Ooo I Almost Forgot

in my zen-like state of chaotic calm. . . we went to music this morning and P3 really wanted to write her name on the tag she was given. I thought it quite a good independent effort:

but I fully admit that could be the doting mother part of me talking.

Zen

Calm.

Made it through today.

Bedtime.

Night.

More Hard Stuff

grrr...

After what I thought was some kind of breakthrough with difficult 6 year old behaviour yesterday, I thought today would be a walk in the park. But you know what? It's still hard.

It's mighty hard to get new soccer boots on. Although not for L6 apparently.


It's hard when you realise you have laid and extra fork for dinner and the person it is for is half a world away.
It's bloody hard to catch a pic of a toy car in mid air, even when there is much pleading and begging. (I did it.)

And I imagine it is really bloody hard to spend hours trying to remotely fix a website and broken emails after you have flown for 13 hours through the night and spent the day in a new country and are just heading off to bed when your alarmed wife starts to bug you. But you did. You have a good heart blokey husband. And your brains are pretty rocking too. Thanks :)

When Your Six Year Old Is Going Mad

there's nothing like a bit of a wrestle with Dad.

That's Baboo flailing wildly in the middle of it. He's a loyal dog.

DIY

He did it!

Rotten bit of floor that I have managed to ignore the sponginess of for the last three years, exposed:



Large hole in my house. Not much between us and the world when you look at it eh?

Buckethead entertainment during DIY effort. "Watch me while I bump into things!"

Using small child to test soundness of new floor:

Hmmm...large crack between skirting and replaced carpet, through which I can see garden. But new carpet that is coming will be much thicker and fill the gap I'm sure.

Go DIY man!

Letters

P3 matching letters from the fridge with her alphabet chart. Sorry - not a very thrilling post. It got too dark but I was gonna take pictures of diggers that L6 drew for the fishing game that is now the digger game, and P3's picture for the same game. A poo. With a P for Poo. Of course. Told you she was foul. Cute, but vile.

The Hard Stuff

Looks angelic, doesn't he?

He's not. Take my word on it. Today was one of those parenting days. I cried. I wondered where I had gone wrong and what I could do to fix it - to loosen up or to toughen up or if I just needed to carry on. Who knows? Everyone who is close enough to let you really vent, is gonna say nice stuff to you anyway. But parenting is hard. Are you doing your best? Of course not. You can always do better. I just wanted to curl up in my bed. But I'd probably cry there too.

Pizza

L6 chose dinner today. So it was only fair that he cooked, right?

(Warning - I thought the top pic of bubbly yeast looked all nice and whole-foody and wholesome, but apparently it makes certain people feel sick and looks like a jug of vomit. Who knew? So skip that if you have a fragile stomach okay?)

A Sprightly Grandmother

P3 and Mutti doing air bicycling.

I'm not saying a word.

Creepy Crawlies

P3 making jam sculpture in yesterday's cupboard infested with pantry moths.




(Don't look eco-peeps.) Terrible waste.

Uninfested pantry. I hope. Trying Ali's bay leaf remedy too.

Really not the way I hoped to spend my evening. The plan was actually to go to bed and get rid of this dismal cold, but when you start pulling out tea laced with larvae, it is time to get serious on the beasties. I read somewhere that vegetarians years ago weren't deficient in B12 because of all the weevils and crawlies they inadvertently ate in dried goods, but now airtight storage is better, it is more of a problem. Could be tosh, but makes a good story none the less.

Friends

Caught up with my friend K (and L too - but we didn't take a photo 'cos we are too ditzy, sorry L!) who is a fancy museum textile conservator in Australia IRL. Is that the best sounding job in the universe? But she is also my friend from primary school, who survived intermediate and high school with me, and I love her. Look we had an oil painting done to commemorate the occasion:



Okay, okay...that was a pic P3 took for us. She did a bit better here, but I prefer the blurry one. Hides the wrinkles better.


Most of the stories we have, are stories I don't want to share, but she did have really cool coloured stockings in primary school, and once we wore the same dungerees on class photo day so the photographer would think we were twins and sit us next to each other.

He didn't think we were twins.

A Belated Birthday Present for Pen

Airshow

We decided to go visit the airshow. Unfortunately so did the rest of the whole entire world.

