Boobies and Fleas

The latest Creation magazine has a picture of a Booby on the cover... the bird, not the um... well, anyway you can imagine the breakfast table conversation we had this morning... Booby traps, boobies with feet (the bird on the cover has blue feet), baby boobies (there were some booby chicks in the picture) it was enlightening and re-enforced for me that this is a testosterone-centric household. I am the only princess here and although that has it's perks it also means that sometimes my presence is forgotten about when they get a bit too carried away with themselves.

It makes my heart happy when I hear my kids chastising each other. Not over everything, that just gets on my goat, it's when I hear "No, Dragon, be gentle, Mummy is precious" or "Lion, careful with my Mummy, she not tough for that" that I realise my kids may leave sharp, pointy toys right where my feet hit the floor when I get out of bed but they really do want to try to look after me. I often wonder if they are trying to kill me though with the toys beside my bed. Their favourites seem to be things with wheels that will scoot out from under my feet when I stand on them, sharp objects, large, unbalanced objects so there is no way to get a sure footing on the ground. But in spite of all those times they do want to keep me safe, at least from each other.

We are having a bit of a flea problem at the moment. We don't even own a pet of any description, well, no real ones. Perhaps Huddy has imaginary fleas or bird mites or something but i never see him scratching so I'll just assume he's fine. The fleas are from our noisy neighbours cats. We only have 1 direct neighbour, they are great. They have a beautiful dog who is so well behaved and clean and quiet and stays out of trouble but then across the street there is a family that is kinda noisy... when they were little their kids thought our unfenced front yard was a great place to play, it's the biggest open lawn area on the street so why not? well, because they then would either try to climb our drain pipes when their stuff went on our roof or they would time their noisiest play with when I finally got my baby that never slept to close his eyes and sleep for the first time in 48 hours. Yeah, fun times.

So they had a couple of cats back then... who bred and bred and now it's like a cat lady situation only it's a whole family and not one lady... they like to poop in our sandpit (now we're talking about the cats, not the family), sleep ON our plants, pee on our plants, they killed our Kaffir Lime somehow, it was left with us by our friends when they left town and one of the cats moved in and killed it, "count to ten....". They like to lie at the bottom of our driveway or under the wheels of the cars if they are on the driveway waiting for us to drive over them and squish them, that'll encourage good neighbourly bonding wont it "1, 2, 3, 4..." they stand in the middle of the road playing chicken with us until we come to a complete stop to wait for them to move (although I think they learned this from their human owners) "5, 6, 7..." they freak out my children by jumping on our screens in the middle of the night and looking through their bedroom window and shredding the mesh on the screen "8, 9, 10..." and now they have given us fleas "NOT HAPPY JAN".

One of the cats seems to be pregnant too... fun, real fun.

I'm not a real fan of cats. I have made allowances for a few cats in my time. Wolf's geriatric old cat that he neglected to tell me about when we went down for me to meet his parents when we were dating. He had told me about the other cat so I was prepared for one cat but he wasn't sure if this one was still alive so he hadn't informed me that I would be competing for his love with a protective feline. I could handle competing with Dragon of the Half-Dozen for his uncles affection, he was such a cute little kid and I was trying to get in good with the family and I could understand his view point that his Uncle Wolf had abandoned him and then come back with this chick in tow and how dare she think she had any claim to his Uncle Wolf. The cat... was not so cute and was rather more passive aggressive. I am allergic to cats a bit so I was told to keep the door closed to the room I was in so that the cat couldn't sleep on the bed. It still managed. I am sure it was thinking "I'll send her into anaphylaxis, that'll get rid of her for sure" (okay, I'm not THAT allergic, I'm taking some artistic licence here). Then when that didn't work it decided to just come in in the middle of the night and sleep on my face. Yeah, that went down well, "okay, anaphylaxis didn't work, I'll just smother her to death". I didn't back down though so it ramped it up... I did say that this was a geriatric old cat... no longer taking as good care of itself as it once had... I woke up the next time with it "taking a photo" of me real close up with it's not so clean nether regions. Wolfs mum did keep the cat quite clean, it was in no way neglected and I do not at all envy her the job she had but it's impossible for anyone to keep up with the toilet needs of a geriatric feline, so on this particular occasion it was well, unpleasant. My first instinct was to fling it across the room and dunk my head in disinfectant but I instead gently pushed it off, informed him that I was not going anywhere and he'd better get used to the fact that I was taking his Wolf back home with me so please cease and desist with the passive aggressive behaviour. And then I went and washed my face. So see, I do make allowance for "special" cats. The neighbours cats are not at all special. I want them off my screens, out of our sandpit, away from my cars. I do not like them.

