Appropriately Named

Jessie was sitting in the back seat on the way home from a birthday party, munching on the contents of her party bag. "Ooh! Look! I've got a baby!" she squealed.

I pretended I didn't know she meant a Jelly Baby.  "Congratulations!" I said. "What did you name it?"

She thought for a moment, then mumbled with her mouth full, "Headless."

Only outside the pharmacy

On many, many occasions:

Me: Okay Woody, click yourself in to your carseat.
Woody: I caaaaan't!  I'm too wittle!  I caaaaan't!  Nooooo!

- - - - - - - - - -

On one occasion, months ago, after a trip to the pharmacy:

Me: (sigh) Here, I'll click you in.
Woody: I've done it by myself!
Me: You - what? You did it by yourself?  How?  Did you just do it because - ? (Making up something ridiculous...) Because we went just to that pharmacy or something?
Woody: Yes.
Me: Okay then.  Pharmacy.  Huh.

- - - - - - - - - -

The next day:

Me: (sigh) Here, I'll click you in.
Woody: I've done it by myself!
Me: You - what?  How?  Ahhhh, I see!  There's a pharmacy just over there!  Ha ha funny!
Woody:  Yes.  I can kwick myself in when there's a pharmacy.

- - - - - - - - - -

Ever since, when in a place without a pharmacy:

Me: Okay Woody, click yourself in to your carseat.

Woody: I caaaan't!  I'm too wittle!

Me: You CAN!  You did it that other day!  The day with the - the pharmacy!?!?  You remember?

Woody: I can't do it!  I caaaaan't!

Me: Why not, for goodness sake? No pharmacy, I expect?

Woody: No.  Dere's no pharmacy.

- - - - - - - - - -

Just to confuse me while at the shops without a pharmacy:

Me: Uh - can you click yourself in today?

Woody: I did it!  By myself!

Me: Whaaa?  Without a pharmacy?  Amazing!  You're getting bigger!  Clicked himself in without a pharmacy close by, imagine that.

- - - - - - - - - -

Just to confuse me while at the shops with a pharmacy:

Me: Okay, click yourself in.  There's a pharmacy over there.  Just do it.

Woody:  I caaaaan't!

Me: Why?  Why-why-whyyyyy?  There's a pharmacy!  Just there!  Look!  The green shop?

Woody: I caaaaan't kwick myself in!

Me: I just really don't get that.

- - - - - - - - - -

Recently, at home:

Me: (sigh) Do I have to click you in today?  Surprise me.

Woody: I caaaaan't!

Me: Oh come ON!  We're going to drive past a pharmacy!  Does that count? Surely it counts?

Woody:  I caaaaan't!

Buzz and Jessie: Woody, we have medicines in our cupboard just there in the kitchen, look!  That means we are a pharmacy!  We are!  You can click yourself in here, because we're a pharmacy!

Woody:  I caaaaan't!  Waaaahhh...

- - - - - - - - - -

Today, while out:

Me: (sigh) I'll put Rex in his carseat so you hop in and I'll click you up in a minute.

Woody: But I can do it at home because we are a pharmacy!

Random Stranger: Pharmacy?

Me: I can't explain.

Kindy, ballet, sewing, cello, noodles, plane-watching, outdoors, swimming, writing, skateboarding and Coldplay

Here are three little guys ready for Year 3, Year 1 and kindy.  The days are generally passable in Year 3, usually pretty good in Year 1, but they are always totally awesome in Kindy!  Kindy is so good in fact, that Woody is always deeply asleep when I go to pick him up.  If Kindy didn't slow down for rest time, he'd power through and enjoy the whole 5.5 hours we pay for, but I understand that after a few hours, the teachers are probably glad for a bit of quiet time!

Day 1 of Kindy.  Enjoyed a big swing with Daddy, then was accidentally pushed clean *off* the swing by Mummy.  Blitzing life, as usual.

Another ballet photo, because I can't get enough of the cuteness.

