Sometimes...

... when I get through my entire shower without being interrupted in any way by anyone I think that maybe I should just wrap myself in my towel and curl up for a nap in the bathtub.

Sometimes when the Monkey doesn't want to go to sleep at night (or at nap time) I catch myself distracted by his cuteness and have fantastic little conversations with him.

Sometimes when the Monkey doesn't want to go to sleep at night (or at nap time) I want to tear my hair out and go check into a motel... by myself.

Sometimes when the kids go to bed and Wolf is doing a late shift I eat an entire packet of biscuits by myself.

Sometimes when I get to go grocery shopping by myself I contemplate putting it in parcel pick up and then going and parking the car under a tree somewhere so I can have a snooze.

Sometimes when I get to go to the toilet without an audience I have conversations with myself because I am not used to the silence.

Sometimes I hear heavy breathing and start to freak out... then I realise it's me.  Hopefully I will eventually get my sinus issues sorted out but until then I just need to chill out a little!

Sometimes when the kids show me a picture they have drawn I quickly pray for a divine revelation of what it is a drawing of because I can tell that they think it is really obvious but I haven't got a clue!

Sometimes...

Wanna know a BIG secret?

Okay okay... it's been a little while, hasn't it?

Sorry.

I've been kinda busy.

Running here...

Heading over there...

Meeting this person...

Heading out with that person...

Feeding kids...

Getting them off to school...

Surviving...

Growing another human inside me...

WHAT?

Uh, yeah.  We've kinda been keeping a secret.  Well, not really, we just keep forgetting to share it with you guys.  We love you but, uh, we uh, well... we forgot to tell you.  Sorry.

Soooooo.  Here is your official announcement:

McTavish Baby #4 is going to make a grand appearance on July 4th 2012!

Yeah, we've waited that long to tell you... we are HALF WAY THROUGH!

Honestly, at this point I felt like maybe keeping it a secret and re-starting to post as usual and then one day in July going "Hey, look at what we found in my womb this week!"

But I thought that might be a little bit too much (but you have no idea how much that idea appealed to me).

Wanna know another secret... we're telling people what flavour baby it is this time.

Except that we don't know!  Three scans and we still don't know for sure!

Though, each time they have seen little clues that hint at a gender... different clues each time...

Also a distinct lack of some other parts that have become rather familiar on the old ultrasound.

Yep, looks like we messed up the recipe this time... it's a girl!  Sorry, that word still kind of scares me.  Eeep.

Pink and fairies and rainbows OH MY!

So that's our big news... I hope there might still be one or two people out there who will come and read this... I truly am sorry that it's been so far between posts.  I have a few half written ones that I must finish, I just need to find an extra couple of hours in my days.  Hey, I get an extra whole day this year... maybe I can put that to good use!

Oh, and if you want to see how we broke the news on the good ol' facebook then this is what we did...

We had a head-lice outbreak 4 days before Christmas... can you tell?

WINNER!

We have a winner!  Thanks to everyone who entered our Lion King give away.  It seems like a lot of us have similar wonderful taste in movies :-)

But there could only be one winner and Kym at Mumma's Mini Mes is the winner with her comment...

"Finding Nemo, I have lost count of how many times she has watched it, she is obsessed with animals and loves watching fish swim."

It sounds like we might have seen that movie a similar number of times.

Thank you again to everyone who entered and a very big thank you to Mandy at Porter Novelli for being so fantastic and looking after my Lion King obsessed son with this fantastic opportunity.

Thank you also to our family and friends who keep checking up on us and chastising us for not posting more regularly... I promise I will try harder.  I can't promise that posts will eventuate from my trying but I will try.

Lion King Giveaway

A loooong time ago in a lounge room far away, a package arrived.  That package was long anticipated... Mummy got VERY excited, very very excited.  Her boys could completely understand why... TNT!  Mummy had a box full of dynamite!... hang on, what?  No I didn't.

Rewind.

Way way back my Lion King obsessed Lion started asking questions... "Mum, when will I get my own Lion King DVD?"... "Mum, you said that I could have a Lion King DVD sometime when it got near my birthday, is that soon?"  So... since I have contacts, I emailed my insider at Porter Novelli who do the PR for Disney DVD.  "Soon," she said, "very soon."

I emailed her back to let her know that my kids back-flipped and somersaulted and did hand stands and danced a jig ON MY COUCH... FOR 10 MINUTES!!!  She thought that perhaps they might be interested in checking it out and having a little party to go with it.  Well, in the interest of making my furniture last a little longer I said they'd love that and decided not to tell the kids about it.  So, sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting and then the package arrived!  Y'know the one that I was writing about at the start?  Yeah, that one.    After I calmed them down and told them that TNT was the courier company and there is no way on earth that I would get a delivery of TNT and even if I did, they cannot use it to blow up the gully, try to start a landslide... or anything else for that matter.  I know, I might just be the meanest mum on earth!  Anyway, then I told them that it was FULL of Lion King stuff... including the DVD!

