Showing posts with label skateboard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skateboard. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 September 2010

Sunday Snapshot of Randomness

Another little snapshot of our week... and a video from the week before because I haven't put it up here yet.

Dragon has been telling me for days that he has a cough but is only ever coughing to punctuate his desire for cough medicine.  I've gotta say, our cough medicine tastes good, I can't really blame him for wanting some.  So, judge me if you want, I spun him a story...

Mummy: "Are you sure you want cough medicine?"
Dragon: "Yes *cough* I have a cough *cough* I need some of my cough medicine *cough*".
Mummy: "I don't think you do have a cough."
Dragon: "*cough cough* I DO have a cough *cough*"
Mummy: "Well, just be warned, cough medicine tastes really bad if you aren't really sick.
Dragon: "I am *cough* sick *cough cough*"
Mummy: "Okay".  Goes and pours a couple of mls of straight lime juice into a medicine cup and heads back to Dragon.  Making sure he's standing on the tiles just in case we need a clean up she hands him the cup.
Dragon: Takes a big swig of 'cough medicine' and puckers his face up from both the surprise and the taste.
Mummy: "How did that taste?"
Dragon: "not very good" and defeated he goes back to playing without coughing... kinda like he's been doing all morning other than while he'd been asking for cough medicine.

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Lion read a book for himself today.  ALL BY HIMSELF.  Actually, he read FIVE books ALL BY HIMSELF.  I cried.  Because I'm a big fat sook. I have been trying to convince him that he can read, he has all the skills he needs he just needs to sit down and really give it a go.  This week I caught him sounding out words on EVERYTHING he could get his hands on so I pounced.  I praised and I encouraged and I praised some more.  I couldn't find any books that we had that were written completely in words he could read but I got him to read as many words as he could but he still didn't get it that with the right book he would be able to read it ALL BY HIMSELF.  Today he found one of our boxes of Reading Eggs books and asked if he could read them since he wasn't able to play Reading Eggs on the computer.  Seemed like a good idea to me.  I thought all the books were made up of one word to each page along with a picture so he really could tell by the picture and that everything in the book started with the same letter so really not that challenging but confidence building none the less.  Next thing I know I am hearing "I am Sam, Sam p-a-t-s, PATS a cat"... what the???  there are short story books in the pack and he has picked one out to read.  He read all four of the stories to me and one of the alphabet books.  WOW.  He was so pleased with himself.  I was pretty darn pleased with him.  So now, just like I thought he would... My boy LOVES reading.

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We often find wildlife in our house.  Spiders are not at all  uncommon, Geckos are thriving around here and frogs are an all too familiar pest.  It used to be just little ones but something wasn't sealed properly when we got the aircons put in 15 months ago and now we regularly get large green tree frogs in the house.  These are TWO that Wolf caught the other night.  He wanted to take a photo with my phone so he brought them into our bedroom and held them over my head while he took this photo.  Thankfully I slept through the entire thing, I must have been tired because usually I wake up to their plop-plop-plop through the house and I'm the one that goes to hunt them down.



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Lion had his school production on Wednesday and Thursday this week.  He did GREAT!  He had a small speaking part as the dad in their pet shop play and had lots of fun but was so incredibly worn out by the end of their four performance "season".  I was glad they did it in the last week of school for this term so they told the kids from the production to have the last day off if they wanted (I'd say it was the teachers idea for a quiet day) and now they can have a chill for two weeks to recover from their very hectic schedule.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of the performance and weren't allowed back stage so I have nothing to show you.  I am hoping someone took some photos for us proud mums and dads!  If they didn't then next time they do a production I might offer my skills as a photographer and take some photos that can be used as an extra fundraising avenue to cover the cost of their performance space etc.  I know there were a lot of people who assumed that because we weren't told otherwise before hand that photos would be fine.


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Now, for this weeks wowness... Our little Monkey has taken to skateboarding like a fish to water.  This was his first or second time on daddy's longboard and he was right into it.  He now wears shoes when he goes on it though.  He wasn't wearing any this day because we didn't think his little feet would need any protection because the plan was that he would stay on the grass and watch... not Monkey, he's in on all the action!


A day or two after this, we were standing chatting with a neighbour on the grass with Monkey sitting next to the board on the grass.  No one saw him do it but he managed to get on and pushed the board over to the sloped driveway and we looked up to see him push off and kneel (like in the video) on the board as he rode it down to the road.  Wolf caught him before he came to any problems and I sent Aunty Chimera a message to ask if we could have the baby helmet back now that Little Bear doesn't fit it anymore.

Sunday, 22 August 2010

Sunday Snapshot

So, I'm thinking of writing a book... I would call it Brown Bath Bubbles.

Would it be...

a) A guide to teaching alliteration to boys.
b) Practical science for boys (you should "pop" in the bath because it will smell worse thanks to the water stopping the noxious fumes from dissipating until the bubbles burst on the surface... closer to your brothers nose).
c) A self help guide for mums of boys... encompassing such riveting topics as ways to avoid the bath time ritual with your sons, teaching your son alliteration and explaining dissipation to boys.

