We arrived in New Zealand the day before the family Christmas party- unfortunately I came down with a nasty stomach virus the next morning and missed 95% of the party so can't report on it! I am very grateful to Dad, Barbara, Toru and everyone else though for looking after Riku most of that day so I could rest and recover. We realised after arriving back in Japan that we had probably unwittingly taken the norovirus which has been going around in Japan this winter with us to NZ- Riku was the first to show any symptoms but had a very light dose of it luckily, however I was next, followed by Toru, Dad, Nana and then Mum- hopefully that was all but it is an extremely contagious bug apparently which spreads like wildfire.
Once recovered we took Riku to have a photo with Santa at the shopping mall before going down to the beach and here was the result:
Couldn't get a smile from Riku- actually Santa didn't help much as he wasn't really the jolliest of Santas- he was more concerned about Riku pulling his beard than finding out what we wanted for Christmas!
The last time we had Riku in a car seat in Japan he cried for a solid hour on the way back from Toru's mum's house. Going to Tairua he only cried for the last 25 minutes of the trip so I guess we should count ourselves lucky!
The weather wasn't fantastic- swells first from a cyclone up north and rainy later- while we were in Tairua but we still managed plenty of activities even though it was a bit cold for swimming. Riku went on a boat for the first time
and slept for most of it! Seems like boats have quite a hypnotic effect on babies.
He went to a natural hot spring at Hot Water Beach
He wasn't very impressed with the sand and refused to either stand or sit on it, but was quite happy on my lap.
He also tried out his new paddling pool
And went hiking, which he didn't enjoy the second half of so much unfortunately. He liked the daisy we found for him at the end (you can see a bit of sunburn on his cheeks here, I tried very hard with hats and sunblock but the NZ sun can be vicious) but wasn't too impressed with the cows!
Actually I have realised that he was most likely teething with his second upper tooth which probably made an appearance around Christmas Day (will write a blog post on the new teeth soon)- he was a bit grumpy and clingy for a lot of the stay at the beach and in hindsight the cause was probably his teeth. Riku doesn't seem to show some of the usual teething symptoms like dribbling or chewing on everything in sight (more than he usually does anyway) so it can be hard to tell when he is cutting a tooth.Riku made a lot of progress with his crawling and pulling up to standing while in NZ- I'm sure all the wide open spaces helped encourage him!