Well... we needed to organise a little party!  We had the Disney Singstar PS2 game to rock out to and no one to rock with.  After a few failed attempts, vomiting bugs, party guests leaving town, we FINALLY managed to pull together a little group of buddies to play the game and watch the movie... and have a heap of fun.

Dragon sings his little heart out!

The movie is just as you remember it... only better!  Really, I get sceptical about these movies being re-released that are supposed to be clearer and smoother and whatever... but it really is.  Having watched The Lion King over and over and over wherever we could track down a copy I had it well stored in my mind to be able to do a comparison.  The voices are sharper, the field of grass flicking in the breeze is clean and crisp, it's fantastic!

Cousin Wilbie is serious when it comes to Karaoke.

We had little competitions to win cute little baby Simba plush toys, we ate worms in dirt (lamingtons with gummy worms shoved in them), ostrich nuggets (that looked suspiciously like chicken nuggets), cheese, crackers, all sorts of yummy stuff.

It did occasionally get a little tricky to see what you were supposed to be singing while you were wearing a Simba mask!

Again, this Karaoke is serious business!

Musical statues and a dance-off... sounds like a good party to me!

We were very happy to have some special visitors with us, you haven't met them on this blog before.  They are this crew.  Dene, Rachel, used to be my youth group leaders a looong time ago and Dene was in our wedding party (and Rachel was indispensable to us that day as well, she took care of so many things we had forgotten to organise).  Together with their kids Eliott and Simeon, they are preparing to head off to Japan as missionaries.  They had a short stay in Townsville where we managed to fit in plenty of time to catch up and hang out and have Lion King themed parties.

Sooooo, here's the really exciting part...

The crew at Porter Novelli have let me have a fantastic Lion King prize pack to give away!  Soooo, if you would like to win this fantastic prize pack below then please leave a comment on this post telling me in 25 words or less, what your favourite kids move of all time is and why.  Mine is Mary Poppins... no, actually it's Anastasia... or um... well... I hope you can be more decisive than me!  So, go on, let me know!

I was not paid for this but I did receive a Disney DVD, The Lion King pack from Porter Novelli and Disney DVD along with a gift card to supply our party.  All opinions expressed are entirely my own... and my kids.

Competition runs until 7pm AEST, Friday Dec 23rd 2011 and is open to Australian residents only.  Please make sure you comment with a valid email address (if you are a noreply@blogger.com address please include an email in your comment), if I cannot get hold of you I will have to pick someone else.

My blogger account has not been notifying me by email of comments to my posts but I promise I will check regularly to make sure all comments are included!

You can't put this on facebook

Okay, I'm pretty careful about remembering that not all my facebook friends have little kids and even fewer have such a male dominated family.  They may not want to know all the gross stuff that goes on in our house that although funny, is still poop related.  As such, some things just don't go on facebook... this one had to be shared.

Monkey is getting better at manipulating his big brothers to get his way.  He's learning from their cues what his appropriate response should be.  This afternoon he walked into the middle of their room and filled his nappy.  From the gagging/choking/gasping for air sounds his brothers were making I'd say it had a good odour to it.  Their crazy reaction made Monkey's day!  He'd walk towards them and their increased wailing and backing off would just encourage him to go and try it on the other one.  Their passionate plea of "go out to mama, pleeeeeeease" was just more than one little Monkey could handle.  All of a sudden I heard the door close and his little giggle as he trapped his brothers in their room while it steadily filled with the stench of a thousand rotting eggs.

I'm not sure if I should be proud of his masterminding or horrified that my two year old has figured out for himself the basic concept of playing Dutch Oven.

Monkey talk

See that kid up there... he's a charmer.  I worried for so long that his talking was going to be a bit slow but lately he's been talking in full sentences and blowing my mind with the things he comes out with.

He's just realised that he can turn my to putty in his hand with three small words.  "Lub you mummy".  Awwww.  He also tells me "Kiss you now" and "no, other side" (he is rather picky about being offered the right cheek to kiss).  "Go Drammar, EAT!" I tried to tell Grannysaurus that the kids see her house as a never-ending buffet of good stuff to eat.

We went and fed some ducks with friends on Monday and he chatted and chatted about the "peedin' da ducks".  He also asks for his own "cheeenow" (babycino) if we go out for coffee.

But that tongue... see that tongue hanging out in the photo... that one.  He's got another sentence... "Lickin' it".  He's started licking things!  Not normal things to lick like lollipops and stuff.  I'm talking shop floors, carparks, his carseat, handrailings, the fridge door, his brothers leg, the lounge room carpet... hideously gross stuff.  He's TWO!  He's not supposed to be doing that stuff anymore.

