my-speck

i'm pregnant and it's going to be a rollercoaster

Reading… an interpretative adventure. Especially when you’re 2.5 January 9, 2012

family reading

We read a lot of books. Every morning little Poogie (2.5 years now) typically brings a bunch into the bed with me, we get little Sister Boona (6 months now!) and have a bit of a read. Then there are more during the day, at bedtime etc.

We have a relatively large number of books, and are constant library users, but Poogie still seems to know most of them by heart. Which I think is pretty impressive. It is to me anyway, still breastfeeding with now non-existent short-term memory.

So last week I was reading one of our favourites, Australian Author Pamella Allen‘s “A Lion in the Night“, and we were up to this page:

reading: A Lion in the Night

When I asked,

“And what is the little dog saying?”

And the answer, in a “mum, this is so obvious I can’t believe you’re even asking me” voice: (more…)

 

Juggling a temper with an ear infection… and cuteness.. September 15, 2011

Day three of an ear-infected, cranky little boy. And a sleeping-a-lot-trying-to-fight-it-off little babe.

Mummy is going a bit stir crazy. She was seen stalking the neighbour’s cat with a squirt gun this afternoon through the back garden… By a workman who she didn’t notice in the other neighbour’s garden. Nice look. He waited until she had been down there for about 5 minutes acting like a dodgy commando-action-hero actor before he made his presence known by raucous laughter. She was a tad embarrased. But granted, she was doing it as the blasted cat was trying to eat her two new chickens. And for some light self-entertainment (she makes her own fun). The workman graciously pointed out where the chickens had gone and where the cat was hiding when his laughter subsided.

As you can see, fours days with two children at home all day, one of whom is on full whine/tantrum/attention-needing at all waking hours, with very little adult human interaction, has left her unable to speak in the first person anymore. She has reverted to full third-person child-speak. God-knows why.

The only saving grace was a few minutes last night when she was preparing dinner. Little O was very excited to be at the big table on his new grown-up big chair and was entertaining his sister with the gift she so carefully chose for him when she was born.

entertaining the little sister


cuteness.

drilling - hard work

 

Singing to my baby sister :) – Movie Monday August 8, 2011

Finally managed to get the video camera going in time to capture this attempt to pacify the smaller sister 🙂

This almost compensates for the number of times I ‘mistakenly’ attempt to jump on her head each day….

Love mum

P.S. Rocky road to follow later this week

 

The what’s and where’s of things… (or what dads do at work) June 17, 2011

So little Poogie has recently discovered a few useful sentences:

“Where’s x?” or “Where are you x?” (when he knows x is in the vicinity). Mostly, “Where are you Daddy?” or “Where are you Mummy?”

Often when he already knows exactly where we are (or might if he engaged the brain) at full yell from wherever he happens to be standing (now which parent did he learn that trick from I wonder?? – that would be me!).

And the second one:

“What you doing?”, or “What x doing?”. Again, often when he can see you / knows what you are doing. But not always, sometimes when he can’t see the person.

Recently, we’ve made a few trips to Daddy’s office at around 5:30, to pick him up and take him home. Little Poogie loves going there, he runs right to the drawer where Daddy keeps snacks, and gets a cracker, then has a dance to the loud music Daddy inevitably has on at that time of the day.

So, cue this conversation yesterday morning, 10 minutes after standing on the verandah and watching his Dad cycle up the hill in the distance, round the corner and disappear off to work:

“Mummy, where Daddy? Where Daddy gone?”

“He’s gone to work, remember, you saw him cycle off.”

“Yes, Daddy gone up the hill to work. …. ” Pause while he thinks. “What Daddy doing work?”

“Mmm.. I’m not sure. He might be typing on his computer. Or he might be talking on the phone.”

Little Poogie ponders this answer for a minute. Then with a very definitive shake of his head:

“No. Daddy eating crackers. … Daddy listening music.”

I collapse on the ground in laughter, because that is such an apt description of what my lawyer husband does at work all day!

