Tag Archives: kids

Off Kilter

It’s been a funny old week. I’m feeling a bit off-kilter. I’m not 100% certain what a kilter is, nor do I know whether I’d like to be on one, but for the moment, I’m definitely off.

SlingBag02

I did fully intend to write up a review of my lovely Sling bag made at Sewjourn, for Nikki’s Review Round-Up Competition. Somehow that deadline slid out the window while I was distracted by kilters, but get yourself over there and vote for a winner anyway, won’t you?

In lieu of that, and of anything else of substance for the blog this week – please accept an offering from last week:

Anticipation:
Sandpit01

Installation:
Sandpit02

Sandpit is Go!:
Sandpit03

My Dad built, and then he and Dermot installed, this long-anticipated addition to the backyard.
The weather even came to the party with a couple of brilliant days earlier this week (I love this Winter-with-a-promise-of-Spring time of year so much). So the kids got to hang out and build sandcastles as much as they liked.

Well. Two of them liked. Mr Fifteen-and-a-half-months-and-I can-climb-out-of-my-cot-now seems to have some kind of bizarre sand-phobia! We’re working on it.

Breakfast

Breakfast 1

Breakfast 2

I have a brand new lens on the camera. It’s taking some getting used to, but I think I’m going to like it. A lot 🙂

Blogtoberfest Day 12

More (and Less) Teeth

Gap-tooth-boy
Teeth are still a big topic of interest around these parts. Current status as follows:

Kid #1: One gap, three more wobblies.
Kid #2: Two grey wobblies 🙁 (I’m still harbouring mother-guilt over that particular event)
Kid #3: One tooth arrived two weeks ago(!), another one on the way (favourite chew-toy = my chin)

There’s been a noticeable lack of creativity ’round these parts lately. I’m sure the lingering mother-guilt has something to do with that. I was “busy” sewing when Niamh took that fateful leap. It doesn’t matter that I’d told her dozens of times not to jump in that spot – this time, I didn’t stop her, so hello! self-blame. Gah.

It’s been a helluva week, too. I had a spot of single-parenting while Dermot was in Sydney for work (earning myself a few brownie points towards wiping out that mummy-guilt). A discovery of the parasitic variety (necessitating trips to chemist and laundromat and noIdonotwanttotalkaboutit. Ew.) Several too-early starts thanks to the smallest boy and his impending second tooth…

Aaaand. A punctured tyre yesterday morning as I dropped Finn off at school. D’oh! As I lowered the window to wave goodbye, I heard a certain kind of ‘thwack thwack thwack’ noise that you just know cannot be good. I stopped the car and found a dirty great big screw sticking out of one of the rear tyres. Hoping the continued presence of said screw would prevent the tyre from letting down immediately, I drove straight to the nearest shopping centre with an auto centre. They were super-dooper busy, but graciously let me queue-jump, and repaired it straightaway while we nicked off to feed the caffeine habit I seem to have acquired lately. (Can’t imagine why!)

But. My good temper will be restored momentarily. We are off! Today is the last day of term, and tomorrow we are going away, la la la. We (ok, mostly I) have been counting sleeps for the last three weeks, let me tell you. We are heading beachfront for three days and then mountainside for three more, just to get ourselves a well-rounded holiday. See you on the flipside 🙂

ETA: Forgot… I did manage to get to the Northside Makers coffee-crafternoon last Sunday (see if you can spot Rohan and I at that link 🙂 ) where I managed, oh, about 4 rows of crochet on a face cloth (simple squares crochet out of a bamboo/cotton mix are divine as face cloths, you should definitely give them a go). Margaret calls me a ‘multitasking wonder’. Hahahahahaha!

My Creative Space

…has a glue gun in it this week. Any crafting involving a hot glue gun is awesome, if you ask me 🙂

Creative Space July 23

Niamh is the queen of cheesy grins at the moment. Another cheesy grin for the camera darling?

Niamh July 23

There we go.

We’ve been making peg-dolls today (don’t worry, I was at the helm of the glue gun). Here’s us: Niamh on the left, I in the middle, and Rohan on the right:

Peg Dolls July 23

Rohan watched (in another lovely hand-knit by my mum). He wasn’t all that excited by peg dolls, to be honest.

Rohan July 23

(I’m pretty sure he’s storing extra food in those cheeks for later!)

