Sometimes the strangest seeming things are perfectly normal after all.

The problem with buying your children toothbrushes styled like racing cars, is that they will at some point - when you're peeling kumara and your back is turned - start pushing them across the kitchen floor while making broom broom noises.

This is the highlight of my SAHM day.

Do you want to know the highlight of yesterday?

Taking Guy Smiley to his Plunket appointment, only to find the building had moved. 

As in, the entire building had been shifted. 

Gone. 

Vanished. 

 
It's not the kind of thing you normally expect. Unless you share the same father as Willy Wonka. In which case, it would be quite ordinary to find a building had lifted itself by the seat of its pants to an entirely new location, just on the fly like that.

 In my universe however, building don't move about. So I drove up and down the street two or three times, squinting at the bare sections where the Plunket building and several other properties used to be, thinking I was somehow somehow missing it. Like maybe it had just shrunk or something. Really really small.

Then I went home and rang them, and learned the Plunket clinic had relocated. And no one had told me. And I had been on time for once too, which was a massive exercise in time management for me.

And that is my tale for today. My children are crowing like roosters while

(Edited two days later to add: I completely forgot to finish that sentence. ^^)

Infinite Monkey's Guide to Good Garden Maintenance

It had been a good seven weeks since the lawns had last been mowed, but Callie was completely unaware of this.  She never left her house, never glanced away from the monitor in front of her.  She wouldn't know if a giant bean stalk had sprouted right outside her window with a 'climb me and I'll lead you to great riches' sign dangling on its lower branch.  To see such a thing would involve opening her curtains; and doing this would produce glare and hinder her ability to see the computer screen.  And we couldn't have that could we?

And so the lawns continued to grow and Callie continued to ignore the disapproving stares from her neighbours, and the fact that her daughter often came home from school crying as she had gotten lost trying to find her way from the letterbox to the front door. 

From The Infinite Monkey's Guide to Losing Friends, Neglecting Family and Killing Household Pets, Part 3: Good Garden Maintenance.

Until the weekend, our lawn was nearly at that point again. The point where small children become lost in an urban forest that starts at our bottom step and continues in sporadic clumps right down to our gate. The point where I've caught the above-mentioned children gnawing on the handrail of the front steps, after having mistaken our home for a gingerbread house.

Or maybe that was less about the lawn labyrinth and more about forgetting to feed the kids breakfast... :P

The problem is, what with all this Winter business, the ground has like a marshland for weeks and weeks. I may as well take the lawnmower over to Bayswater and try to mow the mudflats. And then finally, when the weather had fined up for enough consecutive days to dry out the bog pit that is our front lawn, the mower gurgled to life long enough for me to mow a single strip, and then farted to a stop. Hmm. Probably should have remembered to check the oil... At some point during the span of years we've owned it...

Don't hate me for my awesome MS Paint skills.

But, a week later, and the lawns are done (to some degree), the kids have been able to enjoy playing outside in the nearly-spring weather without needing the help of Search and Rescue to guide them back to the house, and everyone's happy to shed the cabin fever - we are so over winter!!

In other news, I recently finished the Ashbree Lane website. Please head on over and check it out - Maree makes gorgeous tutus, hobby horses and handmade dolls! www.ashbreelane.co.nz

Oh no! Timmy's down the well!

The kids had a friend over today and they spent much of it busy playing and ignoring me completely (except for when I was required to mop tears or wipe mud from feet). Initially, I had this plan to spend my day "getting stuff done". But short of having the assistance of Rumpelstiltskin, it is pointless - POINTLESS - to try and get anything done when there is not two by three little whirlwinds in the house. A play date gives children the perfect excuse to thrash the house in ways they'd never think to do on their own.

Scenario 1 - the muchkins, bored despite a house full of toys.
The Lily Bug: "Hey, should we tip out every single toy box we own, and toilet paper the walls?"
Guy Smiley: "Monster trucks!"
The Lily Bug: *tips out one box. Is bored by lack of accomplice, gives up.*

Scenario 2 - the munchkins + friend, bored despite a house full of toys.
The Lily Bug: "Hey, should we knock down the precarious leaning tower of toy boxes in the wardrobe, scatter the contents all over the bed and then bounce on them until we hear cheap plastic snap beneath our feet?"
The Friend: "Yeah! Then we can take half of them outside and dig a hole and bury them - along with as much stuff from the cutlery draw that we can carry!"
The Lily Bug: "Yeah!"
 Guy Smiley: "Yeah! MONSTER TRUCKS!"
*Cue wanton destruction*

It usually takes a few weeks to locate the last missing monster truck, and I'm still missing teaspoons.
No doubt the lawn mower will find those...

