Two Lego Reviews - Boys VLOG

Lion decided he wanted to do a Lego review on his new Lego set.  I filmed it on my iPad, and once it was done Dragon decided he wanted to do one as well.  I filmed one on the iPad but didn't upload it.  About a week later Dragon wanted to try again, so this time we tried setting things up a little better and used a proper video camera.  He was pleased with the results.

-Enjoy, Wolf McT.

Video 1: Lions Lego Review - Chima Raven Set.

Video 2: Lego Frog Rush Game Review.

Collected Twits

Lion was after a Jedi name, so I  was looking through my Twitter as I had won a prize for one I made up.  While doing this I revisited a lot of old tweets about my son's exploits over the years and wanted to collect them in one place.  With twitters 144 word limit communicating an idea becomes a discipline, one which I have not mastered to well.   Here they are in historical order, with some explanatory notes.


One of my first tweets appeared on 5 Dec 09, which was:

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind

Apparently this was too cryptic so I followed up with:

Exploding bums and projectile vomit. When raising 3 little boys there's never a dull moment. Thankfully the wife cleaned up most of it.

Lego for Christmas, 28 Dec 2009

"Some men will build, others will delight to destroy those things" must be my sons motto as soon as i finished his lego model he 'exploded' it

The Airplane family, 27 Jan 2010, Lion 5 years old

My son (Lion) has told me that we are an airplane family today.

Which meant we had to talk in airplane.  "Tchk, I love you Daddy, roger, over Tchk".  "Brummm"

Bong goes my day, 28 Jan 2010, Dragon 3 years old

Met family for lunch, asked son what he did today his response... Bong!

Happy Valentines day, 14 Feb 2010, Lion (5), Dragon (3)

Never thought I'd be telling my boys "Don't pull apart the furniture" A new era dawns for me.

I came home to these two trying to remove the fabric off the arm of our couch with plastic tools.

Dragon Swimmer, 27 Mar 2010, Dragon (3)

My son (Dragon) is swimming and giving me some classic lines: the water is up to my monkey! Dragon swimmer super hero to the rescue!

He was wearing a monkey t-shirt at the time, and was so proud that he was in deep enough that the monkey was getting wet.

Hammer time, 25 Apr  2010, Dragon (3), Monkey (6 months)

I just told my son not to hit his baby brother with anything.  His reply But Dad it's only a hammer.

A inflatable hammer, but still...

Punching the air, 2 May 2010, Lion (5)

Classic line by my oldest son (Lion) tonight:  If I have a nightmare tonight I will punch it...

Lion no longer talks this way, it is normally Dragon who has decided that punching is the answer to every problem.

Swedish Chicken, 13 May 2010, Dragon (3)

My 3 yo son is flapping his arms saying Bok bok bjork...  He says he's the Swedish chief. Sounds more like a swedish chicken to me.

He was in the middle of a Muppet marathon that day. We have the DVD of the first season, and the boys love it.

Strange Motivations, 16 Jun  2010, Lion (5)

I find it surreal that the threat of 'not going to school' is the biggest motivator for my oldest son

Even now, he is motivated with if you don't XYZ, you may not be going to school.  With me I would have thought 'Yay, XYZ are not going to happen then.'  With Lion, XYZ are done in a flash. 

Can you speak Mon Calamari too? 3 Sep  2010, Lion (5)

having an interesting week, as oldest son has decided to talk in 'octopus'. I'm not fluent in octopus so blub blub blurble dont make sense

Even his school teacher had to take Mummy to one side and say 'Now normally we like to encourage creativity, but speaking Octopus the whole day is very distracting to rest of the class."

Christmas on Mars. 11 Sep 2010, Lion (5), Dragon (3)

explaining how far away Mars is to my sons told them if we left now we would be there for Christmas. Now my sons are convinced we are spending Christmas on Mars

Two tweets in one day.  It was very dissapointing for them to realise that we would not be going to Mars anytime soon.  Some nights, they still gaze up at the stars (normally Venus) and say "I wish we could have gone to Mars."

