Mind your language

It is amazing to see how quickly Thumper is learning to communicate with words. We have been doing baby sign language with her (as we did with BallFiend) and she first signed back when she was about 7 months old, signing 'mum'. Unfortunately I rarely see her do this one as she only tends to ask for me when I am not around. After using few signs since then, suddenly in the past month, her vocabulary as exploded...

Things Thumper can sign:

• mum (started about 7 months)
• goodbye (started about 8 months)
• more (started about 9 months)
• drink (started about 9 months)
• food/eat (started about 9 months)
• dad (started about 9 - 10 months)
• milk - the Auslan version (started at about 10 months)
• sleep (start about 12 months)
• dog (started at 13 months)
• ball (started at 13 months)
• hurt (started at 13 months)
• hat (started at 13 months)
• lion (started at 13 months)
• bath/wash (started at 14 months - first signed when I said 'dad is going to have a shower', she signed bath)
• milk - stopped using the traditional sign and has made up her own which mimics me undoing the clasp on my maternity bra (14 months) 
• elephant (started about 14 months)
• poo/nappy (started about 14 months)
• telephone (started at 14 months)
• hot (started at 14 months)
• fish (started at 14 months)
• bell (started at 14 months - today when I heard the school bell ring and said so, she signed bell!)

Added to her signing vocabulary is her increasing interest in mimicking sounds and repeating words...


Some of the things Thumper can say:

• more ('mah')
• hello ('elo' or 'el-ah')
• mama
• dada
• lion/tiger ('raah')
• BallFiend's name
• dog ('da-') 
• car ('brrm-brrm')
• shh! ('sss')
• monkey ('ooh-ooh')

And while I'm here...


Funny things Thumper does: 

• gives kisses
• blows kisses
• pats people on head or shoulder, as if saying 'there there'
• high-fives
• blows raspberries (and has about five different ways of doing so)
• point to various body parts - nose, head, toes, fingers, tummy.
• she attempts to put own socks on
• completely empties out the drawers in the kitchen, dispersing plastic containers and tea towels all over the floor
• Power-crawls! I literally have to run to catch her.
• crawls up to me and tugs on the leg of my pants when she wants attention 
• does funny poses, such as when she is mid-crawl, she will stop and lift one leg up, point her toes and half-twist her body around, then grins like a maniac
• dances by bobbing up and down on the spot

Life's purpose explained

CutLuce (on picking BallFiend up for a cuddle): You're heavy! Why do you keep growing.
BallFiend: So I can keep getting bigger.
CutLuce: Why do you need to get bigger
BallFiend: So I can get old and die.
CutLuce: (pauses to laugh) Are going to do anything in between?
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Wine, women and books

I've heard it said that we all destined to become our mothers (or fathers, as the case may be if you are male), and it seems I am already following in my mother's footsteps. Not simply in the sense of spawning two human beings (at least one of which is destined to become like me by virtue of her sex). No, I have joined a book group... exactly as my own mother did when she was around my current age.

It all started some months ago (back in April) when, at the invitation of The Bibliophile, I agreed (with some trepidation), to join in a monthly meet-up of other women who also all happen to be mothers of pre-school children. The premise was to read books and then chat about them.

Our book list, so far... 

April: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung 

May: Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

June: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali 

July: Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner

August: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas 

September: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

October: The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery

However, The Bibliophile had a secret agenda to create an excuse a reason for us to get out to the pub for an evening of good company, good food and good wine; and as a way to continue the friendships we had formed through our childrens' playgroup as our children get older and move on to other things.

For the first few months, we met at the Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Then, when we had tired of that menu, we moved on to The Post Office Hotel (which has recently been renovated and has just opened it's kitchen...  fantastic menu!). However for our most recent meeting, ArizonaGal invited us all to her home for our book group evening because her hubbie BotanyBoy is a bit of a sustainability guru and was interested to join in the discussion on Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers.

The evening was notable because:
(a) The Adel-Lady was present for the first time (with previous absences to be fairly attributed PainterSam's ever-increasing notoriety since getting all famous and stuff);
(b) we welcomed a new member, K., bringing the number of our group to nine;
(c) the presence of BotanyBoy was the first time we have had a male in our midst; and
(d) we weren't at a pub.

Indeed, the highlight of the evening for me was the lovely atmosphere created by ArizonaGal and BotanyBoy. When we arrived, the scene was set for a garden-party, with lawn chairs set out ready for our discussion. With drinks in hands, we gathered under the hills hoist to commence proceedings. Discussion was robust, and we all seemed to find plenty to say (despite the fact that the majority of us had not finished -- or in some cases even started -- reading the book). As dusk fell, we paused to spray ourselves with insect repellent (drat those infernal mosquitoes) and to say goodnight to LittleMissL and MasterS who were off to bed after watching Mary Poppins.

As night fell, we adjourned to the outdoor dining table for dinner, surrounded by candle-lit lanterns scattered around the garden. BotanyBoy looked quite comfortable seated at the head of the table, surrounded all of us mums-on-a-night-off. Several empty bottles of wine were cleared away, making space to serve ArizonaGal's delicious vegetable lasagna (made with BotanyBoy's home-grown pumpkin). Dessert was a choice of yummy cakes (lemon or chocolate) brought by E. and L. (OK, OK, there was no choice involved, I had a piece of each!)

