Paint

I was so excited about drawing and painting with Miss5 at her prep's Father's Day evening I asked Tracey to pick up some more paints and pens yesterday.

I assume it was Tracey's keen sense of money-pinching which led her to combine my request and bring home paint pens.

Keen to see how well they work, Tracey set up Miss2 at the table for some art and craft. Unfortunately the lid was a little overzealous about it's job and Tracey needed to apply some elbow grease to get it off. The result was some spontaneous Braveheart-like face painting.

Tracey saw the funny side but Miss2, not so much. "Mummy's nose!" she screamed, racing off in a tither. She thought her mummy had broken her nose.

Given her earlier effort a few days ago, it just doesn't seem to be Tracey's week.

I'm just glad she took a photo this time :)

Luckily Tracey always works with safety goggles in place

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Me & My Girl

Some of our brilliant work with plates.

I was woken this morning, from a perfectly good slumber, by Miss5 screaming, "TODAY IS SAUSAGE SIZZLE DAY!" three inches from my right ear.


Tonight was one of my favourite nights of the year - the Prep Father's Day Celebration.

What I especially love about this night is I get to a eat a sausage, paint, dance and draw with one of my kids (Miss5 tonight, as she's the one in prep) and someone else has to clean up the mess. Plus, I get to play with a hammer!

Even though the above photo is blurry, I think Miss5's fear still comes through pretty clearly. If there was another couple of photos in this series you'd see Miss5 disengage herself from me and cower at the fence behind us. But me, I was having a ball.

This is the Mr Sciggle-like drawing Miss5 drew.

When she was done we could turn it on it's side and it
was a lovely drawing of Miss5 and I at the beach.

Or alternatively, we turn it the other way and we're plummeting to earth having
 fallen out of a plane. Either way, it's a lovely drawing of us, don't you think?

"Take a photo!" I told another parent. "My wife won't believe they let me near a hammer."
(No children were harmed in the making of this photo. Sadly, the same can't be said for a couple of bent nails.)

So not a lot to write tonight, just a whole lot of fantastic memories. Thank you to my darling little Miss5 for a wonderful evening :)

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I shit you not

Tracey just needed to get out of the house today so she decided to head off to the park.

There were council workmen in the street doing what workmen do best - making noise, making a mess and making the traffic stop and wait. She bundled our two youngest girls into the car and waited to be let out of our drive, giving the blokes in bright orange and yellow a friendly wave as she passed by.

Ten minutes later she was wondering why she bothered when Miss2 came down the slide and there was something on her head.

"What's that?" asked Tracey. It was brown. It was gritty. It was runny.

It was bird poo.

Luckily Miss2 was wearing a hat. Tracey removed Miss2's hat, careful not to get any of the muck on herself, and put it in a bag. Then she took off her own hat and put in on Miss2's head and our little girl raced off skipping and happy as a spring lamb, leaving my wife hatless.  

Which is a shame, because you can't remove hair like you can a hat. A point which was made plain to Tracey when, a few minutes later, a bird chose her head to poo on.

Tracey did her best with baby wipes but the park no longer seemed like fun. "Play times over," she told Miss2.

Tracey didn't want anyone to see her looking like this so it was time to head home for a shower.

"It was awful!" she laughed at me down the phone a few hours later. "There was so much of it!" But, as she explained to me, her day wasn't quite over yet.

Shrinking down behind the wheel, she passed the workmen and pulled gratefully into the driveway. She'd made it.

Back inside she quickly settled Miss0 in her cot and Miss2 in the lounge room before locking herself in the bathroom. Undressed, she reached into the shower and turned the tap and.....

...nothing.

Not a drop.

Turns out the workmen in our street had turned off the mains.

Even as I'm writing this I'm still grinning and chuckling like an idiot :)

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Ring My Bell

"Time to pack this mess up," I told Miss5 late on Sunday afternoon. The dining table was awash with sheets of paper (including tiny bits she'd cut up into 'tickets'), pens and glue.

"Nooooo," she bellowed.

Now I was there for most of my childhood and I have to say I can't remember EVER yelling at my folks when they asked me to do something. I can remember wailing fairly loudly after I didn't do what they asked, but that's a bit different.

"Is this how you act when the teacher tells you to pack things up?" I asked.

"No, the teacher has a bell," she wailed. Tracey quickly explained they have a bell they ring when it's time to pack things up.

"Right," I said, and ducked into our bedroom.

It just so happened I had a bell in my bedside table. It was my booby prize in a Secret Santa. That the bell says 'ring for sex' didn't even cross my mind. I mean the thing is broken - I've been ringing it for over a year and nothing.

