Chatting About Lockdown

Boys talk

Seven weeks later and we're still in lockdown because of the coronavirus. It started in March, then went all the way through April, and now we're in May. Mostly it's been fun, even if I have had to give up part of my bedroom for William's bed.

Dad wanted to know what things we've most enjoyed and what things we haven't liked about lockdown. Watch the video to find out the answers.

Today is also William's fourth birthday, which is why he's wearing one of his presents, a new Paw Patrol watch, in the video. Hope it's got good strong protection after he sneezed all over it!

More time in lockdown means more time writing, drawing and doing schoolwork. Here are a couple more of my favourite drawings from the last week, one of my flower shop and one of a rocket zooming into space.

We couldn't have a big party for William's birthday this year, but I hope the lockdown finishes soon so we can get out in time for my birthday. The list of things I want is getting longer every day...

Dino Tails and Scary Tales

More coronavirus creativity

It's been over a month now since we started our lockdown at home because of the coronavirus. The first week wasn't very fun - Mum and Dad were busy working, I was missing my friends from school and I was bored just being stuck in the house.

But since then it's actually become pretty fun. William and me get to play with our toys in the dining room where the table used to be (and which is now in William's room for Mum and Dad to work on), there's a great school app that I love doing maths puzzles on with my iPad, and being at home gives me lots of time to get creative.

Dad challenged me to come up with some different drawings, and the first one I did was this picture of some dinosaurs next to a volcano. There's an Ankylosaurus being eaten by a Velociraptor, and a T-Rex snarling at the top.

One of the things I love as much as dinosaurs is space, so I drew a picture of the International Space Station. We even got to see the real International Space Station up in the sky one night - it was flying past so fast and I was the first one to find it.

Plus of course I still love drawing transformers, and this is one which turns into a fier (fire) truck.

As well as drawing, I'm also still writing stories. This is a short one but a scary one, about a vampire spider...

The coronavirus is still out there in the world, so it looks like we're going to be stuck at home for a few more weeks yet. If it goes on too long I'm going to run out of things to draw and write about!

The Lockdown Lowdown

Sharing rooms and space

It's been three weeks now since we started the lockdown at home because of the coronavirus. Guess they didn't find a cure for it overnight then. So there's still no school for me, no daycare for William, no driving to work for Mum and Dad...

And no separate bedrooms for William and me. We've been sharing our room for weeks now, but most of the time it's going well. It's nice to be able to have a chat as soon as we wake up, and sometimes I get to read to William before we go to bed at night (if we haven't been naughty and told off the night before).

More days at home means more time for getting creative. Today I asked Dad what he wanted me to draw and he said "pirates", so here's my drawing of a pirate on a desert island with his pirate ship floating in the sea nearby (ignore the pencil marks by the mast, I made a bit of a mistake there).

I also did this drawing of a house in the rain, and of course just about every day I draw a picture of a transformer. This is a bad guy transformer I drew for Dad (you can tell because it says "to mikeile" at the top), which transforms from a robot into a somearing (submarine).

Some people said they liked the last stories I wrote but that they were a bit scary, so this time I wrote a story about another of my favourite things: space. Here's me reading my space story about the end of the world.

What's going to happen next? When will schools go back? Will the lockdown finish before William's birthday so we can have a proper party for him? Nobody knows, but as long as I have my colouring pens, pads and paper (plus plenty of food) I'll be just fine.

Keeping Creative During Coronavirus

Scary tales of isolation

Just when I was having a nice time at school, going out places in the sunshine and planning a family holiday later in the year... the coronavirus happened.

I don't really know what a coronavirus is - William think it's something big, like a bear, which will chase us if it sees us. Whatever it is, it can make people really sick, so while the coronavirus is outside we have to stay inside. That means I'm now sharing my room with William since Mum and Dad are using his bedroom as an office to do their work.

