Sunday Sesh

We spent this Sunday afternoon at the park.  My work threw a barbecue by the river, at Kangaroo Point, under the Story Bridge.  Callum loved the jumping castle and spent almost all his time in it, with only a few breaks for drinks and food.  Anya's favorite part was the pile of hula hoops, balls and frisbees.  We had a great time throwing the balls to each other -- she was especially good at throwing the nerf vortex (a whistling football with tailfins).

At one point, Callum said, "Can I do that? Can I do that?" and pointed in what seemed a really random direction until I realised that he was pointing out one of my coworkers spraying colour on a girl's hair.  So we went over and sprayed gold on Callum's head.  Then we sprayed silver glitter on Anya's hair, and red streaks in my hair.  (It felt weird, but I thought it actually looked really good.)  Our car's interior is still glittery, and I suspect it will be so for quite some time.

Easter, the long weekend

Easter: the end of David's long service leave, which started at Christmas.

    

We headed up the coast for the long weekend and enjoyed some very fine weather -- hardly any rain, as would normally come at this time of year.  We've hardly been to the beach this year because of working on the house, so I was really happy to be able to take Anya and Callum swimming this weekend.



On Saturday, my nieces finally redeemed their Christmas gift from over a year ago -- a day of shopping.  We did a circuit of Hastings Street (Noosa) where they cannily shopped to budget (courtesy of me).  Their mum came along too and supplemented the budget a little.  :)  I also treated them to lunch at Berardo's, which impressed them as being the fanciest restaurant they'd ever been to -- because of the small dishes of salt on the table.



Sunday morning, Anya was delighted to notice an Easter egg in her room as she was getting dressed.  Callum was quick to wake up and join in the egg hunt.  Anya was far ahead of Callum in the egg count at one stage, but she showed him where quite a few eggs were, and even gave him one so that they would be even.  We then went downstairs and spectated while our nephew hunted for eggs in the garden.  (His sisters opted out this year, but also followed him around pointing out eggs he was missing.  There were many jokes about having a "man look.")



We had one last glorious morning at the beach on Monday, then headed home to Brisbane after dinner.  And that's a wrap.

The good ship pirate

Anya and Callum played pirates this weekend. There was costuming, complete with commandeered bandanas tied in a piratical fashion. There was a map. There were even treasures, which were made, hidden, forgotten about and discovered. (Anya had to do special tricks to forget where she hid them.)

My favorite part was a pirate flag. The design is a skull over one bone crossing a sword dripping blood, and the motto "WE KILL!!!" The flag is mounted on a flag pole made of many paper towel and toilet paper cores taped together to a 4 foot pole.

Anya and Callum marched around brandishing their flag and chanting their motto mightily before getting down to business and sailing their pirate ship (a large rock in the front yard) to find their treasure.

Dinnertime Challenges

Anya and Callum sometimes get very restless sitting and eating dinner.  Rather than enforce a "bottoms on seats" rule, we help them finish dinner by setting physical challenges.  In between the challenges they have to come back and eat some more.

Originally the challenges were fairly easy, such as "run over to Grandma and give her a kiss."  Next was "run as fast as you can down the hall."  More recently it's evolved to much more advanced challenges.  This week Anya and Callum ran down the stairs and up again, repeating it several times trying to beat their previous times (I used an egg timer). Tonight there were bunny hops, walking backwards, hopping on one leg backwards, and running around Grandma's chair.  Raema loved the challenges as she usually got lots of kisses as they rounded her chair.

Last, I asked Anya what the next challenge should be.  She cocked her head, put her hand on her hip, and said, "Hmmm... I think it should be to eat all the vegetables on my plate!" and proceeded to eat as fast as she could while I timed her.

Anya Turns Six

Anya had a small party in the park to celebrate her birthday.  The theme was "hula girl" and we had face painting, ten pin bowling, and pizza.  The peak moment for me was when she and her best friend put on their hula skirts and hula danced in unison, swaying their skirts and waving their arms.  It was also pretty cute to see them all bowling in hula skirts.



