What off button?

Thumper: Mummy when will you be finished on the com-PEW-ta?

Me (murmuring absent-mindedly): Oh, probably never…

Thumper: Well, Mummy, there’s an off button on the com-PEW-ta.

--

Boring old playschool

Overheard this morning while the kids were watching TV - Playschool had just started.

Thumper, in her best whiney voice: "Oh, I'm bored of this!"
BallFiend: "But this is good! Because the ball of playdough rolls down and hits him and he goes bonk and lands on a drum."

I watch as BallFiend narrates over the opening titles, and indeed, a ball is balanced on a stack of books, then it rolls off, bumps into Humpty Dumpty, who topples over and lands upright again on a toy drum.
--

Claude's corn

Usually when I ask BallFiend to tell me what happened at school today, I get one of two responses: 'I don't know' or 'I forgot'. Getting any info out of him is pretty much futile... even long and involved police-grade interview sessions elicit only the most scant of details*.

So during dinner tonight, DeepSpice and I were amazed when BallFiend, completely unprompted, started telling us about an incident that happened at after school care. It was also pretty gross.

"At aftercare today, Claude... he was sitting on the bench thing and he spewed and he didn't have one of those little plastic bags so he had to spew on the floor."

"Poor Claude," I sympathised, "what made him spew?"

"I don't know," replied BallFiend, "but there was lots of corn in it. Then the teachers came and put kitty litter all over it. What is kitty litter made of and why did they put it on the spew?"

Nice of BallFiend to be so forthcoming for a change. Pity about the timing. At least we weren't having corn for dinner I suppose.

*However, a few months ago, I worked out a fantastic technique that is guaranteed to get results to the eternal 'what did you do at school today?' question. As soon as I can get around to it, I'm going to put it into a book and DVD and sell it to parents everywhere and make billions!

Putting the poo back into pool

We took the kids to the Oak Park pool today. An enjoyable way to spend a stinking hot day. We arrived first thing in the morning to nice crystal clear (chlorinated) water. Over the course of the day, as more people arrived and ratio of sunscreen to water increased, the pool became increasingly murky.

But ultimately it was my own offspring who showed that pool-water 'what for': Thumper did a poo in the pool! And even worse, because DeepSpice had disappeared off to the toilet, so it was all up to me to clean up: I had to scoop up the poo with my bare hands and carry it to the nearest rubbish bin!

Still traumatised!
--

Gobbles

Me: Have you finished your breakfast Thumper?
Thumper: No, not yet. I’m just going have three more gobbles.

--

Grade 1, Day 1

First day back at school today for BallFiend.

Same cheesy grin, with a few less teeth compared to this time last year!
Delphi and Woofer (toy dogs) are still required to attend school with BallFiend (though no doubt they will spend the day shoved in the back of his locker.
Sandals look the same but these are actually new ones, a size or two larger.
New learning community with a new teacher (Suzanne). BallFiend has quite a few of the same kids from Bicicletta last year... most importantly Zoe. 
-- 

Making a mark!

"BallFiend, can I use one of these as an exclamation mark*?" asks Thumper, referring to BallFiend’s off-cuts of cardboard from his latest craft project, scattered all over the floor.

* By ‘exclamation mark’, Thumper means a bookmark. Of course.

--

Science with a sting

"That would sting like a mad scientist!"
- BallFiend

-- 

The grape mine

This morning, after I had finished hurrying DeepSpice off to work (late again - he didn't leave till about 9 am), I sat Thumper up at the table with her bowl of weetbix, opposite BallFiend who was still ever so slowly picking away at his bowl of weetbix. As is his way. Then after carefully taking stock of the situation... Thumper had just been to the toilet... there were no scissors in reach... the kids had water to drink... clothes laid out and ready to get dressed in after breakfast, etc., etc. So I felt safe to quickly and quietly sneak off to shower and dress.

But I hadn't reckoned on the bowl of grapes in the middle of the table being used to booby-trap the entire back room of our house.

After my shower, as I walked back down the hallway, I could hear peals of laughter from both children. I wasn't too concerned at this stage. Maybe just a tiny bit concerned. But mainly I was just glad they weren't fighting again.

