A bit like an Elvis Sighting

Guess what?!?!? 

Some people think they've seen Elvis.  It's called an "Elvis Sighting."

Well we think - think - we've had a Greeny Sighting.

This could be Greeny. 
He looks different to how he looked before, so we're not sure.

But he's a different kind of moth to the regular inside moths.  

So we think it's Greeny.  We're going with that.

He was in our homework corner so we put him in a container and released him.

He was too quick for Mum to photograph and anyway, Rex was in her arms and she can't do anything when he's in her arms. 
So this is a recreation of how "The Release Of Probably Greeny" went:

A fake depiction of the release of a moth that may or may not have been Greeny.  Lame?  Possibly.

We can all sleep well now.

------------------
Greeny Part 1: "Greeny"
Greeny Part 2: "Goodbye my larva, 'tis time to pupate"
Greeny Part 3: "In Which Procrastination Finds Me Out"

Name that Mutation

"tonsillitis"

The word "tonsillitis" means an infection or inflammation of the tonsils.  My little guys get it occasionally in winter and it's easily cleared up with antibiotics.  (There is no indication that it would be appropriate to go whacking parts out of the children at this stage, that's not where I'm going with this.)

Tonsillitis seems to be more contagious than modern medicine realises, and it suffers more mutations than the text books would indicate.

I have noticed that if Jessie is unfortunate enough to get tonsillitis and have a day off school, the illness spreads quite quickly to Buzz.  However, it undergoes an important mutation before it does.  Once it reaches Buzz's little body, what used to be a strain of tonsillitis has in fact mutated to:

"asymptomatosis"

Asymptomatosis, observed and named by me, simply means:
• "a-" = without
• "-symptoma-" = observable symptoms
• "-osis" = a general condition, as opposed to "-itis" meaning inflammation or "-oma" meaning a mass.  Just a plain old "-osis."

More properly, the illness is referred to as "acute selective asymptomatosis."  "Selective" means it happens whenever Buzz pleases, and "acute" means it comes on suddenly in the morning when I say, "Go and find some school socks."

Once Asymptomatosis has infected poor dear Buzz, it spreads quite quickly to me.  It undergoes another critical mutation before it does.  Once the illness gets to me, it has mutated to:

"asymptomatata"

Sing with me: 

"♫ Asymptomatata! ♪♫ I made up the phrase ... ♪

♪ Asymptomatata! ♫ It's a passing craze ... ♫

♫ I have no worries ♪ It's not a genuine sick day ... ♫♪♪"

Which basically means one or more of my children want to stay home without displaying any observable symptoms, and I couldn't give a toss.

Sound bytes from today

Today was a student-free day, so I had all the children at home with me while Mr de Elba was back at work changing the world.  Now I am just curious about the deep-thinkers on Facebook who put statuses like this up on Friday afternoon - and I may be paraphrasing a little but the essence was:

OMG I'm so super-excited lol, it's a LONG WEEKEND LOL!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to ask them what brand of sedative they use on their children? Where can you buy it?  Would they consider using it on themselves before Facebooking about the next student-free day?  Just asking.

As a free gift to them, I will donate a few moments from today so that they may thoroughly enjoy the richness of my student-free day, along with their own.

Jessie: [says something]
Buzz: [copies Jessie]
Jessie: [says something else]
Buzz: [copies Jessie again]
Jessie: MU-U-UM!  Buzz is copying me!
Woody [from another room]: Buzz is copying me!
Jessie: MU-U-UM!  Woody's copying me!
Woody [wicked giggle]: Woody's copying me!
Me: I'm going into the woods to hide.

 

Me, driving: Now Rex, don't cry when I drive over the bumps...
Jessie and Woody in unison: Bums!
Me, to Rex: Sometimes cars just have to go over bumps.
Jessie and Woody: Bums! 
Me: I said "bumps."
Jessie and Woody: Bums!
Me: You guys are from a different planet. 

You're welcome.

2012 Camp Bus Story - Prequel

What is camp without a good bus story?  This year we didn't manage to steal a bus, or the obvious one-up from that: exploding a bus, but we did manage a bus incident two nights before camp.  But before I tell you about the bus incident, which will seem quite tame after this wind-up, I need to tell you what we did the night we took the camp bus for a pre-camp trial run and fuel-up.

Before the warm spring holidays in our Queensland town, we received a flier in our school newsletters saying that there would be ice-skating and tobogganing in a Fitness and Recreation Centre 20 minutes from where we live.  Buzz and Jessie had been ice-skating before and enjoyed it, and we decided that we'd take all our kids along with Justamum, Belle and Banana (from the blog Yes I Said Four) to try it out.  They had a family friend, a boy of about 10, staying with them, so it seemed like a good idea to take the 22-seater bus to fit us all in, and also to do the pre-camp trial run in the same trip.

