NannaAnne's present

It was with great fanfare that NannaAnne stopped by on her way home from work yesterday with a present - which was a very big book! The Wind-up Plane Book comes with a wind-up toy plane which you can see it in the bottom right hand corner of the picture. Several pages have a track built in so that you can wind up the plane and race across the page. Ben can't yet wind but loves the racing part. And what's more, the story is about a boy called Ben who is going on his first plane trip with his mum and dad and baby sister.

This evening we contemplated the double page map of the world at length. We have a couple of globes on the front hall table so Ben is aware of maps and happily he is taken with this one. I think this is probably due to my brother Nick's trip home from London in January, because I was able to show him where Nick and his girlfriend Anna both live. He seems fascinated that we live at the bottom of the map and they live at the top. Just wait until we get to the parts about how baggage handlers do their job!

I must add the Magic Pudding to my to-buy list because we went to the Children's Garden today at the Botanic Gardens and Ben had a great time climbing all over the sculpture of same. It's a shame I cut the Magic Pudding out of the photo - I laugh just looking at him because he's such a grumpy old boot.

Ben's in his nappy because they've turned the water feature back on - hooray!!! I have to say that garden is the best place for 2 year olds in Melbourne, without any shadow of a doubt.

Wind-up plane book is by Gillian Doherty and illustrated by Stefano Tognetti

The Magic Pudding: being the adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff is written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay

Poor little B

Since Friday afternoon Ben has been whiney and tired and refusing to eat, and voila! spots (not the canine kind) have tonight appeared on his throat and his hands. Ian and I have made an internet-assisted diagnosis of hand, foot and mouth, largely suggested by the signs appearing in the childcare centre this week announcing that it's spreading around. We've done well I suppose to have avoided it for so long. Lucky I brought heaps of work home to do this weekend - looks like no work for me on Monday.

So it's been a tough day and the only time he quietened was to eat his Trampoline ice cream, watch Over the Hedge and then to read Rosie Sips Spiders, Wibbly Pig Likes Bananas and Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. In fact he smiled during HMDD, but not the ice cream.

We read Little Sisters Are... last night and it didn't go down too well. He did not like the page where the little sister bites the older sibling at all, and seemed to disapprove of the remainder of the story. I on the other hand found it amusing and will have to track down Little Brothers are... to see what he thinks of brothers' antics.

Fingers crossed that the poor little guy feels a bit better tomorrow. Apparently HFM comes with a very sore throat so what a great excuse for more ice cream.

Little Sisters Are... is by Beth Norling