Because nobody is allowed to go out anywhere, that means school is shut. But the teachers say I still need to keep up with school work, so I've been doing some creative things while I've been stuck at home - like drawing pictures.

That one above is of a permerd (pyramid) in egept (Egypt). You can see all the steps up the sides of the pyramids and the spings (sphinx) which is guarding them. It's very hot in Egypt, as you can see because the temperature is 1000 degres.

I've done some other great drawings too, like this space book I made for Dad, including planet Earth, rockets, the sun and even the international space station. The drawing next to it is of a transformer robot, which turns into... well, just read the description I wrote.

But it's not just art I've been working on. I've also been writing stories, just like I normally do in class. These are two of the scary stories I've written - one about a skeleton and one about a vampire. Hope they're not too frightening for you!

So those are some of the creative things I've done during our first week of being stuck at home during the coronavirus. I'll share some more with you next time.

School's Out For Summer!

Fun in the sun these holidays

After Christmas has been and gone, it would be easy to feel sad after waiting for it for so long. Luckily, the end of Christmas just means the start of a nice long summer holiday for me - thanks to the super-long school break.

This year we've had a real summer heatwave, which meant bye-bye rain, hello trips to the beach. There was so much sunshine we were able to visit lots of different beaches this year - all of them close to home (not that that stopped me moaning about how long it took to drive to them).

As well as playing in the sand and racing into the waves, we even got to see some unusual creatures at the beaches this year. On one visit to Castor Bay we watched a little green turtle slowly plod his way across the sand. He looked so small we think he must have come from someone's house somehow.

Another time, at Waiake Beach, we saw a dead stingray washed up on the rocks. We were pretty sure it was dead, but I still stepped carefully a long way around it, just to be certain the scary stingray wasn't just sleeping.

But we haven't just spent the whole summer lazing about in the sunshine. Most of it, maybe, but not all. We've also done some walking, scrambling over the rocks along the beachfront with Dad and Mum, and biking along some tracks with Grandma near her house.

So with all these trips to the beach and fun in the sunshine, you'd think it was the best summer holidays ever right? Wrong. I also had to go to Greenlane Hospital for a day to have surgery to remove my tonsils and open up my nasal passages. I didn't even know what tonsils were - but they were causing problems, so the doctors had to take them out.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love food. So I was pretty sad when I found out that lots of the types of food I like were going to be off the menu for a couple of weeks. If you want to see the difference, just look at these pictures: before surgery I could eat the yummy cake Grandma made, but after surgery I could only have drinks and iceblocks.

Luckily my throat and nose were back to normal (actually, better than normal!) by the time the end of the holidays came and it was time to go back to school. I was looking forward to a fun year with my friends in Year Three, but then, only a couple of months in, came the coronavirus.

To be continued...

Wrapping Up 2019

What did we get up to this year?

Santa's gone back to the North Pole to rest, my room is full of new presents and we're going to beaches for swims in the sea. That means it's summer time, and almost the end of the year. Way back 12 months ago, I had just finished my first six months of school and was looking forward to the year ahead. But now that it's nearly over, what were some of the cool things I've done this year?

In March we had our big Australia holiday (or as I like to think of it, Ollie-day) with Grandma and Grandad. We visited an old gold mining town, a wildlife sanctuary and other cool places around Melbourne.

I also completed my first full year of primary school. By the end of year two I could read all by myself - whole books, only needing help with a few of the longer words. Now I sit in bed with William in the mornings reading his books to him.

During year two I even went to my first school disco and a school movie night, both with my friend Talia. When the last day of school came I was very sad to not see her for a couple of months.

I'm also an arm circles expert now! After a couple of years taking swimming lessons, I'm now able to swim really well. I can do the forward arm circles easily, and am getting pretty good at backstroke too - except when I try to move my arms the wrong way and end up sort of swimming backwards!