The trip which usually takes about 20 minutes, took almost 2 hours. They were two ghastly hours for blokey husband who was hyperventilating over what he was missing, but two rather relaxing ones for me as I dozed, full of cold, in the sunshine inside the stationary car. Happily enough, the children were also content for some obscure reason, and behaved beautifully, not a moan to be heard.

We saw stuff.




But the best part of all was undeniably the noisy FA 18 hornet screeching over our heads. Made the whole day. I was too busy staring up at the sky and clutching a scared P3's ears to take a pic.

Thankfully, there is always youtube for such moments. Wrong country, and ours was much lower, so you miss the ground-shaking, ear-bursting, chest-thundering coolness of it, but anyway...

Nothing like a good jet buzz. Unless he wants to hurt you of course.

Sigh

So today I visited and really wanted to buy this house:

But I realised I can't afford it. And that's okay, 'cos, count your blessings and all that jazz, I have no reason to whinge.

But it is pretty eh?

Mermaid

Tired today, but still so easy going and lovely. It's scary being responsible for you P3, because you make it so easy. Does that make sense?

House Stuff

I tidied up today. Seriously tidied up. Mainly because I'm kinda as-vaguely-as-possible thinking of looking at moving...or maybe not, because I know it'll be a heap of work. But it'd be nice to be closer to school and kindy, and nice to have a bit more space for children to run around. Or not of course, because these things are fraut with worry and expense, and I do know that.

But besides all that, when you do a Big Tidy it is surely worth posting the pics so you can remember how nice it once was, because it surely won't last when you have more toys than floor space. Except that before I took pics, L6 thought it would be really funny to rearrange P3's room, and she was grumpy at me putting her 'new' room back to the old way. That is without the chair in the middle. I didn't notice he also chucked blankets under the bed which has totally destroyed any anal tidy happiness I might have got from the pictures. Blah.

I also notice that the spare duvet cover on L6's spare bed really needs to go (ugly) and why the heck do children stick sitckers all over their beds???!! Gah.

Loads Of Stuff

I'm not even going to try to make sense of this....

Ah....nothing like a glass of wine on a sunny evening. It was Hot tonight.

P3 took this piccie of blokey husband. I like it. Focus is over rated.

And I haven't got permission to share (naughty) but Easter is coming....check out my cuzzie's daughter in her Easter hat. Too cool.

That pic was courtesy of P67 who needs a big Happy Birthday. Hip hooray!

And really... you gotta check this out....a published author in the family. For sale. Official. So proud. You get 8% discount too! ;)

A Fine Nose

So you know it isn't gonna be a post about me ;)

P3 has an amazing sense of smell. It interests me because mine is so hopeless. She stopped me in the supermarket today because she wanted the trolley back a good 10 metres so she could smell the mushrooms. She is always the first to complain if the kitchen bin gets smelly. Or should I say 'melly', which is disappearing now, but has been very cute up until perfecting the 'sm'.


This evening after dinner she asked for the spices and herbs from the cupboard, and went through systematically opening, smelling and delighting in each one.




I know it looks like a cigar - it's a cinnamon quill, I promise.

Maybe the interest in smell explains her wicked sense of humour and amusement at farts. She finds them screamingly funny. Being such an angelic creature helps her get away with comments like this from the other morning...

"Daddy, you smell like a quiet fart."

Enterprise

How to turn chicken eggs into pure sugar. L6 and P3 set up shop today outside the house. They made $3 between them this morning - yes, one was from me as I feared they weren't going to get a customer. P3 spent hers at the dairy and ate huge amounts of garbage. L6 insisted he didn't want to go to the dairy, he wanted something that will last "for a long time, maybe forever". He wanted to go to the $2 shop of course. With his $1.50. Hmmm. . . he struck a problem.

They tried again in the afternoon, resorting to an 'honesty Kashin' when they came in for dinner. Just after we called it a day, what do you know? A couple of 10 year old girls calling over the fence, asking where the shop had gone and if they could still buy eggs. P3 is happy. She has plans of another dairy assault. L6 is even more thrilled. We are back to the $2 shop tomorrow. With $2.

More Knitting

I finished L6's hippy hat. Ignore the odd looking hole - I'm sure that'll disappear in time.

And seriously? All the rumours? How come no-one suspects I've won a Nobel prize, written my first novel, or am moving to Zimbabwe? A little more imagination please ladies ;)