Rock-a-bye Baby

Little Bear's latest fashion accessory is the backpack.



She tries to wear her kindy backpack as we leave, however it is almost as big as she is & is far too heavy for her. That has caused a few tears now.



She has also tried to wear Cheetah's school bag many times, but it is WAAAAAYYYYY too heavy & she ends up dragging it by a cord & squealing at it.



The other day she discovered this backpack that my young cousin gave her. It is a Barbie backpack & I had it put away for when Little Bear is a bit bigger.



Apparently she is big enough.

Barnyard Babbling

Here is Little Bear doing various barnyard animal impersonations.

If you have the sound up loud enough, you will hear the narrator say the animals name & then the animal makes their noise & Little Bear does her best to imitate it.

Unfortunately she didn't do her horse impersonation as this is her cutest. She did do it 30 seconds after I turned the camera off so I got to see it, you just miss out.

I was wearing a pink top today. Shortly after I got dressed, Little Bear saw me, pointed & started oinking.

I am hoping it was just the colour of the top !!! ( ... as I waddle off to give the Wii Fit a bit of extra attention - do pigs waddle?)

Shining your Kitchen Sink

Further to the numerous comments floating around both on my blog & other blogs at the moment about Fly Lady & her pearls of wisdom for the disorganised soul, I will tell you a story about my first encounter with her.

This was many years ago & we were living in a rental house.

For those who don't know Fly Lady, her very first instruction to those beginning a journey of discovery and decluttering is to shine your kitchen sink.

Her instructions are as follows:

1. Take all the dishes out of the sink.
2. Run some very hot water into the sink. Fill to the rim. Only do one side at a time. Then, pour a cup of household bleach into the hot water. Let it sit for 1 hour. Now, pull the plug with a pair of tongs. If you don't have tongs, then scoop some of the water out of the sink into the other sink and use your hand to pull the plug (wear gloves and don't get the bleach-water on your clothes).
3. Rinse your sink well.
4. Use some cleanser (Comet, Ajax, or Baking Soda) and scrub your sink. Ensure you rinse ALL of the cleanser from the sink.
5. Take a sharp edge and clean around the rim of the sink, just like you would clean dirt out from under your fingernails.
6. Clean around the faucets too. You may need an old toothbrush or dental floss.
7. Now, get out your window cleaner, I use Windex, and give it a good shine.


I followed her instructions to the letter but I only got as far as Step 2 before I struck the iceberg (metaphorically speaking).

I filled my sink to the rim with very hot water & let it sit for an hour. I came back an hour later to find the water level had decreased in the sink. I figured the plug leaked slightly. I finished all the other steps, slightly dissapointed that although doing everything to the letter (including the extra steps for stainless sinks), it still didn't look much different to when I started & I certainly couldn't see my reflection. Oh well, at least I knew it was clean.

We didn't have a dishwasher at this time & that night I went up to the sink to do my dishes & wondered why there was a puddle of water on the floor. I hadn't spilt any (I hadn't even begun washing).

I opened the door of the cupboard under the sink to a gush of water (OK, it was actually more like a dribble, but remember quite some time had elapsed).

Turns out the sealant around the taps was not doing it's proper job & as the taps were joined to the sink UNDER the rim (remember I filled it to the rim?) the water had leaked down between the taps & the sink, into the chipboard cupboards below & sat there for a good few hours soaking in.

Thankfully only so much could leak out before the water level dropped below the join but a little went a very long way that day.

I think I might have overdone it on the bleach though because I kept finding dead cockroaches in that cupboard for weeks afterwards.

It eventually dried out & although there was some minor staining it didn't look too bad & when we left after 3 years of living there, we still got our full bond back.

Sleeping Beauties

The other night I walked into the loungeroom to this sight ...


















Aren't they beautiful.



Little Bear usually falls asleep in her own cot, but we have had a few late nights recently and on this night the three of them were watching an earlier episode of scrapheap challenge that DH had recorded.



Not sure how much of it they saw.

Like my new glasses?

Yesterday at Kindy one of the guys that works there decided to give all the kids glasses.

Not toy glasses though....

Check this out
























Every kid in her group had them drawn on (at least all the ones that were left when I picked her up). It was quite a sight to see all the kids peering through the glass door as I walked down the corridor to get her.