This you may not believe.  I made this ballet bag!  I sewed it!  With a sewing machine!  And it's nice!  Nice enough!  And I didn't stuff it up and get mad at fabric!  I was inspired by this duffel bag pattern and I used fabric that I quilted myself.  I am still in shock that I made this.

Now you may think that Year 3 is a little young to be learning cello.  Goodness knows, I did.  But wow and wonder and amazement, one little Buzz happens to be quite good at cello.  He's most pleased to be allowed to use his bow finally, as pizzicato was getting a bit old.  He's always had the music in him, but I can see the legacy of some really great classroom music lessons as he seems to "get" the idea of musical notation, especially rhythm.  And - not wanting to scrape my own cello or anything - there's something about being the parent in charge of practice that helps one learn bits and pieces oneself.  I learned so much in one productive late night that I did such bad damage to my left pointer finger that it was painful and a bit numb for a few days.

Two-minute noodles are so messy.  But when you drop them, they're relatively easy to pick up and you can have another go at them.

Plane-watching at the airport!  We saw three planes take off and one land in the hour we were there.  A nice way to while away an hour, if you've got one spare!

It's so easy to take a table, chairs, papers and pens outside for no discernable purpose, but really hard to remember to take it all back inside.

I've found if I can plan really well, taking four kids to the pool can be managed.  Things get easier once the bigger ones are water safe.

Now lest you think I'm doing a good job at this mothering thing I include this one of many little writings that fill our house all the time now to show you how far one can fall after taking the children on outings like those above.  This contains language that some of you will definitely not have heard before, and I apologise for offending your delicate sensibilities.  I don't know who is "saying" this to whom, but it appears to be a motherish figure in the middle of the board losing her cool and shrieking at her offspring to decrease their own volume, with the addendum, "...or I will stickey (sic) tape you! Oh I mean it!"

And there is an arrow pointing from that motherish figure to two smaller faces, a boy and a girl, with a judicious application of sticky tape over their mouths.  I can honestly say this has never happened at my place.  But I can't say it's not giving me ideas.

Buzz received a skateboard for his birthday.  Mr de Elba, inspired by the sale price of Buzz's skateboard, bought himself one.  Buzz, Mr de Elba and Jessie all increased their skillz on the skateboards and so Jessie received a small pink one for her birthday a few weeks later.  Woody is getting good enough on the skateboard that he has a similar surprise in store for his birthday in a few months.  My only non-skateboarding child is Baby Rex.

This is Woody chilling while listening to Coldplay on this iPod.  It doesn't matter how big their feet get, they still retain the shape of the baby feet their mother fell in love with in the hours after they were born.

I have a long way to go before I can claim to have mastered my impossible computer problems, but I have finally posted a few times on my blog, which should truly impress you.  It's been harder than knitting elaborate pullovers from piles of rotting grass clippings in the dark with one's fingers stuck together with superglue.  I knew that once I'd chopped through the undergrowth covering the "New Post" button, I could very well have lost every person who ever read this blog in the first place, so I honestly thank you for reading.

Trivia and Photos, in a Dog's Breakfast

Allow me to regale you with trivia, and attempt to accompany it with photos.

This has been no mean feat, as the move from PC to Mac has been nothing short of disastrous. I can now no longer get photos onto my computer without them getting lost and automatically renamed and duplicated and twisted up horribly in a ghastly photo black hole called iPhoto.

Uploading photos to my blog in the arrangement I want is absolutely impossible.   I used to be able to fiddle with the HTML code and put things exactly how I wanted them, but now everything is a complete nonsense on the Macbook, which has turned me from a blogger into a non-blogger. Observe the dog's breakfast which is this post, if you will. Follow along, if you can. (Postscript: I have un-dogs-breakfasted it as much as possible in between a large number of interruptions.)

I have emailed myself some dodgy photos from my phone, tried to save them in some sort of compressed format somewhere in my Documents folder and uploaded them here, then I've had to put a load of line break commands between my photos so they don't appear as a huge pile interspersed with snatches of text.  Whee, Macs are SO! EASY! TO! USE!