Perhaps we should re-name this blog... Brown Bath Bubbles... it has a nice ring to it... like the ring in our bathtub.


Now, someone who does not need the joy of a well timed gas release explained to him is this soon to be one year old.


He's DESPERATE to get the hang of this skateboarding thing like his big brothers... well, they don't actually have the hang of it but they like to think they do.  For now he has to be content with cruising down the sloped driveway out onto the road with Daddy on the long board.


He is getting the hang of this walking thing too...


He has been cruising up and down Grannysaurus' hallway with this little trolley.  It looks so cute watching him trundle along.  I happen to think he is cutest from this angle though...


with his little legs kicking out to the side as he waddles along.  He has taken a few steps wihtout the trolley too!  Just a short jaunt here and there... but his first steps (yes, he started with THREE) happened when Dragon did his annoying big brother thing and just lay down in front of him like this...


Monkey stood up, annoyed, but was too far away to carry out his plan... so he took three steps forwards to be close enough to crash tackle Dragon!

Monkey, Dragon and I went over to visit our sweet little girl my brother's sweet little girl again... and we took a better camera!



Ahhh, all that girliness...


All the pink stuff that goes with girls...


So sweet...

So glad I have boys...


Okay, so this boy does like feathery masks but at least he's not wanting me to make room amongst the Tonka trucks and army men for unicorns and rainbows.  He's quite at home sliding around on the road with his belly on a skateboard...


But he should watch out where he's headed because I thought I was going to get a photo of Daddy knocking Dragon's front teeth out!  (in the end they didn't connect at all!)

Just yesterday we had a federal election here in Australia.  Dragon got a little confused.  He asked us on Saturday morning... "are you going on a boat today?" ... life can get a bit confusing when you can't say "V".  In the end he went to visit Great Grandma with Grandad and didn't get to come and vote with us.  He was a bit disappointed that he missed out on seeing mummy and daddy on a boat.  I don't know if he thought it would be cool or if he was hoping to get rid of us.  Out of our family, the election hype had the biggest effect on him... The other day he yelled excitedly from the backseat of the car "I see the guv-a-mint, I see the guv-a-mint!" after questioning I realised he had seen the roadside propaganda and recognised their faces from all the TV hype.  At first I was really proud that he knew what the old council chambers were as that is around about where we were at the time... but he set me straight on that one. "Not a buildin' mum, the GUV-A-MINT".

As well as not sending us on a boat, Dragon was sad this week when he found out that he can't be in Lion's school play.  I was cutting out some masks for the kids and Dragon decided he would like to wear one in the play.  I tried to let him down gently with the whole "being in the audience is a very important thing to do because if there wasn't an audience they wouldn't have anyone to perform for and the play wouldn't work" line... he wasn't buying it.

Lion got some new knee and elbow pads... except that he can't bend his knees or elbows very well while he's wearing them so it kind of makes the whole experience a little MORE dangerous.  I asked him to pose with his skateboard for me...


I don't know where he got that from.  But I had to get a photo... even with Dragon flying through the frame.

Sunday, 30 May 2010

SK8

Part of Wolf's 40th birthday excitement was the loan of a longboard from the skate shop around the corner from his work.  The owner of this shop hates me.  He gave Lion a skateboard (and helmet, thankfully) for his second Christmas when Lion was only 15 months old... yes, a 15 month old with a skateboard!  Anyway, Lion has my co-ordination gene so the whole concept of balancing on the board is a little challenging for him, hence he has a lot of spills.  Dragon is still not prepared to stand on a skateboard yet so he has less spills but he is also getting to be a bit of a daredevil on his scooter.  I have already posted one photo of Wolf riding the board but here are some of my other two big boys from that afternoon...

boys = skinned knees


About to stack.
From memory he caught himself before the ground caught him.



He did not want to pose for this one, Daddy was just out of frame to reassure the nervous Dragon.



More than happy to pose for this one with his tough-guy look.

Just ignore the fact that he's also fixing up his hungry-bum.

These were going to be a part of a Super Sized Sunday Snapshot... Then Lion and Dragon puked their guts up all over the place.  We had DC and L over for dinner and had just got the kids into bed... I am pretty sure Dragon's isn't a stomach bug but was more of a sympathetic puke... Lion has continued to try for gold in the vomitolympics.

I think I jinxed myself.  I cleaned out under the laundry sink 2 weeks ago and found 2 almost full bottles of disinfectant, nearly 4 litres all up, and joked that at least I was ready for the next vomitageddon... looks like it's happening... never say the "V" word.  So, I have pulled all the towels that I was going to wash tomorrow out of the basket ready for clean up duty, I have a stash of chuck-buckets piled beside the boys door and one next to each of their beds, so as one is used it can get rinsed and left in the bath tub to be dealt with in the morning.  Now all I have to do is get some extra bedding ready to go and then I can go to bed and pray that all the preparation was unnecessary.  I hate puke.