I have had my rant, I'll leave it at that. But if you happen to know any secret recipes for stirfry cat ridding a house of fleas I'd love to hear them.

so much going on...

There is so much going on around here that I feel like I need to blog in bullet point a few times a day to share all the funny quips, cheeky attitudes, trials and triumphs we go through in one day. I know how much I wish we could spend more time with the half-dozen and hear first hand the Teddyisms and Possum's classics and even just the everydayness of their lives so I am hoping that they love to hear about the everydayness of our lives along with the little gems that pop up. That is after all one of the reasons this blog was started. Ah, family, living 2182.85 Klm from them has advantages (this is where Mum-me is holding her breath to hear what I say...) it's hard to get sick of family that lives that far away. But living closer would have it's advantages too. Mum-me and HB might let us corrupt babysit the half-doz occasionally so they could get out without paying a babysitter. Lion and Dragon would learn a whole new lot of boy stuff from Cousin Dragon that they didn't previously know. The half-doz might actually get birthday presents from their slacker aunty and uncle if we went round for birthday dinners and stuff. You know, those sorta things.


Anyway, all that to say that by the time I get a computer in my hands at night I have forgotten half all of what has happened in the day. So tonight I offer you a list, in no particular order...

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

• Hearing my kids singing all the right words to "Modern Major General"
• Well almost right except the "Vegietale, animal and mineral" line, that one cracks me up!
• Echidnas roaming my house.
• Hearing my kids compassion coming out in unexpected ways like this morning my imaginary cat that they rescued from an imaginary tree had the same problem as cousin Wilbie so they operated. Lion had trouble remembering all the lingo for the operation but they "put it to sleep" (aren't you glad they didn't do that with little Wilbie, Aunty Wilbie?) so it wouldn't feel it then they needed to "drill some holes in it" and they fixed it but it was very sore and needed lots of cuddles from them "just like Cousin Wilbie".
• Seeing Dragon be so darn sweet and caring towards Baby "Ecin"
• My kicking baby makes me very happy.
• Finding new flavours of TimTams.
• My friends birthdays!
• Sunsets.
• Finding photos on my camera that Lion has taken without me knowing. Seeing the world through his eyes is so much fun.

Yep, that's what the backyard looks like through the screen door.

And that's what Dragon looks like while he is still napping.

And that would be one of our dining chairs.

And that's my bunch of flowers I bought myself.

• My nice clean wall.
• Knowing that my kids artwork is all safely filed away where they can't destroy it more than they have in the time it has been hanging on the wall.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAD

• The last bowl of the 5litres of pea and ham soup I made.
• Thinking of Lion going to school next year.
• Thinking about babies that are in heaven instead of the arms of my friends. Babies that we were waiting to cuddle that never took a breath. This week marks 2 1/2 years for 2 of them, 2 years for another and days for another.
• My boys crying in their sleep and I cant seem to comfort them.
• Sore butt bones from washing the bottom of the wall while sitting on a wooden kids chair. I think I need more padding on my posterior.
• Not seeing my kids artwork (3+ years of it) up on the great big wall. (*see photo above* the one of a kind original artwork by a very talented and incredibly good-looking artist print in each of those big black frames is 16x20in, just to give you an idea of how big the wall is and how sore my butt must be)
• Using 5 magic erasers and still being able to see gecko skid marks on the wall. They got the pen off the wall, the pen that if you get it on yourself you have to wait for that skin to wear off because you can't wash it off, but the gecko poo left a stain impervious to magic eraser.

Two gems that don't fit on the list...

Lion and Dragon both ate their crusts at lunch today. I don't force crust eating, I refuse to tell my kids that it'll make their hair curly or it'll make them strong. I figure there is no added nutritional value in the bread crusts it's just a matter of wastage. I don't like to waste food but I also don't like fighting over trivial things. I usually offer to them "are you going to eat your crusts?" when they say they are finished and if they say no then that's fine. Lion started eating his today and told me that his friend at kindy told him that crusts are good for him so he was going to eat them. Low and behold, monkey see, monkey do, Dragon ate his crusts too! Can this same friend tell them that he should eat every vegetable mummy puts on his plate???

There is an ad campaign "cheeky checkup" that promotes different methods of breast self-examination. The one I saw today was "the carwash" it suggested going to a carwash, waiting till it starts and doing what you need to do. I'm not sure what carwashes they have used but I reckon you'd get some pretty weird looks from the people waiting at the traffic lights right outside the one that we go to if you tried it there!

Peach Blossom McTavish

Some questions answered...