For a while through the year it seemed like we'd have somewhere new to live. First we were buying a bach up in Wapiu, then we weren't. Then we were buying a bach up in Mangawhai Heads, then we weren't. Then we were buying a new house with more space for everyone... might still happen, but not this year.

As you can see, I've achieved a lot this year. Certainly more than Dad, whose main achievement was spending far too much money on a pile of comics which have been annoying Mum by being piled up in their bedroom all year. What's next? We'll just have to turn the page to 2020 to find out...

My Christmas List

What I'm asking Santa for this year

It's about time! Every week for a couple of months I've been asking how many days it is until Christmas. Then I'd groan when I heard the answer, because the number was so big.

But now it's nearly here. We've put up the tree, hung decorations around the house, and the little magic Christmas elf is moving about night by night, reporting back to Santa on how good we've been (and how naughty William has been, probably).

Since making a Christmas list and having Dad video it worked so well last year, I thought it was worth doing it again. No point having Santa unsure of what to make me - he needs a comprehensive, itemised list. And here's my one for this year. There's a bit of a transformer theme, because they're my favourite toy at the moment. Hope Santa has plenty in his toy cupboard!

We also asked William what he wanted, but all he said was "a digger". I could just give him one of mine that I don't play with anymore. That might even be some good behavior for Santa to hear about. I must tell the Christmas elf so he can pass that information on...

Jobs For The Boys

What will William do for work?

Every day Mum and Dad go off to do this thing called "work". They spend so much time doing it, but I don't really understand what it is. All I know is that they do it to get more money to buy things for me. Which is just fine; they can spend as long doing that as they want!

But one day William and me are going to be big enough to work too. What will we do for a job? Dad says he writes things every day, and Mum works in an office she's been at for over 20 years! I've already decided I'm going to be a paleontologist, but what about William?

He could definitely be a garden care person; someone who keeps gardens nice and tidy with his wheelbarrow and tools. He sure loves his lawnmower. Every time Dad goes out to cut the grass, or pull out weeds or rake up leaves, William is right there behind him with his little gloves and earmuffs on. He doesn’t miss many bits when he’s mowing the lawns either.

William might be a builder too. He keeps taking the toy tools from my room and using them around the house. Especially the hammer, which he’ll use walking down the hall hammering on walls until Dad tells him to stop. He says he’s fixing things, but I think it’s more likely he’s going to make a hole than fix one.

Or he might be a caretaker. This is the strangest one. William’s always loved mops and brooms. Even when he was a baby, whenever we went out anywhere he’d spot someone using a broom and be all excited about it. Now that he’s big enough to walk around and hold things, he’s always doing some sort of cleaning or tidying. When he’s not using his little vacuum cleaner inside, he’s sweeping up the ground outside.

So those are some jobs that I think William might do when he's bigger. A couple of years ago I made my own job predictions. Will they happen, or will any of these ones for William happen? We'll have to wait quite a few years to find out...

Singing For Our Supper

William's going for a song

If there's one thing William and I love to do, it's to fill our house with noise. Whether it's the sound of us playing noisely with our toys, yelling at each other for stealing the other's toys, or running around screaming while waving our toys, our house is never silent. I'm pretty sure that's how Mum and Dad like it too.

The other way we keep our house nice and noisy is with singing. My little brother William just loves to sing. It's probably because he watches The Wiggles so much, and they're always singing songs, that he loves to sing along. And it's not only at home. Even when we're out in the car he just loves to start a singalong. One of his favourites is "Fruit Salad"...

All that singing about fruit salad is making me hungry. Actually, everything makes me hungry - from waking up to bedtime, there's hardly any time I'm not hungry. Luckily another of William's favourite songs is one he learned at daycare - the song you sing before eating to say thanks for the food. Boy, if I had to sing that every time I had something to eat, I'd be singing all day!

That William sure loves to sing. And we both sure love to eat. That probably explains why all our favourite songs are about food. It's partly about enjoying a good singalong, and partly an announcement  to Mum that it's feeding time again!

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.