Look what I found!

"Mum, come and see the new circus trick I found in my body!"
- BallFiend

Yep, I was woken this morning to share in BallFiend's discovery of yet another thing he could do with balls - stand on them, using the side of Thumper's cot as a support intermittently.
--

Crashed out

Got home from the end of year party for the playgroup-which-morphed-into-a-bookgroup at 3.00 pm with a worn out family. Put Thumper to bed for a nap, but a few minutes later she was crying so DeepSpice went in to trouble-shoot. Twenty minutes later, he still hadn't returned, so I went in to investigate. Thumper was soundly asleep... and so was DeepSpice, crashed out on BallFiend's bed.
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The apple did it

I arrived at creche to pick up the kids (5.45 pm - late thanks to a crappy, broken down tram).

One of the carers came over to me and said "BallFiend had a broken tooth today."

My immediate reaction was to freak out a bit... my brain started rattling off questions (is he hurt? how did it happen? why didn't anyone phone me? what about the professional family photos we are booked in for tomorrow!), while my mouth was speechless.

Then I remembered the wobbly tooth he has had for the past few weeks. "Do you mean his wobbly tooth fell out?" I asked the carer.

She confirmed that yes, she meant that his tooth had fallen out.

Seconds later, BallFiend spotted me from across the playground and came running over to share his exciting news. He was closely followed by two friends who were quick to confirm his story and regale me with eye-witness accounts. Eventually through the cacophany, I worked out that BallFiend had been eating an apple and the tooth came out in it. (Classic!)

BallFiend was ecstatic with excitement... I thought I might nearly cry. He's only five and a half... aren't teeth meant to start falling out when kids are six years old? Oh well... he's just growing up way too quick for me! 

Anyway, must go... gotta make a booking with the tooth-fairy.

--

Contemplating having children?

Lesson 1

1. Go to the supermarket.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. 
3. Go home. 
4. Pick up the paper. 
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience. 
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels. 
4. Allowing their children to run wild.

Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3 To discover how the nights will feel...

1. Walk around the living room from 5 PM to 10 PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10PM, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1 AM. 
4. Set the alarm for 3 AM. 
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2 AM and make a drink. 
6. Go to bed at 2:45 AM. 
7. Get up at 3 AM when the alarm goes off. 
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4 AM. 
9. Get up. Make breakfast. 

Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. 
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed. 
4. Then rub them on the clean walls. 
5. Cover the stains with crayons. 

How does that look?

Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. 

Time allowed for this: all morning.

Lesson 6

1. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and pot of paint, turn it into an alligator.
2. Now take the tube from a roll of toilet paper. Using only Scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into an attractive Christmas candle. 
3. Last, take a milk carton, a ping-pong ball, and an empty packet of CocoaPuffs. Make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Lesson 7
Forget the BMW and buy a stationwagon. And don't think that you can Leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the cassette player. 
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. 
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

There... Perfect.

Lesson 8
Get ready to go out.

1. Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour.
2. Go out the front door.
3. Come in again.
4. Go out.
5. Come back in.
6. Go out again.
7. Walk down the front path.
8. Walk back up it.
9. Walk down it again.
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps.
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house. 

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Lesson 9
Repeat everything at least, if not more than, five times.

Lesson 10
Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a preschool child. (A full-grown goat is excellent.) If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 11

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half just throw up in the air. 

You are now ready to feed a 12-month-old baby.

Lesson 12
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney, TeleTubbies, and Disney. Watch nothing else on TV for at least five years.

Lesson 13
Move to the tropics. Find or make a compost pile. Dig down in and stick your nose in it. Do this 3-5 times a day for two years.

Lesson 14
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying "mummy" repeatedly. Important: No more than a four second delay between each "mummy"; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required.)

Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 15
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt sleeve, or elbow while playing the "mummy" tape made from Lesson 14 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Lesson 16
Put on your finest work attire. Pick a day in which you have an important meeting.