More creative spaces to be found over at Kirsty’s place

Crossing the Line

Niamh climbed into bed with me this morning, and I’m pretty sure, though I was still fuzzy with sleep, that she said ‘Wuv You’ as she gave me my first cuddle of the day. Cue ‘Awwwww’ 🙂

I could end my tale there and keep that warm and fuzzy feeling going. But…

As I was getting dressed later, she pointed to my midsection and informed me ‘Mummy yat’. Now I’m not altogether 100% positive, but I’m pretty darn sure that ‘y’ was an ‘f’! I was mortified! It may be true, but hey! does one really want to hear it from one’s 2 year old?

Must they really learn to talk?!

(Oh well. Off to pick up Finn and then go ‘wopping’ at the ‘oopymarket’!)

Term 2, Week 2

It’s difficult to get inside the brain of a 5 year old boy. Most of the time, I guess you probably wouldn’t want to! But we’re dealing with a few problems with Finn at school at the moment, and I’m just finding it so hard to help him through this. Mostly, I end up feeling I’m doing all the wrong things, and some of the time, I know that I am (see: irrational yelling, behaving worse than a child myself sometimes). After dropping him off each morning, I’m all kinds of tense for the rest of the day until I pick him up. I keep expecting school to call and ask me to pick him up because he’s done x or y. Logically, I know it’s not that bad. I know that he (mostly) has a good time once I’m gone, that a good portion of his behaviour in the morning is due to separation anxiety. Logically, I also know that he’ll eventually get over his apparent phobia of the school toilets (won’t he?!). That school won’t always feel like a prison sentence to he and I both (oh please?!)

But damn it’s hard right now.

On the Farm

I’ve been feeling kind of… isolated?… displaced?… bereft?… something, these last weeks. It’s due to a combination of things, not least the increased difficulty of getting out and about with two kiddos. But I’ve come to realise that I’m really missing where we used to live. We’ve been here ten days shy of a year, and I’ve never quite found my groove – probably because I’ve been either pregnant and exhausted, or sleep-deprived and exhausted, that entire time.

It’s not like this is an unpleasant place to live, it really isn’t. But I miss the wonderful local shops where the staff knew our faces, if not our names, the kid-friendly cafes where we could while away a sunny morning or lazy afternoon, the wonderful bookshop…

Anyway. This place just doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere and energy about it. But it is not without benefits. Yesterday, we took off to a community/educational farm not far from here and spent a few hours puttering about.

We found a shady place for our lunch…
Farm01

Met some of the residents…
Farm02

Explored the community vegie patches (which put great shame to ours 😳 )…
Farm04

Did some of this…
Farm03

And some of this…
Farm05

It was very peaceful (at least until the splinter incident, which was traumatic for all involved, but Finn most of all). A very nice way to spend the first 30 degree day of the season.

An Awww Moment

You know, I think Christmas is cancelled. Because quite frankly, how could anything top today? Finn and I were exploring a new (to me) fabric shop with equal amounts of glee – he running madly beetween the bolts of fabric and probably irritating every other shopper, and I discovering wonderful embellished fabrics and trims in this little shop I had ignored for so long. When he came up to me, and announced…

“Mum, you’re gorgeous!”

So as you see, I need no more from my life, Christmas cannot possibly live up to that!

Eh. Pity he’ll grow up to be a teenager and will forever more think his Mum is a complete dag :giggle:

Are We There Yet?

I think children must come preprogrammed with the “Are we there yet” routine. My son is 2-and-a-half, and it started today. We drove to my mum’s place, about an hour and a half from home. For a while, he was happy to drive me nuts with “hungy.. hungy… hungy” commentary from the back seat. Then, after I gave in and handed over a Caramello Koala (never doing that again… what a mess!) he started in on “where are we… where are we… where are we…?” After amusing himself with repeating the (admittedly humorous) town name hundreds of times, he hit on the big one. “We there? We there? We there? We there?” 😐

I used to think I’d have a reasonable tolerance for this kind of thing. Now I know that just isn’t so. It’s like every single time kids say something, it’s fresh. They don’t get tired of saying the same thing over and over. So first up, I naively answer whatever question he poses. Then I listen to the question for a few dozen repetitions, without responding. Then I figure OK, maybe he’ll stop if I answer him again. Nope. Then I get cranky and ask him to stop… and ask again… and again. Finally I figure out some kind of distraction, and that works for a while… until he figures out the next thing to pester me with.

Hmmm… guess this isn’t gonna stop for a couple more decades, huh?