Onwards the Sun

As I first sat down to write, I became aware that the Lily Bug had ducked into the bathroom to paint her face with watercolours. I knew this, both from the clanking I could hear from down the hallway, and the fact that it's impossible to convince her to paint strictly on paper in a nice quiet contrived kind of way. It always turns into something more upon the of full body art with a generous helping of interior design.

The Lily Bug told me she wanted to be a vampire wolf, which is why she painted her entire face black. Then began working on her limbs.

I stopped typing to grab the camera - every creative endeavor (or disaster) is potential fodder for that future 21st birthday cork board?  And the coffee went cold as I snapped shots that will be of no interest to anyone except me.

But still, I captured irrefutable proof that we had done something constructive with our morning apart from zoning out in front of Dinosaur Train, dinosaur documentries, Monster Jam clips and anything in between, as per the suggestions of the YouTube sidebar.

I'm going to forget later in the week, the little things that we do. When I'm lying in bed feeling guilty that I've spent too much time working on websites, leaving the kids to entertain themselves and more often than not by splitting the computer with them. A child on each knee, one half of the screen taken up with Dinosaur Planet, the other half a space for me to work on tweaking HTML and CSS code until a website is cross-browser compliant enough to be satisfactory.

I think, once I've wrapped up my current website queue, I'm going to put Infinite Monkey {Design} on the back-burner. Of course, I say this to myself, quite regularly. Then I think of the additional income these sites provide. Income that supplements groceries, or provides the petrol to take the kids out, or allows me to buy a new camera so I can capture all the stuff I'm afraid of forgetting. Maybe I'll just put Infinite Monkey {Design} on a short hiatus over the summer holiday period and rethink my work hours.

When I began writing this blog post, it was yesterday.

Yesterday was the umpteenth day in a row of glum grey sodden wet sky.

Yesterday our Taranaki family returned home and the atmosphere in our house was kind of sad.

The silence they left behind was too loud to be drowned out by dinosaurs and we were too drained and tired to run around the house playing indoor hide & seek. We tried, but only got as far as hiding under a blanket on the couch, then hiding beneath the same blanket on the same couch again.  By the third repetition, we were running out of places within the blanket to hide.

Nan stayed over last night after I convinced her there was too much food left over from the weekend for us all to eat, and we needed her company to help fill in the silence. And it did.

Today, it is a clear blue sky day. Moods have improved. Sites are still waiting to be finished, but today we're going out into the sun.

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

My Children Are Human Paint Brushes.

With the weather finally turning to winter around here, the little monkeys are being confined to indoors more and more (and are home from kindy & playcenter this week because of colds!).

Who has any ideas for fun stuff to do when you're trapped inside?

Today I set the kids up in the kitchen with a large sheet of paper and some paint. I thought it would keep them occupied while I got some graphic work done... Of course, I was too busy snapping pics of the chaos to do any work, but it was a great way to spend an hour!

Recently I went to a four year old's birthday party and had a discussion with a couple of mums regarding messy play. Most regarded it with horror, even while saying "I'd love to let my little ones get messy but.. the clean up..."

Yes, clean up can be a mission, but look, it's so worth it! Nice clean tidy structured play is all well and good.... But my challenge to those who fear chaos is: Let your kids experience messy play. Come on! Throw a shower curtain down onto the kitchen floor and give them a big bowl of cornflour goop. It cleans up easy! And if they're hesitant to get stuck in - YOU get stuck in first! Show them how fun it is, and I PROMISE you, you and your kids will LOVE IT!

Mud Pies and Party Frocks

Today I decided it's almost pointless to try and dress the Lily Bug in anything "girly". This isn't a new realisation. We gave up with pretty frocks last summer, as they hampered her ability to climb trees, and although we managed to get her to wear them every now and then for the sake of a photo, they soon returned to the wardrobe in favour of more practical shorts and leggings.

It's a given that if she steps outside, she's gonna get dirty. Today was no different, and after an afternoon of trying (without success) to dissuade the munchkins from playing in the muddy trench by the front gate, I threw my hands up in defeat and grabbed the camera. For posterity of course.

