The Long Weekend...

Saturday dawned early... too damn early for my taste. As is usual on rainy windy nights we had had a fairly sleep free night. I was out of bed at 6:30am, and Chris had fled the domicile for his wild bacchanalia... also known as Matt's stag do. And what was this event? Caving, abseiling and blackwater rafting.... ah those boys :)

Ruth was coming around Saturday so I set to in the laundry and kitchen. Boys were fed, played with and then laundry and dishes were washed. C fell asleep so I really got moving :) I strained the marscapone and made the pastry for the quiche - yummy roasted garlic and caramelised onion pastry. Then I threw the mascarpone whey, an egg and some cheese and bacon into the pastry shell and voila - perfection! C awoke and the boys played in the tent I had dragged inside, and popped a mink blanket inside. Ruth arrived at lunchtime, just after my pie/quiche came out of the oven - perfect timing. K had a ball playing with Finn once he woke up from his nap. C didn't nap at all - too exciting! After Ruth left I took the boys up to the library in the stroller and they enjoyed themselves. C fell asleep 2 minutes into the walk - booya!! The wild wet weather predicted failed to materialise and it was warm and blustery. As Chris still wasn't home I got the corn bread, roast chicken and steamed pudding on, entertained the boys and fed them dinner before a quick bath and bed. K went down like a dream, C like a nightmare. It was 9:40 before he finally went down for night (night? ha! as if!!) and I collapsed into bed at the same time. C doesn't know it but sleep training will be starting in a couple of days! Gradual withdrawal method I think! Apparently Chris arrived home around 11ish having left the house at 6:15am..... Hmmm! Anyway this morning he made a real effort not to refer to his water inflamed sinuses or the creaking muscles from 6 hours of caving - good thing too!! We headed out to Pukekohe to get a feel for the town and to walk through the open home....of the Dream House. Well, obviously if we won lotto it wouldn't be our dream house but for a potential first house it's pretty dreamy. I like Puke, it's got a really nice feel to it, even if it could be called the city of roundabouts lol. We had a look at the other (much cheaper) houses we'd shortlisted. Boy, 2 minutes drive made a huge diff in terms of neighbourhood appeal!! So those houses got crossed off the list. We hope that Chris can get a job in Akl and that the Puke house dream will rise again, phoenixlike.... but we'll just have to wait and see. This evening I looked around the disaster of my lounge and pondered on the thought that Chris being home sure does generate mess! Alone with the boys yesterday I cooked, cleaned, played and tidied and before the boys were in bed the house looked ok. Tonight... oy vey!! I think I must just slack off, and then everything goes downhill fast! Chris cooked a fab risotto for dinner tonight - yum! Chris is being landed with the boys tomorrow as I urgently need to type 2 sets of minutes and work on a database! Oh, yay!! And... that's our long weekend!

Big Boy

K has proved resistant to the concept of using a toilet. Using cloth nappies has helped and he now helpfully points out that he'd like to have a nappy change. Yesterday I swung by the local op shop as they had 50% off all items. I found 2 pairs of 2yo underwear and I purchased them for the princely sum of 10c. I now have 3 pairs of undies for K - at a total cost of 40c. Not too shabby hey! I need to buy the little stepladder/toilet seat thing for K before we seriously start training. At the moment I just want him to appreciate the difference between comfy undies and bulky nappies. It seems to be working, although he hasn't produced on the toilet yet. However, he was in his daks all morning before he wet himself.... given a choice of leaving toys and hopping onto the toilet or playing with trucks in the dirt... let me think!!! I also got K signed up at a Kindy while I wait for the Rosier Rd one to open up. Tomorrow a walk! And Ruth has promised me the loan of Finleys underwear - score!

