Fun with Colin

What excitement!! The Colin Buchanan concert on Wednesday was excellent and the kids had a ball (after JJ stopped screaming and begging to go home because she was so overwhelmed by it all!). Jeremy got the morning off to come, and Lynn came too, so it was a far less stressful experience (for me) than last year. I love the pic of the kids watching the concert - X was too excited to sit on my lap to watch, but too short to see properly when he was standing up, so he spent half the time straining to see over the seat in front!

Instead of being literally last in the queue to see the man himself after the show, like last year (that was a fun hour!) we were actually first in line - woo hoo!


JoJo has a thing about wearing 4 plaits all the time at the moment (actually she has a big thing about the number 4 in general... "Mummy I'm going to smell your hair 4 times"... What the?) and she was very pleased when Colin liked them!

Fun with friends

Posting this a bit belatedly... Our church had a post-Mark-Driscoll-breakfast-for-blokes a week or so ago (they may have called it something different though!) and JoJo, Xander and I had great fun playing with our friends H and A (as well as S, who came after the pics were taken) so their dad(s) could go to the breakfast. Playdough was a big hit with all the kids - the boys found it hard to move past "roly poly, ever so slowly" but the girls made some spectacular creations! It surprisingly civilised having the kids so early in the morning (pre-8am) - they were all fresh and happy. We'll have to do it again soon!

Blue Poo!

Xander must have eaten more of that blue crayon than I realised! Erk!

One of the many problems with.....

.... blogging is that you feel you should have something profound, pithy and preferably witty to say (and of course heaps of amazing pictures). Oh well, sorry.
.... Henry the Octopus is that he is quite disturbingly reminiscent of JaJa Binks. *Shudder* Let us never speak of either of them again.
.... headaches is that they make it very hard to get things done that need to be done.
.... living in an affluent society is that it is hard to focus on the things that really matter.



Here's a photo of my daughter looking very attractive (she has her mother's looks) so this post doesn't look so boring.

Decisions, decisions

Spent an interesting morning this morning. One of our local schools is planning a Montessori program to run alongside its "normal" program and the principal talked to some playgroup friends and me about it this morning. It sounds pretty good on the whole, but I'm a bit worried about there being an "us and them" culture created at the school with the 2 diff programs, and I'm also worried about how the other teachers will feel about the Montessori kids getting such fantastic resources etc. I'm hoping to do some supply work at the school (maybe before the end of the year?) to suss out what's going on behind the scenes. Even though JoJo doesn't start prep until 2010 the primary school we pick will effect what she does next year for kindy. I just have to keep telling myself that kids are resilient and it doesn't reeeeeally matter what we pick. Hmmmm.

We're also trying to make some decisions re: Jeremy's work etc for next year. I can't really go into details here (oooh the suspense) but there are a couple of options and the one which seems more worthwhile also seems more scary and unknown. I was reading my new book (Amy Carmichael) last night and a couple of quotes from her stood out to me.... "to any whom the Hand Divine is beckoning: count the cost, for He tells us to, but take your slate the foot of the Cross and add up the figures there" ....... "Satan is so much more in earnest than we are - he buys up the opportunity while we are wondering how much it will cost". Wow that woman sure had a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

I have learnt an important lesson

If you have the misfortune to come into the possession of a perfume card which bears any mention of the name "Sarah Jessica Parker", do not under any circumstances use it as a bookmark. And don't say you weren't warned.

Cute hats!

Here's a couple of hats I made the other week for a photographer friend who wants them for her newborn shoots. Many thanks to the (disturbingly naked) Baby Zan for modelling so patiently.

*rubs hands gleefully*

Our Amazon package arrived yesterday - it's like Christmas! I have 3 great books I can't wait to read : Feminine Appeal, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, and the one I've really been hanging out for, A Chance to Die (biography of Amy Carmichael). I love reading good christian biographies and haven't been able to find much of what I'm after at K**rong so I'm torn between wanting to sit down and read each book at a sitting, and trying to ration myself so I can make them last longer!

Jeremy got some boring books on computers and Greek *yawn*.

Things I'm grateful for: Baked Beans

They meant that our manic friend / outing filled day yesterday didn't end in disaster. Thankyou Mr Heinz!

Here comes the sun.....

I just have to comment on the absolutely beautiful weather we have here in Brisbane today - max of 28 degrees, not a cloud in the sky (this morning anyway) and a beautiful coolish breeze. Aaaah, who wouldn't live in Qld?

A moment in time

X is wearing his "pi'back" (piggy back) which he decided he just had to wear on the way up the stairs from the car (don't ask me why, he usually hates it). He didn't actually break the chair - it collapsed under JoJo quite spectacularly while she was talking to the boy next door - but he did spend quite awhile trying to fix it.

In the afternoon we had our first walk without the pram. X wore the monkey again and we walked around to the fruit shop, only realising far too late that I was not going to be able to carry much home! We saw a very friendly cat on the walk back, and luckily it enjoyed the kids' rather enthusiastic advances, but then JoJo cried half the way home because she wants a cat so much. Unfortunately for us, if we do get a cat it will have to be one of those hideous hairless ones because J is allergic to cat fur.

The kids had a great night with J - it's so different now that he's not coming home completely exhausted after work and he can play crazy games with them (not having a sinus infection seems to help too!).

They're baaaaaack!

My horrendous migraine style headaches that is.
At the moment I'm avoiding cheese, ibuprofen, citrus fruits, chocolate and I'm trying (not that hard) to cut back on tea. I think I need to try a bit harder in the tea dept though.

Shoo, begone you horrible things.

Nice!

Three good things that happened today...