Thirty seconds later I was back in the kitchen. I gave my bell a ring. Let's face it, I was being a bit facetious. I didn't expect it to work.

"Okay," said Miss5 sweetly, and started packing everything up. I've got to talk to her prep teacher and see if she's got anything for cleaning the bathroom. Maybe a whistle or something.

I didn't give the whole thing another thought until Monday morning.

Racing around getting ready for work, I suddenly heard the bell, which I thought was odd because I'd left it on the fridge. I looked over. It wasn't there. At some point on Sunday night Miss8 had grabbed it off the fridge and was ringing the thing in her bedroom and giggling along with Master7. They both thought it was hilarious because it had the word sex on it, even though I tried to explain it was SIX in New Zealand - this argument might have worked a whole lot better if they'd ever actually heard someone from New Zealand count.

Ah well. No harm in it, I thought. Until Miss8 rang the bell again and Master7 joined in the fun and yelled out, "Come on boys, don't be shy!"

I'm just glad I know the silly thing's broken ;)

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Well Hung

This is how they were hung in the dining room.

With our updated 'FAMILY' set of photos hanging in the dining room, we decided to hang the older set up in the lounge room.

Well I decided to - as a surprise for Tracey while she was at work today.

Trouble is my tool kit is a little sparse on things like tools. It's lacking a hammer, for example. In fact, it can hardly be called a 'kit' because the tools are kept in the junk draw with assorted pens, calculators, batteries, torches, chargers, recorder, GPS, pegs, sticky tape, door knobs, glue, sharpeners and, showing my age, a Sony walkman.

Let's see, I thought to myself. A couple of screwdrivers. An adjustable thingame. A butter knife. A nut turner. Four retractable measuring tapes. I have lots of measuring tapes because I know it's very important to measure things lots before you do anything. 'Measure twice, cut once.' Only it's inevitably three measures for me because the first and second never seem to match up. Sadly though, there was nothing in the junk drawer to help me hang a few frames.

"What are you doing, Daddy?" asked Master7. He'd obviously heard me making noises in the kitchen and thought there might be food.

Pulling a kid's recorder out of drawer, I answered him with a question of my own. "I don't suppose you know where the hammer is?"

"Um....," he said. My head shot up. He had that look of suddenly being trapped in my headlights.

"You do!"

"Mum says we're not allowed to tell you!" he whined.

"Ah, well lets call her and get her permission," I said, picking up the phone. "Hello Tracey? Daddy here. I need the hammer to put up some pictures. Yes. Yes. No, just the pictures. Who? Ah, okay, I'll get him to fetch it for me, shall I? Great. Okay, love you too." I put the phone back on its cradle and turned to my son. "Mum says it's fine, mate. Just this once. Go grab it for me please."

"I'm not stupid, Dad," Master7 said, shaking his head and walking off. "You didn't talk to Mum." Damn. He's got his mother's smarts.

Thing is, now I knew the hammer was in the house - Tracey hadn't sold it.

I started in Miss17's room. We hardly ever go in there. An hour and several rooms later I had it. My devious wife had hidden it in the mop bucket - like I'd ever have reason to use the mop! Genius.

Only now Tracey was due home in only fifteen minutes. I quickly grabbed one of the measuring tapes and dropped the end behind the lounge. Two small pencil marks followed by a couple of small nails and the F was up. I moved onto the next letter and dropped the tape. Two pencil marks, two nails and I hung the A.

And froze.

The top of the A was ten centimeters below the top of the F.

I squinted down behind the lounge. When I dropped the end of the tape measure when I was doing the F instead of going all the way to the carpet it came to rest on a damn kids toy. Forgot to measure twice, didn't I.

I looked at my watch. Ten minutes.

Quickly weighing up the odds of me managing to correctly measure all six letters so the tops lined up I settled on a new strategy - an arty farty stepped look.

"What a great idea!" Tracey said when she arrived home a few minutes later. "I'd never have thought to do that."

What can I say: I have a gift.

This is how they now hang in the lounge room - very noice.

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The Great Balls Up

When I was about seven my father enrolled me in a local kiddy league team. I'm sure he had visions of watching me plow through the opposition and score tries, giving him the opportunity to turn to other dads and say things like, "that's my boy." Sadly for him, though, I didn't last the season.

I'd be standing in the full back position with the full back, minding my own business, wondering when dad was going to buy me a hotdog, and suddenly the ball would land near me.

Dad says I was always quick to react. I'd be straight over to the ball - hands outstretched as though to pick it up.

The first few times this happened, Dad says he'd get all excited.

'This is it!' he'd think. 'Grab it, son, and run!'