A time to tan, a time to welter

Well the walk to Ceramco park went really well. K walked all the way there and we met with Ruth etc. Sadly, he was a bit knackered from the long walk and that, coupled with the heat, did him in. There are lovely big tree trunks in the park from where the council lopped down all the shade!!! You have to wonder what they're thinking. Anyway Ruth popped K into her car and I raced off home with C in the stroller. It was good catching up with Ruth. Also caught up with Darren recently, he came over on Friday as I nursed the wicked sunburn I got from pelting home with C in the noonday sun :( Burn on top of burn... not good! Did the Plunket meeting on thursday - must finish the minutes! The weekend went well however with us scouting west auckland for the cheapest fruit and veges. I did the TCANZ meeting - must finish the minutes! On Monday Chris pranced off to work and his root canal. Lucky Chris!! I mooched about, cooking, cleaning, going to playgrounds and realised that I thoroughly enjoy both my boys :) They were playing together today - eating pikelets and banging toys together. Today is lovely and gorgeous and I am disinclined to work. Not good as I have 2 sets of minutes, some SMNZI stuff and calls to make.... hmmm tomorrow, tomorrow is good! And I will have to do TCANZ tonight. Yes, i'm a slacker!!

8 months old today

I can't believe my tiny baby has turned into such a hefty porker!!! 9kg's! C happily babbles, claps his hands, bangs his toys.... and desperately tries to crawl. The promised tooth is STILL not in evidence but eating is going like gangbusters. Last night he savaged an end of sweetcorn to within an inch of its life. Alas his sleep is appalling... then again, so is ours at the moment due to the horrid sticky weather - 100% humidity!! However last night the poor baggage didn't go to sleep(and stay asleep) until 10pm!! He only awoke once at 2am for a quck snack then slept until 6:40am.... which is when his older brother scuttled silently into the bedroom clutching birthday cars to his chest and snuggled up with me. I left my car on yesterday - boo - so no driving anywhere for me. Will walk up to ceramco park this morning and stop in at the library on the way back. Jen is visiting later this afternoon too. Then Chris will bring trickle charger home and liven the battery. Tomorrow is payday! Wooohooo! At the moment C is ferociously mopping the floor with his bib. I have been so thrilled by the Bumbo - it has worked so well for us!! We also seem to have acquired a new pet - Boldaz. He is a small bird, decked in hues of chocolate and happily struts into the house to partake of meals. Bandit heartily despises Boldaz Brass and does his best to remove him from this existence.

Beach Ahoy!

Monday morning was gloriously sunny. Isabelle suggested a trip to Cornwallis beach and I thought - why not! Summer is waning and I packed snacks, towels, sunblock and toys. Once there K had a blast. He bolted straight into the water - which was very warm! Then balanced on his hands and kicked his way along the beach. He told me he was being a ladybug. There was digging in the sand but pretty much the whole time was spent in the sea. Cameron played under the tree with his toys. But poor me, the person who is not fond of beaches unless they are shady, got sunburnt. I hate being sunburnt. Standing calf deep in water for nigh on an hour all up itn was inevitable :( At 11:30 it began to drizzle and soon began to rain in earnest. It was so warm and humid that it didn't ruin the experience. However, the thought of driving on those windy roads in the rain made me decide to leave. We got home at noon and hopped into the shower to wash off the black sand. I say we but K insisted on a bath. No problem. He then hopped happily into bed and had a lovely long nap. C wouldn't nap in his cot. Having fallen asleep in the car there and back he obviously felt he needed to keep a close eye on me :) Isabelle and co visited in the afternoon and K showed excellent manners and sharing. I was very pleased with him - and told Chris so. He tells me when an urgent nappy change is required these days as he doesn't fancy sitting on a poo apparently.... looks like toilet training is on the horizon :) Today is wet and warm but we have Playcentre tidyup so will see if I can get an inside job to assist with the sunburn.

Happy Birthday to me!!

The sun came out for my birthday - yay!! I was allowed to have a small sleep-in and then was presented with... presents :) I got the Big Bang Theory season 2 and Despicable Me. The boys got me a cup with their picture on it - too cute. I got breakfast and lunch made for me and watched most of BBT - it was awesome! K was quite taken with Despicable Me too. As always the dish of roasted pork belly seethed in cider and apple juice was delicious.

Party time!!