True Story. 29 Sep 2010, Lion (5), Dragon (3)

sons are cranky with me because they believe I am withholding critical information in regards to their time machine.  "Dad it has to work!"

Too much Calvin and Hobbs and Star Trek I think.  They had a cardboard box and an old radio I let them pull apart and were getting frustrated that I kept feigning ignorance on the inner workings of a time machine.  How do I tell them that robots from the future would come back in time and try to kill us if I allowed them to create one?  Because I know one of them is going to create a killer robot soon, no point in giving it a time machine as well.

More to come....

Butterfly at 8 Months Old

I am now 8 months old (back on the 4th March). I love to do my own thing exploring all the stuff I am not supposed to get into. My teeth are so very close but STILL not getting through. I can crawl pretty fast now, and I pull myself up on EVERYTHING. I like to be the centre of attention and if I think you should be looking at me and you aren't then I will let you know!

"Am I doing this right?"

She was tired and didn't feel like sitting up by herself and kept trying to lean back and get comfy. I didn't have my usual assistant (Dragon) and had to use Monkey... which didn't work out very well.

♥♥♥

I was trying to get a photo of the rose hair clip I had made her but she couldn't take those sweet eyes off me.
♥♥♥

"MY BLING!"

When she wasn't going to cooperate I gave her my necklace to try to distract her from climbing/falling off the seat. It worked, but I couldn't get her to keep it out of her mouth for more than a few seconds!

I love her chubby little hands.

Since when does the tooth fairy need a warrior army?

In Greek mythology sowing Dragon's teeth would yield a harvest of ferocious armed warriors. I hope our Tooth Fairy is careful what she does with this tooth then, I'm not sure she needs or wants a ferocious army... or even just a single warrior.

Dragon lost his first tooth on Monday morning, he was doing what he does for most of the morning on school days, talking while carrying his shoes around in his hands. Half way through his sentence he stops, stunned, spits something out and exclaims "Hey, my tooth just came out while I was talking!"

So we got excited, took photos, put the tooth in a safe place for the Tooth Fairy and got his shoes on him in time to get him to school on time! Now lets just hope he doesn't think talking non-stop is the best way to get a wiggly tooth out because he came home that afternoon to inform us the next one is wiggly.  That night the Tooth Fairy hauled a nice shiny $2 coin in to replace the little tooth, a lovely swap for a first lost tooth. His "older and wiser" brother was swift in reminding him that there is a sharp decline in the exchange rate after the first tooth is handed over. Dragon was cool with that, he was just happy to now be part of the tooth losing crowd.

You Give Me Fever...

Scarlet fever, not quite what the original artists had in mind when they wrote the song. Two weeks before school started back for the year we had the two big ones knocked out with Scarlet Fever. It was the first week of Wolf's holidays and we were quarantined. This was our big week, the week we had planned to do adventuring every day, maybe an overnight at the beach hut with a trip out to Mt Fox. To say I was upset was an understatement. I was cranky, frustrated, upset, annoyed... I'll stop short of pulling out my thesaurus.

This was our first chance since Butterfly was born where we had Wolf and the boys off school and work at the same time. I was sooooo looking forward to this, so were the kids. Wolf's usual lack of enthusiasm for anything that might be considered "social" or "adventure" was being ignored and we were going to go and make some fantastic memories and he was going to have fun once he was out there... I knew he was!

I may sound a little callous, my kids were kinda quite sick, after all. But they weren't acting it. Knowing that physically they were still up for all this stuff and within 24 hours of the antibiotics we were seeing improvements in their physical symptoms, but we were still on a 5 day quarantine and I would NEVER willingly put other people in danger. I knew that for my normally healthy kids with no other problems that scarlet fever is pretty much a non-event if caught quickly but for others it could easily be life threatening. There are so many other health issues that can cause dangerous complications so I was not going to break our quarantine, at home we stayed. Slowly but surely the state of the house and our moods went down hill.

