Sunday, November 22, 2009

Air con is evil. Except for today

Sooo we come back from a week down in dear old Hobart and arrive in our house at 4pm to find it is 42degrees (107.6F) out on the back deck. We quickly dig through our bags to find our swimmers and sprint down to the ocean baths. Patrick had a wonderful time chasing other kiddies and kicking over my sand castles, and we managed to stop Ollie from eating too much sand by letting him suck on a piece of seaweed (he's 7 months old. EVERYTHING goes in his mouth, so seaweed was simple harm minimisation. Hell, it may even have been nutritious.). Two hours later it's still 37(98.6F) out there even though it's now dark, and it's about 30 (86F)in the bedrooms. We've trundled out the old portable air con for our room (the one I demanded we buy when I was pg with Patrick) and I've been looking at ebay for one for Paddo's room.

Srsly. WTF. forty-effing-two degrees.

Photos of Hobart trip to follow...

Friday, November 06, 2009

The meaning of Life

The thing I love the most about Patrick and Oliver growing up is watching them exploring and understanding their world. Those moments when, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the "click whirr clunk" as the cogs in their heads turn over. Ollie spent at least ten minutes in the bath last night closely examining a plastic flag that clips onto Patrick's tu.pperware bath boat passing it slowly from one hand to the other, turning it over, and occasionally popping it in his mouth for a thorough checking. He is nearly sitting up by himingself- and right now he is leaning gently against me, as I lie on the bed typing. He is carefully examining a (clean) pair of Patrick's underpants and demolishing a rusk (Multitasking in a boy. You gotta love that) with an expression that seems to say "If I can understand this, I'll have it all figured out. Existentialism- meh. It's all in baked goods and undergaments."

Patrick's developments of course these days are a little more cerebral, as he gets better at understanding concepts. Some of the things he is getting into are:
*Birthdays. Well, I'm sue he doesn't really know what the whole "this is the day I was born" thing but he does know it involves presents, a party, cake, and singing (What's not to love, I suppose?)
*Mummy and Daddy's "other" names- like "Jen" and "T.....". Apparently Oliver's "other" name is Ollibollen, whereas Patrick's is "Paddywhack". But he knows Grandma's other name is "(June)".
*Friends. I'd had a particularly crap day at work and Patrick said "Mummy you're my best friend". His toys have best friends too (The green train is the blue train's best friend and so on). Patrick has had two besties at daycare for a good while too- lets just call them Poppy and Bianca, and he talks about them at home.
*Sick. We had a run (pardon the pun) of gastro- Patrick kindly brought it home from daycare, and he confidently told me "the food in mine tummy came out mine mouth". He also helpfully told me "Daddy's done a spew". He knows the food goes into his mouth, into his tummy, then it goes round and round and comes out as poo- we were attempting to gt him to stop eating sand which terribly irritates his bum when he decides to poo in his nappy.
* rewards. We had been going really well with toilet training but hadn't really woked out how we were going to progress fom going pants-less to wearing underpants, as the last tim I tried it he just weed an poo-ed in them. Also he was waiting until he had a nappy on to do a poo- which was triply bad because a. you had to change a nappy almost as soon as it went on, b. that was normally only when we left the house and c. it means he can hold on, but just wasn't going to do it on the potty. My mum suggested a star chart. I didn't think he was old enough to understand the whole action-consequence thing, but what do you know, it's working. We've had him in pants at home for the mornings most of this last week and he's been really good. Only trouble is we are running out of his favourite star sticker(the star in a car).
*boys and girls. He knows mummy is different to daddy, himself and Oliver because "mummy hasn't got doodle". You know that feeling you're being watched? I get it having a wee. Patrick's looking hard to see if I really haven't got a doodle, or if it's just really small. (MrT confuses the issue by saying "Well, mummy has sort of got a doodle..." let's just leave the finer details of anatomy out of it until he's in, say, high school, eh?). He is convinced he has boobies (teaching a 2 year old to say "nipples" just doesn't seem right) and MrT has a fine set of pecs (ok, moobs), and Ollie has big fat moobs, so that doesn't really register. Poppy and Bianca are boys as far as Patrick can tell, (and he is sure they have doodles). But he is getting there.

Other news- mrT and I both got much bigger than expected tax returns, so we're thinking of heading here for a few nights. Or here. We can't decide. At least we know it will be hot in sunny queensland, and the other one is close enough that we could conceivably dash down there any time we choose. We're also doing Christmas with my family in coastal Victoria: on of my aunts has an amazing beach house (One of those ones where they bought a fibro shack years and years ago when they were all as cheap as heck, and then replaced when tit was falling down and they were able to afford to do so), so the cousins will be able to play together for a week which we are looking forward to.

Rigt the battery on the laptop is almost out and I can smell MrT burning something on the stove, so I have t6o go.