Not Dora

Conversation this morning between DH, Little Bear & her Poppy:

DH: Do you want to listen to some Nora, Little Bear?
LB: Dora!
Poppy: Not Dora, Nora !
LB: Not Dora, Dora!
Poppy: No, not Dora, Nora !
LB: NOT Dora, DORA !
Poppy: 'N' 'N' 'N' 'N' NORA !

LB: 'N' 'N' 'N' 'N' DORA !!!!

Random Birthday Photo's

Seeing as I missed posting about Little Bear's birthday like I promised, here are some of the better photo's of her birthday at home.

This one deserves the top honours. Little Bear is showing her appreciation to Aunty McTavish for making such a beautiful birthday cake. Feel free to leave Mummy McTavish/Aunty McTavish some comments on this blog oohing & aahing over such a beautiful cake. She will read them & she deserves it !



The favourite toy of the night - a Bubble Machine. Also thanks to the McTavish clan.

Little Bear & Dragon were in raptures over the bubble's.



And of course, how better to play with bubbles than with a racquet of some kind. And even better than 1 racquet is 2. Lion is showing off his Bubble Badminton skills. That's my ambidextrous nephew !




And how better to finish a birthday than falling asleep on Daddy's lap. This is a special treat reserved for those really special occasions. (For those who regularly visit, you might notice the wear on this couch getting more obvious with each post it features in. We are hoping to get a new one really soon)

I love this man !!!

Little Bear's New Bed

Yesterday Little Bear was very sick.

She was fine at kindy, then at about 7ish she threw up. As she had been coughing a fair bit before hand, I put it down to that & still let her have Macca's chippies for dinner. She didn't have a temperature, seemed fine & as my kids throw up when they choke (we try not to let that happen too often), you can see why I wasn't too worried.

She ate about 2 chippies & mostly just sucked the sweet & sour sauce off them & kept double dunking (I was sharing the sauce with her).

After that, she began to develop a temperature & then it was all on until 1am. I lost count of how many times she threw up, but it seemed like every 20 minutes or so. Due to a number of tummy bugs in our family recently, I am becoming fairly adept at handling them efficiently. We put a clean set of sheets under her current set of sheets, then folded up a bunny rug to lie under her head. Several bunny rugs later & I didn't even need to strip the bed down to the clean sheets (however once more would have been the kicker).

This morning, she still wasn't well & I was completely knackered, so we stayed home together. After taking Cheetah to school, she seemed to be OK so we came home & had brekky. That stayed down so we went bed shopping. As she was in her pram & dosed up on Panadol it wasn't too difficult.

It took 4 hours to find a bed, a reasonably priced inner spring mattress & pillows, quilts, sheets, mattress protectors etc. (That doesn't count the hours on the internet searching, the numerous visits to various bedding shops over the last few weeks & time poring over catalogues).

I can't believe I spent as much on the linen as I did on the bed (after much shopping around too I might add)!

The mattress we have to pick up tomorrow, we don't have that yet, but we borrowed Cheetahs mattress tonight so she could still get to sleep on her new bed.

I think she is pretty pleased with her new bed!






Let's hope it gets us all a better nights sleep than last night. Seems to be working well so far ;-)

Cheetah doesn't mind lending his mattress. He gets to sleep on a camp bed tonight which he thinks is great. & tomorrow he will also be getting a new mattress too as his old one is getting a bit long in the tooth (& when your mattress bites you, you know it's time for a new one).

(Did you notice the disney princess theme in the room, with the wall art, sofa chair & quilt cover? Not intentional but comercialisation can be handy sometimes when you are trying to co-ordinate pieces bought years apart. Little Bear picked all of those things herself. She is starting to pick up on some of my OCD traits partiality for orderliness I think).

Are we there yet?

This morning we pulled up outside Cheetah's school to drop him off. Just before we pull up I hear the following ...



Cheetah (excitedly): Little Bear, where are we? Where are we Little Bear?



Little Bear (in a very loud & joyous exclamation): THERE !!!!!!

Canberra

From Newcastle, we travelled on to Canberra when I was starting to feel a bit better. By this point my cold was much better, but had progressed into that dry hacking cough that drives everyone around you into a murderous rage crazy!

While we were there, Canberra experienced it's coldest day in 43 years (or something like that) our friend who lived there told us.