1. Take a cup of cream, and put 1 cup lemon juice in it.
2. Stir.
3. Dump it on your nice shirt. Also, saturate a towel with this mixture.
4. Attempt to wipe it off with this towel.
5. Do not change. You have no time.
6. Go directly to work.

Lesson 17
Go for a ride, but first...

1. Find one large tomcat and six pitbulls.
2. Borrow a child safety seat and put it in the back seat of your car. 
3. Put the pitbulls in the front seat of your car. 
4. While holding something fragile or delicate, strap the cat into the child seat. For the really adventurous... Run some errands, remove and replace the cat at each stop.

You are now ready to have kids!
--

Why Parents Drink

A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper.

"Hello?"

"Is your daddy home?" he asked.

"Yes," whispered the small voice.

"May I talk with him?"

The child whispered, "No."

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your Mummy there?"

"Yes."

"May I talk with her?"

Again the small voice whispered, "No."

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, "Is anybody else there?"

"Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman."

Wondering what a policeman would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?"

"No, he's busy", whispered the child.

"Busy doing what?"

"Talking to Mommy and Daddy and the Fireman," came the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, "What is that noise?"

"A hello-copper" answered the whispering voice.

"What is going on there?" demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive.

Again, whispering, the child answered, "The search team just landed the hello-copper."

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?"

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle:

"me"

--

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

In an effort to convince Thumper to leave a hair clip in her hair (to keep her hair out of her eyes), I put the hair clip in to my hair. She looked up at me and smiled, and said in a very matter-of-fact way: "You look like a baby."
--

Grey or Brown

Overall, Thumper is great with her colours - she can correctly identify pretty much all of them, and has been able to do so for at least 4 or 5 months now. However, in the bath tonight, Thumper was playing with four plastic blocks: three blue ones and one grey one. She held a blue one up and said "This is blue." I agreed with her that it was indeed blue. Then she held the grey one up and said "This is brown."

I find this interesting because BallFiend did exactly the same thing - always said that brown was grey (and in fact, he still does occasionally). One of the carers at his creche is from Eritrea and another from India; both have quite dark brown skin and I distinctly remember BallFiend describing their skin as grey.
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Staging a production

Thumper, annoyed at my asking her not to throw the contents of the kitchen drawers across the room, lay down on her tummy and starting doing a pathetic grizzle. After a minute, she realised that I wasn't paying attention and called out to me "I have to have a trantrum. I have to cry."
--

Merricks Beach trip

With a public holiday last Tuesday, it would have been unAustralian for DeepSpice not to take the Monday off, so with little urging from me, he did and we wisely used the opportunity to get out of town for a four-day weekend. Despite only trying to book a few weeks in advance, I had managed to find a lovely beach house at Merricks Beach. I'm not going to say exactly where it is, because it was so good, I don't want to share it with anyone else! But here's a couple of photos...

View from the front verandah.

Back deck and beautiful native Australian back yard.

Unlike previous holiday departures, when we usually end up leaving at about 1 pm, we actually managed to leave within 30 minutes of my planned departure time of 10 am and were sitting down to enjoy lunch at our beach house by 1 pm. 

Then, at BallFiend's insistence, it was straight off to the beach. It was only 18 degrees but the sun was shining, and it wasn't long before BallFiend had rolled up his pants for a paddle. Thumper spent the first 10 minutes clinging to my leg, scared because it was "too noisy" - she didn't like the noise of the waves lapping on the shore! But it was wasn't long before she too was paddling. 

And of course, it was then only minutes until both kids had "fallen" (ie. deliberately sat) down fully clothed. We had come down prepared for a walk and some sand-castle building, not for two drenched kids. So I walked back to the beach house for towels and a change of clothes. After a some more serious sand-castle building, we eventually convinced them it was time to go and get some dinner. Back at the beach house, we stood the kids at the back door, and literally hosed them down to get all the sand off. Despite having paddled in the freezing water at the beach, they complained that the hose-water was too cold!