Then as I entered the room, Thumper looked at me and said in an advisory tone, "Don't look under the fridge mum." When I asked her why, she refused to tell me. So I asked her if I should ask BallFiend why I shouldn't look under the fridge. Before she could say no, BallFiend piped up: "Thumper put grapes under the fridge."

I looked over at the now empty bowl on the table. The entire bowl of beautiful, fresh green grapes was gone, with just the stalks remaining. And indeed, there were quite a few grapes under the fridge. But that didn't account for all of them. However I just assumed Thumper had eaten the rest. (She's a complete glutton when it comes to grapes. She'll just keep eating them until they're all gone if no one stops her. I know. I had to change her pants after the last time she gorged herself on grapes and it wasn't pretty!)

So I set Thumper to work retrieving the grapes from under the fridge. Told BallFiend off for laughing and encouraging Thumper in her misdeeds. Then proceeded to try and get us all organised to go out. I hurried around collecting the various items that Thumper would need for the day (about 20 pairs of spare pants - toilet-training has not been going so well recently) and shoving them into her pink Hootabelle ("no, it's Twinkify!!" she insists) bag.

Then I feel it. Pop. Squelch. I looked under my foot and find the skin of a grape stuck to my shoe, a small puddle of grape juice on the ground. I look around the room and suddenly realise where the rest of the grapes have gone: spread out like a mine-field, all over the room.
--

Chocolate moose

Today, Thumper, BallFiend and I visited StompyDad who has been busily 'decluttering' as a result of the xmas gift that I gave him (a book called Sorted). A gift that has sadly backfired upon me as StompyDad now requires that I spend many, many hours at his house to look through the piles of stuff that he has determined to be clutter. Presumably so that I can shift it all to my house and ultimately end up with an equivelent clutter problem in 30 years time.

And so we were all off to see StompyDad and his clutter. (Except for DeepSpice who got to stay home and attempt to recuperate from the dreadful night's lack of sleep that we both had, courtesy of Thumper waking and wailing multiple times. DeepSpice did most of the getting-up, so I thought this was fair enough).

We stopped on route at a bakery to pick up lunch supplies to take to StompyDad's house - just some pastries and a few sweet treats. I chose lemon tarts for StompyDad and me, BallFiend opted out, and Thumper choose a chocolate mousse. (Both kids also decided to chuck massive tantrums in the shop so that by the time I left, I was completely embarassed by them and furious with them. BallFiend was very contrite afterwards. Thumper not so.)

We arrived at StompyDad's house, ate our lunch and then I was given a grand tour of all the recently decluttered sites around the house... "Open that cupboard. Look in here. Now I just want to show you this, it's important..." and so on for about an hour and a half. Eventually StompyDad left me to actually look through the boxes of stuff. There were some fabulous finds, in amongst the many things that should have been thrown out or sent to the op-shop years ago. The best prize was finding my and CutLuce's Wind in the Willows audio-book, on three cassettes. You know, the kind with actual magnetic tape in them! Recently I've been reading Wind in the Willows to the kids (and Gran and GrandPaul took them to a performance of it at the Royal Botanic Gardens last week). So I have been wishing I could get my hands on that audiobook again. Now I can. All I have to do is work out how to get it transferred onto a CD-rom. Piece of cake.

I also found my old Barbies and a toy rubbish truck (my favourite toy vehicle when I was a kid) and Pick-up Sticks, and a wierd maths toy that you stick rubber bands on and make symmetrical and mirrored patterns with. BallFiend took to these immediately, especially the maths toy. "Now I have something to use my rubber band collection on" he remarked with great joy.

After many hours longer than I had intended to stay, we headed home, the car boot filled with newly rediscovered treasures.

Once home, we sat down to dinner (thanks DeepSpice) and began to tell DeepSpice about our day...

Thumper mentioned that she had had a "chocolate reindeer". I corrected her: "No, you had a chocolate mousse." As soon as the words left my mouth I made the connection: chocolate mousse > moose > reindeer. Of course DeepSpice was way ahead of me and had already sussed out Thumper's thought process...

A few weeks ago we went up to Mt Buller for a couple of nights. While we were up there we went to the cafe at Mt Buller Chalet where they have a large stuffed (ie. taxidermied) Canadian Moose on display. At the time, Thumper was pretty obsessed with reindeers (due to the whole xmas-Santa thing), so we mentioned to Thumper that a moose is a bit like a reindeer.