They have faded a little bit in these photos. They were only drawn on with white board marker & rubbed off quite easily. There wasn't even a trace of them left this morning.

She thought it was hilarious every time she caught sight of herself in a mirror.

Chipped Tooth

I finally got the picture of Little Bear's tooth. It took quite some doing because the little toad princess kept doing this....

Finally we got this...

It is the front left (her right) tooth that is chipped. It doesn't look like much now but it is actually a fair size chunk that was taken off when you consider how small the tooth is to start with.

She seems to be better today. There is still some sensitivity but it's not too bad now.

It was a bit rough for her this afternoon. Our usual ritual is come home & the kids get a chocolate biscuit each for a late afternoon snack. (DH likes his choccy bikkies & it's the usually the only junk food the kids have all day). This afternoon her tooth was too tender to chomp on the bikkie, so Daddy had to chop it into little pieces for her, the only problem was that little pieces meant lots of crumbs & that made a big mess. Oh well - at least she was happy.

Oh No - It's almost Monday !!!

Following on from my last post - it is back to work tomorrow & I still have much to do.

I have had a very productive weekend though.

Last night we went to Grannysaurus & Mr Sunshines place for Uncle Jingles birthday. Grannysaurus has some pictures on her blog if you want to check them out.

It was a nice night out & dinner was lovely (Grannysaurus cooked a roast dinner).

Unfortunately Little Bear got a bit carried away in all the excitement & while playing a game involving jumping off a step, little bear lost her balance & fell flat on the tiles, chipping one of her front teeth. Her mouth was a bit tender all night & still is today. She hasn't eaten as much as usual today & it took her about 15 minutes to eat a banana today (chopped up) which usually only takes her about 2 minutes (she loves "na-na").

She is a bit reluctant to show off her chipped tooth so I don't have any photo's as yet, but hopefully as it starts to feel better she will smile for the camera.

Today I have done a heap of the usual housework, however I have managed to cross off another couple of things from my list of "things to do before I return to work full time" (maybe I should shorten that to "To-Do by April").

One thing I have been doing in small bits & pieces is cleaning up all the stationery that was beginning to accumulate in Cheetah's room. The stuff I took out managed to fill a 48L plastic tub. I am trying to sort it out so that he can have what he needs back in his room & the rest can get tossed or stored in the appropriate places.

Today I worked on sorting out his colouring pencils. A couple of weeks ago, I put them all in one container & sharpened them all, throwing out a heap of bad ones in the process. Today I sorted what was left by colour & found that he had enough to fairly evenly fill 4 pencil cases so that each pencil case had an assortment of colours without too much doubling up or lacking of any particular colour.

That done, I just have to work out what to do with the other nine tenths of the stuff - Baby steps is what gets the job done though.

The other thing I did today was to sort Little Bear's baby photo's, putting a collection into a folder ready to be printed for scrapbooking purposes. She is 20 months old now & I have almost completed the first page of her baby book :-)

Now the trick will be keeping that folder updated as I take more photo's.

Thankyou to Mum-me & Queen Stuss who gave glowing reviews to fly-lady. I actually came across her website years ago & still go there from time to time for good ideas. My problem however is not so much my lack of ability or motivation to organise - it's my lack of time to do it & for a long time too, it has been lack of storage in this house. It really has been a case of shifting the mess from one place to another because there wasn't anywhere for it. It is extremely hard to keep a clean house when you can't even put all the towels away at once because there just isn't the space. At one point, the only wardrobe we had in the house was a kids wardrobe. Now DH & I have a built-in & so does Little Bear. Cheetah will be getting one soon as his room is the next to be renovated as soon as we have the money.

We are gradually overcoming the storage problem as we renovate, borrow cupboards & buy things like plastic boxes & other things to keep our stuff organised, but it will take time.

I now have to go & iron hubby a shirt for tomorrow, as because I was doing those other things, I haven't finished my ironing.

A mother's work is never done

Today I had a very very busy day.

To start with, I got to sleep in until 7:18am so that wasn't too bad, but it was not indicative of how my day progressed.

I took Cheetah to school at 8:00 & then came home, did some dishes & tidied the house a bit.

Dragon & Mummy McT came around mid morning sometime. We then went shopping - which seems to have become the thing to do on Friday's now. Sometimes we shop just for coffee & a look around. Sometimes we actually have to do it. Today it was a have to!!