One of our precious friends delivered us a meal one afternoon, along with it she brought some chocolates and treats for the kids and a book that made me cry and a gingerbread house kit! She had bought it on a whim when she saw it on sale post-Christmas and hoped that it would fill in some of our house-bound time. Well, wouldn't you know it, the boys reminded me I had completely forgotten that in our pre-Christmas craziness I had purchased a gingerbread house kit and it was still sitting somewhere in it's box. The weeks before Christmas were a little crazy... I cannot even remember why, I think the baby was sick, or I was... or someone was, we've had a lot of sickness lately.

So one afternoon we sat and we decorated. Lion and Dragon took one house and Monkey and I took the other. It was fantastic! I remember buying the house thinking "Boy, I'm going to regret this!" and "This is going to end in fights and arguments and this is such a mistake." DID NOT HAPPEN. Partly, I am sure, because we had two kits but mostly it was just good kid-friendly fun. So, without further prattling on, here are the photos...

Monkey turns into such a ham sometimes, it's rare for others to get to see it or for me to catch it on camera so I LOVE this photo. Monkey and I decorated this masterpiece.

These adorable boys melt my heart. They decorated this incredible masterpiece. I piped the loops on the roof shingles, they did the rest of the piping and decorating, I was amazed at how well they handled the piping bag and how they carefully selected each decoration using the box for inspiration then adding their own touches.

Monkeys and mine on the left, Lion and Dragon's on the right. 

This wall and roof section was all I was allowed to design, Monkey is quite the artistic director. From what I have heard from photographers he has a career in food styling ahead of him if he keeps his opinionated ways.

This was a gingerbread man. Monkey kept calling him his dude. "I am going to eat my dude first".

The boys were all better soon and we planned to move as many of our activities to the next week... but it poured down all week. Like flooding type rain, not the sort of thing you can brush off and go out anyway.  Oh well, we'll just do them all when it's cooler later in the year, I wasn't looking forward to the sweltering heat anyway. Lion did have a reoccurrence (or something similar) in the first week of school that required some stronger antibiotics to make sure we knocked it out but they are the picture of health now.

Butterfly Beauty

It's been a while and I need to make sure the In-Laws are seeing photos of this precious princess.  She's growing at a great rate now and is at that fantastic stage where everything is JUST-SO-EXCITING! Her hands do what she wants them to (mostly) and she can get around pretty well, the world is her dinner plate. So, here are Butterfly's seven month old milestone photos.

I'm seven months old now (Well, I was 11 days ago but Mummy was sick so we missed it). I'm incredibly cheeky and love to giggle at my silly brother Dragon. I am developing a taste for pretty things, I love to eat them! I can caterpillar crawl, sit up and eat everything in sight. I am on formula and getting more chunkalicious by the day. My teeth are STILL just under the surface but are not causing me many problems. My favourite two tricks are acting shy to get attention and seeing what things look like when I turn my head on the side.

Her outfit today was very special. The dress is a beautiful hand-me-down from "House of Hannah" and the bow is from the fabulous pinkberrykisses and they just happen to match perfectly!

She was actually in the mood for photos today, so we got more than one good one :-) Dragon was my usual baby wrangler extrordinaire, but she goes all serious (confusion maybe?) before she starts to laugh and smile at him, I am glad I got a photo of it.

♥♥♥♥♥ Last one, just because she's so stinkin' cute ♥♥♥♥♥

Reindeer and your eternal salvation...

So we know that they all know The Boar's Head Carol and Feliz Navidad around here but another tune that always gets some time in the spotlight as Christmas approaches is "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" (YouTube link here).  Today my little Monkey was singing it for me.  His version saw both Grandma and Grandad get taken out by the wayward Caribou.  His version also had an interesting ending for a 3 year old singing a Christmas song.

Grandma and Grandad got run over by a reindeeeeer

And they got kiiiiiiilled
But God gave them new bodieeeeeees in heaven
And new hands and new fingeeeeeers

Wolf was, of course, thankful that we will also be getting new hands and fingers to go with our new bodies when we get to heaven.  I was just thinking that it might be time to cash in that therapy fund for this kid.