🙂

Love mum

P.S. Can’t wait until the “why’s” start…

 

I born a …. June 16, 2011

From the mouth of a babe:

“I born a nana!”

“I born a nana”

I guess those books we have been reading every day to try to get used to the concept that a baby will soon arrive are really getting through :).  I wasn’t quite sure he understood that the baby would come out of my tummy through a ‘hole’ somewhere, but he told me yesterday the baby would come out soon through a ‘hole’, and today’s demonstration proves he really does get it…

 

This beauty was uttered not 5 minutes ago, spontaneously on the verandah to Aunty G.   Imaginative play! I love it!

 

Love mum

 

P.S. Let’s hope the real baby gets better care than this poor nana a few minutes after birth:

 

Is the baby coming out today?… June 8, 2011

So today little Poogie has a bit of the flu still, so we had a day home from kindi (daycare).

 

All I had planned was the fitting of the baby car seat at the ambulance centre (great rental service here in Brisbane) and then a trip to the obstetrician’s for a check-up.  We had started to talk to little O about the need for a new baby seat in the car already: especially as his seat had to move over to accommodate the new baby capsule, and that the baby when it came out would travel in the car, next to him.  Where he could see it (which he seems excited about!).

(more…)

 

Bad parent of the day: dad April 30, 2011

Filed under: Communication,Raising a Child,speaking — rakster @ 10:16 am
Tags:

New word for the day:

Motherf@&$er! (giggle, giggle)

Great! Courtesy of Dad and the moron who just pulled up short in front of us in the highway.

20110430-101627.jpg

 

Fever! (and counting) March 16, 2011

Hello!

 

I had a premonition today that things weren’t quite right.  So I phoned your daycare at 2:00pm, when I knew you’d be sleeping, just to see how things were going.

 

“Great, great, great, he’s having a great day…”

I had a good chat with your teacher and all seemed well, you’d been interacting well, trying really hard to talk in whole sentences all morning, and having a ball in general.

 

Then 30 minutes later at 3:00pm I got a call:

“O has woken up and he has a bit of a high fever, your intuition was right!”..

 

So I went and got you – and you were a little crying mess of hot sweaty 38.9 degree celcius feverish boy when I got there.  Poor thing.  So we went home, took the advice of the hospital from last time and after you having some panadol did no cold compresses or showers or anything, just some quiet time reading and cuddling together in bed.   Which worked fine for the first hour while the panadol was still taking effect.

 

And I learned something about you through the constant stream of babble-talk that you went on with while in your half-sick-crazed state.  You can count to ten perfectly.  Over and over.  In the middle of sentences, like:

“Mummy, daddy, magpie up in the tree, eating icecream, and then big bang, hockey hockey ball ball, hit ball up up.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, um, eight, nine, ten.  Hungry caterpillar, magpie waddle giggle gargle, mummy….”

🙂 small things.  Kind of astounding because your Dad and I certainly haven’t taught you that.  And we don’t watch TV or anything that really has that kind of counting in it.  Must be osmosis at daycare!

 

love mum

(p.s. 21 months)

 

Was that “duck”????… Bad parent of the day award February 16, 2011

This week you’ve started to talk in whole sentences.  Like,

“The bird is in the sky. Up there.”

And the like.  And in addition to using your own sentences, you’ve decided to repeat verbatim what other people say to you, back to them:

“Let’s go eat now”; “Lets feed the chickens”; “I like eggs”….

So today I was pulling out of our street into the busy road on the way to drop you (O) at daycare when someone nearly hit me…  I swerved and said,

“Fuck.  Stupid asshole.  Did you see that, they almost hit us.”

Can you see where this is going???..

….

….

….

You proceeded to babble in the back about “ducks” with a certain inflection in your voice the rest of the way to daycare.

Nice one mum.

P.S. Yes, we have instituted the swear jar, as I’ve written about before. But at present the rules are that it only applies once you walk in the front door.  With the unspoken proviso that both your Dad and I try to adhere to it around you at most times….   But as I’ve also said before that I think I have contributed the most to the about $150 we’ve collected so far..