After dinner, we took the kids out for a short walk around the local area, and they were very excited to see lots of rabbits nibbling away on lawns and shrubs. Thus began Thumper's (and to a less extent, BallFiend's) weekend-long obsession with bunnies... we saw them frequently on the back lawn at our house. I'm sure the locals and the farmers in the area hate them, but it was a real novelty for our city-dwelling kids.

As it turns out, it was a good thing we spent Saturday at the beach, because for the rest of the weekend, the weather was miserable - raining and grey, with occasional breaks when the Sun would peak through long enough to give a glimmer of hope, before disappearing back behind the clouds. 

So on Sunday, we went for a drive in search of "the chocolate factory" mentioned in the "Things to Do" notes at the beach house. Apparently it was only 100m from the Merricks General Wine Store. The MGWS was just a few minutes drive away and also happened to be a wine-tasting venue for three local vineyards. After dutifully tasting some rather nice wines (and purchasing a few!), I enquired about the whereabouts of the chocolate factory. I was informed that the chocolate factory is now at Flinders, about a 20 minute drive away. BallFiend was not going to be easily dissauded, so we continued on our way... 

Flinders is a lovely little village to visit and there were a lot of people wandering around the main street shops. It was surprisingly hard to park but we eventually found a spot, right next to where a local community group were holding a fund-raising sausage sizzle (much to the delight of BallFiend, Thumper and DeepSpice). I left them to their sausages and ate one of the rolls I had packed. Then we joined the throngs wandering along main street, until we reached the chocolate factory. It turned out to be a chocolate shop, with the factory part sitting idle out the back. BallFiend and Thumper were each indulged with a chocolate car and a chocolate frog respectively, whilst DeepSpice and I each had a macron (nice, but not a patch on Choukette's!). With the kids happily munching on their chocolates, I left them with DeepSpice in a park and took the opportunity to browse through a couple of boutiques. Found some lovely earrings, on sale too! 

On our return journey, we stopped by the Ashcombe Maze, but as we arrived, it started absolutely bucketing down and then a bus load of Japanese tourists turned up, so we decided it would be best to leave the maze (and it's exhorbitant admission fees) for another day. Later in the afternoon, we enjoyed the company of The Bibliophile and her family, who were staying at their nearby hobby farm for the weekend. BallFiend and Thumper were very excited to see MasterW and LittleMissIz, and us 'groan-ups' were pleased to be able snatch a few moments of peace (in between the kids' interruptions) to enjoy a glass of wine and some adult conversation. 

On Monday morning, I took the kids down to the beach to poke around in the rock pools, leaving DeepSpice behind to have some time to himself. Thumper was terrified of all the dogs being walked along the beach and insisted I pick her up whenever one came into sight. But apart from this, she walked the entire way from our beach house, along the beach, and back again - at least 500m in each direction, plus the wandering around at the rock pools, and the extra 200m or so she did when she decided to 'run away' from BallFiend and me as we were walking back. 

BallFiend watches on as Thumper runs away. He then starts to get worried, and goes after her.
Then stops and urges me to go after her. (I stood my ground and she eventually came back.)

The rest of the day was spent lazing about doing nothing much... or at least, if we did do something of interest, I can't remember what it was! 

Thumper, unsurprising after her long walk, had a big, big sleep.

Then we went out for dinner at The Hertiage, a local restaurant/pub. The kids were served up the most enormous bowl of spaghetti bolognese each and surprising managed to eat about 90% of it. Then BallFiend ordered a choc-top ice cream for dessert. After meticulously picking all the chocolate off the top, he decided he didn't want the ice cream. Thumper was only too happy to oblige, leaving BallFiend to finish of the cone and DeepSpice and I to recite Jack Sprat. The owner, Glenda, came over to comment on our beautifully behaved children and gave them a little bag with crayons, stickers and activity sheets to keep them entertained. Overall, a surprisingly relaxing meal out, given we had children in tow.