Little Rex at nine months.  I remember how full-on this age is, with the little person clutching my legs as I work in the kitchen, the constant crawling through dirt and mess, and the squishy expectorated food down the sides of the high chair. Oh, there he is, awake and crying.  See?  Blogging?  Huh.

My good friend Justamum has to put up with me texting these pictures from time to time.  Everytime I can make a rude, or snigger-worthy word on Scrabble, I share it with her.  I'm sure she really enjoys this.  This is true friendship, indeed.

Jessie started ballet this year - I wasn't sure we were a ballet type of family, but she's really enjoying it. Here she is, striking a pose.

So much help.  Which is great, because there is so much laundry.  Once the baby gets old enough to be unhappy with everything except being in his mother's arms, all chores become difficult.  Sometimes you just sit him in the washing trolley and get on with it.

This nasty weed has been growing in my front garden for a few weeks.  I let it go long enough to work out what it WAS, then I got rid of it.  I know this one from my grandparents' farm - those seed pods will burst and scatter seeds far and wide, so it had to go.  But before I got rid of it, I named it.  I bet you can guess what I named it.  Obvious really, isn't it?

I had a brainwave one night as I dropped off to sleep - this little Phonics Lunchbox.  I'm doing half a day of work a week, and I have collected enough little speech kids to explode my brain.  A few of them are really struggling with the task of learning the classroom spelling words given each week at school, and I was wondering about the best way to give them some phonics tasks to help them learn their list words.  This is what I came up with - a little snap-lock lunchbox with a strip of velcro on the top, with their weekly list of words inside, along with all the velcro letters they need to make all those words.  I have used the Spelfabet Movable Alphabet to make this little Phonics Box.

I tried to take a cute pic of Rex and his sick mother, but he kept grabbing the phone and this was the best I got.  It occurred to me that before I had children, there were times with a head cold called for a "Doona Day," but now the best I can hope for is a "Doona Hour" and a cup of tea uninterrupted.

Mr de Elba is away for a few days, so here is my challenge: have all children fed, clothed, homework done, extra phonics done, school readers done, lunches packed, cello, swimming and chess remembered on cello, swimming and chess days, dinner-bath-stories-bedtime negotiated with a minimum of hassle, while pondering on my current list of concerns which seems weighty at the moment.

Well this has been a joy, battling the HTML while a sad baby wonders why his mother won't let him type too.  I have missed all you lovely people, and I'd love to write more often.  Oh no!  School Pickup!  Baby crying! Afternoon Tea! Homework!  Darn you, real life, darn you.

Take Away the Tools

It's surprising how blowing your New Computer Money on a computer that you can't use properly curtails all your social media activity!

Anti-Social Media

Facebook - it's a funny thing.

I held off for so long before getting an account, but since then I've been able to keep in contact with so many lovely people - close friends I see in real life often like Justamum, distant friends I've only met through blogging like Sue Ellen, Penny and Tracy, and people from my past with whom I'd been sad to have fallen out of contact, like Jannine, and 134 other lovely people who I am proud to call my friends.  One of my biggest regrets was that each time I added a new friend, I didn't do a little status about who they were, how I met them and how special they are to me, just to introduce them to my other friends.

So what happened?  I found that I just wasn't posting anything - I had a birthday, did a Horror Kids Ministry injury, my children went off to Year 3, Year 1 and kindy and my baby remains adorable, but none of it made it onto my Facebook wall.  Mr de Elba and I have so much fun watching Buzz, Jessie and Woody riding their bikes in our cul-de-sac and I could easily post pictures of that, or at the very least, of our food.

But I just didn't.  I assumed that all my friends were less interested in my trivia than I was in theirs and I let Facebook get one-sided.  Then one day I was tagged in a friend's post and was treated to the ensuing discussion on a matter close to my heart between my friend's friends and it kind of consumed me.  These people needed to be set straight!  They were arguing a completely untenable position and if only they could see the light, their life, my life and the lives of thousands of others would be turned around!  (Pfft.  Changing the minds of ignorant Friends-of-Friends on social media?!)

I had trouble crafting a reply.  Then I turned to the expert in knowing about social media while not actually using it: Mr de Elba.