The kids loved ice-skating!  Buzz thought he was an Olympic-standard skater as he shuffled around the rink, Jessie and Woody both cried until they got little-kid skates which helped them shuffle around too instead of their usual falling/crying routine, and Mr de Elba and Justamum helped their respective children around while trying not to fall down, get wet or get bruised.

I was glad to sit out with baby Rex in the wrap, because can I just remind you of this:

which, while much improved since the birth of little Rex, cannot be trusted in a slippery-floor situation, much less an ice-skating situation.

The tobogganing was also a winner after initial tears from Jessie and Woody.  Jessie seemed to have had no real reason for tears, but we thought Woody's tears were probably justified.  His first ride went perfectly if his cape is anything to judge by, despite his facial expression:

 But his second trip was generally considered to have been a mistake:

Tears ensued, but Daddy saved the day:

Banana and Belle had a blast on the toboggans:

 As did Buzz and Jessie:

And when it was all over, we hopped into the bus to go home, with a quick stopover to buy 30c cones at McDonalds.  It was late, dark, rainy and cold.  Everyone was tired, especially baby Rex who needed a feed, a bath and his own comfy cot.  The bus felt a little old and unreliable, but what could go wrong, right?

Proof-reading

It's good to see Buzz is still filling the house with drawing and writing, even though his spelling isn't always spot-on.

I mean, ideally he wouldn't have left the "o" out of "count" in last week's homework.

But which of us hasn't left the "r" out of "shirts" in an email to the boss about corporate uniforms, or left the "l" out of "public awareness" or "public access" in a job application?

Glass houses and stones, and all that.  

It looks a bit school-ish. It's just a way of trying not to forget to do homework quite as often. 

We only put their names on the desks because there were fights over who sat where.

Let there be light

In an interesting twist on Father's Day, a seven year old boy buys HIMSELF a gift from the school Father's Day stall.

 But he's gorgeous.

On the way to school today, Buzz asked if he could have a "really powerful torch (flashlight)."  A few realities about this situation:

1. He doesn't need one.  Nobody needs one.  Everyone in our family except Little Rex and me seem to want ("need!") a torch, but those who stumble about at night don't reach for a torch before doing so.  We have occasional nocturnal visitors to our bed seeking asylum from nightmares and wet beds by cuddling up beside us and kicking us in the back all night long, so we are well-placed to certify that none of these visitors ever presents him/herself with a torch shining the way to our bedroom.  Pity, as the way is sometimes littered with matchbox cars.
2. Our home is already filled with torches.  Mr de Elba has a "really powerful" one that he doesn't ever use, the children have acquired a vast array of those cheap ones that you can buy at the counter of pretty much any store, and cheap torches have been the usual purchases at the annual school Father's Day Stall.  Buzz never really learns that Mr de Elba isn't going to actually USE the cheap torches Buzz buys for him, and the torches break quite soon after purchase anyway but always manage to find their way to where I can't find them before I can throw them out.

Now that I'm clued up to the torch problem at our house, I will send Buzz and Jessie with less money to future Father's Day Stalls, and I'll give them a stern talk before they go directing them to buy something other than a torch.  I may need a threat to go with that, but I haven't sorted that bit out yet.

Today was again the annual Father's Day Stall.  I hadn't thought of the importance of this morning's chat when sending Buzz and Jessie off, all cashed up to buy something nice for Daddy.

As it turns out, Jessie bought Daddy ... A TORCH!  Oh how happy he will be.

Buzz, seeing that Jessie had bought Daddy a torch, decided to buy ... A TORCH!!!  And since Daddy already had one coming to him, the torch should rightfully go to Buzz himself.

I have no idea what The Perfect Parent would do about this.

Got Talent?

Jessie brought home a note yesterday asking for our permission for her to go in "Our School's Got Talent" where primary school kids perform a song or dance or something similar.

Jessie had some half-baked ideas of getting me to teach her piano and then teaching her a song to perform in the week we've got before auditions.  I told the poor little darling that I really am no piano teacher but fell short of reminding her that she doesn't like taking instruction from me at all.  I mean, she HAS to, being my child, but she doesn't like it and aggressively resists even my attempts to get her to write her number 3s the right way around.

She wondered if she could learn a song to sing.  She wondered if she could learn a dance to perform.  She wondered if she could learn some gymnastics ... none of these are easy to pull together from a baseline of No Prior Knowledge within one short week.

Then I said something that made her eyes light up and think that she absolutely, definitely was going to compete in Our School's Got Talent, and quite possibly wipe the floor with the other contestants.  "How about you say a poem?  A funny one that Mummy wrote?  Maybe even you and Buzz could do an act together, saying different stanzas?"  In order to illustrate what I meant to them, I suggested a couplet off the top of my head:

We have  brand-new baby, his name is Tim-o-THY
He is a little brother for Nathaniel, Joe and me.