Only I wouldn't. Instead I'd circle the motionless ball, hands still fully outstretched as though to pick it up, but my hands wouldn't come closer to it than two feet. And then the opposition would arrive and score a try.

"Why won't you pick up the ball?" he'd ask, and I'd shrug and eat my hotdog and pretend I didn't know. But I'll tell you why: even at 7, I wasn't stupid. I'd seen what happens when you pick up the ball - the other team comes down the field and beats the crap out of you. Far as I was concerned, they could keep it. I was only in it for the hotdog.

Had I actually more fully participated in the game when I was seven, we might have found out I had a little problem a lot earlier. Because I'm basically blind in one eye my depth perception isn't all it should be, as evidenced by the assortment of fence and automotive paint I've collected over the years on the front and back of my car. As it was, it was only when I once again ventured out onto the footy field, this time instead of hotdogs I was chasing the attention of girls, that we discovered how bad my problem was.

I am virtually blind in one eye, and let's just say living in a 2D world doesn't help on the sporting field. Catching a ball, to pull an example out of the air completely at random, was not easy. And it wasn't like I wasn't trying.

"Here!" I'd yell at my team mate on the field when I was in the open. I'd see him turn and pass. I'd see the ball leave his fingers. I'd know it was coming. I'd prepare, hands out ready to receive...and I'd feel the breath of wind as it passed by my stomach, chest or head. Or worse, slammed into my stomach, chest or head and bounced away. You can only blame the guy passing you the ball so many times. Apparently.

Eventually they stuck me in the scrum where the only balls I had to worry about were the ones my team mates were traumatizing by grabbing a handful of my already tight footy shorts, wrenching and yanking so hard their fingers turned white.

The only sports I was in any way successful with were the ones where there weren't balls. The three r's - rowing, running and reading. (I include reading because I would speed read). And I genuinely loved these sports.

Having said that, and with hindsight being twenty-twenty, I think dad gave up too easily and I perhaps missed an opportunity to be a great sportsman, possibly of international standing.

 If he'd been on his game he would have enrolled me in soccer - not touching the ball with your hands is a really big part of that game and I was a natural at that.

I could have been a star!



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I Bloom

From yawn producing
original...

Tracey was going through some old photos on one of our hard-drives - we have several terabytes of photos because a kid can't pass wind in this house without Tracey wanting to capture the moment for posterity.

"What a dreadful photo!" I exclaimed when a particularly nasty one of me crossed the screen. I was yawning on account of it being late and Tracey was keeping me out of bed to help her set up a photo shoot. "Get rid of that."

"I'll fix it for you," said Miss8.

Tracey has been fiddling with photos and making them better for years, with the help of Photoshop. Colours are enhanced and wrinkles removed - guess which one makes her more popular with her clients? More recently Tracey has been showing Miss8 how to use Photoscape, which my daughter loves.

...to exciting edited version
with barely discernible touch ups.

"Okay then," I said to Miss8. If she could do something with this photo, I figured, we might have ourselves a budding genius photo editor on our hands. Although I didn't hold much hope.

A few minutes later she was done.

"What do you think, Daddy?" she asked me.

She's a natural!!

I think there's career potential in this, I really do. I've gone from tired and weary to looking as fresh as a purple daisy. 

"I look fabulous," I told her. Now to get her working on pruning my waste.

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No Strings Attached

Trying to have an afternoon nap when there's a two year old in the house isn't easy, but today Miss2 was showing the classic sign of being tired - saying 'no' to everything and then getting upset when she didn't get it.

In no time at all Tracey had tucked Miss0 into her cot and crawled into our bed with the defiant and contrary Miss2.

"Lie down."

"No," said Miss2, and lay down.

"Shut your eyes."

"No," said Miss2, and shut her eyes.

Eventually Tracey managed to settle Miss2 by stroking her hair. Then my daughter's breathing settled, her little eyes remained shut and so then, finally, did Tracey's.

SLAP!

'What the hell was that?' thought Tracey through a fog of sleep.

SLAP!

Tracey opened her eyes just as the hand crashed down for a third time on her face. SLAP!

And then she realized that it was her own hand.

Miss2 was picking up Tracey's forearm, positioning the hand above Tracey's face and letting go so gravity could do it's thing.

Who says nap time can't be fun.

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Sand Man Plan

Ever lay in bed and had the feeling something isn't right?

Something woke me. I lay still for a few seconds trying to work out what it was. Nothing. No movement. Not a sound. I opened my eyes-

-and jumped out of my skin! Miss2 was standing in the bed between Tracey and me, still as a statue, staring at me.