Don't get me wrong. I love it when the kids can busy themselves all day by dreaming up creative new ways to use toys as stepping stones in order to cross the great lake of lava that is the entire floor surface of the house. Even if it means I have to spend the next week approaching very short men and offering my first born if they'll help tidy up the aftermath.
And I never really meant to imply I intended to waste my day on housework. Pfft! Who wants to waste precious time doing that?

An adaption of the Laundry Tornado.

This morning - while the munchkins were watching Sunday morning kids telly - I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to finally catch up on my favourite blogs. This is what I decided as soon as I woke, because at night I'm always elbow-deep in graphic design or Wordpress customisation and I never ever ever seem to get my head away from Photoshop layers or div layers. And you know, sometimes I just want to see what Catherine's been up to.

So, with the Lily Bug snug under a blanket and glued to the Wild Thornberries and Guy Smiley busy driving his monster trucks across a line up of Hot Wheels cars, I thought I could safely blog hop for a little while (while trying to figure out what's gone wrong with a Wordpress plugin in a separate window) without interruption.

And then, I walked away for a moment to make a coffee. Dumb mistake. Guy Smiley noticed the whirling thumping hum of our computer (I think that fan is going to #!!$% itself soon) and I returned to find my seat had been taken by a little boy who was suddenly extremely fascinated by Catherine's apples. (Wow, that sounds way ruder than it was mean to.) It then took five times longer to finish reading her two latest blog entries because Mr Two Year Old keeps wanting me to scroll back up so he could count the blumin' apples. Seriously, if I was in the kitchen he'd have no interest in what I was doing at all! Typical.

By the way, Catherine's apples are not apples at all, but White Sapote. I'd never heard of White Sapote before this morning, or Earth Gems for that matter (thanks Catherine for always teaching me something new!) but I'm curious now. I wonder if these could be found at the local Farmers Market? Though, the chance of me being organised enough in the morning to make it to a Farmers Market is slightly less than the chance of waking up to find fairies have made a wee house in our garden...

But you know...You never know. ;)

In other news, we've had winter bugs run rampant through the house for the last fortnight... (I now have a mental image of little scarf-clad bugs, tearing through the house like something the Cat would pull out of his Hat. Judging by the state of our house, I'd say that was entirely possible ;))

Anyway, here's an collection of the last fortnight's antics (you know, when we weren't at home being unwell - possibly due to too much running around wet playgrounds in the winter)

Look! I even managed to get a pic of the Teen in here! Not that I took it myself, no she usually hides her face behind her hair and grumbles about how she's having a bad face day whenever I wave the camera in her direction.

We have some lovely little reserves and playgrounds in our neighbourhood, and just the other day we discovered a new bushwalk. Okay, not new, but new for us anyway. We had no idea where this track was going to lead us, and then it opened out onto our road! Sheesh. I've lived on this street 12 or so years, and never even noticed this particular slice of native bush. You know, despite the "Manutewhau Walk" sign and wooden walkway leading into it...

Did their eyes light up when they discovered the track had turned to mud!

A couple of weeks earlier, a friend showed us another nature reserve, tucked away down an Avondale side-street where I would never have thought to ever find a forest. Waterfall and all.

Seriously, people who think Auckland is all about traffic congestion, arsehole Maserati-driving JAFAs & high-density housing, just really need to get out of the house more.

That narrow concrete thingie that the kids were walking across wasn't as dangerously scary as it looked. Honest. It was only a small drop onto lots of soft nature-stuff. And there was an adult standing 6 or 7 metres away, waiting to catch a falling child with her go-go-gadget extendable arms.

 Okay, it's late evening now, and I began writing this at about 10am this morning. In between popping away to sort out children's arguments ("she pushed me" "he smacked me in the head with a car"), sorting through the last months worth of photos & trying to make some kind of half-arse dent in housework, I've completely managed to ignore the small backlog of website/design jobs and uncleared emails that I'm usually stressing and panicking over. But I have managed to spend a reasonable amount of time enjoying the laughter of Guy Smiley as he chased after Lily Bug and Friend with a hose, and rambling in my blog for the pure sake of it. And sometimes I really really need to do that more than anything. It's like brain food.

My only worry now - other than whether or not the kids current game of swan diving from chairs onto a pile of beanbags and blankets is going to at some point require medical care - is what to name today's blog entry.

Hmm...

Things a small child probably doesn't need to know

There's really only so much a four year old needs to know. And in our family we often tend to answer our little ones questions far too readily, and without always stopping to think about the appropriateness of the originally overheard converstation that prompted them to make enquiries in the first place.

Take this snippet from tonight for example:

THE LAD: Yeah! I can get suicide bombers for my game now!
THE LILY BUG: What's suicide bombers?
ME: No....
THE LAD: They're people with explosives strapped to them -
ME: Nooo...
THE LILY BUG: What's explosives?
THE LAD: It's -
ME: Jarrod! No!
THE LAD: It's, uh... licorice.