We did have an early lunch at the shops which was nice & the kids were actually really well behaved during lunch.

I got home just after midday, gave Little Bear her bottle & put her to bed & then did more dishes, lots of organising & then I did the folding. A few weekends ago, I had a busy weekend (that's most weekends lately, but that one was particularly hectic). Since that weekend, I have managed to get the clothes washed & dried, but haven't managed to get them all folded before I have to go to work. Once I start my working week, my nights are taken up with getting everyone organised for dinner, bed & work/school the next day (this takes most of the evening). Therefore I am doing the folding the weekend after it was washed.

Hopefully now that I have caught up on last weekends washing, I will be able to get all of this weeks clothes washed, dried & folded by Monday. Here's hoping.

Now that all the essential stuff has been done, I am trying to organise the rest of my house ready for when I go back to work full time. At this point, I am expecting to be full time in April & there is only so many Friday's between now & then.

• I have about a years worth of filing that needs to be done - I haven't touched that yet.
• Today I took the first step in organising all my digital photo's on the computer. I made sure they were all saved in the correct folders on the correct computer (we now have 4 computers in our house). I also got rid of the unnecessary copies.
• I still have to go through the photo's, delete the cruddy ones & put the good ones onto CD so that we have a backup copy of them all.
• I have to go through a mountain load of stationery that has come from my cleanup of the rest of the house. I am not sure where I will put it all, but at the moment it is sitting on the floor of the study until I find a home for each bit.
• I want to get something going with our garden beds. At the moment they are just a mass of weeds. I don't think I will get them all planted out by the time I return to work, but I want to have a plan of what plants will go where so that I can get them a few at a time & plant them on my weekends.
• I also want to go through all my old files on the computer, getting rid of all the stuff I don't need or want anymore. I have stuff in dozens of folders split between 3 of our 4 computers (all of which have more than one hard drive in them) which means a lot of unnecessary garbage floating around.

There are also a stack of other odd jobs I want to get done before I return to work.

I have done some of the things I wanted to, like the major cleanup of Little Bear's wardrobe, cleaning out our junk spare room, a stack of sewing (some things that had been sitting there for a year), and other things that will help keep the household running smoothly for a while once I no longer have that day off.

I am not really looking forward to returning full time. In a perfect world, I would probably choose to work 3 days per week, but unfortunately that is not an option. I am finding 4 days a little bit of a struggle sometimes (most times) but if I can get my home organised to a point where I don't have a seemingly insurmountable to-do list, this will make life somewhat easier.

Am I asking too much?

New Look

OK, the majority of my tampering is done & from now it will just be minor tweaking.

For those who have followed since the creation of my new blog, I have made some dramatic changes to the original template.

The background image for the posts is Suite No. 3 - Prelude from The Solo Cello Suites by Bach arranged for Viola. I would have liked to have put Prelude from Suite No. 1 simply as it is a much more recognisable piece, however my teacher wrote all over that one, so I picked the Prelude from Suite No. 3.

The Violin to the left is the one that came with the blog template, however I got quite creative with it in Photoshop & it doesn't look much like the original. I hope to replace this image with that of my own viola soon.

The viola & bow in the header is my own, as is the bow that seperates the posts, obviously modified - thanks to Photoshop.

It has been a bit of a process, because I have had to learn a bit of xhtml to modify the template to do what I wanted it to do. I learnt all I know from self-help sites on the web :-)

Please leave your comments about my new layout and be truthful. I don't want to keep it if no-one wants to read it !! I am particularly interested in whether it reads OK on smaller screens (mine is 1680 wide) as I know this was a problem from time to time with other layouts I have tried.

Words of Wisdom

The other day, Little Bear was playing an Animal Sounds game on my iPhone with her dad helping her. You touch the animal & they make their sound.

Little Bear touched the cow. It mooo'd as cows do.

Daddy: "Cows go Moooooo".

Little Bear: "Moooooo"

Daddy: "Cows are good. ...{big pause}... Except Cows with Gun's - They're bad!!!"



Huh???

Wii Fit Revolution

OK, after much umming & aaahing over whether or not to waste spend the money on the Wii Fit, I decided to take the plunge.