"How does this Facebook thing WORK?!" I raged.  "Do those blessed with ignorance and arrogance just mouth off on Facebook and fill the Internet with stupidity, while those of us afflicted with intelligence and wisdom quietly sit by, not entering the fray, leaving the stupidity hanging in the air?"

"Yeah, that's about it," he said.

"Well that's impossible!  I can't have any piece of this nonsense," I huffed.  And I deactivated my account.

That was about a fortnight ago, and since then I've been surprised at how many more hours God has put in a day for our enjoyment.  Did you notice He has done that in the last fortnight?

I decided to use some of those extra hours doing some phonics with my kids at home.  I am seeing the results of "learning" to read and spell in a phonics-poor environment and I am feeling more and more guilty for not stepping in two years ago and questioning the whole-language approach that their school is using.  I hope I am turning things around one phonics principle at a time.

But here's a conundrum.  With my Facebook-free time, I've also been clearing out the laundry and the play room.  They now look so clean and clear and wonderful that societal pressure tells me I should be taking a photo and putting it on Facebook - "Look what I've done!  Cleaned my house!"  I'm sure I'd easily get at least 15 Likes and 7 comments all saying "☺".  But I can't do that on a deactivated account, so I'll clean something else instead.  I believe that if you clean something and don't announce it on Facebook, it is still clean?

I'm missing the communication with my friends and I'll certainly reactivate my account one day, but at least for now, I'm going to plough on with phonics (I suspect it would be easier to plow on with phonics if we were American) and keep on cleaning.

Don't touch the yellow leg

Let me tell you about my Horror Kids Ministry Injury.  Since my last blog post on stupid injuries I've done Horror Sticky-Tape Dispenser Injuries and Horror iPad Injuries but this was something else.

One Sunday morning in January, Mr de Elba and I were running some kids ministry activities at church.  The deal was I would lead some songs from the stage, and then Mr de Elba would present the story and activities.  Our first song was:

which you might notice has quite a long introduction.  I used the introduction to move around among the kids encouraging them to dance and clap (while looking quite lame myself I am sure, but I care not) and then before I knew it, the first verse was coming up fast.

I moved to the front and gracefully leapt up onto the foot-high stage ...

... except I didn't.  I found myself face-down on the stage with a terrible pain in my shin.  During that bit where kids are supposed to be singing, "He's the one who makes the sun shine..." there was instead a shocked pause while kids and attending adults put their hands to their mouths and whispered, "Is she okay?"  I knew I'd missed the step and done a howler of an injury, but there was little to be done except jump up with a false smile plastered on my face and see the song out.

I stood up, shrugged my shoulders and sang, "He's the one who hung the stars" while commanding myself not to look at my shin until the end of the song.

I could barely stand.  I put my weight on the other leg for the whole song while doing the actions, and at the end I finally looked down.  There was a huge scrape extending up most of my shin, with rapidly swelling mauve-ness covering both the bone and muscle.  Mr de Elba didn't know how badly I'd been hurt and suggested we do a few more songs.  I saw out three songs while standing on one leg, trying not to cry or say something terrible, then I hobbled off to find some ice.

In the furthest reaches of the furthest freezer in the furthest room of the church I found the only ice in the town (or so it seemed) - a lone orange icy-pole.  I wrapped it in a dishcloth, hobbled back to the kids room and elevated my leg while moving the icy pole every minute to ice parallel strips of my rapidly swelling purple leg.  The stage had messed up the bone and the muscle and both were radiating an angry painful heat that made me wonder if amputation could be of any help.

After church, I knew I'd done something awful.  I considered medicating with (A) paracetamol, then (B) paracetamol+codeine, but settled instead for (C) a nice rose Moscato. And because you really shouldn't go mixing your Moscatos with your codeines, I was unable to try option B as things worsened.  (Option A was discarded as a complete waste of time.)