Fortunately the Lily Bug was spared from nightmares involving suicide bombers tonight. Instead she may dream of a Willy Wonka type land involving licorice straps as personal clothing items.

Hmm. I'm not actually sure which might incur the greater nightmare.

I'm not entirely certain if it's nature or nurture, but sometimes our lovely kids come up with some strange stuff, right on their own accord and without any prompting from us at all. 

Take this snippet of crazy for example: The other morning I woke to the Lily Bug standing beside the bed, growling beneath her breath while wearing this mask (painted by Guy Smiley the night before).

I won't lie - I nearly shat a hole in the mattress. 

On a brighter and completely unrelated note, here's a wee gem that sprouted from a different conversation a couple of nights ago.


ME: You kids are geniuses.
THE LILY BUG: Wow! Really!!!
(I'm surprised at her excitement, and wonder how she knows what a genius even is. Until she turns to her brother and yells...)
THE LILY BUG: Guess what!?!? Mum said we're GENIES!!

Okay, but one last thing: Because I seem to love peppering my blog with post-dated entries like a wee treasure hunt of where the end result isn't treasure, but just a few more minutes of a reader's life wasted on my inane ramblings, here's another.

My question to the blogiverse is: What kind of cute/quirky/outright crazy stuff have your kids come out with? Come on, sharing is caring!

Rumours of my alien abduction have been greatly exaggerated.

 I went willingly.

But the anal probe was an optional extra. ;)

I moved my infinitemonkey.co.nz domain name off this blog and onto my own hosting space the other week, but somewhere upon the lines, my attempt to put a different domain name in its place failed. For a few days there, this blog drifted helplessly through cyberspace, closer and closer to the deep dark black hole of Total Oblivion until... Well, until I tried setting up a different sub-domain name, and now I'm back. I'm back, and the rumours about table dancing on board that alien spaceship were true. They were all true. And I regret nothing. (Although I'm not sure how I'm going to explain the green-skinned lizard tongued baby to the Lad.)

The problem is, I'm not sure that this rearrangement of URLS (I'm now located at http://agdf.infinitemonkey.co.nz) has broken my site for either those that follow it, or the kiwiwmummyblog directory it's linked at, so if you (you who? Anyone will do!) happen to be reading this, whoever you are, and you've come across this ramble via Kiwi Mummy Blogs or your RSS feed or whatever... Can you please please pretty please no I'm not begging of course not but maybe I am... Leave a comment?

A simple "hello" or "shut up you stupid plonker" will do! But better yet, because sharing is caring and all... Maybe you could comment by telling me something? Something about yourself? Yes, that's a good idea!

Tell me one thing about yourself that no one else in cyberspace knows.

Because in space, nobody can hear you scream.

Oh, and if you can tell me where that quote came from, I'll give you a cookie! (A special triple-choc candy coated internet cookie - yum!)

And runny grobbles for the children

I don't want to blog about my supermarket misadventures - I don't want to be that tedious. But if we're going to be honest here, I have been driven bat shit crazy and I have to get this off my chest:  My last half a dozen trips to the supermarket have been like a trip. A bad LSD trip from my teenage days. Except this time the chocolate bars aren't talking to me.

You know those contests where a person is given 60 seconds to race around and fill their trolley with as much random crap as they can throw in it? My shopping trips are like that, except I don't get to win my groceries at the end. Nor do I end up with anything I actually want and/or need. I just get a small child who tries to climb the confectionery shelves at the checkout while I shove my random stuff onto the conveyer belt and pray I've slung together enough groceries to actually prepare at least one complete dinner for the week. Because Gods help me if I have to come back to this damned place again today.

This isn't my photo. My camera is broken again, so I kinda borrowed this from foto-grafik.deviantart.com

 The agitator here is Guy Smiley, who, at the darling age of two-in-three-months, is at this charming stage where he rebels against any kind of constraint. Car seat constraints are where the trouble begins, but that's a halfway manageable problem. With enough perseverance and brute force on my part (gentle brute force, I should add), he will eventually consent to being buckled into his seat. It's the battle for the supermarket trolley's toddler seat that I absolutely cannot win. Not even with chocolate bars. Talking or otherwise.

Being constrained to stay at my side once we enter the supermarket sparks insurgence. For approximately five seconds, Guy Smiley will pretend to hold my hand, until that exact moment when I think to myself "yay, he's going to be placid toda - aaahhhfuckit!" And he's off. Legging it at the fist opportunity, as fast as his fat little legs can project him. Then as an added blow to my will to live, he'll drop to a thrashing dead weight when I try to pick him up.  It's guerrilla warfare, and I'm throwing canned missiles into my trolley in the futile hope of being able to strike some kind of culinary taste-bomb once I get home.