* The shoe fixer upper man managed to fix my remote key for the car and didn't charge me!
* I discovered laundry bleach.... wow where has that stuff been all my life? My grotty washers now look slightly less grotty, which believe me, is something to be very glad about.
* I discovered I can touch my toes without bending my legs for the first time since I was a teenager. Time will tell how useful that skill turns out to be but I think I'm pretty safe to say I have a career in international gymnastics ahead of me.

Quote of the day...

Play is a child's work, and it is not a trivial pursuit ~ Alfred Adler

So that must mean that playing along is a mother's work, in which case it must be someone elses job to do the housework. Excellent.

Sewing!

Without warning my sewing mojo has returned - I'm going to make a bag! Woo Hoo! My dining table is covered with fabric, the kids are sleeping, my cutting wheel is ready to roll and I'm having IDEAS! Now to figure out how to re-thread the overlocker.....

What's working, what's not

Working:
* I'm trying to get the kitchen (and lounge if I'm feeling up to it) cleaned up and dinner semi-prepared at lunchtime. Before (this is the crucial bit!) getting to the computer. Having dinner half made makes a big difference when J isn't getting home till 6:40.
* X being weaned... not that I can go back now (it's been a week and a half), but it's good to know he's ok with it :)
* My joint is finally finallystarting to feel better. I've been in alot of pain more or less since I got pregnant with JJ, and have just found a great physio for pregnancy related problems. So far so good. I'm still far from perfect but it's great just to be making progress.
*Being pretty strict with myself about not having the computer on / doing woolly stuff when the kids are awake.

Not working:
* JJ's complete inability to eat independantly. I feel like I nag her constantly about eating and I hate it.
* Snacks for kids and me - they're eating far too many biscuits, but I can't think of anything else that a) they'll eat (quickly enough) and b) will pack enough of an energy punch to stop their sudden episodes of low blood sugar induced poor behaviour / emotional over-reactions. If you have any suggestions I'll all ears (or in this case eyes!).

I'll come back to this list in awhile and see if things have improved!

Random facts

Okey dokey, I've been tagged by the fabulous Simone to share 6 random facts about myself and not being one to let the chance to talk about myself slip by, I thought I would seize the first available opportunity, even though I still have a tissue shoved up my nose to prevent computer drippage (see my prev entry... if you dare!). First, here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who ‘tagged’ you!
2. Post the rules on your blog!
3. List 6 random facts about yourself!
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post!
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by commenting on their blog!
6. Let the tagger know the entry is posted on your blog!

Also, my apologies to those of you who know most of this stuff already :)

1. I spent a couple of years as a kid living just outside a small village in Kenya. We had no electricity or running water and did correspondence lessons for school. We also got some unusual and exciting parasites and other diseases. At the time I thought it was all good fun and just accepted it, as 7 yr olds tend to accept most things, but now I'm amazed that Mum and Dad left their comfy Aussie life to take their 3 little kids to a disease-ridden part of the world to help get an indigenous church there off the ground. I think having my own kids has made me realise what a big deal it was... I'm not sure I could face it!

2. I am really, seriously, very bad at keeping in contact with people when I don't see them regularly. I mean really bad. I feel very terrible about this, and I'm making an effort to get better. It's a long slow road though.

3. I was a moderator on a big internet parenting forum for awhile (until a few months ago). I enjoyed it for a long time, but got completely burnt out in the end. I really love forums for the way they let you connect with people you would never usually meet, and I enjoy the exchange of ideas and opinions. I have learnt alot about pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and health in general from that forum and I'm really grateful for that. It was a great place to see what people think about christianity (which is close to my heart) and to talk to them in a more open way than I would usually get a chance to. What I don't like about internet forums is that (some) people seem to feel that good manners don't apply online - I think people don't realise how hurtful their harsh comments really are. In a strange sort of way though I think it's good to see what people are really like... we pretend to be "nice" and "normal" to the people we talk to face to face, but online people seem to expose more of what's really going on in their heads, and it's not always pretty!

4. I have a degree in music composition (and a degree in early childhood teaching - doesn't that mean someone should pay me to be a mum?). For some reason though, all my creative energy at the moment is going on crocheting and yarn dyeing. Mmmmm yarn! I think the combination of small creative spark + lots of mindless repetition is doing it for me at the moment. When I get more time (read when J isn't completely overworked and I'm not completely exhausted as a result) I'd love to get back into music a bit more.

5. At the moment I probably get most of my theological input from listening to Colin Buchanan CDs.

6. I would love, I mean really love, to be in a bush band. I know that's shockingly daggy and I should probably be embarrassed, but there it is!

Yikes, now I'm meant to tag 6 people.... let me think!

Jacqui, Leisa, Courtney, Lesley, Tracy, Sue, and that'll do I think!

Why.....

.... oh why oh why am I sick again? (I'm writing this post with a tissue shoved up my nose to stop myself dripping on the laptop... how's that for a nice mental picture?) And for that matter why are my poor kiddies spluttering and miserable and why is my lovely husband wheezing and coughing? Ah life isn't so much fun sometimes. On the plus side, J has been home (sick, admittedly, but still) all week and the kids have had a pretty fun time having dad around. It's been nice to not have to struggle through the day, hanging out for J to come home, which would have been no picnic this week. It makes me hang out for the future though - no more mourning, crying and pain sounds pretty good to me! (Revelation 21:4 for people who have no idea what I'm on about...I'm not at my most coherent tonight! ).

Some interesting quotes...

Nothing has an impact on kids except what they do daily ~ Ralph Winter

Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. ... [Women are]generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't....How can it be a large career to tell other people's children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? ... No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness. ~ G.K. Chesterton (shamelessly lifted from Jean's blog!)