Happy New Year!

Hel-LO all you wonderful people!  All three of you!  I hope you had a scintillating Christmas and a beautiful New Year!  Apparently one of my resolutions is to use flamboyant, lesser-used adjectives in 2014, and so far, my writing is turning out quite odd.

I check in here at Killing A Fly every now and then to see if anything new has popped up here, but it never has and so I assume it never will unless I have something to do with it.  This is depressing, as I don't want to have anything to do with it for the many reasons which I have typed out and will now delete because they're boring.  It's basically a description of my technical incompetence.

Rex is growing up quickly and is now nearly 18 months old.  He recently had a horrible haircut which distressed me so much.  The poor hairdresser did well enough, given Rex's behaviour.  She demonstrated amazing skill in not taking an ear off, Rex was so badly behaved.  I don't blame her at all, but I did feel terrible for the poor little boy, with his short, uneven, choppy fringe and long shaggy hair over the ears.  I did a bit of a tidy-up and it looks much better.  (Above is Rex with his long hair, which did look quite awesome.)

Rex mostly walks now, after spending months trying to decide if walking or crawling suited him better.    He wanders around the house quietly calling "Mem-meh" which means he needs me, or "Dedd-deh" meaning he will go to Mr de Elba and then decide he needs me.

Woody is four and a half, and getting pretty cool.  He loves maps, particularly the weather map, or "Wevver-nap" as he calls it.  He loves getting the weather radar on my iPad and telling me if it looks rainy or not.  He wants to be a Wevver Man when he grows up, which sounds pretty appropriate to me, so go for it, I say.  Here he is watching the recent cyclone as it crossed the Western Australian coast.

Woody is currently struggling with having his older siblings around all the time.  Having them around at all, in fact.  He's doing a lot of yelling and shouting, and we're pulling out all stops to try to discourage him from flaring up all the time.  But he remains my best helper when I'm hanging out washing or folding clothes.  The little champion.

We discovered Jessie (7 next Easter) had a fear of seagulls during our beach holiday in early December.  We were eating fish and chips at the beach (pictured), and the seagulls were coming up asking for food, as they do.  But instead of swatting them away or throwing food so they went further from her, Jessie just cried and claimed they look "vicious." She became very upset when Woody and Buzz threw leftover fish and chips close by, causing an angry squabble of seagulls to come closer and display their viciousness, so Mr de Elba thought he'd make her feel better, maybe even laugh, by getting the boys back later on.

Buzz and Woody finished eating and moved down towards the water's edge to play while Jessie stayed up at the tables with us, too terrified of the seagulls to move.  Mr de Elba took some leftover fish and threw it down towards where the boys were.  Not much.  And there weren't many seagulls.  Until he threw it.

What had previously been about 15-20 seagulls squabbling over the boys' chips in a really-not-all-that-vicious way had become a mega-flock of about 60 angry seagulls who darted en masse towards the leftover fish, shrieking at each other in what I can only describe as a "vicious" manner.  The boys who both love animals (and birds in particular) lost their minds, and ran around screaming for a bit.  Once they saw the seagulls were after the fish and not them, they laughed and returned to watch the birds feeding, but for one embarrassing minute, it appeared to the casual observer (of which there were a few) that a father had incited a flock of angry birds to peck his terrified sons to death.

And it only happened in the first place because Jessie had seemed inconsolable because of the proximity of about 10 seagulls.  We decided that parenthood is so easy and we're so good at it.

Buzz is 9 next Easter, and he just loved our day at Australia Zoo.  He's into swimming, cricket and riding his bike, and a hundred other things which make my head spin.  He's a clever little cookie but he needs something different next year for school so we're going to try somewhere new.  I alternate from being very confident it's a great move to being quietly worried about a good many things.  But he is confident and resilient, and I need to give it all to God and trust that things will work out.

Long story short: Bought a tent - set up the tent - Mr de Elba, Buzz and Woody spent a night in the tent - Jessie distraught because she wasn't allowed because she was sick - the next night all three big kids were allowed to sleep outside but Mr de Elba was staying up late tidying the study soooo .... I decided I should take one for the team and have my turn.  Above is a little bit of the chaos that occurred before baby Rex was sent to bed, and below ...

... is the chaos that occurred after Bullseye came by saying, "Pleeease may I come in your tennnnt?" and I just said "Yeahsurefinerightwhateverknockyourselfout" before I'd really thought it through.  I sent her out soon after that, to stand guard and kill any snakes.  Not that we've ever had one in the yard, but I have quite a phobia of them, and felt more comfortable with Bullseye outside, not just because when she was inside, she was sitting on my arm.

Okay, one more:

My dear friend has two new dogs.  This is the back end of one of them.  Don't they come in amazing shapes, dogs?