For a three year old, this kid has an amazing memory and an amazing ability with words!
--

The whole nine grains

During dinner tonight, I noticed that Thumper had her finger up her nose...

Me: "Thumper, what are you doing? Take you finger out of your nose!"

Thumper: "But I can't get the rice out of my nose."

DeepSpice and I look at each other with that look. Then we both sigh.

DeepSpice pulls out his hanky and instructs Thumper to blow.

Success! The grain of rice is retrieved.

But wait...

Thumper: There's still more rice...."

DeepSpice repositions the hanky and once again instructs Thumper to blow. Another grain emerges.

And so it went for the next five minutes until eventually all nine grains of rice were freed from their nasal prison... at least we really hope that all of 'em!
--

Writer's Festival

At BallFiend's school, they have had a Writer's Festival all this week, with real live actual authors visiting the school, a book fair, a 'dress-up as your favourite book character' day (which BallFiend outright refused to participate in as he hates dressing up), and of course the children doing their own writing, illustrating (in water-colour and pencil) and then publishing their finished books...

A selection Prep Bicicletta's published works.

BallFiend is a very reluctant writer - whilst he can write at about the average Prep standard, he really doesn't like to. So it took a lot of effort to coax him to write his book. But he got there in the end.

 

Yep, I am still feeling gooey inside after reading the dedication and the piece on last page. 
--

The giant poo

This post will definitely be TMI for any reader who is not yet, or never intends to be, a parent. Move along - you have been warned.

Right, for those of you still brave enough to read on, this post is about the absolutely enormous poo that Thumper finally set free today. You may still opt out at this point. No hard feelings.

(Speaking of 'hard feelings', when Thumper feels a poo coming she calls out "I have a hard feeling." She came up with that description herself, and I reckon it's a pretty good one!)

Anyway, as you may recall from recent posts, Thumper recently entered the final phase of 'toilet-training': ie. she has replaced her nappies for undies. This does not necessarily mean that she never wees in her undies, but more often than not, she tends to successfully get the wee in the potty or toilet.

Poos, however, are a different matter. I am told it is extremely common for toddlers to take a lot longer to get the hang of putting poo in the toilet. So annoying as it is, we just smile, mutter 'nevermind' and clean it up.

Unfortunately somewhere over the past couple of weeks, Thumper got it into her head that when a poo comes out it is going to hurt. As a result she has become increasingly skilled at holding and resisting the urge to let it out. Of course, eventually (after a couple of hours) the poo-power wins, she looks around with a startled face, obviously completely taken by surprise. And I get another pair of undies to clean up.

However, Saturday came and went, with no sign of a poo from Thumper. DeepSpice and I didn't think much of it... she has gone for over 24 hours with no poos before. But then on Sunday, Thumper started to express some discomfort, every now and then, when the urge to poo struck. She would run to the toilet ("I have a hard feeling!") but a few minutes later would announce that "The poo is shy and it's gone back inside my bottom." So she went to bed on Sunday night, still holding on to her goods.

On Monday morning, Thumper was getting the urge to poo with more frequency, and crying out in pain each time. I asked her if she wanted to wear a nappy and poo in that, and she said yes. But even wearing a nappy, she couldn't allow herself let go. It was really horrible to watch, and I was starting to get quite concerned.

At school, after dropping BallFiend off, I had a chat to another mum who suggested putting Thumper in the bath to relax her. At this point I was willing to try anything... even if it did mean cleaning up a Code Brown (usually I would delegate that sort of thing to DeepSpice!)

So once back at home, I offered Thumper some prunes, then popped her into the bath and there she stayed for the next hour and a half. Every 5 minutes, Thumper would double over in pain as a bowel-cramp hit her. Moments later she'd be back to her cheery self, happily playing in the bath. Seriously, I felt like I was a midwife, assisting a mother in labour! I even convinced Thumper to kneel on her hands and knees when she felt the urge to push! Over and over again, she really looked like she was about to push that poo out, but then nothing... I have never seen such sheer (sub-conscious) determination to hold on!