The day of Kieran's party dawned bright and sunny with a happy little boy racing into the bedroom for snuggles.... early, very early! It was a gorgeous bright sunny day- all the better for us to sweat. We got to the playcentre at 9:15 and got things set up. People arrived, children played and before we knew it 10:30 arrived and with it snacks and cake. K blew out his candles brilliantly - all 3 were snuffed out in their prime. We then chilled and chatted and by the time we cleaned, vacuumed, stacked, replaced sandpit covers etc it was fairly late. We dropped off the keys and then realised that we had forgotten the dishwashing liquid and the rubbish bag! Doh! Luckily the cleaning day is tomorrow so I let the Playcentre Prez know I would be popping in briefly to collect our tat. It was 2pm by the time we staggered into the house - and boy, I was tired. K wasn't. He was so in alt with all his toys that he couldn't sleep. Once C was up we headed out Helensville way for some strawberry ice cream and strawberries. Once home K leapt about in the baby bath on the lawn then played with EVERY SINGLE ONE of his presents :) He finally succumbed to sleep at 9!! Tomorrow - my birthday!!! We also have to stop in at playcentre - might take K along for a walk... or maybe not. We'll see. And also return a peapod - size medium, not large. And then over to visit Rache, who has car trouble. I empathise, how I empathise!!

Time of tides

I have been watching the situation in Brisbane. My heart goes out to all the people affected. There are truly tragic situations - like the young boy who drowned with his mum, letting his younger brother be rescued first. The whole thing really highlights the might of nature. It is going to cost Aus squillions! Having pored over all the info I was thrilled to see that mum and mike's (newly repaired/refurbisbed) house looks like it is out of the flood zone. Facebook has been fantastic in seeing how everyone was getting on. Ross and Mark are holed up with 2 cases of wine, Mel's sitting on the Gold Coast and thinking about an inflatable boat, and Stace is keeping the Telco updates coming :) Here nary a cloud has crossed the sky, and my days are peaceful and filled with my 2 young shriekers :) I consider myself extremely fortunate in so many ways. Cam slept for over an hour this morning - brilliant. This arvo I will bake biscuits, cake and collect the playcentre key... I may even stop in at a playground. I was going to go out with the stroller.... but think I will drive as time is tight this arvo! Tomorrow.... cake decorating, trip up to the shops and baking for the party!
Well, the best laid plans.... K decided to sleep for just over 2 hours while C decided sleep wasn't an option if he wasn't in my arms. This kind of sucked as I needed to do some SMINZI stuff... guess what I am doing tonight. Once K was up, weeping but awake, we cavorted in the garden. He got given a hippo squirter for xmas and is lethal with it. It has been the cause of 3 time outs in the last 2 days.... shooting water inside the house/at his sibling or parent is just TOO tempting. We emptied the pool as the water was a touch on the manky side and proto mosquito's were dashing about in it and then C and I rolled around on the blanket while K bounced around the garden. Literally. Naked. On his moonhopper. Around 5 we rustled up some biscuits for K's party. He helped mix the ingredients and counted the chocolate buttons. Amazingly, there were no buttons to be found after his efforts. Hehehe.

Eating up the freezer

Periodically I go on this mad binge where I (shock!!horror!!) clean out the freezer, inventory its contents and attempt to use our frozen food in our planned meals. Oh yes, everything is planned in our house. I make up the fortnight's meal plan that rolls from one payday to the next and this feeds into the shopping list. Just call me little miss spontaneity :P. Anyway gazing into the maw of the freezer I realised 2 things. 1- I obviously believe that a pie a day is necessary to life to judge by all the frozen pie dough and 2 - we don't have nearly enough ice cream in there. There is zero ice cream in my freezer and after 2 days of mortgage/job news and the root canal Chris will have to have (say hellooo to $1400 winging its way out of our bank account) I could have used ice cream. To be perfectly honest I would probably do better with a gym membership - but that aint happening. What else. K is really digging the whole sit on the toilet and get treats thing. No results as yet, tho he did defecate outside. I let his father deal with that, man to man :) See, this is why I wanted boys :P. I have been mulling over the menu for K's party. I will make biscuits tomorrow and might knock out the cake tomorrow night which gives me all day friday to decorate it. My only other option is to bake cake friday and decorate laaaaaate that night... I think not!! I still don't know what cake I want for my birthday and am rather disinclined to make one myself. Chris will be preparing the birthday dinner...but would he cope with a cake related task as well? In other news the people selling the House of our Dreams offered to rent it to us for 300 a week for 6 months or so to see if we liked the property with a view to purchasing it if we do/job sitaution improves. We were actually really excited by this but the cost of transferring phone and hiring a truck would be too expensive and the move would cost us money. In fact, we'd just come right and then Chris's contract would end.... and who knows what would happen then. Suppose we could get a tenant... but, no. Some more birthday cards came for Kieran today - Great Grandma Marjorie (and Ken, of course) and Lesley & Ian.
And that's all for now :)