"Honey?" I whispered over the sound of my heart thumping frantically against the walls of my chest cavity. "Honey? You want to lie down now?" She didn't move. It was like one of those kids from Children of the Corn. Eventually I had to get up and lie her down manually - she was sleep stalking.

"This has to stop," I told Tracey the next morning. She readily agreed.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked me.

Damn. I thought I'd just done my bit by pointing the obvious problem out.

"I have the baby to deal with," Tracey rightly pointed out. "You'll need to take care of this."

There have been times in my life where I've considered myself a bit of an insomniac. What rubbish. I was getting loads of sleep compared to this.

I've tried taking Miss2 back to her bed in the wee hours of the night, but she's back next to Mummy within minutes. Some nights she beats me back to our bed.

I've tried sleeping in the lounge room so I can stop her as she comes out of her bedroom, but in PNG I once slept through an air-raid siren which was screaming only three meters from my bed so you can imagine what the chances were of me hearing my little angel pass by on her way to our room.

I've tried coaxing, yelling, silence and pulling my hair out - all to no avail.

So for two nights I've pulled the trundle out and slept beside Miss2. What I really love about our trundle is it's a thin foam mattress on an old spring-based bed on wheels, so when I lie on it it feels like most of my body is actually in direct contact with the floor. Comfy. My plan is she'll have to step and crawl over me to get out of bed, so I'll be able to stop her.

This roadblock technique has been a resounding success in that Miss2 hasn't left her room before daylight, but a failure on the me feeling refreshed in the morning stakes - I'm completely knackered. Tracey, not so much.

"Morning!" she grinned at me yesterday. "That's the best sleep I've had in months! I fed the baby at 2 and that was it. Since then I've had five hours of solid, non-interrupted sleep!"

2am? That would have been about the time Miss2 was attempting to get out of her bed and used my head as a step. Which was about an hour after she dropped a book on my head. Which was about three hours before she started playing with my nose. Which was about an hour before she fell out of bed and landed on top of me. Which was an hour before she jumped into bed with me and used my legs to warm her ice cold feet.

"Aww, you poor darling," said Tracey with absolutely no sympathy at all. "Welcome to my world."

Clearly, considering the whole reason I'm trying to fix Miss2's night time roamings is so I can have more sleep, this approach isn't working. So I've come up with a new strategy.

"Tonight I'm going to try a sleeping tablet," I told Tracey.

"You can't give a two year old a sleeping tablet!" a wide eyed Tracey roared at me.

"Not for her. For me," I explained.

If I can make it from bedtime to sun up without needing to open my eyes I won't care where the hell she's sleeping. Or standing. Or waving her sickle.

Of course, we've got the sanity saving advantage over many parents in this predicament - we've five children older than her who all manage to go to sleep and wake up in their own beds. We know it's a faze and is going to get better. Thank goodness.



This post is a Guest Blog on TWO POINT FIVE KIDS
Also available on Facebook at TWO POINT FIVE KIDS
In case you're wondering, the 'point five' is her husband :)

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We help a go-getter of a woman in Bolivia

This week we had some payments come in late (they're usually in our KIVA account around the 15th/16th) so I've added $8 so I can lend out another $25 and gone looking for someone to help. Which didn't take long.

Sarah was actually the very first loan available. I knew I was going to lend to her the moment I saw her photo - any woman who can BBQ gets my vote :)

Here's what her KIVA application said:

"Sarah is 31 years old and is single. She makes a living selling ‘chorizo’ (seasoned pork sausage) sandwiches in the most populous street market in the city of El Alto. Her products are very sought after. 

This loan is her first with the institution. Sarah is going to use this loan to buy furnishings for the eatery that she is going to start for her business. Her reason for applying for this loan is that she wants to provide greater convenience to her customers and to produce in greater quantity her products and increase her sales and therefore her earnings. She is very interested in the way in which Kiva works; it seems very noble to her. 

Sarah faces challenges in her business such as continuing to study in the university and also she helps her little brother who depends on her. Sarah is a very responsible person as she has to take care of her brothers. Her wish is to become a professional and have her own restaurant and help her little brother until he becomes a professional."

What I love especially about this way of helping people is my dollar goes a long way. I help someone and they pay back my money. Then I lend that same money to the next person. For a small amount of money up front I can go on helping people for years. As I see it I'm recycling my charity dollars :) We can even withdraw the repaid dollars if we want.

If you want to take KIVA out for a test run they have a 'trial' offer at the moment - you can join and lend someone else's money to someone of your choice so you can see how the whole thing works. Then, if you think it's something you'd like to be involved in, you can add your own cash to the cause.

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