Stowaway

If anyone grabs keys, purse, wallet or bag Miss2 is on the doorstep looking for a ride. She knows the signs.

It shouldn't really have surprised us then when we walked into the bedroom this afternoon to find she's all over the big baby bag packed and sitting ready at the base of our bed. And by all over it I mean the was just about all in it.

Miss2 is clearly aware someone is going somewhere and determined to NOT be left behind.

We've never to worry about sibling rivalry here in the Devereaux household, but I'm concerned this may be changing.

In the past we've always ensured the younger older children (that make sense?) get their own baby doll when the new baby is born, so they can look after it at the same time. It's always worked a treat.

But Miss2 isn't as easily distracted as her older siblings have been. She's way too switched on for my liking.

Hopefully she'll take to the new bub as well as all the rest have. I guess we'll know in a couple of weeks :)

BIG MAN, little diet

Since the day after Boxing Day I've been focusing on losing a tenth of my body weight in a further effort to increase the odds of me seeing my children grown up and moved out. Ideally I'll also manage a few decent, uninterrupted sleep-ins after they leave, thereby allowing me to mutter, "It's been a good life," as I tootle off to meet my maker.

Realizing my own short-fallings I've opted for a date rather than a weight to signify the end of my diet. If I was aiming to keep going until I reached a certain weight I would have given up by now, but a five week stint I can do because I see an end in sight. At that point I'll re-assess my goals, which if my cravings are anything to go by I suspect will include a six pack and a triple-decker tomato, potato chip and Tim Tam sandwich.

So far things have been going along swimmingly. I've dropped from 101kg before Christmas to a nice 94kg as of yesterday. There will be celebratory high-fiving and seeking of sex when I sneak below 90kg, although the impending delivery of baby number seven may hamper at least one part of this plan. At 85kg, which is where I fantasize about seeing the scales read, I think I'll run naked around the house whooping and cheering, although the naked bit will simply be my by then over-sized shorts falling off my by then super slender hips. 

I'm focusing on a protein heavy diet for these five weeks, with greens thrown in to add some balance and crunch to mealtimes. I haven't felt hungry yet. It's probably not something you'll find recommended in the CSIRO well being book but it's worked a treat for my brother, and even young Master20 has had some success with it. And like I pointed out, it's not for long.

I've already noticed my face and stomach are looking much thinner and it's easier to drag my body around on my bike.

Tracey has started to notice changes as well as the fat drops away to reveal the thin man beneath. Today, for instance, she sat bolt upright when she touched my cheek. 

"OMG You've got a lump on your face!" she panicked. Turned out I had two. 

That's the thing about check bones, we tend to have one on each side of our face.

It Adds Up

Since gaining employment at Hungry Jacks we've been attempting to encourage Miss17 to save money, rather than waste it on junk food and clothes like Tracey and I did when we were her age.

There's a train of thought which says if you save 10% of everything you earn you will retire comfortably. We've suggested, because she doesn't have many overheads at the moment, she save at least half of what she earns.

Fortunately, she's been listening and the numbers in her savings account just keep going up.

Yesterday, Miss17 ran into the kitchen to tell me she had a grand saved. Only what she squealed was, "Dad! Dad! I have a comma in my savings account!"

She was never much good at knowing what to do with them in English, so it's nice to think she's got the hang of them in maths.

Keep going, sweetie, and one day there might well be two.

Jumping Jack Flash

Tracey walked back into the house after dropping me at work this morning and could swear there was a lingering smell of mangoes. Only we haven't had mangoes in the house since Christmas, so they should have stopped lingering a long time ago.

It turns out Miss2 must have turned a stove nob before we left home this morning and for an hour the house had been filling up with flammable gas.

Quickly mustering the kids back to the car for an unscheduled trip to Grandma & Grandads, Tracey aired the house out for a couple of hours. She said it took longer to clear the smell out of the kitchen than our bedroom after a night of beer and salsa dip.

We've never had much of a problem with hands about the stove, but Miss2 seems enamored with the one in our kitchen since we gave her a toy kitchen for her birthday on the 26th of December. Only three days ago Tracey caught Miss2 with her hand reaching into a saucepan we'd left on the stove after we'd served dinner (it was cool by then, thank goodness).

As for how to handle Miss2's stove fetish, well the trick is to catch her in the process of touching the stove. We can't very well punish a two year old for something she won't even remember.

We'll need to keep a real good eye on her from now on or our little walking disaster might turn our house into a newsflash.

Havachat Devereaux

Some people in customer service don't chat much to their customers, but I love talking to my clients because people are so interesting and if you ask the right questions you always learn such interesting stuff.

Today a couple of amusing things happened which had me chuckling and more than a little dumbfounded. This will give you an idea of why I love my job plus the poor, twisted shape of my sense of humour.