Thankfully because he knows I don't like him doing it he moves away from me so I can pretend it isn't my child licking the floor in the middle of the shops.  We went into the garden section of one shop the other day, I watched that kid like a hawk.  I was ready to pounce should he so much as look at a bag of poop.  Thankfully we made out to the checkout before he wandered off to the middle of the walkway while I sorted out the bags and he lay down to do a biiiiiiiiiig lick... he lay on the floor, arms outstretched and started at one hand and licked right across to the other hand.  I did my best to pretend he wasn't mine... I mean, other than the fact that I dropped everything in my hands and screamed

"NOMONKEYDON'TLICKTHEFLOOROFTHESHOP!"

I totally got away with it, I'm sure no one knew he was mine.  Anyone want one of those kisses of he's handing out?

Excitement!

I just got an email saying that there is a super awesome parcel on it's way to me!  Do you want to know what the best bit for you is?  It's for a FANTASTIC GIVE AWAY!

But that's all I'm telling you right now.

So, what else has been going on around here in my bloggy quietness?  Lots.  That is partly to blame for the quietness.  It's been a busy two terms at school and last holidays we were so busy with endless invitations to here and there that we didn't get much of a break.  Now we are in our second week of these holidays and I am feeling refreshed and ready to face the final chaotic term of school.  I made a purposeful decision to stay home a lot these holidays.  As much as possible to do things that included all of the kids and to spend lots of time just being together.

But, leading up to the holidays we did have a little bit of fun...

Lion's school does a school concert every second year and in the other year the do something on a much smaller scale.  This year they presented a Food & Dance Fiesta!  Each year level presented a dance and there was all sorts of food for sale and the year levels all manned stalls selling different things.  The year ones all had to bring in cupcakes to be sold at their stall which was a raging success.  Lion's class danced to "boot scootin' baby".  I was thrilled when the classes came out in lines and Lion was right at the front down the end where I was standing (I had Monkey in the pram so I could only get to the ends).  Then they decided to do a re-shuffle for some reason... Lion ended up at the back, in the middle, behind some rather tall kids.  I got rare glances of him and managed to get a couple of photos that weren't real good but hey, we got a record of the event.  After the first time through they had to come and get a parent to dance with them.  Unfortunately with Monkey in the pram (against his wishes) and Wolf at work, I couldn't be the one to go and dance with him.  He had taught Dragon some of the moves so I encouraged (bribed with an extra cupcake) Dragon to go and dance with him.  You can imaging how much of that I saw with all the parents of the kids in the front two rows dancing in front of my tiny little boys.  Oh well, I was proud of both of them for getting up there... even if I couldn't see most of it.

We went down to The Strand Ephemera to check out some of the artwork on the day before Father's Day.  The kids had a ball but I was suffering with sinus headaches from a horrid sinus infection that just wont go away.  Some of the art was good... some was just really really poor.  These are two pieces that the kids particularly enjoyed.

Last week (1st week of school holidays) Wolf had the Tuesday off so we took of up the the beach hut for the day with Grannysaurus and Cheetah.  We played in the sand, swam in the ocean, boogy boarded, went to Frosty Mango (Aunty Chimera and Little Bear joined us for that)... we had a generally awesome time.  Not many photos were taken because the photographer was having too much fun!  Mum did grab a few on my camera while I was in the ocean though.

I was so proud of my kids... and Cheetah.  We'll start at the oldest...  Cheetah had never ridden a boogy board before and was struggling to catch a wave.  Even after I explained when to push off.  I had a thought... I don't use the top of the wave to tell when to jump, I use the feeling around my ankles of the water rushing back out to sea as well as the look of the wave...  As the next lot of "big" waves were starting to roll in I quickly explained how waves work and at which point in the waves life you need to push off and all of a sudden he was riding like a pro!

Lion was dumped wave after wave.  He saw a particularly big wave coming and got a gleam in his eye... He caught it and it took him two metres and dumped him.  HARD.  His little head popped up from under the water, he spat mouthfuls of sand and sea water out and looked at me.  I thought he might be about to cry... his little voice spoke up... "that. was. AWESOME".  He grabbed his hat, wrung the water out of it, put it back on his head and took of to find his next wave.

Dragon is usually a one wave boy.  He gets dumped once and that's it.  He's sitting in the shallows and wont try again.  He was dumped over and over and over and he just kept going back for more.

Monkey is also a stick to what he knows kinda kid.  Especially in the ocean.  He got out there and was riding the boards with no one holding on to him (much to mummy's horror), he was jumping waves and pretending to fall over... he had a blast!

So there's a little of what we have been up to.  There's still so much more to share... but not today.  I hope there are still people reading this little old blog... it'd be a shame if there was no one to win the fantastic prize I'll have to give away soon!