The Lily Bug is no help at all. Not that I should expect her to be, at the tender age of four-in-two-months. She'll say "I'll go get him mum!" and the next moment she's hot on his heels, tugging at his hand and squealing "come on, let's go this way!" The supermarket has become my children's training ground for total anarchy.

As the Lad helpfully offered, "really Callie, you're trips to the supermarket are pretty fucking pointless". And the Lad would be right.

Though, I challenge him to do a better job, when his son is rocketing through the store like a runaway pinball and the walls are closing in on him as he's caught in the grip of what could be an acid flashback of '93 but is most likely a really bad anxiety attack..

My dreams are still filled with the disapproving frowns of disapproving shoppers with their disapproving head shakes and their disapproving mutters of .. well... disapproval. Bastards.

Please, if you see a blue haired lady dashing through Countdown Westgate in pursuit of two wee Che Guevara's... Please throw some grocery staples into her trolley. She always forgets the sugar, flour or toilet paper, and it's it's been about two months since the bathroom last had a light bulb.

101 Totally Awesome Things About My Life *note sarcasm*

I am not a Mall person.  Malls make me anxious.

I don't know if it's due to the throngs of people who meander slowly ahead of me when I'm trying to chase down my wayward children, or a sub-conscious fear that if the Zombie Apocalypse was to happen while in a mall, I'd be trapped with a shitload of annoying teenagers and prissy office girls enjoying an 'extended lunchbreak'.

God forbid. I wouldn't know whether to run from the brain eating zombies or the girls stampeding their way to Supre for a free-for-all. Either way...  Though, least if I were trapped in a Mall, I could find refuge in the confectionery isle of K-Mart - no self-conscious teen or stereotypically skinny office girl would be seen undead there, right?

Wait, it's the zombies I'm meant to be running from in this scenario, isn't it? Damn it, I forgot what nightmare situation I was writing about for a minute there.

In fact, I completely forgot what I was writing about from the moment I typed the words 'Zombie Apocalypse'.

Oh. That's right. Christmas shopping.

 For the most part, we've got Christmas sorted, but there's going to come a time - very soon now - where I'm gonna have to suck in a big brave breath and negotiate my way through a mall teeming with crazy-eyed shoppers and brain-eating teenagers.

It is inevitable that in the next three weeks, I will find myself trapped in a unbearably long checkout line with my six rolls of gift wrap, shopping basket of confectionery 'stocking stuffers' and a box set of American Chopper that no staff member will be able to find the discs for.  I will worry that my card will decline, even though I know there will be enough money on it to cover what I am about to purchase. The children will transform into snarling Wargs and Grumkins as soon as they see the shelf of lollipops alongside them. Someone will begin to cry.

In that moment, the walls will close in on me as the anxiety attack takes its hold. I will consider Pirate Bay as the source for the Lad's box set, rethink the necessity of Christmas stockings and start wondering if we really need all this wrapping paper, or if we could just upcycle the kids impressive stash of Playcentre paintings...

Looks like they're painting Christmas colours to me! Or as the Lad suggests, Zombie brain splatter patterns!

All of this will happen. It's a scenario that's as much a nightmare tradition for our family as leaving up the Christmas tree for the first four months of the new year and drawing a face on a toilet roll and calling it the Xmas tree fairy because we've lost the original (actually, that one's not tradition at all, but I'm planning on making it so this year - just for shits and giggles.)

But as far as shopping malls go, I'll have my say in that at least. And I'll take my chances with Westgate. It's spacious outdoor design and dead boring selections of shops should filter out most of the teeming hoardes, and if all else fails, there's a Hunting and Fishing shop up the road, just in case I need to score myself some guns to deal with any f#%^ng annoying teenag  zombies.

In one of those instances where you make a mistake and try to fix it...

... By making a bigger mistake.

  Let's start in the vague direction of the beginning.

I've always been fairly blase about my hair. Bleach it, dye it blue, shave it into a mohawk, chop it with my eyes closed... Hair is just hair. It grows back. Eventually.

 Though in saying this, it's been a few years since I've done anything more extreme than hack at it with a razor. I'm slowing down with age and *cough cough* maturity.

Since allowing the lad to shave my hair to a #5 a few months back, and enduring several weeks of being mistaken for one of the Top Twins (or so I imagine)  it's slowly slowly grown back to the point where I realise my unkept mop is now comparable to that of Donald Trump.

It's depressing, but true. Ask Google.

So I decided a couple of weeks ago to finally mix up the streaking kit that has sat at the top of the kitchen cupboard for four or so years, and stick it all through my hair. Just for something different.

As I half-way expected with stripping out dark dye, Super Blonde actually became Super Ginga.
 

Bleaching my hair was a mistake.