First of all, I had this dear seventy year old customer come up to me with a withdrawal. But when I turned her form over I found someone had written, "SUCK MY LEFTEY xxx" on the back.

"Did you write this?" I asked my customer, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

"Oh deary me. I certainly did not," she blushed. "But oh look, it's got kisses."

"Yes," I acknowledged. "They're sending a mixed message."

It kept us amused for the rest of the transaction. I was especially impressed she didn't have to ask me what it meant - the old girls these days have so much more life experience.

Shortly after I had another customer in front of me, who amused me for an entirely different reason. The young woman presented with bare feet and the look of someone who'd been up all night drinking and smoking - plus she had some scabs forming on the sides of her face, which I thought was an odd place to keep them. Clearly, she'd been having a bad day. Or couple of days even.

"What's happened to you?" I asked, because I can never think of a reason not to.

"I had an altercation," she answered.

"With what?" I asked. Bitumen?

"A police officer."

At this point she couldn't have steered me away from the conversation with a blue healer and a bull whip. But I sensed I had to be careful not to scare her off with a series of questions, so I nodded for her to go on.

"He had the handcuffs on too tight." There was a pause while I digested this little nugget. My mind wasn't quite connecting the dots. She took a breath before she plowed on. I might add, her tone wasn't accusatory, just matter of fact.

"You see, he pulled me over and told me my car was defective. But I knew it wasn't so I drove off. So then there was a bit of a car chase. But I pulled over and explained why I drove off, and he said that was alright. But then he put the cuffs on too tight."

A bit of a car chase? She could have been describing an episode of Cops.

But apparently that's why she has scabs on the side of her head, and that's why I can never think of a reason not to ask my customers lots of questions and have a conversation - you never know where it's going to lead.

Movie Madness

Because it was a hot day, and because she's nearly nine months preggers, Tracey spent the day in search of air-con.

Before work, Tracey and I brainstormed and came up with a plan - after some shopping she would take the kids to the movies. Because we haven't had to pay for dvd's for a few years, with Tracey having free movies from her work at Blockbuster, we haven't taken the kids to the cinema more than once a year.

Adding to their holiday adventures, at the local supermarket centre management had organised free slot cars for kids. A nice bit of fun. They had a couple of goes before grocery shopping and then another before heading to the car.

Then she announce to the kidlettes around midday, when they'd get the most relief from basking in the superior, closed room air-con and sip on cold drinks. Alvin was showing. Perfect. Or so she thought.

"Who wants to go to the movies!" she asked excitedly in the car. 

"No thanks," came the chorus back.

"You don't want to go to the movies?" she asked, a little incredulous. 

"Movies are boring. All you do is sit there and eat junk food," Master6 told her. 

I thought that was the point. So did Tracey. And this from the same kid whose idea of a dream Saturday afternoon would be to sit on the lounge and watch an entire season of Pokemon.

Not to be deterred from spending two hours in a wonderfully cool room, Tracey asked a few more times as she drove into the heart of G-town.

"Would you stop asking, Mum," Master6 said eventually with a well practiced eye-roll. He gets them from my side of the family.

Next Tracey suggested Ten Pin Bowling: their air-con is nearly as good as that at the cinema. No go. Air Hockey? Nup. 

In the end, at their insistence, Tracey took them around to her sister's place for a refreshing swim. 

So no air-con for Tracey, but every cloud has it's silver lining. We expected to spend about $50 on a special treat for the kids today. Instead, the total cost was zip. 

Sugarbowl

If a spoonful of sugar is so good it justifies having a song written about it, a bowl full of sugar must be even better. Right?

Just in case you thought last week's mess was a one off and I was exaggerating I've posted this week's effort. I'd poured some sugar into the little white souffle cup so I didn't have to bring the big sugar container out onto the balcony. A good thing I did. After they'd finished their cereal I was playing table soccer with Miss4, Master6 and Miss8 and while my back was turned Miss2 decided rather than sprinkle some sugar on her cereal she'd sprinkle some cereal on her sugar. Then eat it with her fingers.

And in case you're wondering, I haven't missed the fact these messes seem to occur primarily on the mornings Tracey is sleeping in. Clearly she'll have to stop doing that.

Happy New Years!

Friends of ours on holidays from Emerald dropped in to spend New Years with us. With their four kids and all of ours it made for cramped sleeping conditions, but not in our bedroom, so that was alright. Plus she's preggers as well, so next time they visit we'll have two more bodies to fit in. That'll be fun :)

G-town puts on a fantastic night in the park for families, from 6pm to 9pm (so not too late for the littlies), with rides and live music and, importantly on New Years, fireworks. Admission is free, and so are the rides, so it seemed to fit into our budget really well.