David also got in on the bowling action:

Bird Frenzy, and Balloon Crazy

Some photos of notable moments in the last few months.  We went to the Samford Show on July 18th, enjoyed a tethered hot air balloon ride, and treated the kids to a few amusement rides.

After waiting for holidays to be over, then getting over the whooping cough, we finally finally had a play date mid-August with Anya's best friend from kindy, Amelia, and her best friend from school, Annika.  Anya was so excited by the idea of having her best friends meet and play together.  I was bemused by the fact that all their names begin and end with A.  I proposed to Anya that they could call themselves the "A" Bunch (referencing one of her favorite books, The Lunch Bunch).

Balloon Crazy at the Samford Show

Best Friends, Reunited

This past weekend we had my Aunt Jo (my mother's cousin) staying with us, so on Sunday we all went to O'Reilly's to feed the birds and have a little walk in the tree tops.  Everyone had a great time.  Callum made me laugh by gruffly commanding the birds, "Get on me!"  Anya impressed me with her nonchalant climb up a tree to 30 meters off the ground (in a caged ladder, but still!)

Wow! A king parrot on my shoulder!

Crimson Rosellas

Regent Bowerbirds

The Super Life

Superkids can fight crime with anything, even teapots.


Superkids have their own special seating.


Superkids wear goggles in the bath.


Superkids don't have to worry about safety barriers.


Superkids have Superdads.

Arty Partying

So much to tell, so little time.  Do I give a ginormous report, or throw together a tossed salad of amusing anecdotes?  It's very daunting to think of trying to catch up to where we are now, but for you, my loyal readers (I know there are at least two of you), it's my duty to try.

Easter Week

Once again, we spent our week of holidays “up the coast,” as we say – that is, at the family units at Peregian Beach. Usually, we share our beach holidays with Don’s family, who have two girls and a boy; this time we were with Rob’s family, who have two boys, much to Callum’s delight. It’s been a bit frustrating for Anya as the only girl, while the boys rough-house and say naughty things, but Callum has been completely and thoroughly enjoying himself. Anya isn’t totally left out, as she and Jayden do have in common a great love of drawing and pretend play. I brought a big pile of paper and it’s been all used up along with good quantities of pencil, crayon, sticky tape, staples, and prolific scissoring.

Easter morning the cousins were up at four a.m. with excitement, but thankfully were held back from visiting us until six a.m. I’d hidden some eggs around the unit to start Anya and Callum off, then all four kids moved outside and found more scattered around. I do miss the Easter activities of my childhood such as dying and decorating hard-boiled eggs, and making up little baskets with grass and chicks. Here the focus is very much on chocolate and it’s like having Christmas where all the presents are made of chocolate. We gave Anya a Lindt bunny, and Callum a Buzz Lightyear chocolate figure; they also received a large egg apiece from our in-laws and sacks of chocolate eggs and bunnies from their grandma.

It’s the custom in our household to let Callum and Anya have a little snack just before bedtime – sometimes candy, other times cookies, or even cheese and crackers if the mood strikes. This week, that became an excited look through their enormous array of Easter chocolate to decide which bit to eat next. (Amusingly, looking at Buzz Lightyear, Callum asked, “Where’s his head?” I had to unfold the wrapper to show him the face and remind him that he’d eaten it the previous evening.)

A new addition to our household this week is Maddy, a small mixed-breed dog who belongs to our other in-laws. They went camping this week, and asked us to look after her. She’s about the size of a cat, but very self-assured and tends to snap at small kids. Anya and Callum have had to be very patient with her and approach her very softly. Rob’s family recently acquired a dog as well, a small poodle, so it’s been a very doggish week. The poodle’s name is Minnie and she is amazingly patient, putting up with anything the kids want to do with her.

Another custom we’ve adopted this week is “happy hour” with drinks and snacks on the upstairs veranda or down by the barbecue. It’s a little awkward because we don’t want our kids getting full on chips and junk just before dinner, but it’s been really nice to relax with our in-laws and simply chat. The kids come and go, playing ball or other games, in between sitting with us sometimes to participate in the conversation. We had a good one today that started at 3:30 and carried on until 5:30! I did some sketches of Travis (my nephew) and Anya, and then Anya got inspired and got her own book to do some drawings of me.