And I decided to fix it

So I bleached it again. On the assumption that it would go really blonde.

I found the thought of having blonde hair to be kind of appealing. A stark contrast to the blacks and blues and purples and (more of late) purple-red and red-browns that I'm used to. But hey, I'm too old for fun colours... Blonde could be a pleasant change. Sure, I might feel a bit like a traitor to my own self - like I'm conforming to society's expectations of what a good responsible parent is supposed to look like - but I decided I'm finally ready to give  'normal' hair a go.

As I mixed up my bottle of Schwarzkopf Nordic Super Duper You Asked For It And Now You've Got It Blonde I looked at the gorgeous blonde with the flowing locks pictured on the front of the box and said to myself "I'm gonna magically transform into YOU soon!"

Of course, I'm well acquainted with Murphy's Law.

Yes. I have transformed.

Into a radioactive lemon.

See?

            
                                                                                      So, I guess bleaching my hair again was a mistake.

But truly, I think I can fix it this time.

I realise now that the best thing I can do is to revisit the Fudge Paintbox colours of my early 20's and throw some Blue Velvet through it. Or maybe a nice chilli red (think Sydney from episode 1 of Alias).

It's going to work. It's going to be awesome this time.

Other parents will shun me even more so than usual, and as an added bonus... The kids at kindy are gonna think I'm the coolest clown ever!

Stay tuned...

Oh, and before I go I'm going to link you (oh invisible and non-existent readers) to what is perhaps the perfect though horrifically bad  teeny-bopper pop punk/whatever theme-song to this post. I challenge you to survive it for longer than 21 seconds:

I thought you were a female!!

This post topic has been thrifted from the blog of Widge, because after reading what she had to say I started thinking about all the times the Teen has thrown out random movie quotes that fit so perfectly with the conversation at hand; thus making her sounds even more clever/witty than she already (thinks she) is.

I don't know how she does it. I struggle to remember the names of my family members half the time. And she can drop a quote from a movie she watched once in Year 7. Although in saying that, she cannot for the life of her remember a single thing her maths teacher has said. Ever.

So anyway... The Lily Bug has a certain movie phrase she uses all the time. Regardless of the situation or the topic at hand or who she's even talking to at the time, and despite the fact she actually has no idea what it means.

"I thought you were a female!"  She gasps between bubbling peals of laughter, every time she feels like telling a witty joke. She knows we'll laugh at her for saying it (though sometimes the laughter can be a little forced. The joke IS getting old...) and it's particularly funny to us all when she says this to her big sister's boyfriend, or to her granddad. Funny because they don't know the origin of the joke, and their expression twitches a little with stunned mortification.  What is that three year old implying? Do I look like a woman?

Not so funny when said to random strangers. Hmm.

It's from Ice Age 3. That quote. The scene where Sid tries to milk a male buffalo.  I have to explain this to people sometimes, least they get insulted.  But we didn't bother explaining it to the Teen's boyfriend. It's funnier for us that way. ;)

This photo has nothing to do with the subject at hand by the way. It's just the Lily Bug having a craaaaazy moment. Well, I guess it kinda fits.

Guy Smiley Does the Happy Poo Dance

My life as a Domestic Goddess... It goes a little something like this:

Thursday afternoon and I pause in the kitchen to breathe in the delicious aroma of yogurt banana cake baking in the oven. *nom nom nom*

Turn and trip over the clever arrangement of children's toys, scattered over the floor like a special mummy booby trap. Joy!

Quick check on pre-schooler in bathroom who has developed mystery fever and is having a cool bath. Child is busy using toothbrush to clean black mould from the bit of lino that has peeled up from edge of shower stall. Child seems well then.

Screams of "god no! Oh yuck, it's in his hair!" can be heard from the lounge. Screams are getting louder. Closer. Too close. Damn it.  Bathroom door opens, toddler is thrust into unwilling mummy arms.

Toddler is wearing a new hat. A hat made of poo.  Toddler also has new shoes to match. And gloves. And lipstick it seems.

Feverish child is elbowed out of bath, poopy kid dropped into it. Feverish child gags.  Smells bad mum! Poopy kid grabs mummy dearest with gammy hands. Wants to get out of bath. And then back in. And then out. It's the Happy Poo Dance.

A song comes to mind. Join in with me if you will.

You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about, you do the poopy dookie and you turn around, that's what it's all about...

Mummy smiles through gritted teeth and reminds herself that somewhere in the world, there are other mothers enduring similar scenarios. At least that's what that article in Next magazine said.

The cleansing is complete. A new smell begins to take the place of eau de poo.

Burnt cake.

FML.

You're lucky there's no photo to accompany this post. Instead I have drawn a lil' picture, outlining the event. Just in case you can't be naffed reading through my long-winded drivel.