The lines for rides were long, some stretched all the way across the park (dodgem cars). We stuck to the jumping castles and merry-go-round.

Even Miss2 enjoyed racing around inside the jumping castle and tackling the slide. Just the kids from our two families took up a whole turn. Immediately our kids were off a jumping castle all three of them deflated, with kids inside. I asked Master6 what he'd done, but he assured me it wasn't his doing.

The Merry-go-round was a big success, although Miss4 was petrified. Bizarrely though, when we called out 'smile' for a photo the terror would disappear and she's smile largely and even gesture gracefully, often with one arm draped back over her horses hindquarters, as she passed. It was a beautiful act. She's very professional - once you turn the camera on her she makes sure you get the shot. It became an amusing game for us waiting for her to look scared again and then changing her back into Miss Supermodel.


Miss4 was petrified of the fireworks, and spent the whole show with her head in my shoulder, demanding it stop. She'd peek a look every now and then but no amount of coxing would change her opinion of these loud, obnoxious bursts of colour. At one point near the end of the display she screamed out "They're getting closer!!" and went into even more of a tither.

They were beautiful. Although I do wonder why they waste time and money on anything which doesn't burst into twenty feet of colour. I just want the big ones, not the screamers or trees on the ground.

Finally got the kids to bed around 10pm so we could settle into our balcony and have a drink ourselves - although I'm on a diet so it was a weak scotch and water for me.

No New Years resolutions for me this year - I never keep them anyway. Maybe I should use that to my advantage - this year I pledge to not win first division in Gold Lotto. Lets see how I go :)

I hope you all had a fabulous time, whether you stayed up for the countdown or slept through it. Here's to a bright 2012. Cheers.

Clothes Dyer

HIDDEN POST BECAUSE OF MY TECH UNSMARTS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE. CARRY ON PEOPLE. BACK TO YOUR LIVES.

Tracey hates the way I wash our clothes.

I don't blame her. I hate it too.

"They go in dirty, they come out clean," I told her on the weekend. "What wrong with that?"

"Everything pink!"

What makes this worse is when Tracey first moved in with me I gave her the 'separate the whites' lecture. Although I can't remember this I feel like I was there because of the detail Tracey goes into when she's retelling the story.

In my defense I would like to point out I do, in fact, separate the whites from the towels from the colours - it's just sometimes, when I'm down to the last of the pile there isn't enough for a full load of each. So shoot me, I like an empty laundry basket.

Apparently I also suck at hanging clothes out.

Tracey has developed a system whereby she hangs each child's clothes together on the line, making it simpler to bring the clothes in and put them straight into the appropriate wardrobes.

I have developed a system whereby regardless of how they're hung I bring the clothes in and dump them on our bed ready for sorting when she gets home from work.

My trouble is I can't tell which garment belongs to which child. The sizings are too close. To make things worse, we hand a lot of clothes down, so picturing who I've seen wearing a skirt or dress doesn't help. To make things even worse, everything is pink.

But I guess that bits kind of my fault. Luckily most of our kids are girls :)

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I Can Do It Myself

Nothing a cloth, a hose, a shower
and a hungry dog can't fix.

Even though it can be frustrating waiting for a little miss or sir to work out which of the holes to stick their head into, or which shoe goes on which which foot, you've got to keep the big picture in mind - if you want them to stand a chance of meeting that special someone and moving out of the house before you die you've got to teach them little things like how to dress themselves and cook two minute noodles so they can survive in the real world. No one is going to date someone whose mum helps them put their undies on before they go out. 

And for the record, as much as you love the little cherub now, you WILL want them to move out at some point, if only so you can play some decent music.

As parents, one of the things we try to teach our kids is how to do things for themselves, whether it be making their own beds or dressing themselves.

I have a work colleague who is far better at this than I am. Her daughter has been making her own lunches since prep. My kids don't seem to know where we keep the lunchboxes - for a while there I'm pretty sure they thought their lunch boxes stayed in their school bags (which stayed in the car) and magically refreshed themselves with food overnight, much like a computer game. 

A level of self sufficiency is even more important in a house with this many souls in it. And a house with me in it. I don't know which dresses belong to which girls - I swear some of Miss17's clothes look like they're small enough to fit Miss4. 

And although getting them to do stuff for themselves is important it inevitably leads to some amusingly disastrous results. Like today, when Miss4 was making breakfast for herself and Miss2 and she covered herself in milky cereal. Herself, the table, the chair and the balcony.

Frustrating? Yes. 

Funny? Hell yes. 

Something she'll learn from? Well, I'd like to say yes but this isn't the first time her breakfast has leaped out of the bowl and made a dash for freedom, which is why they were breakfasting on the balcony, so I might get back to you on that in another 14 years.

Wish me luck - she likes listening to Justin Bieber.