Today, during his swim lessons, he floated on his back for the first time by himself!  He is also becoming quite the expert at doing “The Rocket” at he shoots towards the steps at the side of the pool.
Way to go kiddo!

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We spent about two hours at the Basingstoke Aquadrome today ~ our longest time ever.
Tosha loved to alternate between the hot tub and cold beach areas; and Tolii couldn’t get enough of the waterslides.
Today was a milestone for Tolii; well, actually two milestones.
First, he went down the yellow waterslide by himself for the first time [...]

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Both our boys are really growing up now…perhaps the transition to school for Tolii has benefited him and Tosha.  I guess Tosha now considers himself the big cheese at nursery and Tolii is being challenged along with the Year 1 pupils in his classroom.
The conversations with Tolii are becoming much more rich in description and [...]

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I’ve lost track of how many Power Picnics we’ve hosted over at the Millennium Meadow.  I think today was the third.  Sorry, yesterday.  I really must start these blogs entries earlier, lest I fall further behind — forgive me…I was listening to music while sprawled on the sofa with my feet and legs twinging from [...]

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Tosha earned his “Ducklings Award Grade 1″ certificate today at his swim lessons.  You might remember that he put up a bit of a fuss at his first lesson…well, he calmed down and got on with the business of learning to swim!
Today, Tolii, too, earned his latest, and last, Ducklings certificate: Grade 5.  Now its [...]

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We arrived back on Friday afternoon from our wonderful holiday in Corfu, Greece.  There’s so much to tell that we wrote a separate page about it all!  But here’s a taste…
Corfu is a beautiful mountainous island with many things to explore; and some very cool beaches to bathe on.  The hospitality of the people were [...]

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The second week of May has been stellar! The temperatures rose to above 25C - and that was all we needed to haul down the pool from the loft, fill it with warm water (by attaching the garden hose to the kitchen tap), and take a plunge!
Daddy enjoyed himself so much at his party [...]

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We had a wonderful afternoon walk after the kids’ swimming lessons (like last week, Tosha put up a fuss, let’s hope he’ll settle into the lessons by next week). We’ve written a separate Kids’ Outings page about the walk itself. There are a ton more photos, of course, in our gallery.
We drove the [...]

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Today was Tosha’s first swim lesson. His lesson at 10:20am at St. Swithun’s School’s pool was at about the same time as Tolii, Angus and Rupert’s lesson. And, Katie joined the swim school this term too!
All this and you’d think things would go, well, swimmingly.
Daddy and mummy decided to see if just one [...]

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Today was Tolii’s last swim lesson for this term. He earned his “Duckling Award Grade 4” certificate from the Judy Sporle swim school!
More importantly for Tolii, he got a badge!
The “exam” was last week; so today was a bit of a practice session and a chance to have a bit of fun. Vicki took Tolii [...]

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What a fantastic weekend we all had. We headed down to a cottage in Dorset for a mini-holiday courtesy of granny. It was one of her Christmas presents to the boys — and oh boy! did they (and us) every enjoy it. So much so that Tolii was in tears leaving the place [...]

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After swim lessons, Tolii and daddy stopped at the park nearby. After a good play and pee in the bushes (does he drink the entire contents of the pool?), we got back into the car to meet granny, who was shopping at Homebase.
Tolii asked how you drive a car.
“You take lessons from a professional [...]

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Today, Tolii swam the entire width of the pool by himself! Three times!
He kicked his feet and put his hands over his head while looking down into the water.
Watch out Olympics 2016!

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Paula and Mike Stead invited us over for a BBQ in today’s wonderful weather. It turned into a bit of a reunion as we hadn’t seen them in a few months, nor had Tolii seen the other special guests: Joel and Fran. Dropping in, too, was Graham and Gill. Good times and [...]

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Four days off. With the kids. Thankfully, with two grannies too!
Friday: sunburning daddy at Finkley Down Farm Park; Tolii meanwhile shuttled between THE slide and the monkey swing. Tosha took the whole place in, but especially liked his first ride on the monkey swing. Back home we had our first BBQ of [...]

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