In the morning of our last day on the Peninsula, The Bibliophile organised for us all to meet for breakfast at the Somers General Store, which was of course followed by a mandatory (thanks BallFiend) walk/play on the beach. Then it was back to our beach house to pack up. Whilst outside, loading up the car, I noticed a strange brown lump on the path and went over to investigate. A small ball of fur was just quietly sitting there and didn't even move when I approached.

Thinking it might be an injured or dead animal (I seem to attract 'em for some reason), I went over to investigate, but it suddenly got timid and scurried away into the agapanthas. I went back a few minutes later and found it out on the path again, and was able to get a much better photo:

After a quick bit of research on the Web, I reckon it might be a bush rat. 

The drive home was an easy 90 minute trip - thanks to EastLink and an endless suppply of cruskits to keep the kids from grumbling - and we were home by about 3pm. However, once we had unpacked the car, I discovered the full extent of the cruskit crumbs and so spent the next hour and a half vacuuming and wiping out the interior of the car! All worth it though. Can't wait to go back!
--

The big dry

Went in to wake Thumper from her afternoon nap today at about 3.45 pm. She had been a bit difficult about settling down to sleep when I put her in the cot at about 2 pm - I had heard her playing for a while and moving about. So I was, at the very least, expecting to find her asleep upside down in the cot with a foot or two hanging out between the bars.

I certainly was not expecting to find a completely naked child, curled up sound asleep in the top corner of her cot, with her nappy in another corner of the cot and her dress thrown out on the floor! 

My first thought was: wet sheets and blankets! But to my surprise, she hadn't even wet the nappy, let alone the sheets. She had been changed into the nappy at about 12.45 pm (just before I left StompyDad's house, where we had been visiting that morning). It was now several hours later but she was completely dry.

So I got her up and put her on the potty. Still the drought did not break. Back into a nappy and off to Gran and GrandPaul's house for swim then dinner. Even more surprising, when Gran removed that nappy, at about 4.30 pm, it was still dry too.

I can't help but think this child is cleverer that she is letting on: that she knows exactly how to use a potty, but she is just choosing not to. I admire her spirit.


--

Puddle

This morning, both kids were still asleep at 8.00 am, so I had the pleasure of being the one to wake them up... it's nice to be waking them up when it is usually the other way around! Sweet, sweet schadenfreude!

This morning was a rush-around morning as I had to get Thumper to Gran and GrandPaul's house by 9.00 am, then BallFiend to kindergarten by 9.30 am.

So I went into the kids' bedroom, opened the curtains and kissed them both good morning. I lifted a sleepy Thumper from her cot and carried her to the change table. When I removed her nappy, I discovered it was completely dry! She is well and truely still in nappies during the day, so a dry night-nappy is extraordinary. Being the opportunist that I am, I suggested that she might like to go on the potty and she readily agreed.

As much as she loves taking off her nappy and having a nudie-run, and as much as she loves pulling BallFiend's undies out of the clean washing basket and trying them on, and as much as she loves the idea of sitting on the potty, getting her to actually stay on the potty for more than a split second is near impossible. But this morning, in her sleepy state, she happily sat on the potty for several minutes. Upon rising, there was one teeny, tiny drop of wee. So we clapped and cheered and danced; and Thumper decided that she had now earned the right to a nudie-run and ran off down the hallway.


Despite knowing that there must be a whole night-time's worth of wee yet to come, I didn't chase straight after her - I paused to gather up her pyjamas first. I was only a moment behind her, but in that time she had let the flood come forth: a massive puddle was waiting, right in the middle of the hall-runner. We have floorboards throughout the entire house, but she made sure that she picked the only available piece of carpet available to wee on.

On the positive side, this mornings events tell me that:
a) she can hold on,
b) she knows how to choose where she wants to wee, and
c) she may well be out of night nappies before she is daytime toilet-trained!

--