Mumbling to myself

Over the last couple of months Isaac has been teaching himself to play chess.  This has been a fascinating process to watch.  It started with Isaac bringing home chess books from the school library.  Occasionally he would ask me to read them to him, but most of the time he sat in his room reading them to himself.

Soon he was talking about how he liked to play chess with the other kids at school.

At first I wondered how much he was really taking in, and how close to the rules these chess games were.

Then one day as we all driving in the car, Isaac piped up and said “Do you know what my favorite move in chess is?  When you castle the king!”  My immediate reaction was to think “Yikes! Okay, I need to pay more attention to this!”

Isaac has since been playing lots of chess, and seems to really enjoy it.  I do wonder how long this game will hold his attention.

Cheers,
Ben

It has been quite a while since I have posted here.  And the reason is quite simple – babies need a lot of attention, and we have a new baby.  Kai Alexander Armstrong arrived about 6 weeks ago (weighing in at 10.7lb) and I have been too busy to post to my blog since.

To make up for my silence – here is a video of the bubby:

(For any Americans reading this “bubby” is commonly used in Australia for “baby”).

Cheers,
Ben

Here is a video of Isaac, Lizzy and I having an impromptu game of “hall soccer” with some beach balls:

Cheers,
Ben

As a kid I used to put salt and pepper on everything I ate.  These days I have drastically cut down my usage of salt and pepper (largely due to being married to a woman who believes that adding salt or pepper to a meal without tasting it first is an insult to the cook).  There are still a couple of foods that I refuse to eat without salt and pepper.  Steamed cabbage is one of them.

Recently we started having steamed cabbage as part of our dinners on a fairly regular basis.  At first Lizzy thought this was great (exclaiming that it “tasted just like lettuce” – which she is quite fond of).  However, the other night, she declared that steamed cabbage was yucky and that she did not want to eat it.

As Lizzy seems to have tastes quite similar to mine – I told her that I did not like steamed cabbage unless I added salt and pepper – and asked her if she wanted to try this for herself.  The result was that she ate all of her cabbage with record speed.

Afterward she smiled at me and said “I love you daddy!  You made me eat all my cabbage!”

To which I had to clarify that I “helped” her to eat her cabbage, not “made” her.

At the end of all of this, Lizzy told Werona that we needed to have salt and pepper on the dinner table whenever we had steamed cabbage in the future.

Cheers,
Ben

Well, we are now within two weeks of baby’s due date and are now just waiting.  Last night Werona and I packed the bags for a trip to the hospital, and for the Kids to go and stay with a friend of ours.  We also have a printed out list of phone numbers – and have tried to think of all potential issues.

Now it is just down to waiting for the baby to arrive.

I must confess that I do not remember feeling this nervous / stressed about the arrival of Isaac or Elizabeth – but I am certainly looking forward to finally getting to see (and hold) this little kid (and to find out whether it is a boy or a girl!).

Cheers,
Ben