After a time, the discussion wandered away from the topic of climate change and onto more mundane things (including our children, which is a topic that is supposedly banned at book group) and the evening slowly drew to a close.

It was without doubt, a lovely evening, full of style and sophistication. And although we didn't manage to solve the problem of humanity-induced climate change, The Weather Makers made a strong impression on me. I am now inclined to read Here On Earth: a case for hope, Tim Flannery's new book.
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Sewer Gator

See you later toilet paper. Don't forget your crocodile!
- BallFiend's comment when flushing the toilet.

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Wasteland

A few weeks back, on a bit of a whim, I signed our family up for a 'zero waste for a week' challenge that the local council were promoting. The idea is to put nothing in your rubbish bin for a week - all waste has to go in the recycling or compost. The council sent me a few freebies as an incentive to participate:

• a reusable coffee cup;
• 5 reusable produce bags; and
• a reusable sandwich container.

We had already been doing a few things to avoid waste, like recycling packaging as much as possible, re-using plastic bags or taking non-plastic bag alternatives when shopping. Thumper has been in cloth nappies since birth (except for when we went on holidays and had no access to a washing machine). However, we don't have a compost bin, so for the challenge week, I sent our food scraps to GrandPaul's compost bin.

Overall, we did OK, but I don't think we're going to be winning any prizes - we definitely didn't manage zero waste. But considering we didn't really try all that hard, I reckon we didn't do too badly. At the end of the week, there was so little rubbish in our bin, that we didn't need to put it out for collection that week: we could easily go another 2 or 3 weeks before the bin is full. (Although, this is actually pretty normal for us).

It is interesting to take a bit more notice of what does get chucked away. Most of the packaging we do have is recyclable - but manufacturers will persist with using non-recycleable packaging. Particularly annoying ones are:

• bread bags and the little plastic tie
• tablets in foil packaging, but with plastic bubbles on one side
• deli ham/sandwich meat comes in a plastic-backed paper wrap
• breakfast cereal - the inner plastic bag
• all my favourite chocolate biscuits and lollies come in flexible plastic wrap that cannot be recycled (although the plastic tray inside the biscuits can be recycled) 
• toothbrushes and toothpaste (while I didn't have any that needed discarding this week, they are not recyclable) 
• other health/personal care items (eg.sunscreen, nappy rash cream) comes in tubes doesn't appear to be sold in recyclable packaging.
• meat from supermarkets (and sometimes from butchers) is packed on foam trays
• clothing (both new and secondhand from op-shops) always seems to come with those annoying tiny plastic strips to hold the tag/label on.

Then there are the things we could have made sacrifices for to avoid waste, but chose not to, for example...

• night nappies for BallFiend (he's four years old but not night toilet trained yet and although Thumper is in cloth nappies, BallFiend refuses to wear them, having been used to disposables all his life); 
• pads/tampons;
• disposable replacement-razor blade cartridges (even if you keep the handle part for reuse).

The Zero Waste Challenge was an interesting experience, but not one that is going to get me to completely change habits and adopt a zero-waste lifestyle permanently. It's not really practical to live off the land when you live on a smallish block in the inner city - can't really grow your own everything (ie. it's all very well to have a vegie patch, but what about wheat for bread, cows for milk, animals for meat, etc.). And for some products (medicines come to mind) there is no other option than to buy what is on offer, packaging and all.  

Consumer-awareness campaigns are all very well, but I reckon it is really up to governments to regulate the packaging used by manufacturers and retailers. There are way too many products that are sold with mixed packaging where part of it is recyclable and part isn't, and consumer boycotts aren't going to change this. And a lot more could be done at the retail level to get shop-keepers to stop putting purchases into plastic bags. I know the big stores (Coles, Bunnings, etc.) have been the target of this type of thinking and are now voluntarily avoiding use of plastic bags. But every single greengrocer that I have ever been to has rolls of little plastic bags for fresh produce. Then when you pay, they place all this into another plastic bag! It doesn't matter if you take an alternative like a trolley or basket, they are too damn quick! 

It's really annoying, because there are so many ways were it would be really, really, easy to stop using plastic and creating waste. I think we are all just too lazy really. 

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Trail of destruction

I left Thumper happily playing with the toy hospital (the Fisher Price Little People Hospital that was mine when I was a kid) in her bedroom and returned to the kitchen to prepare dinner. When I went back to Thumper a little later, she was still in her bedroom. So I had no idea that she had successfully completed a stealth mission in my absence...

It turns out, I must have forgotten to close the door to my bedroom, because when DeepSpice got home a couple of hours later, he found most of the contents of his bedside table on the floor... along with a knob from the chest of drawers in the kids bedroom!
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Wet paint

I can't claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine (yet!) but I have come up with the perfect perpetual keep-a-four-year-old-entertained activity:

Give BallFiend an old paint brush and a bucket of water and tell him to paint the fence.

It is amusing to hear him call out, puzzled: "Where does it go? It keeps going away! Oh (annoyed), now I will have to start all over again!"
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Hee-haw!

That donkey is winning!
- BallFiend, watching the Melbourne Cup day horse-races.
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