Running the Gauntlet

Well, we survived the Parent & Child Show yesterday, I think. And I say 'I think' because I'm not entirely sure - I'm still waiting to get the feeling back in my right arm after lugging around Guy Smiley all afternoon. 12kg of toddler quickly felt like 20kg worth when it became a wriggling over-excited toddler who wanted to go in the opposite direction at all times.

As the Lily Bug waited with her dad for the Wot Wots to come on stage and hopped about in politely-contained excitement, I ran the Gauntlet of seemingly endless stalls catering for everything a parent and child could ever (and sometimes never) need, in chase of the wayward son who had turned into a whirling dervish. Eye contact with demonstrators was avoided least they try to engage me into feigning interest over their products - I couldn't afford to shift an eyeball from the little boy who was mimicking the crazy flight-path of an inflated untied balloon. Maybe it was bright lights and the bustling throng of people that had him all revved up and in search of adventure. Or maybe it was the "I Love Punk" tee he wore, making him yearn for chaos and anarchy.

Outside for some fresh air, my stress levels were kept in check by the realisation that I wasn't the only one with a cannonball child. Frazzled woman put themselves in time out while their children burnt off some excess energy on inflatable castles. Children squirmed and kicked as their parents tried to gently manhandle them to the parking lot. The surrounding sounds were not so much the laughter of children but rather the bargaining of mothers, keen to get their children home. "Come on Sally, I think there's some ice cream at home. You can have it if you'd just stop being a little..." "yes Josh you can have a doughnut, but only if we leave the bouncy castle now..." "right pick yourself up! I'm not carrying you!  Stop that crying everyone's staring, we have to go!

 Ah, the joys.



End note: I have realised I'm not a fan of mobile farms. The wee calf, goat and lambs gathered together in an anxious huddle as over-excited toddlers and preschoolers squeezed and prodded them, made me feel sad. It just seemed wrong for these wee creatures to be carted into a truck and driven to shows, galas and birthday parties for the entertainment (aka a farm-like experience) of city kids.

In saying that, I allowed the Lily Bug to gently pat the baby goat and snapped a photo of her doing so. I'm propagating the exploitation, which makes me a hypocrite... *sigh*

End note 2: J realised it's not always a good idea to attend a tightly packed event while wearing a Warriors jersey. Every three meters, someone wanted to stop and talk about the team. Endearing the first half a dozen times, but after that...

I'm Melting! I'm Melting!

With the warming weather comes an increased urge to get out of the house and enjoy doing so without having to drag the kids away from every muddy puddle they want to stomp in.

Roll on Summer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for letting the kids jump in puddles, but it gets to the point where light splashing is not enough - not for them anyway. They have to find one deep enough to wade through. And that's still not enough. They've gotta get their limbs in there; scooping up handfuls of mud and dripping it from one palm to the other, smearing muck to the elbows, The Lily Bug likes to explore the texture of mud with her entire body. In particular, her hair. Give her a storm-fed puddle as a palette, and she stands on her head and transforms into a human paint brush.

She did attempt a headstand in the mud during this particular adventure, but I missed the shot as I was already halfway back to the car calling "come on before I leave you behiiiind!" along the way.

What I really really hate about this kind of fun? The part where it becomes unfun. The part where it becomes one of  those waking nightmares you can't shake off for the rest of the day. Yup. The part where mucky monsters have to get clean again.

For the highly-volatile Lily Bug, this becomes a Total. Meltdown. Nightmare. By the time we get on to the clean up, she's tuned out the world and she's in 'The Zone'. You know that tired zone that is usually a precursor to a full-scale over-tired screaming fit? It's at this point, our fun-loving three year old transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West.

There's kicking, there's screaming, there's the gnashing of teeth... Halfway through the ordeal I'm declaring "we are never EVER playing in mud again" and by the end I'm all but begging my poor devil-possessed child to stop with the screaming and clawing and thrashing because I am in fact a wee bit afraid that the neighbours will think something godawful is going on in the house, and call the cops.

At least in summer, a water fight can solve the issue of clean up time.

In summer, the messy play table can be moved outside so I don't have to spend an hour scrubbing floury watery goop off the kitchen walls. The muck is cleaner; less water-logged rugby field and more soggy sandpit.

 Roll on Summer.

This was last summer. The clampit was filled with lovely soft Pinaki sand on one side and water on the other, then mixed to create a diarrhea-brown ooze that we (or rather, they) spent every available day wallowing in. Clean up time was garden hose simple.

You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself.

This isn't a newsbreaking thought, but sometimes I must seem like the weirdest person around. If I were to start throwing out examples as to why I'm the weirdest person around, I'd still be sitting here at 3am writing, so I'll just start with a few. Or one, actually.