We have a due date of September 6 but since I can't seem to get babies out the conventional way as Lion says "we will chop mummy open and the doctor will pull the baby out". That will be probably 2 weeks early if Dr "Geoff Jansz" goes to his usual program. Although he may let me go longer since I don't have to fit in with his annual conference he attends the last week of October this time :)

This was absolutely a planned baby! We are very excited!! We will find out what we are having but we will only tell close family (when you know the exact time the baby is coming you have to keep something a surprise for your adoring public). We don't have real good odds to get a girl though. I probably wouldn't know what to do with a girl now! We'll take what we are given and will be just as excited with either. We will not just keep trying until we get a girl, that's just crazy talk.

We have chosen the name Peach Blossom to keep with the flower names that our kids have until they are born. It started with Lion, I was pregnant but we weren't telling anyone but parents and brothers and sisters. Chimera put the question to Cheetah that if Aunty McTavish had a baby what should she call it? Flower. But what if it's a boy? Yeah, Flower! (he was 4) So Flower stuck. (Although I seem to remember the Aussie Half-Dozen calling him Lizard after they found out he would be a boy, thanks Dragon for being so excited about a boy cousin!) Our Dragon was called Gumnut until he was born after May Gibbs Gumnut Babies, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

This time it's Peach Blossom. Unless you are Lion, then it's Spiker and to Dragon it's just Bubby. That sometimes comes out Blubby so I was a little offended when he kept tapping my tummy saying "Blubby, Blubby, Blubby" It's easy to get offended when there's hormones going crazy.

I'm pretty much the same as any other pregnant chick.

I am not keeping real well but it's nothing I can't handle, constant morning all day sickness combined with my tummy bug I had a few weeks ago and then the cold and then the cough keeping me slow moving and close to home. But you just have to keep doing some stuff. I know that I get worse in the afternoons so I am doing stuff in the mornings if I can. I'm used to it now, and I know not to listen to anyone that tells me about the magic 12 week mark where all of a sudden your sickness goes. Then when that doesn't happen it's 18 weeks then when you are still crook all the time you get "well at least you aren't on bed rest". I am having ginger this and ginger that and wearing my seabands when I can, it all helps and at least I'm not greeting the toilet bowl each morning.

I have a smell up my nose constantly. Not so strange except that I have no sense of smell any other time. I wake up randomly during the night smelling poo, raw red meat, rotting grass, just random gross smells. I have had to change to liquid soap in the bathroom because I figured out that was part of my smell problem. It smells nice usually, it's just yuck at the moment.

I am pregnant so all the yuckness is just part of it and I'll survive.

The boys are a bit of a mixed bag the way they are reacting. Dragon seems most excited but also has decided that he wants to be a baby all the time. There is also that whole shower thing. I had seen the book that was recommended "There's a house inside my mummy" in a bookshop and looked for it at the library along with another book that looked good (I can't remember it's title). Thing is when I used the computers at the library to search for it they gave me some random place to look and I couldn't even find that section. I got home and used their internet search and found that it's in a special parents resources section that I have never seen before. So now I need to go back. Lion is just getting on with life.

So Jennifer from The Miles Family Adventures guessed our news first (well Chimera actually did but she really knew already so she got a different treat) so Jennifer will be getting a special treat soon.

I have my first OB appointment next Tuesday. I got a gentle lecture from the receptionist about leaving it so late to make the appointment since I should have been to see him about week 10. We're not all that rich so I figured the longer I can put it off I might save one or two appointment fees over the course of the pregnancy.

WIN WIN WIN

I've been having a browse over the last few weeks at Heavenly HomeMakers that I found through Our Aussie Half-dozen and thanks to Mum-me for pointing out that there is a competition to win her two new ebooks! YAY! Go here to win them.

http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/blog/giveaway-time-two-new-healthy-recipe-e-books

Anyone for a competition?

It has been mentioned by some it seems to be a bit of a competition between Our Aussie Half-Dozen and Samster.com. In the interest of fostering healthy good hearted rivalry we offer last night's effort from Lion in response to Sleepy Teddy

Yes that is "the mattress" under our bed where it should have been all along. The yellow thing next to Lion is Jeremy Giraffe, his current favourite bed time companion. Jeremy usually sleeps on Lion's back, there obviously wasn't enough room for that. Lion has taken to sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our room lately. He has done this before but it's been for a few nights and he has gone back to his own bed. This time he wasn't going by himself so we dropped a hint by removing the fold out mattress and all the bedding. He didn't get the hint. He came in and found the only mattress on the floor and got on it as best he could. There was just enough gap for his 3 year old body to fit between the mattress and the underneath of our bed.


He is good at weird and wonderful sleeping positions. Jeremy is able to be seen better in these photos.