Highs and Lows

Today was Kieran's birthday so typically he decided to sleep late while his father paced about waiting for him to wake up and open his presents. Despite C waking every 2 hours through the night - that sodding tooth has risen up, then sunk like Atlantis for the 6th time! - I leaped into action upon awakening and prepared the requested meal of pikelets. Ferocious snackings ensued (while I made Chris's lunch) and then we watched K open his presents. There was a large dumptruck "to go in the pool". For alas, the very expensive electronic one (xmas present), was plunged into the depths yesterday and we are unsure as to whether it will recover. There was also an Infantino tractor counting puzzle and some bath toys (a present from Cameron who is perhaps a little tired of having his xmas bath toys torn from his grip each bath session). Dad/Grandpa Rick had sent over a picture dictionary and we pored over that this morning, identifying each letter of the alphabet and exciting images. Lion was right up there!! He also tried on the fluffy jumper that his great-grandma Marjorie sent. Once home from our walk to the library K scarfed down a huge lunch and slept like an angel. Once awake he happily strutted about in his peapod nappy. We managed to scrounge enough pennies to buy some size large peapod nappies. The plan is for this to diminish our grocery bill by a not insubstantial amount.He also sat on the toilet today - but alas, zero result. Obviously offering "toilet treats" is working for him. Exciting news today was that we got approved for a mortgage. This was very exciting as we had lined up some properties to view on my birthday. Alas, the jubilation did not last. In fact, the jubilation lasted about 22 minutes. It appears that Chris may not have job security after June. Naturally we don't want to embark upon house ownership/mortgage payments when our sole source of income is uncertain. So the house owning dream has been deferred for another year. We'll see what's what then. Naturally this news put a bit of a downer on our day but we rustled up home made pizza for K, and made cinnamon biscuits - in the shape of trains and cars. All in all a good birthday for our wee man. And tomorrow is another day :)

11.01.2011

Happy Birthday my darling boy! You are 3 today and your impish grin, unparalelled talent for causing mayhem and your loving nature makes every day an adventure.

I love you

xxxoooooxxx

Cultcha smultcha

The Museum... what can I say about Auckland Museum? Well, for starters it is one of the grimmer buildings I have been through, which is really odd as it is quite pretty! I was heartily sick of PI culture by the time we finished touring the first of the 3 floors. Yes, I am a cultural philistine apparently!! Luckily we found a room that featured many, many, many musical instruments and this kept K's attention.... as did the faux treehouse next door. We headed up to the 2nd floor and the natural exhibits. Volcanoes, and sealife and birds. K was clearly flagging at this stage, while C was bright eyed and bushy tailed. We viewed the dinosaurs.... and left. It was a good day :) Chris found being home for so long exciting.... and was thrilled to return to work. He has spent the last 3 days munching cloves... looks like a root canal is in his imminent future. Sigh. I have trawled through what seems to be lists of every property currently available for sale in Pukekohe... and we have a shortlist of 5. This saturday we have K's 3rd birthday at Playcentre. The cake has changed from a Gruffalo cake to a rocketship - so that makes things easier haha, and the following day, my birthday, we drive out to Puke to view properties and catch up with Karen, who I worked with at Vodafone. That afternoon the boys and I will meet up with Rache and co at CraigAvon while Chris prepares a sumptious birthday dinner for yours truly. Speaking of birthdays - K's is tomorrow and I was delighted to see a parcel arrive as well as some birthday envelopes. I spent some time "creating" personalised birthday paper for the wee man, and have wrapped all of his presents. I can hardly wait for the morning!

