Grandchildren

We’ve just spent a few days in Perth visiting David, Yuki and little Orin. We are fortunate that even though they live on the other side of the country, we are able to se them two, or three, times each year. Orin is now 15 months old and is a little ‘live wire’. I’m sure that he recognised us from our Skype conversations on Saturday mornings as we were greeted with a great big smile when we arrived on his doorstep.

He’s starting to form words which isn’t bad since he gets spoken to in both English and Japanese. Eventually he will be bi-lingual but both languages together seem to make his own speed development a little slower initially. He’s walking around by holding on to things and is very active. I guess that because he is such a champion crawler, he still gets to places faster on his hands and knees at the moment and hasn’t quite taken off on his feet.

Orin is a great eater and gets very excited when he sees cake; except that his mother won’t let him have any of it. Overall, he is a very lovely little boy!

 After I wrote my last post about the Burrawang Tree, I was reminded of a series of stories that our granddaughters Audrey and Violet really enjoy. In fact, their mother enjoyed the same ones when she was a child. In the 1970’s, the Australian author and illustrator, Ted Prior, wrote a fabulous series of books about a character named Grug. In the stories, Grug was created when the top of a Burrawang Tree fell to the ground. Now, in over the thirty books in the entire series, Grug has had many adventures and solves all sorts of life’s little problems.

In one picture of him in his house, Grug goes to bed but his blanket doesn’t quite cover his toes. Little Violet still tells us that she has ‘Grug Toes’ whenever her feet are cold.

The original series of Grug was republished by Simon & Schuster in 2009 and some new titles have since been released. We recommend Grug books to any one with young grandchildren.