I was a bit hesitant, particularly because I didn't want it to scream OBESE at me in big orange letters as a number of people have commented on and although I am not fat, some of these types of things can be a bit touchy.

Apparently I have bought what could be the last one in Townsville at the moment. It took me a bit to track one down, but I found one , it came in a couple of days ago & was the only one the shop got, even though they had ordered several. I took that as a sign I was meant to have it (OK that's stretching it a bit).

Got it home & I MISERABLY FAILED the VERY FIRST TEST - (setting it up).

I didn't pay attention to the board when I was setting it up & just assumed that the switch with the blue light on it would face the Wii console.

Turns out the board was actually back to front & this is why I was only getting every second step when I tried aerobics & why I had to lean in the opposite direction to the one I wanted to go in the Ski slalom. Finally worked out the problem when Mummy McTavish was trying to head butt soccer balls & she would lean left & her Mii (the computer figure that she was controlling) would lean right.

The board even has "Wii" written on it which was upside down when the board was in the wrong position, but as I said, I wasn't paying that much attention at the time I set it up.


That fixed, we tried out a few of the activities. I can imagine Hula Hooping being a great party game, particularly after a few glasses of wine.

I didn't do too badly at aerobics after the board was turned around. Apparently it's just not Mummy McTavish's "cup of tea" though (in the words of the Wii).

Presently I find the sugar coated insults amusing. I don't think it will take me long to find them antagonistic & patronising.

Turns out Mummy McT & I are both in the "ideal" weight range. We are both "unbalanced" & apparently I have "good posture". (In real life my posture is atrocious but as long as I can make the red dot stay in the yellow circle while inhaling & exhaling in time with the pulsing blue circle & doing yoga, then I have it fooled :-)

My review so far of the Wii - I have had fun today, the exercises are much more vigorous than you would expect (or at least more than I expected) & once you are playing, it would be easy to get 30 minutes or more a day.

The exercises may get a bit boring or tedious in future, but as I am very very much a beginner in almost all of them it'll be a while yet.

Mummy McT has threatened to bring her video camera around next week. I will be the one behind the video camera I think. She can have her big hula hooping butt waggling around on the video.

So much for doing some housework today!

Comments Issue Fixed

Sorry about that - after asking for your comments on my new blog, the new format wouldn't allow them.

I have fixed that up now. Comment away :-)

WELCOME

Just so you know, I am not going to make a habit of this.

I haven't really been happy with the name of my original blog (Castle in the Air) since I created it. I just couldn't think of a better name at the time. The URL also wasn't that catchy either.

(I could have made things simple & just changed the name, not the URL but I don't like to do things by halves & as I don't have dozens of followers - yet - the best time to update was now).

I chose the new name for many reasons.

It is a name often associated with people with impairments, particularly mental impairments and particularly autism. Initially I was reluctant to use it because of those associations. However I couldn't get away from the fact that although I am not mentally impaired (although some might argue that), this phrase describes both what I am & what I aspire to be.

It is now after midnight & have written, deleted, re-written & deleted again, many times over this next paragraph. So many of the reasons I feel that this phrase describes me so perfectly are a bit too personal for me to share on the world wide web, so I shall leave this paragraph without explanation tonight. Who knows, if you read my blog for long enough you might just find the explanations within.

I hope you like my new look blog. Please leave me comments & tell me what you think.

It will be changing over the coming weeks but nothing as major as the overhaul it has just been through.

Good night & God Bless

Gramatically Incorrect

Here is one for Mummy McT who was feeling a bit hurt at someone critisizing her grammer when it was just a typo.

DH is currently playing Wii Golf. His score is quite good & he just hit a great shot that landed about a foot away from the hole.

DH: "Ooooooohhhhh!!! You couldn't get any more perfecter than that !!"

Me: "Well your grammer could !"

DH: "What?"

Me: "Your grammer could be better."

DH: "You leave my grandma out of this !!!"

Lovely weather .... for ducks that is !

Yet another exciting day in the life of us.


OK, maybe not ... but it had it's moments.


Today it rained again ! Yesterday DH mowed most of our yard (it took him over 1/2 hour just to mow the footpath the grass was that thick & the ground that mucky). It looks a bit better, but because of the conditions, it also looks very interesting. Lots of brown muddy grass & some of the grass seems to be mown at different heights.


