Remembering Robbie

Robbie Somers 2001 - 2019

Yesterday was a sad day. Our favourite cat Robbie died. He was 18 and a half years old.

I don't know what it will be like without him. He's been here at our house longer than I've been alive. Mummy got him when he was just a one year-old kitten. After that he grew into a big ginger cat, and when I came along we spent lots of time together.

Most of the time it was me wanting to spend time with him - gripping him in tight cuddles, patting him while he was trying to sleep in the sun or just chatting to him while he was eating his dinner.

His name was Robbie but I called him "Puss Puss". I'm not sure why - it was just a cute name for a cute cat. Unlike Bayley, he was always friendly. He never scratched me or tried to bite me or hissed at me - even when I was being pretty annoying. I loved to pick him up and really stretch him out - he had such long legs. Dad sometimes said he was part-kangaroo.

The bad side for Robbie was that he was so nice and friendly he made a very easy target for me (and later William too). Sometimes he got squirted with the water pistol, sometimes he got chased across the garden, but he was always my friend.

When Mummy told me that Robbie had died, the first thing I did was ask if that meant we could get a rabbit. But even though I said that (and having a rabbit would be fun), every time I go outside it feels just a little bit emptier now. I'll miss you Puss Puss.

Let's Meet: William

5 questions about William

We've met some of the other people in the family - what about the newest member, my little brother William? He's 3 years old now, can talk pretty well and has started preschool at daycare. He can also go from best friend to bad guy in just seconds, depending on how rascally he is.

I'm probably the person who knows him best, partly because he's always in my room playing with my toys. Even when I'm trying to play quietly on my own. Even if I'm trying to play a game on my iPad. And even though he has toys of his own in his room. Guess he just wants to be around his cool big brother.

So when it comes to answering questions about him, I'm the expert. Like I can tell you what his favourite food is (banana, or as he calls it, "lala"), and what his favourite TV programme is (The Wiggles - he still has a Happy Birthday banner of them hanging on his wall, even though his birthday was months ago!). Watch my video to learn some more about William.

Now, who else is there left to do a video about? Maybe the cats. Except they like eating and sleeping, and that's about it. It would be a very short video!

Birthday Boys

Two celebrations

The middle of the year is a big time for balloons and birthdays in our house. It’s handy that it’s gone all cold and rainy outside, because that just means more time indoors to play with the mountain of presents that are coming!

First up was William’s birthday, who turned three. The little fella’s already starting preschool at his daycare, so it feels a bit like he’s catching me up with age.

The big thing he’s crazy about are The Wiggles. Every day when we get home he asks about watching them, lying down on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket and cuddling the Wiggles car soft toy. Actually my Wiggles car soft toy, but I’m being a good big brother by letting him borrow it.

So it was no surprise that his birthday party had a Wiggles theme. Balloons hanging up everywhere in the Wiggles colours, and a huge multi-coloured cake complete with Wiggles car on top!

Now that he’s getting bigger he’s starting to get some pretty cool presents, like the dinosaur Lego set. Mum and Dad are definitely encouraging him helping out doing jobs around the house, since they got him a little broom and some earmuffs for mowing the lawns. I’m too smart for that – I ask for presents that involve no work around the house!

After that I had to wait four whole weeks for my birthday to arrive. Boy that time sure goes slow when you’re thinking of all the presents you’re going to get!

Luckily it was worth it when I unwrapped a great space shuttle Lego set, a book about space, a Hot Wheels activity book and some clothes with pictures of dinosaurs on them. And not a broom, vacuum cleaner, duster or any other housework thing in sight!

I had a hard time choosing what cake I wanted this year. Maybe Transformers, but that might be hard to make (even if I’d like to transform a whole cake into an Ollie-eaten cake!). Or super heroes, but I had that last year when I turned five. So it was an Angry Birds cake instead, because I’ve played the game so much over the last year and completed so many levels.

To help celebrate, we took my old daycare friend Damiyn and new school friend Michael to a cool indoor play place called Magic Loft. It was huge and filled with cars to drive, ball pits to dive into, trampolines to bounce around on, and cupcakes to eat when we took a break from all the driving, diving and bouncing. Even William joined in the fun – you can see him climbing up the steps in the picture.

Best of all, the birthday fun keeps on going. Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t seen Grandma, Grandad or Aunt Val yet, which means I don’t have any presents from them. So even though I’m two weeks past my sixth birthday now, I can still look forward to greeting them at the front door with my usual question of “Have you brought me any presents?”

And this time, they will have!