Cue the outfit change first. Those pink pants and white sleeves have been kept stain-free thus far, but I think we pushed our luck today.

When the kids finally tired of the mud and consented to a shower, I shrugged and accepted once and for all that my girl will never be a girly girl. No wistful sighing over frilly dresses and pretty hair clips and nail polish and Barbies and all that other girly stuff...

Good riddance to that nonsense, I say. *rolls eyes*

And then I went and changed out of my mud-splashed jeans and into a skirt. A skirt, for the first time in a long time. The Lily Bug's eyes widened in amazement and she exclaimed "oh wow mum! That's so pretty!" and then she pointed to the black ruffles, "what are those?" While part of me was surprised to realise I have a near-four year old daughter who doesn't know what a ruffle is, I was even more surprised when she kinda sighed and added "I wish I could wear a pretty dress"

"But you have some!" I cried. "In the wardrobe!" And off I trotted to retrieve them.

"Fairy dress? Or party frock?" And I dropped the armload onto the floor. "Here, wear them all!"

And she did. First she held up the grey tutu Granny Greener sent up at Christmas. The one she had consistently removed last summer, as it hampered her tree climbing style. "Oh wow, pretty!" And she wriggled into it. Then she spotted the yellow and black striped costume dress with bumble bee wings. "Pretty!" And she put that on too. Over top. Then proceeded to twirl and dance around the room.

Guy Smiley wasn't to be left out. Much as he may have wished he could've been... Silly mum slipped a fairy dress over his head too (lad was too busy watching kids afternoon tv programs to notice - bahahaha!). Though, as soon as he looked down and realised he had a frock on, he began clutching and pulling at it, desperate to get the thing off him.

He may be super cuddly, gentle with furry animals and prone to carrying around a dolly from time to time, but he aint no fairy! He likes to be able to sit like a man!

Half a dozen outfit changes later, and the Lily Bug's eyes lit when she came across the yellow and white polka number. Yellow is her most favourite colour in the whole wide world, and she managed to keep this dress on for a good half hour before it got in the way of her jumping game and off it was flung.

No doubt about it, the Lily Bug's a bit of a tom boy who loves stomping through mud, climbing (everything) & playing with dump trucks. But it turns out that, from time to time, she also likes fairy costumes and pretty dresses. And, despite myself, I can't help but kinda smile a little at that.

(Linking up with Communal Global for this week's Tuesday's Around the World.)

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. 

Park! Park! Park! Park! Paaaarrrk!

After a couple of days trapped inside due to a stomach bug that swept through the household, we were so so relieved to escape the plague house outside this afternoon and spend a couple of hours at our favourite playground.

The cabin fever has been almost worse than the sickness itself. A camp out with DVDs became the theme of the weekend, however there's only so many times Ice Age 3 can be watched before "I thought you were a female!" is no longer funny. Even to the three year old who was the first to laugh, and who laughs the hardest - despite being completely unaware of what the joke is actually about.
 
So, at the first sign that the munchkins were able to keep down their food, we scarpered to Hobsonville Point Park for a bit of fresh air.

Hobsonville Point Park; with its interactive playground sculptures based on New Zealand native trees. Sculptures that are lovely to climb on in winter, and hot enough to strip the skin in the summer. (Kudos to the stupid bugger who didn't take that into consideration when designing a playground for thin-skinned children.)

Two days ago, the Lily Bug spent the entire day lying on the couch, without energy to do much more than sit up and vomit. Today she climbed right to the top of the ... climby thingie ... and into the net. Right into the net! That's a first, folks at home.

Always, always keeping an eye out for little brother. (And sometimes, sometimes a little lost when, during a game of hide and seek, mum doesn't hide where she was instructed to hide.)

It may have been too soon to take them on an outdoor adventure. Guy Smiley threw up a short while ago. I hope a relapse is not in order for tomorrow. I was thinking it might be a nice day to venture into our failed garden and begin removing the winter weeds. Or the plants we were supposed to keep. I can't tell which is what half the time. (My mother is the green fingers. I'm just the butter fingers.)

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