i think i'm in trouble..

a momentous today yesterday. i bought the kids very first board game of their own. it was a toss up between hungry hippos and the old favourite, Trouble. Trouble won. And so did Sophie, and then zacy. i didn't stand a chance. i also didn't realise that the could recognise so many numbers or count so well. i think they are playing it independently of me right now. and they are so grateful. tey keep saying 'thanks for buying us our new counting game mama'. makes me want to buy them a whole lot more of everything in the world. like i said. i think i'm in trouble...

some day my spring will come

given that it's all cold and rainy again today it is nice to remember that spring does come. and so do shorts, hats and outdoor picnics.

graceful in decline

there are many lovely things that cj does for me during the week but one of the nicest is to take the twins shopping most saturday mornings and bring back a bunch of flowers (chosen by them) and some scones. with chubbies incharge of flower selection we end up with some interesting choices (to say the least: is a lettuce ever really a flower??) but one thing i've been able to observe are the different ways in which diffrerent flowers bloom, fade and wilt. carnations go out very quickly. roses just fall apart. but tulips are almost more beautiful. in their final moments than they are when still in bud. so i think i'm going to adopt that as my approach to growing up. less like a rose. more like a tulip. possibly without the clogs.

while i remember

other cute things the chubbies currently say:

• zaccy loves to tell me, very seriously, when he has a 'ploblem'
• instead of saying 'don't we' (ie we love stories don't we) soph says do't we. "we always wash our hands do't we mama) it sounds like doit we. it is totally adorable.
  
• zaccy calls the toddler room at childcare the 'tobbler room'.
  
• and soph's theory about why she can see the moon in the afternoon sometimes is that somedays, after a big sleep, the moon runs really fast and catches up with the sun.
  

i think their reality is way better than mine.

just freaky

about an hour ago i was trying to remember the name of some truely awful australian sit com; about the only thing i could remember was tht it starred jon english playing a former rock star who suddenly had to be come dad to his teenage kids because their mum disappeared or died or moved to outer chad or something; and now, i just turned on the TV and whose was the first face i saw?? JON ENGLISH. how freaky is that!! there seriously can't be that many times in a day/week/month/year when he makes it onto TV these days???

if only i could find some practical use for this freaky stuff...

kung foo fighting

one of the many responsibilities of the parent (or step-parent) is the purchase of the totally hot must have or my life will end and i'll be ridiculed by all my friends concert tickets sold via the internet for the teenagers who are at school when the tickets go on sale. today the task was the foo fighters. this was considerably easier than the time i was buying WWF tickets a couple of years ago and isaac kept disconnecting the phone line on me; on that day when i finally got the line re-connected soph beat me back to the keyboard and very nearly purchased some tickets to the yodelling delights of byron whitman. not good. but today things went relatively smoothly and we now have two foo fighter tickets. the only interesting challenge was that to access the 'pre sale' release i had to register with their 'fan club' and receive a secret pass word. how weird is that? i'm surprised i didn't get rejected when i filled in the name/age section...but anyway I guess i can now look forward to 7 million emails trying ot sell me tickets to bands i've never heard of singing songs i cannot stand. but the foo fighters are cool and now steph and her buddy can go and that, after all, is the main thing.

lost arts

every so often i get a wee bit nostalgic for days of old and times gone by. lots of stuff in this 21st century are totally cool but there are definitely something that i think we should try and cling to in these bright and shiny 'new times'. Here's a few:

• Doileys. real, crocheted, pretty doileys (not that i can make them but i do like to HAVE them)
• Bread and butter pudding (not that i can make these either but i like to think that someone can...)
• Jam roly poly (now THIS i can do)
• Thank you notes for presents received and favours done
• Board games
• Framed family photographs
  
• Wildly inaccurate christmas carols about snow and winter and christmas puds
• Christmas puds

how good does all that stuff feel?

too cute to care

one of the minor dilemmas of parenting is the 'do i correct things the kids say wrong, even though what they say is really cute' phenomenon. Both Soph and Zaccy say 'find' instead of fine "don't worry mama, it will be find". and soph calls her doona her doo-nut. and zaccy calls hairy mclairy hair d'clairy. and i just can't bring myself to correct them. sometimes cute is its own form of accuracy.

it's really true

hot chocolate cures all thing. and hot chocolate and mindless novels cures even more.

defeated...

isaac has always been at the fussy end of the eating exchange. and i always promised myself i wouldn't stress out about it. but when some nights come along and he won't even tryy food that i KNOW he likes, it just really wears me down. really really really. it is great that soph eats everything that moves, but i woudln't mind a bit of a middle ground wiht the two of them.

things to come

tonight soph asked me if she could watch some more TV and i said no. she paused. threw her head back. and ran screaming to her room where she slammed her door for the very first time. at this point the rest of the family burst into laughter and i started filling in applications for a residency visa in Bucharest. It would have to be more peaceful.

performance anxiety

somewhat surprisingly, now that more than 1 person knows about this blog i am increasingly reluctant to write anything in it! i think i just need to get in touch with the 'buyer beware' thing and recognise that if folk choose to read it and then don't like it, that is their problem not mine. which makes my current fury with JK Rowling kinda hard to defend given that by this logic she can write what she wants and i don't, after all, have to read it...but i am still totally cheesed off. i think thhere is a breach of promise thing happening. i mean, she promised (no not literally) to write feel guide books where good triumphs over evil. immediately. not at the end of 1500 pages or so. i mean, if i want to read 1500 pages of depressing stuff i could just read the paper. or the history of the Geelong Footy club. Or anything ever written by Dale Spender. Or the transcripts of the Ray Martin show....so much choice....so little wine....