We had a heated motel room & didn't really care. It was just COLD. The motel was OK, most importantly it was heated, but I was a bit dissapointed as we booked it on Wotif. Their Wotif details indicated that each room had a washer & dryer. We therefore took a few things we needed to wash so that we could do our laundry before returning to newcastle. When we rocked up, there was a laundry facility, but not a washer & dryer in each room. Not impressed. Usually I check the actual motel website before I make a booking on Wotif, but this time I must have overlooked that step. Never again. (Please note: Laundry facility was almost vitally important as being North Queenslanders, our supply of warm clothing was minimal to start with. When you are wearing more than one layer of warm clothing because the weather is so cold, that further depleted our stash to 3 days tops. We made do however & know better for next time)

On the first day which was bright & sunny & beautiful (but still cold), we visited Questacon (all indoors for those who don't know). The kids loved this. They had a room just for littlies that Little Bear thought was FANTASTIC. Cheetah enjoyed all the bigger kid exhibits, however 1 level was closed unfortunately so we missed out on that one.

One of the activities was to press a button & press it again after 15 seconds, trying to get it as close as possible to the 15 second mark (counting in your head). I was chuffed that I took one go & got it within 0.005 of a second (see photo below). This also meant I had the most accurate guess of the day, up until just after lunchtime when we left. Not sure if it was broken after that.

That night we went up the Black Mountain Tower (aka Telstra Tower, aka Telecom Tower). The first time we got up there, we got through the door & found that they only take cash, not credit card, for the admittance fee. We trundled off to grab some dinner & some money & then headed back about an hour later. This time we actually got through the entry gates.

Here is Little Bear with the boys on the viewing platform. As you can see it is cold & windy.


I still remember visiting this tower with my family when I was 3. I remeber seeing big machines through glass windows & having to use some stairs. This time, all you could really do was go to the revolving resteraunt (patrons only) or go to the kiosk & viewing platform (via a lift that didn't give floor's, but rather told you exactly how far above sea level you were as it lifted you up).

The view was OK, but probably would have been better at sunset (when we first attempted to get in) rather than at night, although the lights were pretty.

The next day it was cold & overcast (I think this was the coldest day). This was the day we had set aside to take some photo's in front of Parliament House, go to the National Zoo & Aquarium & also the Cockington Green Gardens & Walk in Aviary.

The first thing we did though, was go to the Royal Australian Mint. We got there, only to find the Mint was closed for renovation & only the souvenire shop in the entry way was open. The attendant cheerfully told us that we could watch the process on some screens set up in the entry foyer. This set up was a series of 7 photo's (not all of which worked), on a screen where you press a button to see the next photo. The photo's weren't that crash hot & as some where 'missing' (should we be concerned about other things going missing at the Mint?) it really left a lot to be desired.

We did get to stamp our own $1 coin to comemorate our visit. This cost us $3 for which we got $1 in return. Hmmm - now we know how the Mint makes their money! (Obviously that was a joke because our whole gripe is that we never actually got to see how the Mint makes the money at all).

After the Mint, we got to the Zoo but somehow completely missed the Aquarium section. We saw the White Lions. Little Bear loved seeing Giraffe's up close. Unfortunately, she was not happy to be photographed & every time we pointed the camera at her, she turned her head. Didn't get as many photo's as we wanted, but got a few that show how rugged up we were.

We went home (well, to a Motel room that was acting as "home" for 2 1/2 days) to have lunch & a sleep. Unfortunately, Little Bear slept for about 10 minutes in the car & as a result, did not sleep when we got back to the room. At about 4 ish, we decided to give up on Cockington Green & the Aviary & just bum around in the motel until dinner time.

For dinner that night, we met up with our friend & his gorgeous wife in Canberra at Zeffirelli's for pizza. I can't believe that Little Bear sat still enough for me to braid her hair (in 2 braids, not 1) to go out looking nice. I took a photo of it, because I doubt I will get another chance like that before she is 5. She is like the energiser bunny - just keeps going!

At dinner our friends wife - M - began asking Cheetah about school & he hit it off with her right away & talked her ear off all night. We then went back to their place, where Cheetah taught M to play "21" (that's Blackjack to all the gamblers out there). DH then had to teach M the correct way to play, as Cheetah had learned the game of his young cousins who had the rules a bit muddled (or had 'changed them' to suit themselves as Cousin C is known to do sometimes).

Little Bear was completely taken with their two puppies - 13 year old Nala (some little furry breed) and 2 year old Toby (a golden retreiver). Little Bear talked & sang to Toby, through a glass door, most of the night until it was time to go.

The next day we headed back to Newcastle for Little Bear's birthday. That will be my next post!

Nanny in Newcastle

For the travel update I know you are all sitting on the edge of your seats for...

We left Brisbane on Friday morning, after missing out on seeing my friend who I was going to meet up with there.