That night was painful, and I began my week-long love affair with ice packs.  The next day, as Crazy Sister will bear witness, I was quite incapacitated.  But it wasn't until the day after that I woke up and found I couldn't weight-bear.  I grabbed doors as I staggered down the hall to the bathroom, I only got the children their breakfast by using Rex's wheeled high-chair as a zimmer frame to help me stagger around the kitchen, and I begged Mr de Elba to work from home to mind the children while I went to the doctor.

My lovely doctor made me scream.  He sent me to a radiologist who also made me scream.  I begged two lovely friends to take over the child care and went back to the doctor who looked at the x-rays and said the most amazing thing I'd heard in a long time: "It's not fractured."  I felt like a big hopeless sook with my hobbling and screaming and boo-hoo.

I went home to abstain from Moscato so I could focus on codeine and ice, lie on my couch and be hopeless for a week while reminding my children to "MIND THE PURPLE LEG!"

The bruise, which certainly SHOULD have been violent shades of purple, blue, green and black to lend credence to the level of pain I was experiencing, only ever got to "mauve-ish" on the Colour Wheel of Bruising.  After a week I could weight-bear, by which time it was changing to yellow and I spent the next three or four weeks reminding my poor children to "MIND THE YELLOW LEG!" This sort of smash injury to a muscle can be painful for quite a long time at five and a half weeks post-humiliating injury, it's still pretty sore.  Swimming has helped a little, and I can walk without trouble so the residual pain doesn't bother me too much.

It is a mark of my commitment to kids ministry that I didn't change churches, but stayed on to face the same children and, more humiliating, the same parents who saw me do it.

Now, would you like to hear about my Horror Sticky-Tape Dispenser Injury or Horror iPad Injury?  Or just see pictures of Buzz, Jessie, Woody and Rex variously starting school/kindy/swimming/ballet/looking adorable? Or none of the above?

Countdown

(Buzz, Jessie and Woody are sitting in the car, waiting to go to school.)

Buzz & Jessie:  Thiiirtyyy… twenty niiine ... twenty eeeight …

Me:  Oh come on.  What are we counting down to?

[I go to the bathroom, grab my shoes and return.]

Buzz & Jessie:  Twenty oooneee ... twentyyy …

Me, putting Woody’s shoes on:  What? Are we still doing that? Pfft.

Buzz & Jessie:  Niiineteeennn …  eeeighteeennn …

Me:  Guys. That’s far too slow to be actual seconds.

[I go and grab Rex, return and click him in.]

Buzz & Jessie:  Fooourteeennn … thiiirteeen …

Me:  This isn’t even a countdown. It's too slow!  

Buzz & Jessie:  Tweeelve …

[I dash back and make sure there are no bags, hats, lunchboxes, water bottles or homework folders left in the house, and return.]

Buzz & Jessie:  Seeevennn … siiixxx …

Me:  Can you guys stop? [To myself] This is the dumbest, most pointless countdown I’ve ever …

Buzz & Jessie:  Fiiivvve … fooourrr …

Me:  You’re wasting your breath.

Buzz & Jessie:  Threee … twooo … oooneee …

Me:  *sigh* We’re going.

Buzz & Jessie:  Sit in the caaarrrr …

[I sit in the car.]

Buzz & Jessie:  Staaarttt the eeenginnne …

[I start the engine.]

Buzz & Jessie:  Aaaand … LEAVE!

[We roll out of the driveway.]

- pause -

Me:  Um - how did you do that?

Percy and The Loop of Eternity

It was a beautiful day on the island of Sodor.  "I am such a useful engine," Percy whistled to himself as he chuffed along the track from the Blue Mountain Quarry towards the dock pulling a fully-loaded coal car.  All the engines were very excited to be driving on Mr de Elba's Track of Awesomeness, and so was the coal car behind him who went "clickety-clack" as it went over the points.

Suddenly, Percy knew that something wasn't right.  "Wait a minute," he said.  "I’ve seen this Giant Baby before."  He looked around him and noticed that Mr de Elba's Track of Awesomeness had been severely modded to end in a Loop of Eternity, just next to The Giant Baby.