Resolved

We have been mulling over our new year resolutions and have come up with 2 (not including beating the boys daily with the jugcord of course. KIDDING. No matter how angry the boys can make me I cannot imagine ever doing this). And our resolutions? Simple. Be more financially savvy, and to try and get a place of our own this year. Since we have zero savings a deposit will be a challenge. Since I am currently not working - scratch that, since I am currently not being paid to work (cos boy, sometimes those boys are hard going hehe) - the ability to save is somewhat limited. HOWEVER Chris does earn decent money, we have paid off the cordbank, car repairs and photos and so we should be able to scrape some shekels aside. So, fingers crossed that sometime this year we are able to get ourselves a mortgage :) A house of our own... tres exciting!!

Today I took the boys up to the rooms for the Plunket coffeegroup. Erin and Nakita were there and we had a good chat. I dashed home, practically melting in the heat, and Chris was waiting, pinny in hand, with a yummy risotto for lunch. He was then allowed to race off in the car for a boys afternoon while I attempted to get the boys down. K went down like a dream.... C, not so much. I was struggling with him after his 2nd awakening when a small shape tiptoed into the bedroom, scurried over to me and whispered "Found you mummy!" before giving me a big kiss. My heart melted.... Today I popped C in the inflatable boat and he cooed and giggled as he glided around the pool. No, the pool is very small - he glided all of 50 cm before bumping into a wall or K's eager helping hands ;) C's hair has suddenly grown in and he no longer has a fluffy tuft/mohawk but a proper head of hair. Brown hair, to match his brown eyes. The promised tooth however is still promising grrrrr.

I must also start to think about getting C christened. Better do it soon as his birthday is in May!!! Where does the time go! I am sure his Godfather to be is champing at the bit to don dark suit and a Mafia accent hahah. The baby sign language is going well. C recognises the signs for bath, snackin's, nappy and sleep. So does Chris :P

Tomorrow we are heading out to the Museum - I MUST remember my camera!

A plague descended

A pox on the warm weather which seems to have bred mozzies the size of blackbirds. We have been unable to spend much time outside at all despite the oppressively warm days. Once outside one can almost hear the glad cries from the assorted insects and a black cloud seems to blot out the sun... still, at least the pool is up. K closely supervised this process telling his father to hurry up and then, once construction was complete hopping into said pool and commenting "clever boy, daddy!" Glad he approves :) I dragged Cam in and stood him in the water. He instantly mimicked a one legged water bird and peered suspiciously down into the "depths" of the pool. Such trusting infants. K meanwhile floated about the pool in his inflatable boat, blasting the birds from the trees as he "played" his trumpet. Happy as a clam he was! We have been experimenting with ice cream recipes, sundry other food related activities - including cheesemaking - and Chris even made mayonnaise last night for our picnic in the garden. All 3 boys were feasted on but I got off lightly - phew!!! Today we headed off to Craigavon park and playground and K was as a merry as a grig :) Once home Chris steeled himself to pull all the nappies from the bin outside and place them in a rubbish bag. It was pretty horrific. Two and a half weeks worth of nappies with lots of warm weather does not a happy Christopher make! His comments throughout were rather.... sulphurous! And alas his afternoon was further "enlightened" by K deciding to be sunsmart with Chris's pillows (toasting in the sun), a picnic blanket, his face and half a bottle of sunblock. I heard Chris's howls as he laid eyes upon the scene....... and his fervent pleas to be allowed to return to work :P Tomorrow is the plunket coffeegroup and Chris is dashing off to a boys arvo after that. On friday it will be K and C's first trip to the museum.... I am looking forward to it :)