An Australia Ollie-day

Golden views and kangaroos

Well, g'day mate! We're going on an overseas holiday with Grandma and Grandad. This time it's an Australia holiday to Melbourne, which will also be William's first time on a plane! Uh oh, hope he's more relaxed about the flight than Daddy.

I'd been counting down the days on the calendar in my room for weeks, and at last the holiday day arrived. We went out to the airport super early, and I spent most of the flight playing Angry Birds on the little TV screens.

When we were coming in to land in Australia, one of the flight attendants asked me to be the official lolly helper, handing out lollies to everyone on the flight. Even better, I got to keep all the lollies left over at the end! Looks like I won't be needing dinner tonight then...

As soon as we got to Melbourne, we left it behind and drove off to a place called Ballarat. We went all the way there just to visit this old gold-mining town called Sovereign Hill. It was pretty cool - the whole town looked really old, with wooden buildings and people wearing funny old clothes. Luckily there was also a pretty new-looking playground as well.

We went underground to see two gold mines. One of them needed a train ride to get far enough underground, and in another of them I saw a huge piece of gold locked in an underground safe. Later on, I also went on a horse and carriage ride with Grandad, which was a wobbly ride around the streets of Sovereign Hill.

The next day we headed back to Melbourne. We were staying in a place called St Kilda, which was great because not only did it have a pool, but Grandma and Grandad were only a couple of rooms away from us, so we could race down the hallway to their room and knock on their door continually until they woke up, got up and opened the door to let us in.

Another of my favourite things about staying there was starting every day watching a morning kids cartoon show called Giggle and Hoot. Something about owls I think, but it gave me something fun to watch while the adults planned where they were going to take me and William that day.

One thing Melbourne city has that Auckland doesn't is trams, so one day we took a tram ride into and around the city centre. It was pretty fun being on a tram in between the cars on the road. In fact, it was tram-endous!

That picture isn't a tram though. It's actually the Puffing Billy Railway - a steam train we went for a ride on one day. It made a loud "toot-toot" whenever the driver blew the whistle, and everyone outside was waving at us from the roadside as we passed. On the ride we passed through some forest and a couple of small towns. It was super cold though; Dad was joking that the driver was going to announce "Next stop: Hypothermia".

We couldn't go all the way to Australia without seeing some proper Aussie animals, so on another day we went to a place called Moonlit Sanctuary. It was a bit like an open zoo without all the cages, and we were able to walk around the paths feeding and patting all the kangaroos and wallabies. I even stroked a snake and saw a koala pooing. Oops, hope William doesn't step in that one!

It was Grandma's birthday while we were away, so for a nice birthday lunch we drove way way out into the countryside to a vineyard in the Yarra Valley. It was a beautiful sunny day but quite a lot of driving just so the adults could drink wine and get pestered by wasps. Those buzzy things might explain the face Mummy's pulling in the photo.

Nearby there was a chocolate and ice cream factory, and I filled my hands with free chocolate samples. Not as many times as that greedy Daddy though. If the factory had toys as well, I could have spent the whole holiday there!

After ten days on our Melbourne holiday it was time to go back to the airport, and back to New Zealand. I did get quite sad at the airport when we got home, but Dad promised we'll start planning another holiday very soon. I wonder where it'll be next time...?

Let's Meet: Grandad

5 questions about Grandad

If there was a gold medal being given out to the naughtiest member of the family, it would be a close race between William and Grandad. That William does some pretty naughty things - I told you about some of them in one of my earlier blogs. But Grandad, well, he's a different sort of naughty.

So since I answered some questions about Grandma last time, it's only fair that I do the same for Grandad. But what tales of terrible tickling should I tell? Maybe I won't tell all of those - don't want to get him in trouble with Grandma.

I'll just tell you about some other things, like what job should Grandad do? I think a policeman, because he could then tickle the bad guys into giving up! Watch my video to see what answers I have to Daddy's other questions about Grandad.

There you have it - the answers to some tricky questions about Grandad. But who should we do next? Maybe it should be the turn of that naughty little brother William next..?

Let's Meet: Grandma

5 questions about Grandma

There's one thing I can always be sure about when visiting Grandma's house: both my piggy bank and my tummy will get fuller. Every time we see her she gives me some money to put in my piggy bank, and if we're seeing her at her house then she's always been baking something yummy. Sometimes she's even let us help.

But even when the baking has all gone, there's always a stash of white chocolate drops and round mints in her pantry - and I know just where to fine them!

But what else about Grandma? Daddy wanted to test me on a few questions about Grandma, like what sort of job would be best for her? I think growing vegetables and fruit would be the perfect job for her. You can watch me answering more questions about Grandma here.