Anya’s been learning to read, with “homework” each night of a different reader. The rhyming games, and other word games we’ve been playing with her for the last several years (just for fun without any educational goal) seem to helped a lot with this. She’s really got the hang of sounding out words. The only thing holding her back is her own tendency to get frustrated when faced with something new and difficult. I think as she continues, her confidence will grow and she won’t be so easily frustrated. On the holiday we haven’t pushed her to do much reading, except for one afternoon looking at Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.”

She also received a list of “sight words” to learn just before the holiday started. (Sight words are those you recognise immediately without having to sound them out.) I haven’t tried to drill her in them – I don’t find flash cards very appealing – but I did use them. I had to make up a board game for her to play with her cousins one afternoon, and I decided to base it on the sight words. Milton Bradley would never buy this game from me, but I do think with a little polish it could work as a real game. My first version involved spinning for a word and moving to the closest square with that word. My second version involved collecting letters until you had the ones that would make a word on the board, so you could move to its square. Her cousins also got me to help them make a snakes and ladders style game with drawings of animals, but I imagine that could also be adapted to sight words.

Meanwhile, Callum is speaking in quite elaborate sentences. For example, today he said without pause or hesitation, “Can I have a drink of water and when I drink it all up, you give me a cup of juice?” (This is a sort of rule I’ve introduced recently, that you only get juice after drinking a cup of water.) He also made us laugh this morning at the beach, as Anya refused to take her hat (she wanted to swim some more), and he scolded her, “Put your hat on, young lady!” Our in-laws have taken to calling him “Mr. Galumph.” I guess this kind of rhymes with our pet name for Anya, “Miss Gump.”

The Wow Moment

I made a new friend at the annual Artforce awards where she was nominated for one of the award categories. (I wasn't -- just attended out of interest to see the leading designs.) We decided to collaborate on a new traffic signal box (TSB) design. This is really exciting and fun as I've never collaborated with someone before. It's a different way to work, bouncing ideas off each other and changing things around like a sliding Chinese puzzle.

I've learned some new ways of composition from her such as tracing, photocopying, cutting and gluing. I typically do things the hard way -- freehand sketching with old-school erasing and starting over if I don't get it right. Last night we even used whiteout to "do over" some areas and cut apart white paper and a spare color copy of the image to do over other parts.

We've gotten together several times now -- usually I head over to her place after the kids are in bed. Last night I went over to help finalise the design, thinking that we just had a few things to firm up, and we ended up changing the design some more... and I stayed until one in the morning. The design is now finally ready for submission -- it already looks different from these photos -- keep your eyes peeled for the final result!

Last Friday I also brought a pile of the working materials and the mock-up to Anya's class and gave a short talk (after morning tea and before the teddy bear's picnic... but that's another story...) The aim of the talk was to illustrate how you go from imagining a design, to planning it and working it out. I'd downloaded Hokusai's The Great Wave and a swath of paintings by other artists who inspired us, like Lin Onus and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It was the best moment when the first image flashed up (projected on the wall from the teacher's laptop) and all the kids gasped, "Wow!" They continued to "Wow" each successive image as if watching fireworks and I felt thrilled to be connecting them to the wonders of art. Anya had a proud moment as well, when I mentioned that some of the animals in the design were from her drawings.

Acrobalance

Yesterday, I learned to do this:

Someday, I dream that I'll be able to do this:

The Ultimate Abs Workout

So forget your Wii Fit Plus; forget your pilates devotions; forget your fit ball. THIS IS IT: hula hoops. After doing this for just 20 minutes in circus class tonight, I swear I can feel washboard ridges forming already.

Bat-crazy

The evolution of a fad in our household can sometimes take some strange turns. Our kids are already, for some strange reason, enamoured of bats (see the post about the Baby Bat game). Combine this with a memory for that nutty song, Banana Phone, and what do you get?