"Oh no!" he wailed as he completed his third entire loop.  "What am I to do?  I have to deliver this load of coal to the docks soon, or I'll never get back to Knapford Station before dark!  Sir Topham Hatt will be cross with me, and he will say I am not a Very Useful Engine at all!" he moaned as the coal car went "clickety-clack" mournfully behind him.

Suddenly, he spotted Rheneas chuffing towards him from the docks.  Rheneas pulled up quickly when he saw that his track ended abruptly.  "Oh dear," chuffed Rheneas.  "Whatever’s happened, Percy?"

"Mr de Elba’s Track of Awesomeness has been modded!" wheeshed Percy.  "I'm stuck in a Loop of Eternity next to this Giant Baby!  Can you go for help – please?"

"I'm on my way!" whooshed Rheneas as he reversed back towards the docks.  Presently he returned and whistled, "The Station Master said that Sir Topham Hatt has requested this modification so that you can provide entertainment for the Giant Baby!  You could be here for hours!  There's nothing we can do!"

"Oh no," wailed Percy.  "I don't know how much longer I can chuff around this Loop of Eternity!"  (He'd gone through two batteries since Christmas morning as it was.)  "Thomas never had to put up with this rubbish," grumbled Percy.

"What about me?" piped up the coal car.  "I've got to carry this giant load of coal - spare a thought for my bearings!" Clickety-clack, clickety-clack went his wheels as he followed Percy helplessly around the Loop of Eternity.  "Annie and Clarabel never had to put up with this rubbish!" grumbled the coal car.

Rheneas looked on helplessly as the Giant Baby gurgled happily and took a swipe at Percy as he passed.  "Sorry, Percy.  It sucks to be you."

Percy wailed mournfully, "It certainly sucks to be me."

"Hang on," said the Narrator.  "I don’t think we can say 'sucks' in this timeslot.  Let me check the script."  And he flicked furiously through the script grumbling, "Ringo Starr* never had to put up with this rubbish."

- - - - - - - - - -
* Ringo Starr narrated "Thomas the Tank Engine" in its glory days.

Camping together in a tiny tent

On my recent post about the Lalaloopsy Dolls, Tracy P posted this darling comment:

You had me at "camp together in a tiny tent"!

And from that moment on, I started warming to the idea of Jessie having some Lalaloopsy Dolls. Behold: camping together in a tiny tent!

What a wonderfully blessed Christmas!  My friend Catriona posted this on her blog, and I loved the delectable juxtaposition of adjectives:

I am thankful that God chose to enter our world in such a tiny fantastic big humble way.

My Mum, Dad and Crazy Sister her family came over for Christmas lunch. We missed Wee Bro who was staying in Mt Isa (a long way away) these holidays.  We roasted some lamb and fabulous potatoes and pumpkin on the barbecue and enjoyed Crazy Sister's pavlovas with Mum's fruit for dessert.

PavBurger

In terms of presents, we did the same thing we've done in previous years: just got a few little things for each person.  And then just a few more little things for each person.  And then some last-minute little things for each person.  And ended up with - let's face it - too many little things for each person. My own favourite was the terabyte of space I requested - that along with my 100GB Dropbox means that our family photos seem to be adequately backed-up for the moment.

I loved giving some bookshelves and bar-stools to Mr de Elba - I knew he wanted them and I kept them a secret until Christmas day!  Buzz loved the giant posters on the Moon and Space Exploration, Jessie showed an outrageous amount of euphoria to receive a hair curling iron and Woody played with his new wooden train track for hours.  Baby Rex received the wooden letters for his bedroom door with an appropriate amount of dribble and Bullseye got nothing and was none the wiser.

The nappy box was a bin, not a gift.

Summer holidays seem to stretch interminably before us, but they will be gone in a flash. And I'll have a big boy in Year 3, a big girl in Year 1, another big boy in 3-yr-old Kindy (pre-pre-prep) and another big boy who will be nearly crawling, walking, eating meat, bringing home girlfriends and getting his driver's licence*.

- - - - - - - - - -

*I'll spell licence [noun] the Australian way for Dad, who picked up the American spelling in my recent post about Taylah's mum's licence problems.