If I had to describe Grandma (and Daddy asked me to), I'd say she's "very nice". But what about that Grandad? What will I have to say about him? That'll be in the next video...

Let's Meet: Mummy

5 questions about Mummy

That Mummy's pretty great. She makes my lunch for school every day, makes my bed all comfy before I go to bed at night, and always rushes to look after me if I'm sad. We've even got kind of the same smile, if you look at the picture.

But Daddy wanted to see just how well I knew Mummy, so he asked me a few questions about her. Like, what's one of my favourite things that we've done together? That would be going to Australia when we went a couple of years ago. Or what would be a great job for Mummy to do? I think flying a plane, because flying's fun - plus then she can fly us to Australia.

Daddy had five more questions as well, but you have to watch the video to find out what they are and what I said. Let's get ready to meet Mummy!

Not sure if Mummy would agree with all of those answers. She might think Daddy had something to do with making me come up with these, but they were all mine - really!

Next time, let's meet: Grandma!

Making Waves and Bursting Bubbles

Super summer holiday

The school books have been packed away for the year, Santa has gone back to the North Pole for a rest... that means it's time for a nice long summer holiday. And what a holiday this year! School's out for six weeks, even longer than the usual holidays I've had. Now what will I get up to...?

Well, eating, of course. It's the perfect time of year to be enjoying ice creams, and I'll be saying "yes please" faster than you can say "four scoops or six?" William's learned how great it is pretty fast too, though he'd probably get a whole extra scoop if he actually ate it all instead of dripping it down his clothes.

 

Going to the beach is another fun thing to do over summer, so we visited a few on the holidays. We swam at Castor Bay and saw lots of tiny red jellyfish - lucky they weren't stingey ones. And we went to my favourite beach with the cave at Rothesay Bay.

I'm much more confident in the water now after all my swimming lessons, so I was able to go out even further this year. William wants to but he gets a bit scared by the bigger waves - and by falling over in the water, which he does all the time.

When we weren't out swimming or eating ice creams, there were our cool new Christmas presents to play with. Mummy set up our new waterslide in the garden so I could speed down it in a huge splash.

And if we weren't tired enough from doing that, we'd get out our bubble-blowing toys and chase them around the garden. Sometimes I'd even try to eat them if I was fast enough to catch one whole in my mouth.

So, it turns out being at school is even greater than I thought. Sure, I enjoyed my first six months there, but these long holidays are awesome! Before long Daddy, Mummy and William were all back at their works or daycare, but my holiday adventures just keep on going...!

Tis The Season To Be Ollie

What I got for Christmas (fa la la la la)

Yay, Christmas time! Out of the three best days of the year (Christmas for presents, Easter for cake, and birthday for presents and cake), this is the best one!

Like last year, we wanted to get into the festive spirit by looking at some of the amazing Christmas lights people put up on their houses, but if you wanted to see photos of us doing that... well, you've come to the wrong place. William was too rascally for photos when we all went out one night, and then it was raining too hard when Daddy and I went out on Christmas Eve.

But never mind - none of that stopped Santa visiting our house, looking for a chimney, not finding one, sending an elf to break in through a window, and leaving presents under our tree.

 

Lucky I'd made that awesome Christmas list earlier in the month, because I got so many of the things I wanted on it! You can see some of them in the photo, but they included the huge Paw Patroller vehicle, a dinosaur cuddly toy for sleeping with, an Octonauts activity book, a scooter, a backyard waterslide, a dinosaur puzzle, and heaps of yummy food.

William got some good presents too. He just loves pushing his toy vacuum cleaner around the house. He even seems pretty pleased with that pile of clothes he's just unwrapped.

Best of all, now that I'm at school I have a whole month left now to play with everything! Who said getting older was hard work?

Wrapping It Up

Christmas List for Santa

Jingle those bells, it's nearly time for Christmas! Yay, my favourite time of the year. And not just because it's a time to get lots of presents. It means a big, long holiday, going for swims, and lots of fun in the sun.

The first day of December is the earliest Daddy says we can put the Christmas tree up, so I made sure that on that day we all helped get it up and decorated. Every morning since then I've been in charge of counting down the days on our Christmas countdown ornament.

But speaking of presents, there are one or two things I'd quite like. Well, maybe three. Okay, quite a lot. To make it easy for Santa (and everyone else) I've written a handy list of what I want for Christmas, which you can hear straight from my mouth here.

So, no excuses Santa. It couldn't be clearer if I flew up to the North Pole, took your hand, and walked you to each of the shops myself. Now how many days does our countdown say that I still have to wait..?