Beach Baby

We’re all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or two... except for Wolf... and it was only for a day... and not really much of a holiday, just a few hours away from regular life... eh, scratch the song, it’s just not going to work for this post.

I took off up to our family beach hut for the day yesterday with the boys, Grannysaurus, Grandad and Great Grandma. We popped in to visit family friends who live in the area for morning tea and then headed to the beach hut for the rest of the day. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of the big boys because I took all those ones on Mums camera. I do have a few of a certain little Monkey’s first trip to the beach! Lion and Dragon were both at our beach hut before they were two weeks old so this is quite a wait for little Monkey... and I think he liked it.

This beach is wonderful, it has just the right mix of everything you need and no one to share it with! While the grandies and the kiddies had a nap/rest during the heat of the day I headed down the road a bit to take Monkey to visit Aunty Em who was having a holiday with ALL her family nearby... and we may have stayed a bit longer than we intended since it was stinkin’ hot and their cabins were air-conditioned.

When it did get cool/shady enough to go down to the beach Monkey and I spent most of our time in the shade to protect his fresh new non-sunscreen wearing skin and let the grandparents (great grandma had gone home) deal with the big boys.  Dragon and Grandad took a wander down to the point and trialed a nearby playground and Grannysaurus and Lion took on the stinger enclosure.  Now don't think I was shirking all the hard work in this deal... Noooo, Monkey and I worked on his kissy face.

Unfortunately it was hard to get a photo with one hand and keep a hold of Mr Wriggles with the other.  He is really good at it but he has to be in the right mood or it just ain't happening.  Oh, and just in case you can't tell, he's VERY serious about kisses!

Monkey had his first feel of sand between his toes and I think the only reason he like it is because he made it into something close enough to work for mummy to do... he would keep his feet still JUST long enough to let me cover them up then he would kick it off and wait for me to do it again... possibly he just kept freaking out when his feet kept disappearing... who knows.

Most of the time he wanted to be sitting in my lap or carried but he did get his feet wet (photos on mum's camera) and he did have a little lay down on a beach towel just chillin' in the afternoon cool.

Now, just because I can't get enough of those sweet little beach baby toes here's another photo...

 Now I need to plan when we can go back as a whole family for a few days... We are a big family with four generations and one beach hut so if you don't book in early all the good weekends are gone!

Cow-Jumping the Tassie way...

Renata wrote this post which made me reminisce... and laugh but Renata would probably rather I didnt laugh at her pain. It made me remember something about my grandad who passed away in 2005.

My grandad bragged about his cow-jumping skills, we had heard him talk about cow-jumping a few times. It's something that must be seen to be believed. it's not being able to jump over a cow like it sounds, it's being able to make a cow jump, if you've seen a cows legs you'll know they arent designed for jumping. During the holidays between year 11 & 12 he took my sister and I down to Tassie to see where he grew up, meet more of the family and spend some time with him. We spent a bit of time at a dairy farm that his brother ran with his primary school teacher (a lovely woman who told us many stories of our Grandad's antics) one day and we insisted he show us what cow jumping really was... He lay face down near the cows and with cows being inquisitive creatures they slowly came over and all stood around just looking at the weird human laying in their paddock. He jumped up arms flailing, screaming and yelling and wouldnt you know it... THE COWS REALLY JUMPED!!!! Not high but all 4 hoofs off the ground at once. they were desperately trying to get over each other to get away from the crazy man in their field. It was a crazy thing...

I wish I had photos of it but unfortunately I have no idea where they are anymore.

Please dont try this one Renata :)

And I thought it couldn't get any worse

Okay, so after the bare backside in the middle of the video shop episode (I think I'm still living in the 90's, they havent stocked videos for years!) I thought we had dealt with our embarassment for the weekend. Oh how wrong I was.

We decided to go to Bellarmies (Sizzler) for dinner tonight and invite Grandma and Grandad to come. Everything was going nicely, Lion was eating everyone else' prawns...

Dragon was eating everything in sight...and we were generally having a lovely time. Until Lion noticed a man walking past our table, he was not a small man but he had a bit of middle age spread happening, nothing more. Just as he got level with Lion... "That man is FAT!" and not in that nice quiet voice he is know for (oh, who am I kidding, he never uses a nice quiet voice) it was his larger-than-life-everyone-in-a-3Km-radius-can-hear voice. The man ignored him if he did hear (and lets face it, no one missed it) but we got some looks later on from his wife. As I tried diplomatically to explain to Lion that what he said was not appropriate he decided to counter me with (again in his LTLEIA3KRCH voice) "But he is FAT". Mummy was trying not to die of embarassment so she kept a smile plastered on her face and continued on... in the end I decided the longer I kept trying to explain the inappropriateness of his statement the more he was going to keep loudly saying the (other) F word so we resorted to "we'll talk about it later". How do we explain to kids where truth ends and "better to keep your mouth shut" starts????