With the rain comes the black cockatoos and the ducks.


Today I witnessed a rather surreal moment. I had Mummy McT & Dragon in the car, as well as Little Bear, & we were on our way to pick up Cheetah from school. On a 4 lane road with a traffic island in the middle, the car two ahead of us suddenly stopped. Thankfully everyone was driving carefully (unusual in Townsville) & there were no crashes, but next thing a family of little ducks waddles out from in front of that first car. They made it safely to the traffic island, but some of the littlest had a bit of trouble getting up on the island. It was so cute watching them flap their wings & try to run & propel their fluffy little bodies over the step. They then slid down the sloping traffic island to the two lanes heading in the opposite direction to us. I am happy to report they made it safely across the road & into the gully on the other side. Let's hope the water really is wetter on the other side of the road & they stay there.


Unfortunately that incident happened so quickly that M.McT & I did not have time to even grab our camera phones to take a pic.


Here is something I did manage to capture though. Little Bear throwing one of her tantrums. There was about 2 seconds of crying followed by this....

(Sorry it's a bit dark. I don't have a video camera, only the video option on my regular camera).


Most of her tantrums at home are very similar. There is usually a bit of crying, sometimes screaming, and very very occasionally she might stamp a foot or two, but it almost always ends like this. What you don't see in the video is her crying as she lies herself prostrate on the floor, pulls her hands in & starts sucking her thumb, & then crawls her legs in towards her tummy so her bum is sticking up in the air.


In the shops it's a different matter. She can scream for as long as it takes to change Mummy's mind & as mummy doesn't give in to tantrums, that's a lot of screaming !!! I stood in line one time at the checkouts for 20 minutes with her screaming for at least 15 of them because the nasty mummy that I am, I wouldn't let her jump all over my fruit & vege's in the bottom of the trolley. (I tried to lift the bags out of her way, but she would grab them & actually put them on the floor of the trolley specifically to jump on them. Charming child).




Something that was much more charming than tantrums in supermarkets was Little Bear looking after her dolly at lunch time. My little girl is only a baby herself and yet she is so gentle & loving of her baby. She wraps the baby up in a blankie, pats the baby on the head, brushes her 'hair', kisses her (lots & lots & lots & lots), and makes sure that baby is well fed.

Today baby got given a bowl of Macca's fries. Little Bear is only 19 months old, but no-one else had anything whatsoever to do with this setup.

Much as she loves her baby, Little Bear quickly decided that she couldn't let baby gorge herself on all those chippies alone so Baby was lifted up to the coffee table to share with Little Bear.

Don't you think baby is looking very expectantly at that chippy?

Little Bear thought so too, so offers the next one to her.

"Chippies are all gone baby, but you can suck the salt of my fingers now"

(OK, so she didn't really say that, but she might have been thinking it)

Raindrops keep falling on my head... and everywhere else

For your viewing pleasure, this is what the weather is like every day lately.

Actually these video's are mind deadening a bit boring but they give you an idea of what it is like to live in North Queensland during the wet season.

In the first video, I was trying to capture how full & slightly cloudy coloured the pool is. Hard to see through the window, but you can see the puddles in our gravel driveway & the big puddle in the gutter.

In the other videos, it is hard to see just how deep the water is in the yard, because the grass is so long because of the constant rain. You can also see the HUGE weeds that have invaded every single garden bed (we don't get a lot of time to garden, but our yard rarely looks like an overgrown vacant block as it does at the moment).

No Crocs in our pool yet, but given that we are starting to turn into the river of Townsville instead of the City of Townsville & croc's are beginning to end up as Road Kill, it probably won't be long. Then again, as they don't have opposable thumbs, they probably won't be able to get past the childsafe latch. Maybe they'll just take up residence in the puddles under our house!

Dancing Bear

This video was taken on Friday when Dragon & M.McT were visiting.

I turned on a Veggie Tales CD for the kids. Little Bear likes their version of 'Modern Major General', sung by Archibald Asparagus, and began dancing wildly as soon as that song started.

Unfortunately by the time I got out the camera, she had been dancing for long enough that she was starting to slow down, but you can still get the gist of her dance.

We tried to encourage Dragon to dance too, but obviously he just isn't a Gilbert & Sullivan fan. (I'll have to keep working on that one).