Buzz: ...and Mum, you get these two things here and they turn into guns ...
Me: Mm, wow. (Bending down to closely inspect Buzz's face,) Umm - why don't you go and check your face in the bathroom mirror, and then -er- fix it.
Buzz: Why?
Me: Well, I wouldn't like to spoil the -um- surprise, but I think that if you were a Batman villian, you'd be called "Pesto Face."
Buzz: Oh. Okay.
To my sweet little guys,
You know I love you. I enjoy being close to you and I miss the feeling of your sweet soft little bodies hugged tightly in my arms if I spend a few hours away from you.
But I would like to tell you this. You don't have to go everywhere with me.
If I am in this room and move into that room, you don't have to follow.
If I want to go from that room into the other room, you don't have to come with me.
If I want to go into the kitchen to prepare a meal, you don't have to sit on the floor immediately behind me, nor to do you have to squeeze between me and the bench.
If I go to the bathroom, you really don't all have to cram in there with me.
I just say this to relieve you of the burden.
Mummy.
The raspberry (in the foreground) - it will live! Thankyou to my good friend from Thistlebrook for giving me two suckers from her raspberry. One died and one looked like it was going the same way, but here it is, alive!
I was chatting to someone I know today. "How are you going? Your kids doing well?" she asked.
"Yes, they're all fine," I answered. "But now the summer holidays have started, I get the feeling that I am standing at the front edge of six weeks of fighting!" (for they are feisty little things, and enjoy a good knock-down fight.)
She jumped straight into Expert Mode.
You've-Obviously-Done-It-All-Wrong-Mode.
Let-Me-Teach-You-About-Parenting Mode.
"Oh no. No-no-no," she warned. "You know what you need to do?"
(Goodness! I had no idea she knew what I hadn't tried, let alone what would work if I did!)
"When mine used to fight, I smacked them. I smacked them hard. I mean, I really, really smacked them hard! Both of them, and this was when they were really little. It only took about four times, and they didn't do it again. They came to me with their problems instead of fighting."
Well that was interesting. She took some small children and smacked them very hard four times, and hey presto! For the rest of their childhoods they never fought with each other. What's more - if I took my three children and smacked them very hard the first four times they fought, they'd never do it again. Ever.
Fixed.
Silly me for not thinking of that before.
You'd think that if a woman breezed into a newsagency, marched straight to the stationery section and then went over to the counter, slapped some SuperGlue down and said, "Ninth of December and we've already broken Baby Jesus," that the assistant would laugh, make a joke or somehow acknowledge the humour of the situation. But you'd be wrong.
Just as I was beginning to think that perhaps you should be calling me Buckley, things started looking up.
It started, as many happy things do, with the doorbell ringing. A friendly Australia Post man asked how my day was going and I told him that by the look of the two lovely parcels at his feet, I suspected it was going very well indeed.
I signed for the parcels and took them inside. One was from a nice bunch of people who kindly took my money in exchange for a Nativity Set, and the other was - OH JOY - from Go Fish! My giant order of many CDs had finally come!
It came two hours too late to give one to Buzz's class teacher as a Christmas Gift, but she was happy enough with the CD we did give her. However, it came just in time to give one to a small young man of our acquaintance who was turning a year older and wished us to attend his most excellent party.
And to top it off, I put some wires along my back fence for my passionfruit and my raspberries to climb along. I am never happier than when I'm outside creating something useful for my garden using my cordless drill and my lovely blue screwdrivers.
And to think - I was initially planning to spend this afternoon on the phone to Australia Post to ask where my parcel had got to.
Call me Murphy.
I have something very frustrating to tell you. But I am sick of the sound of my own typing, so instead I will use my old friend Google Image Search to find pictures that will help you understand what's going down.
Today was the first fine day after what seems like months of rain. It was only a week or 10 days of rain, but it seems much longer.
I was walking in the back yard surveying the damage of rotten strawberries and zucchinis when I saw a tiny white egg on the ground. The giant eucalypts in the bush behind us house many native birds, and I assumed that the egg fell from one of the many nests in the knotholes that overhang our yard.
The egg had been there for hours, possibly overnight and if there was a baby bird inside it would surely be dead. There was no chance that it could be saved, incubated, hatched and raised. It was a bit sad.
I decided to bury it. Poor little thing. As I picked it up, I noticed its shell was cracked. I peeked inside, and there, curled up around some yolk was a tiny baby bird who was cold and still. I could see its forming feathers and its black eyes.
It was just a little bit sad.
This poor little girl is running out of complaints. It must be a huge burden.
Today, after complaining about every possible thing under the sun ...