They received this as if I were Keates or Byron, or at least Roald Dahl, and now I'm done for.

I have to write something brilliant in an impossibly short time-frame, and somehow gently tell Buzz that his choreographed moves to the as-yet unwritten lines will probably not suit the piece.

It's turning out to be more of a "Mummy's Got Talent" and in between feeding and nappy changes, I'm feeling the pressure.

Introducing Little Rex

Introducing our new little boy - Timothy Flynn born in the early hours of last Wednesday morning!  In the weeks leading up to his birth I'd been on a limerick binge, and I ended up wishfully writing this one, hoping for a natural spontaneous birth, dreaming of the middle-of-the-night "Honey it's time" moment that I always thought would be nice (and it ended up being quite accurate):

I woke in the night with chagrin,

The babe sought to escape from within

We did a quick race

From our home to The Base

And out popped sweet Timothy Flynn.

Which is quite corny, but I liked it.  Our public hospital is called the Base Hospital, and it's referred to as "the Base" - I hope that makes sense.

I hadn't gone out of my way to tell my blog that we knew we were having a little boy, but it wasn't exactly a secret.  Now that it's definitely out though, I can post this one I wrote after the ultrasound:

We're having (from the ultrasound) another little DUDE.

It seems it would be prudent to start budgeting for food.

Although the food, financially, will surely be the worst,

It seems that we will need another fridge and freezer first.

Maybe I'd posted that already and forgot, and now I don't have time to go back and check.  Sorry if you'd heard that one before.

He was born the day before his due date, about 30 hours before I was booked for an induction - something the doctor wanted to avoid after a previous caesarean.  Many things were tried, but they all failed one by one: walking, hot food, essential oils, etc. In the end, a day of bouncing gently on an exercise ball did the trick - or maybe it was the Thai for lunch and Mexican for dinner - or maybe it was the psychological power of LOOKING at a bottle of castor oil that I was too nervous to actually TAKE for fear of too-strong contractions.  At any rate, by midnight we were wondering if it was 'Time', by 2am we were calling my Mum and Birth Suite, by 3am the midwife was thinking that it was certainly 'Time' ... and then things are fuzzy for me.  I guess that because he was born at 3:23am, whatever happened in those gas-hazed moments was pretty crucial.

Feeding is fun with expressed milk in a bottle! Soon this fun will be over and we'll feed the usual way (prayforus), but for the moment, everyone is enjoying this bit (and so am I, because I have chosen to do it this way BEFORE the crying and blood and countless people checking the attachment only to declare that it's right, it just hurts.)

This little superhero turned three, and we bought a proper cake from a shop, after my disastrous attempt with Jessie's cake in April which I didn't blog because - sigh. We are seriously considering buying cakes for family birthdays from now on because they are SO NICE!  This one was superb!  'Bleurgh' to homemade cakes, particularly mine because I cut corners.

And now I will get back to snuggling with this handsome little prince, as well as driving our new car (where can I unnecessarily drive to today? Whee!), fixing interminable problems with Woody's birthday gifts, driving Buzz and Jessie to and from school, breaking up fights, managing the kitchen and the laundry as best I can, trying to cap my unreasonable rage at some highly-expensive, professionally-fitted, terribly-posh maternity bras that ceased to fit me a week after I bought them (and now there's no hope), and dealing with potential depressive illness in a sadly neglected family dog.  And hugging Mr de Elba, who helps me with all of the above except the bra issue.

Futile Housekeeping & Funny Faces

Happy New Year!

The first of January is a bit of an anti-climax.  New Year?  There's nothing much new about going from one holiday-day into another.  Things are very much the same.

The first day of school, however, is something else! New beginnings, the end of the oh-so-long aimless days of summer holidays, time to get back into routine!  Happy New Year at last!

Year 2, full of happy expectations for this year, because he has his favourite teacher!

Prep, and enjoying her new wardrobe so much!  

Everything swims on her, despite being the smallest size.

And hats don't fit on pony tails.

Staying home with Mummy this year! Woohoo!

Looking forward to catching up in the playground if they possibly can.

How you doin?

Looks like a friendly gesture, but really pretending to cream you with a Nerf gun.

That thing with his ear?  His Uncle WeeBro did that.  All the time.  And still does.

Wishes she could go to school, but can't.

Everyone shops at KMart

As soon as we arrived at our holiday house, I went to KMart to shop for swimwear for the children. Crazy huh? Who goes to the beach without swimmers? Well, apparently, it's easy to forget them if the children decide the preceding afternoon that they hafta-hafta-hafta swim in the neighbour's pool. As soon as the decision was made, I knew I would either be packing damp swimmers in the morning, or would forget them altogether.

As it was, I packed mine and Mr de Elba's (because they were dry) and forgot the kids' (because they were outside drying on the airer.) Hence the trip to KMart for swimwear shopping as soon as we got there.

