daddy's choice of stories from their weekly library trip. Mummy thought the books were a bit old for Ruby but she loves them and will sit for ages with you picking colours and counting things that are on the pages. In the two days since the colour book came home Ruby has learnt white, brown, green and red.

Growing wise, there seem to be more teeth on the way. Another molar came through on the weekend and it we don't think the last two are far off either with Ruby showing all the signs that she is still teething.

And the funniest thing Ruby did this week is a cart wheel. Well, sort of. Mummy was doing them in the park and Ruby decided she was going to copy. She puts her arms up high and then swings her leg around in a circle. We will endeavour to get a video of this and also one of Ruby saying her colours.

Little helper

Ruby's favourite thing to do at the moment is to help you with your chores. Sounds good right and to a certain degree it is. Everything is getting done really quickly due to the fact that the faster you get the dishwasher emptied or breakfast cooked the less likely someone is to get injured or something is to get broken. Ruby loves sitting up next to the cook top and helping to stir dinner or breakfast, she loves to empty the dishwasher and even knows where the plates, bowls and cutlery go. She also loves to empty the dishwasher as you are trying to load it. Ruby is really good at passing pegs to help hang out the clothes but gets bored with this very quickly and has just recently taken to the vacuuming - which she will only do on her own.

Ruby has also recently started to do lots of colouring. We have lots of pages of coloured scribble around the house and this weekend we are going to attempt to paint without making too much mess.

This week we took great grandma to music class and then granny and gramps took us to lunch where Ruby got to play car racing games in the kids play area. This is Ruby's other latest love. Driving the car. She will sit in the front seat for ages playing with all the things that flash and make noises and gets a huge thrill when mummy lets her sit in the front to drive up the driveway. The only thing is that she doesn't ever want to get out of the front seat and this usually ends in tears.

Just as a side note - congratulations to Andrew and Kay-Lynn who were married on the 1st of August. The Abbott's had the best time and we look forward to helping you enjoy the next chapter of your lives together.

Big Girls Bed

This week Ruby decided all on her own that she was going to sleep in her big girls bed. As mummy was going through the usual bedtime routine Ruby climbed up onto the pillow of her big bed and laid there without moving. When mummy asked her if she wanted to sleep there tonight, Ruby nodded. So after a kiss good night, the light went out and the door got closed. Mummy then sat by Ruby's room waiting and waiting, surely there was no way Ruby was going to stay in the bed without restraints!

After 45mins and not a peep from her room, mummy went to check on Ruby who was sound asleep in exactly the same position she was left in. And this is where she stayed, even when she woke up at 7am, Ruby stayed on her mattress and waited for mummy to come and see her.

The following night didn't work exactly like that, Ruby woke a few times and ended up finishing the night in her cot, but last night was exactly the same as the first night. Ruby slept the whole night in her big bed and stayed there even when she had woken in the morning.

Other than the freaky sleeping Ruby is swimming like Ian Thorpe, climbing like a monkey and eating like her father. And the word of the week - "Ruby", everything is "Ruby" or "Ruby's".

Super Ruby

Last week while visiting Grandma Dianne, Ruby was taken by a photo hanging up that had Ruby, mumma, grandma and great granny in it. She sat there for ages just looking at it. When we asked her where mumma was she would point and say 'there' and she did the same for grandma and granny. When we asked her where Ruby was she would look up smile and point to herself, who's that in the photo then, 'baby'.

Since then mummy and daddy would ask where is Ruby just to see her point to herself, then out of the blue we were playing this game and little voice came back 'Ruby' and of course she was pointing at herself. She is also saying 'Ruby' for things that belong to her. When we are heading off for our afternoon bike ride Ruby knows that we have to put our helmet on first so she runs to the garage pointing at her helmet 'Ruby' Ruby' 'Ruby'.

The other thing Ruby has started doing, is putting things away. Ok, this seems trivial but she would not do this before, she would spread her toys and books all over the house and just walk away and leave them. Now she is putting her clothes in the dirty clothes, putting toys away and picking up after herself - when asked!

We've also started back at swimming and music class this week. With Ruby loving both. Swimming with daddy on a Thursday and music with mummy on a Tuesday, we might even get daddy to music next week, although he wasn't very impressed on the other mums (no yummy ones apparently) at the new class time so we will see.

Ruby has also met her Aunty Freda this week and lots of other relatives from Daddy's side at a party over the weekend. Ruby was a little taken aback by the amount of people wanting to talk, cuddle and hold her but in the end the resident pig and Freda's new monkey book were the winners.