Today was supposed to be 'stay home and mow lawns and pull weeds' day, and because of that, we decided to spend the best part of the afternoon trawling after the kids in the toy section of The Warehouse. Procrastination. It's an illness. (By the way, that wasn't the 'I'm so weird' example. I'm getting to that bit now.)

Because my lil' camera is an extension of my right hand, and because I can't go anywhere without my right hand, I had to take my lil' camera with me on our grand excursion to The Warehouse. And, under the pretense that I was photographing Christmas present ideas, I took photos of the kids looking at toys. Photos of the kids testing out toys. Photos of the kids riding the toys around the aisles...

The crazy thing is, I just had to. I felt slightly self-conscious and a little bit nuttier-than-usual; kneeling in the middle of an aisle to snap a pic of the munchkins as they mulled over leapfrog laptops and whatnot. But much as I tried to stick the camera in my back pocket and pretend that I'd left it at home, I kept right on fishing it back out and snapping pics like the crazy snap happy life-tourist that I am.

Is it weird? To chase your kids around a shop, snap snappity snapping photos as you go? Because I never ever see other parents doing this. Never. And personally, I think they should. I think people should capture a broad range of moments in their children's lives. Not just 'here's Sally in her best party frock and Peter making a mud pie'. Our little sproggits are going to be all grown up before we know it, and we'll forget these small moments. Being uneventful moments in the scheme of things, they'll be amid the first memories to fade. But we'll know that they took place, and maybe because of that, it'll be these every day non-events we'll miss the most.

Okay before you (oh invisible and likely non-existent readers) sneak off, I'm not finished with the inane prattle yet! Sheesh. How rude. :P

You may have noticed the munchkins are wearing different outfits in the bottom row of photos. That's right folks; we're such sad-sacks, we did this 'window shop at The Warehouse' two days in a row. Yes that's right, we went there yesterday too.

Boy, were we trying hard to avoid maintaining the outdoor areas of our home.

Truth be told, I'm not a shopping person. But sometimes I just feel like going in to a shop. Any shop, I don't care. I just wanna go into a shop. Those garishly bright lights and rows of crap I don't need are sometimes a novelty to me.

Because unless I lock the kids in the house with a box of cereal and bowl of water while I sneak out for a couple of hours, I can never go into a shop. The Warehouse, with its loads and loads of mass-produced crap, is just about the only store (asides from Toyworld) where I can keep the kinetic energy ball that is Guy Smiley contained to a manageable area without him rocketing out the store entrance within five seconds of walking through the door.

According to Guy Smiley, the funniest game in the whole entire world is to make a mad dash for the door and try to throw himself onto the sidewalk before I can grab him. Any attempt to restrain him is met by  flailing thrashing squirming limbs. And not just four limbs. When he wants to escape your grasp, he suddenly grows an extra set of arms and legs.

It. Does. My. Head. In.

[This would have been a good time to insert a photo of Guy Smiley peddling his chubby lil' legs away from me.  I completely forgot to get one of those shots. Just pretend it's in this space.]

Given the givens, I didn't expect to make it to the homeware section, and I didn't care to, but somehow between the four aisles of toys at one end of the Warehouse and the kids fold-out foam couches at the other, I managed to spot a couple of items (aka mass produced crap) that I wanted. And thus had to photograph. *facepalm*

The red and white polka dot teapot I want simply because it's red with white polka dots (and it matched my hoody at the time. How cool would that have been, walking around with my teapot-hoody twinset?) And the mugs promise a spoonful of summer with every sip. I reckon if I woke up and had a coffee in those mugs every morning, I'd quite possibly never be grumpy again.

One day, if we can stay in the Warehouse long enough for me to get to a checkout counter without a small child having a total global meltdown, I'll buy some and test this theory.

Teapots and coffee mugs aside, there's nothing I covet quite like this camera. One day Canon 1000D. One day you will be mine.

End note: I didn't get a photo of the Warehouse staffer who gave me the hard word about letting my wee minions ride the toys, nor a photo of the Lily Bug's crestfallen face when I told her it was time to put the bike back... But if I had, I'd probably be uploading it right about now.

End note 2: I've never locked the kids in the house with a box of cereal and bowl of water and crept out to the shops. Just in case you were wondering. (Though, there are days when I'd like to...)

 Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people. 
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you can't help that. Most everyone's mad here. 
[laughs maniacally; starts to disappear] 
Cheshire Cat: You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself. 

What's Gonna Work? (Teeeeam Work!)

It must be the most catchiest ditty to have burst out of the realm of kids programming since... D-d-d-d-d-Dora. And if you don't know what I'm talking about from the title of this blog post alone, then you've been living under a rock. Or you don't have kids. Or you have kids but they don't watch telly. Or you don't have a telly. And perhaps, you live under a rock. (FYI: I'm all for living under large natural structures and not allowing the kids to have their brains siphoned out via TV. Just that for us, we live in a small shoebox and often use the TV as an early-morning babysitter so mum can dither around pretending to do housework.)