The Chairs.

Great-Aunty S gave us some new to us chairs for our cubby house and the boys decided that they wanted to sit outside like grandma and grandad. Mummy McT qualifies this... G'ma and G'dad dont sit down at the letterbox, they sit on their patio, it's all the same to a 3 and 1 year old.

Lionism

Been meaning to blog this one for a while, grandies had a trip to Tasmania at christmas and since then we have had a bit of a fascination with Tas. Lion was doing his usual pretend to be something else this day and decided he was "the biggest Stegosaurus you've never seen in Tasmania".

He also informed Grandad and Wolf something along the lines of "you cant fly a plane to tasmania because there's too many devils down there". Well Grandma and Grandad did go on a boat.

Frilled-Neck Lizard

Lion has a new passion… being a frilled-neck lizard. I am guessing it’s a use you had never thought of for a coccyx cushion. He is quite an impressive lizard, he would scare me if I was a predator looking for a nice meal of desert lizard. Grandma helped him look up some video on the web of frilled lizards running, after we very unsuccessfully tried to demonstrate it for him (and aren’t I glad there’s no video of that!!!) and now he can run just like a frilled lizard with it’s back legs flicking out sideways and with front legs dangling. He makes a great frilled lizard noise too, it’s a brilliant hiss with his mouth wide open, the only thing that gives it away that he isn’t a real frilled-neck lizard is that the inside of his mouth isn’t yellow.

Frilled-Neck Lizard Running to scare off a predator.

Displaying his frill to threaten the predator

Displaying his frill and hissing to let us know he means business!

Dragon is wearing no shirt because he is doing a bit of growth spurt eating but then throws up on himself because he doesn’t slow down even with a VERY full tummy. And we have used all the spare shirts at grandma’s house. But he looks so cute standing there with his shoulders back, so I had to take a photo. Grandad decided to make sure all his food was well and truely digested, we hadn't told grandad why Dragon wasnt wearing a shirt...

And while the lizard frill was having a rest they boys tried to break into Aunty J’s car. They didn’t get very far.

Did you know???

That smoke, dust or steam in the air makes the moon change colour? okay, you most likely did but if you are old enough to read this without help then you dont count. I just wanted to brag that Lion now knows about why the moon changes colour. And if you ask him he says it so matter-of-fact that you would never doubt it even though it is coming from the mouth of a three year old. We'll just add that to his adorable little explaination of how a car engine works. Oh he's so intelligent... and i'm not at all biased.

Grandma and Grandad took Lion and his big cousin M up to the beach hut today to see Great grandma. it's an easter tradition, Great grandma goes up there and we all make the pilgrimage to visit for at least a few hours. This year we had mountains of cleaning planned so it was great that the grandies could take lion and we got cracking. Aunty J even took Dragon for a couple of hours so Wolf and Mummy McT could go and have lunch together. YAY! anyway the moon colour conversation came up in the car on the trip back and Lion Proudly informed us on his arrival home how the moon changes colour.

Then we had to decide where to put out the easter baskets... Mummy sort of might have influenced his decision a little. I am guessing that had i not intervened they would have been put in his room or the lounge room so that he can get them first thing in the morning and eat all the eggs before the rest of us even woke up. probably not much chance they would have been put on top of the tall-boy in mummy and daddy's bedroom well out of reach of Lion paws but there they are and he thinks that it was all his decision. As I am a mummy for longer and longer i start to wonder how many of the things i thought were my decision growing up really were my decision...

the bunny is a bit tight this year. thankfully they arent up to comparing their bunny's leavings with other kids bunny's. I dread the thought of all that chocolate in the fridge until i get sick of it and let them eat it all in one go and just put up with them on a sugar high for 24 hours (or more). The bunny decided not to do it this year, they are only getting a couple of pieces each and I have, I hope, given enough hints out that I really hope others do the same. They are getting a box of duplo to share with the money great grandma gave them for easter instead of buying them more chocolate! I was very happy with great grandma!

well, off to bed now. Dont forget in all that chocolate that JESUS IS ALIVE!!!!!