I was absolutely devastated when she sent me a message saying she wouldn't be able to make it because something urgent had come up at the very last minute. I was also a little bit relieved, because by this point my stomach was causing me absolute agony (due to constant coughing, combined with no sleep for over 36 hours & sitting in an uncomfortable commodore passenger seat). Brisbane city is lots of hills & I wasn't looking forward to trying to juggle both kids, the pram & my stomach ache to make that visit (as I would be walking to meet her, not driving).

Anyway, this also meant we were able to leave a bit earlier that we had previously anticipated & took off at once for Newcastle via Port Macquarie.

The drive to Port Macquarie was a bit taxing, given that Little Bear was starting to despise the car seat (which had been laundered I might add). However we got there about 6pm (ish). After spending a lot of time coughing while glued to a not so comfortable car seat, my stomach was killing me (worse than it had been in Brisbane). The next morning I was starting to wonder whether it wouldn't be more prudent to book a second night in Port Macquarie to avoid driving that day, but after a couple of hours of being awake it settled a bit & I was able to travel (although it was anything but comfortable).

Our motel in PM was OK & was right on the beach - you could see Flynn's Beach (I think that's what it's called) from the motel & it was quite beautiful, but we only caught a glimpse of it as we left, because we arrived after dark & left first thing in the morning.

We got to Newcastle about 1pm the day we left PM. Nanna & Big Pop were excited to see the grandkids & for the next few days I didn't do much other than laundry & try to relax as much as possible as I was really crook by this point.

This means that so far we have very little photo's of our journey as it was just too much for me. We also had to cancel our Albury leg of our journey to visit DH's brother because I was still too sick to travel when we were meant to be leaving, but we did get to add another day onto our Canberral leg which worked out well as we had crammed a fair bit into that & it allowed us to have a bit of breathing time while we were there.

We took plenty of photo's in Canberra, but Little Bear has been a bit camera shy. I will post these when I get home. We took a few more when we returned from Canberra to Newcastle & now that we are at Surfer's Paradise, I expect that we will take a lot of photo's when we visit Seaworld tomorrow.

The Travelling Bug

I think the travelling bug means that you can't stay still, you have to keep travelling. My family seems to take it literally though. Every time we travel, we get sick.

I was meant to work Monday, Tuesday last week & then we would leave. I ended up sick & at the doctors with a really bad head cold & no voice. Little Bear was just starting to catch it when we left.

On Wednesday afternoon we left. We had dinner in Ayr at about 6:30pm & just about had to force feed Little Bear as she wanted to play on the slides (can you guess where we had dinner?)

At about 10:00pm, with the car an absolute mess from trying to keep children entertained, we began to regret our insistance that Little Bear eat more for dinner.

She threw up. Not a little, but all over herself & her car seat. Very wet, sticky & smelly.

The only place to pull over was on the side of the road where there was a steep bank. Of course DH pulled over & gravity took over making a bigger mess of what had previously been fairly well contained in Little Bear's lap.

I cleaned up as best I could, dressing Little Bear in the spare clothes I had packed within easy reach. & using up an entire packet of baby wipes. This was somewhere just north of Rockhampton I think. Someone pulled over, thinking we had had an accident (becuase of the angle of the car on the side of the road), but they couldn't help, so we thanked them & on they went.

After cleaning Little Bear & the car up as best I could, I put a towel in her car seat, sat her back in & put a sheet over her to keep her warm as it was starting to get very cold.

We travelled on, reasonably uneventfully until about Gin Gin, where Little Bear woke up & promptly threw up. I think this was about 4am. Same story as above, but this time I didn't have spare clothes for her, so I dressed her in a long sleeved shirt of Cheetah's. The kids then watched the Bee Movie at 4am & dozed again after that finished.

We made it into Brisbane at about 10:00am & after trying to find a Loo Stop near the freeway on the northside of Brisbane, we wasted about 1/2 hour, and then took another 1/2 hour to make it to our motel.

Thankfully our Motel let us check in early & they had a washing maching & dryer so I spent the better half of the day doing laundry. Because the kids were wide awake & didn't have much of a midday sleep (because they had been sleeping in the car), I went from 7:00am Wednesday to about 9:00pm Thursday without sleep.

I finally got to crash that night & crash I did. (However, tired as I was, I did manage to check & see that Qld won the first state of origin match, but now they are all catching the swine flu because some bright spark thought Melbourne (swine flu capital of Australia) would be a good venue for a match between Qld & NSW. Not looking so hot for the next match, but best out of three boys, that's all you need !!!