Justamum's kids needed a few swimmers so she came with me. We quickly picked out what we needed for Woody, Jessie, Belle and Banana, and then I looked for a swimming shirt for Buzz. I wanted something that would be visible in the surf, as I knew I would be counting heads a lot of the time and a distinctive swimming shirt was going to facilitate matters greatly. However, there seemed to be limited choice when it came to visible colours.

Fluoro orange, they did not have. There seemed to be a large amount of black which is just not all that good when it comes to counting heads.

Red! What about red? Poor Justamum had to suffer my deliberations regarding the relative merits of the RED shirt with BLACK sleeves and the BLACK shirt with RED sleeves.

I'll spare you descriptions of my deliberating.

I finally decided that since the sleeves would be the most visible part, I'd go with RED sleeves.

Yay! Look at Buzz, happy in his new swimming shirt!

Surely he would be EASY to spot in the surf now! All I had to do was find the red sleeves!!

Shortly after, I realised that everyone shops at KMart.

Ur doin it rong

If your kids take communion in a church like ours, you want them to be suitably reverent.

It's great when they learn to quietly say "Thankyou God for Jesus," and "Sorry for the wrong things that I do," before they quietly eat their bread and drink their teensy bit of juice.

But if after drinking the juice, your six year old boy lets out a burp and says, "C'n I 'ave some more?" it may be time to retire him from communion for a bit.

Keep Out, and other writings

I love it when kids' written language skills get good enough that they take themselves off and write their thoughts.  Buzz started doing that earlier this year.  His first piece of writing made us so proud.  Our son, taking himself off and writing a commentary on life!  It was truly wonderful.  It read:

"I dont Lic you nAAw mum that you yeld at me and That you smacd me DAD"

Needless to say, we were both tremendously proud.  Since then, Buzz has filled the world with his writings, even going so far as you write a stern Instruction To Self regarding the self-administration of an asthma puffer during his recent struggle with an asthma-related cough.

"nat tace 2 pufs at forst bac and secnd do or no plae"  (Take 2 puffs at first break and second.  Do, or no play.)

And the most recent had me in stitches.  I walked past his door the other night and saw this stern warning to all:

"Keep out.  Privacy.  No enter.  Snakes."

...

That's enough to keep me out.

Thookenspiel - you're doing it right

Today was Thookenspiel Day.  We have worked out that it is probably better used as chimes with each length of pipe suspended with string and struck with a hard mallet.  There is definitely an element of 'ching' there.

In order to suspend the lengths of pipe, I needed to put a hole through one end of each of them.  I only broke one drill bit in the process. Either I needed to use the masonry drill bit, or my bits are a little on the breakable side, given that it's the second drill bit I've broken.  The end of the first still resides deep within my back fence.

I couldn't find anything cooler to suspend them from than an old drumstick, and with than red 8-ply acrylic, but it works well.

Both Buzz' class teacher and music teacher proclaimed it a success, so I need to thank all my readers who voted to call the thing a Thookenspiel and carry on with the original plan!

[Insert photo of finished product here.  Oh that's right, I forgot to take a photo.  Silly me.]

Thookenspiel

So the big boy Buzz brought home a note from school saying that they will be starting a unit on musical instruments next week, and it would be good if we could start collecting objects that can be used to make an instrument.  I assumed that many little kids will come along with a box and some rubber bands to make a guitar, and I started wondering what we could do that would be a little bit different.

Mister Google gave me many ordinary ideas, and two good ones.  One was to make a tambourine from a round lid and some jingle bells.  Buzz thought this idea was terrible.

The other idea was to make a glockenspiel from different lengths of metal pipe (electrical conduit was mentioned) and both Buzz and I thought that was a great idea.  I knew it would take some time and effort and probably cost a bit more, but how cool would it be to be the only kid making a glockenspiel from electrical conduit?  We would be awesome.

Today after the school and kindy dropoff I took Woody to the hardware store to buy the conduit, and hopefully get a nice man to cut it to size for me. My approach was to ask if someone could cut it to size or sell me "a hacksaw that could do the job," and the two gentlemen headed off to do the selection and cutting of the pipe.  This was no mean feat, because the instructions detailing how to get the notes of the major scale require that the pipe is cut to lengths involving eights of an inch, but they did it for me, correctly assuming that if I tried with a hacksaw, I'd lose not only the major scale tuning, but also some digits as well.

I was delighted.  I certainly cost more than a cardboard box and rubber bands, but it cost less than I'd imagined so I gleefully paid my money and came home.

It was then that I realised that the material the men had selected didn't so much go "ching-ching-ching."  It went went "thook-thook-thook."  Wrong stuff.  Glockenspiel fail.

Ching-ching-ching is really the minimum standard in a glockenspiel, I think.

So. I need you to tell me what to do next.

My Kitchen