So anyway, I digress. As usual.

Everywhere I go, it seems I can't escape the Wonderpets theme song. It has become the stuff of Facebook statuses. Usually along the lines of "Wonderpets Wonderpets... Go away!!" In the supermarket, 3 aisles to my right, I hear a small voice singing "we're not too big and we're not too tough but if we work together..." and then the mum is joined by her wee daughter when it comes to "what's going to work? Team work!"

And then there's our household. The kids are singing it while running in circles and bouncing off furniture, J is singing it late at night while putting together his latest model speedway car, and yours truly is currently singing it inside her head as she types this post. *shakes head in despair* The only one in this house immune to the song is The Teen, who shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and zones us all out in that way that only teenagers, men and small children can.

This has gone on for weeks and weeks. I admit, the song has one singular good use.  Can't get the kids to help put away their toys? Start belting out the chorus. (Or belching out the chorus, if you're clever like J.)

What I don't appreciate, is having the song stuck in my head when the kids are tucked up in bed nice and early, and the teen is at her one-night-a-week youth group leaving J and I to have that kind of special 'alone time' where we can dress up like show ponies and play dressage games, and I'm STILL singing the freakin Wonderpets National Anthem of Loopy Land inside my brain. Over and over and over...

Oh, totally kidding about the pony play by the way. I just wanted to see if you - oh invisable and quite possibly non-existent readers - were paying attention.

We prefer gorilla suits.


To the fly boat? To the fly boat!

Seriously, I'm thinking about getting one of these for the Lily Bug for Christmas. I'm 120% she would have hours of fun rescuing her Sylvanians from the willow tree, fetching trapped dinosaurs down from the bookcase...

Wordless Sunday: Colour

Everyday I'm Shuffling :|

I've been on the verge of a full-scale laughing fit all day. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm guessing the self-inflicted sleep deprivation has something to do with it.

It began last night when, during an intimate moment with J, I called him Spock. It's not my fault. I blame it squarely on that single wayward eyebrow hair of his that caught my attention (and nearly took out my eye). "Spock" I struggled to say through peals of hysterical laughter, as fat jolly tears rolled down my face. The laughing fit was eventually stifled, along with the 'intimate moment' by the time I was done with tweaking his eyebrows and laughing anew...

And before it seems the whole purpose of this post is to poke fun at J and his eyebrows (they're really not abnormal at all, it was just ONE stray upward-curving hair that set the whole thing off...) I should probably get to the point.

Inappropriate laughing fits.

I'm not sure how common they are amidst the general population, but I have suffered from this affliction for as long as I can remember. And truely, it's no laughing matter, this sickness of the mind really has caused distress at times.

Like the time my sister and 15 year old niece arrived for an impromptu visit, and revealed that my niece was having a baby. I know they were expecting me to understand the predicament, as I too was once a teen mum. They were probably hoping for understanding, advice, or something half-way rational to come out of my mouth at least...

Instead, I gave a wee anxious giggle. Which erupted into a snort. Which was followed up by a full-scale laughing fit to such intensity that I was absolutely incapacitated. Unable to speak or even close my mouth to swallow back the drool. My family walked out of the house, and I could do nothing to stop them. They walked out, and didn't speak to me for six months.

Again, sleep deprivation was the root of my hysterical evil. But at the root of the sleep deprivation? Depression and escapism.

Fortunately, depression and escapism aren't an issue for me right now, I simply choose to stay up late because I'm working on website projects I never have an opportunity to catch up on through the day.

However, I should probably think about having an early night sometime soon. All afternoon I've been singing Everyday I'm Shuffling inside my head, and with it comes a mental image of Yours Truly breaking into a crazy dance in the middle of a serious or mundane situation (a parent/teacher interview, a supermarket checkout queue) and this in turn causes the bubble of insane mirth to rise in my throat once more...

Yes. Tonight would be a good night to get some sleep. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day.

Things a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman:

 In the midst of preening through my old blogs in search of some of my favourite posts to regurgitate here, I came across this one from  23 March, 2010. Ah, the memories of that day... I swear, I came home from having that ultrasound and cried and cried and cried...

---

Things a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman:

6. This baby has an unusually big stomach  - I’m just going to measure that again.
5. Now I’ll get someone else to check on those measurements…
4. Let’s just go with my measurements - hers were even larger.
3. Well it’s certainly looking like a big baby - do you have any Tongan in you?
2. I’m glad I’m not the one pushing this one out! 

And the all-time #1 thing a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman…

1. And here’s baby’s squished up face.

WHAT does that even mean??!!