But finally the wonders of a warm bath did the trick and I watched in fascinated horror as an enormous, brown poo emerged from her rear. I swear that poo was at least as long as her forearm. Strangely it looked a bit like Thumper had a puppy-dog's tail until the poo broke free and floated lazily to the surface.

You'd think with an hour and a half to plan what I was going to catch the poo in, I'd have thought to get a bucket ready. But no. So I grabbed the nearest receptacle - a hair-washing jug - fished out the poo and dropped it into the toilet. Then I had to empty the bath, clean it and Thumper off, then refill the bath because Thumper insisted she hadn't finished playing yet (despite the fact that her fingers and toes were as wrinkly as the prunes she had consumed earlier). Finally, Thumper allowed me to extract her from the bath so she could be dried, dressed and fed some lunch... after that ordeal, we were both hungry!


Postscript - Saturday 8 December:

I woke up this morning to hear the thump-thump-thump of Thumper's little feet down the hallway. (Whoever came up with the term "the pitter-patter of little feet" to describe children had no idea, or they didn't live in a house with timber floorboards!) She stopped at our bedroom door and called out "I need to go to the toilet." And I replied "off you go then". A few minutes later, a triumphant Thumper calls out "I did a poo! I did a poo on the toilet!"

Thinking it would probably just be a single tiny pellet (she's managed that once or twice before), I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom where I found a proud Thumper peering into the toilet bowl. She stepped back so I could look and sure enough, she had done a proper poo in the toilet.

So maybe all that holding on did serve some purpose. Maybe she had to go to extremes to find the balance between incontinence and constipation.

I just really hope she has actually got the hang of it now, because once she does we are having a post-potty party!!
--

Little grammar nazi #2

Thumper wanted a drink of milk and put her request to Gran...

Thumper: "Milk".
Gran: "Thumper, please ask politely."
So Thumper begrudgingly added: "Please."
Gran: "You need to say 'Can I have some milk?'"
Thumper, rolling her eyes then said: "May I please have some milk?"

--

Little grammar nazi #1

When driving somewhere with Gran and GrandPaul recently, BallFiend noticed a promo painted on the window of a local pub: ‘Kids eat free Mondays’.

Upon seeing this, BallFiend commented: “Kids should eat free everyday… but it should say ‘Kids eat free on Mondays’”.

--

Wee Wee

An email from CutLuce today:

Forgot to tell you... Cuz1 said BallFiend & Thumper today... Sort of. We were talking about her cousins and she said BallFiend, but for Thumper - she said "wee wee". X

To which I responded:

Wee Wee! That's sooooo cute!
And so appropriate, seeing as Thumper has a bit of a tendency to do wee-wee all over the place at the moment, while she is toilet training. 

--

A freaky-looking levitating cat

BallFiend's muse has inspired him again...

BallFiend has been invited to Zoe's birthday party tomorrow. It's a dress-up party - come as your favourite animal, real or imaginary. BallFiend is planning to go as a black cat (possibly he could be Schrödinger's Cat as this would mean he would be both real and imaginary at the same time). I'm not sure if the choice of costume is because Zoe said she likes kittens or because dressing up as a black cat is pretty much the only thing BallFiend has ever been willing to dress up as. I suspect the latter.

BallFiend's apparent willingness to dress-up was surprising enough, and then I asked him to make a birthday card for Zoe. Usually whenever I ask BallFiend to make a birthday card for someone, he begrudgingly agrees, then proceeds to 'draw' a random mess of scribbles and often all in grey-lead pencil, outright refusing to use any colour.

So I was very surprised when he readily agreed to my suggestion that he make a birthday card. He even started out by drawing something recognisable - a cat. OK, so it's an extremely freaky-looking, levitating cat, with a big, toothy grin and a bellybutton black heart with veins coming out. (It was a bellybutton at first, but then it became a heart, as is the way of six-year-olds).

Left: the back of the card, featuring a scene from Angry Birds (as you can see).
Right: the front of the card - a black cat with the heart and veins clearly shown.
In the sky is a bird (of course!), done in a Picasso-esque style: partly in profile and partly as seen from above. 

