Wave At The Bus: The 170 Costumes

This man is a legend. Other fathers watch on in awe. He humbles me.

Dale is a stay at home dad who, after his son heads off to catch the bus, dresses in a different costume every day and then stands outside the house and waves at the bus.

Miss17 has informed me if I'd pulled this stunt she would have put herself up for adoption on the grounds of (my) insanity or (her) embarrassment - whichever they'd accept.

I've a link below to Dales's blog and a video of 170 of his costume changes.

Dale, you rock! And hunt! And fight crime! And do spells! And play ball! And rule the seas! And you wear a mean tiara!




Wave At The Bus: The 170 Costumes: Here's the quick video view. For links to each wave (in order), keep scrolling. Don’t sell yourself short, every day is worth a view (we...

Dress Sense

I have no dress sense. I admit it. I'd happily wear the same six t-shirts for the rest of my life. If it gets cold I'll just throw on another t-shirt. Problem solved.

And my kids seem to be following in my footsteps.

But this is good. Because apparently kids should be allowed to dress themselves. It encourages free thinking and independence or some such. I love it when my kids dress up, and we have a huge dress-up box. But according to Tracey it shouldn't necessarily happen in public.

When I was courting my wife I would embarrass her by letting the now Miss17 (back when she was two) dress herself before we went into Tracey's work. Nothing would match. She'd have half the dress-up box on and she'd think she looked awesome.

It doesn't bother me how the kids are dressed when I take them down town. I've started insisting they wear shoes, but that's mainly because I'm sick of carrying them if the ground is hot or rough.

When Tracey goes downtown the kids are preened and brushed to within an inch of their life. Even their shoes match. Mind, I've gone to the shops, come home and finished an episode of Big Bang in less time than it takes Tracey to get out the door.

Pleasingly, it looks like the clothes horse gene is strong in my young kids as well. Master7, for example, would happily wear nothing but a singlet and undies all day, everyday, everywhere. 

I walked into Miss2's room this week and found she'd dressed herself for a nap. As you can see from the photo she'd gone off to sleep dressed in one half of every pajama set she has. 

I can't wait to take her shopping. Maybe we can go to Woolies and visit Nanny :)

Dumbbells

We struggle some mornings to deliver all our kids to their respective destinations. Especially Mondays where we have Tafe, primary school, prep and daycare, and that's before we look at work. Sometimes in the melee things get left behind - homework, lunches, kids.

We've driven kids to school in their PJ's. Once is usually enough.

I'm assured, however, this isn't a problem confined to our household.

Take my friend, Jelly, for example. Because it isn't hard enough for a working mum to fit exercise into her day, my friend's kids decided they wanted to join her at gym this morning. This meant the usual morning chaos to get the kids moving and everyone out of the house and to their respective schools on time was brought forward an hour.

Deciding if they were all going into town anyway they may as well not return home before starting work and school she bellowed at her kids to grab their uniforms. This would claw back fifteen minutes of her morning, giving her time for a nice relaxing cup of coffee before work.

"Have you got a shirt and shorts?" she asked her son, Master14, in the car, because experience has taught her if somethings going to go wrong it's going to go wrong with him. "Your socks? Shoes? Hat and homework? Schoolbag and lunch?" Had she missed anything ? "Are you wearing undies?"

All responses in the affirmative, they headed to gym.

It was only after gym she realized her mistake: poor instructions. What she should have said, she saw with the benefit of hindsight, was grab yourself a uniform from your wardrobe.

Instead, what Master14 did was to open up the washing machine and take out the clean but still wet set of clothes he'd worn the day before.

Despite this, my friend was determined to avoid returning home, the end result being she stood, bonnet up next to the school, dangling her son's wet clothes over the running engine of her car in an attempt to dry them.

Needless to say she didn't quite make it to that relaxing cup of coffee before work, but I'm betting she could have done with it.