And I was even more surprised when BallFiend readily agreed to write inside the card, without his usual stream of complaints about it being too hard and boring... although he did copy most of the words from an old xmas card that he had found inside a book the other day (which is why he has used a double-story letter "a").

The inside of the card.

I now look forward to being surprised a third time tomorrow, when it is time to get ready for the party. Given BallFiend's usual reluctance to dress up, at all, ever, I will be amazed if he does actually agree to dress-up.
--

Jesus in a box

A conversation in the car today...

BallFiend: That tree looks like a Christmas tree [on seeing a very tall conifer in the front garden of a house]. Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Actually, I know the true story about Jesus...

Me: How do you know about Jesus?

BallFiend: Well, F. [another prep kid at school] told me... Some people wanted to kill Jesus. They were angry with him because they thought he'd done something wrong. But he'd actually done good things. So they killed him by nailing him to a cross. And then they put him a box and took the box away somewhere. And then his girlfriend went and she found the box and asked "are you alive?" and then the box thought she was talking to it and said "yes I'm alive".  But Jesus wasn't [alive].
And that's for real!

So there you have it: the true story of Jesus.
--

Portrait of Zoe

BallFiend's drawings are almost always very technical, usually they are aerial views of pipes with various marbles or other objects rolling around in them. Or cross-sections of plumbing...

BallFiend's drawing of the bathroom sink in cross-section, done in early-2012.

He almost always draws in pen or texta and usually only uses one colour, occasionally two or three.

So I was amazed to discover this picture whilst going through BallFiend's school bag yesterday afternoon (during the daily check for important school notices):

"Zoe", portrait by BallFiend, 24 October 2012.

He said proudly: "It's a 'self-portrait of Zoe". Zoe is a girl in his prep class and someone who he has become quite friendly with recently.

We showed it to DeepSpice when he got home, and after some discussion, DeepSpice established that this wasn't actually a self-portrait and that BallFiend was in fact the artist. BallFiend assured us he drew it all himself... though I do wonder if he worked on it with Zoe - the eyes and nose are very much in BallFiend's own style, but I've never seen him draw a mouth/teeth, or a Sun, and he's never done sky and grass like that before.

The picture is also interesting because he rarely even does any representative drawings and I reckon I can count on one hand the number of times BallFiend has drawn a representation of a person that he knows!

There was the time he drew Gran, back when he was 3-and-a-half. Then there was this picture he did of "Mum and me":

"Mum and me" by BallFiend, 28 May 2012.

There is also this picture he drew on Mother's Day earlier this year, while we were dining out, but it was just a face, not of anyone in particular:

A face, by BallFiend, 13 May 2012.

These pictures show how he has been focusing on how to represent facial features (it took The Librarian, with her fine art background, to point this out to me!)

It's lovely to see all BallFiend's thinking about how to represent a face come together into a whole drawing. It's also great to see BallFiend developing new friendships. I just hope Zoe doesn't take having a green nose and yellow teeth the wrong way!

--

The end is in sight

The past two days have seen a slight lull in enthusiasm in Thumper's campaign to conquer the toilet - on balance there were several more misses than hits. And her progress continues to be annoyingly hindered by the "shy wee", which makes it's presence felt but then disappears as soon as Thumper sits on the loo. The bath-time wee last night was a particularly annoying one, with Thumper getting in and out of the bath three times over to sit on the toilet. Eventually she was successful and enticed the shy-wee out, but unfortunately there was a lot of water dripped all over the bathroom and toilet in the process.

Today (Day 5) has seen Thumper return to form, starting off in the morning with another dry night nappy followed by a wee on the toilet in the morning. Thumper had creche today and the carers were all very excited when she arrived wearing undies. She used the toilet with no problems all day for wee. However poos are proving more difficult - Thumper had two 'accidents'. . Apparently after one of them, she approached a carer and said "I've had an accident, by accident." which not surprisingly caused a bit of confusion! (I'm just glad I was at work today and wasn't around for the clean-up. Hopefully, Thumper works out the number-two part of the process soon... that would be nice.)

Accidental accidents aside, I'm so excited and impressed with how quickly this has all happened (once Thumper took it upon herself to start, that is). And the overnight dry nappies are a complete bonus! I'll be totally amazed if she becomes dry at night at the same time as during the day!
--