First David showed them a YouTube video of Banana Phone, and they begged for repeat viewings. Why this video is so appealing, I'm not sure.

Next, out of desperation for a change, I showed them another YouTube video, which was listed in the "related videos" to the side. From there we hopped from video to video, almost all featuring babies with real faces and cartoon bodies, singing parodied versions of actual songs, usually about poo or farts. (Thanks a lot, Flowgo...not!) One of these was less scatological and merely featured a baby Batman, which they loved and wanted over and over.

David then decided to show them old Batman TV episodes from the sixties, and I followed that up with Batman and Spiderman cartoons. They totally don't care that the videos look so grainy and discoloured, especially on our large screen HD TV!

Xmas 2009

Massive piles of presents, first at home then at the bigger family shindig. (Click on the photo to browse through my flickr album!) I won't bore with the whole gift list, but the ViewMasters were a surprise favorite.

We had a great Xmas day, opening presents, feasting on a potluck meal, and even got to go swimming. Neighbours have been kind to us this year, first on Xmas day when we swam at the neighbours', then all through the after-Xmas period when we were up the coast. We swam at the next door pool whenever we felt like it, thanks to a neighbour who was away and said we were welcome to use the pool. Why would we swim in a pool with the ocean right there, you ask? Well, I have often wondered myself why anyone living at the beach would have a pool, and now I know.

For days when the undertow and sweep are too strong, or the weather is just too blustery. For days the water and sand are littered with bluebottles (stinging jellyfish). Or just because it feels great to swim at the beach and follow that with an extra dip in the pool. Or, have a pool session in the afternoon because you already went to the beach in the morning. Besides, you can do stuff in the pool like: blow all the air out of your lungs and sit on the bottom with your legs crossed; perform jumping tricks like twists, splits, and the old classic, cannonball; play Ring-Around-the-Rosy; and so on.

I couldn't believe how huge Anya's confidence became with swimming daily in the pool! (She was doing all the above, and more.) I just wonder what their new boosted confidence will do to their swim instructors. Swimming with Callum was quite tiring as he had no fear of lunging every which way, secure in the knowledge that we would keep a hold of him. His lunging about included shoving and kicking us in the guts, since we were only his lowly diving platforms. He also got pretty bold when Anya was jumping off the wall with her cousin Isaac, and joined in for several jumps.

As for David and myself, we brought a huge stack of books, an HD media player loaded with kids' movies and our own stuff, my laptop (no internet, though), and went op-shopping several times (op shop = thrift store). Mainly, though, it was a big change of pace to swim every day (sometimes 2 or 3 times in one day) and spend most of our time plotting a chance to grab a nap (a fiercely contested privilege between the two of us). Anya and Callum flourished in having both of us, and their grandma, on tap almost the whole day, as well as our in-laws (including 3 cousins) who were staying downstairs.

We also had one night out on the town to see Avatar 3D. I was really transported. The story was fairly unoriginal, but with the beautiful world and people and animals, I became very involved in the environment. When we left the movie, I felt like I was in some sort of different headspace, and it took me almost half an hour to come back to myself.

Woodford 2009

I was lucky to go along to the Woodford Folk Festival again this year and enjoyed it very much, only wishing that there were some way that Anya and Callum and David could also come and enjoy it. Unfortunately the cost (almost $100) means that it's not worth going for only part of the day.

Some cool moments/events were: Men Wot Sing conducting an a capella singing workshop; Circus Cabaret (I also caught "Oni the Haitian Sensation" again by chance later and she was the most amazing hula hooper I have ever seen -- which is saying a lot, because generally I think hoops are just difficult to do, without actually being that impressive to watch); Daniel Champagne followed by Kim Churchill ending with a blues jam with both of them (is it still a jam with just two?) including a moment with stilt walkers joining the mosh pit; Angie Hart (ex-Frente lead singer)...

...and a completely nonsensical ending to my festival day wherein I got lost trying to leave the site, realised I was on "Ridiculously Close" (yes that's the name of the street), and caught the tail end of an aerialist on a lyra, followed by a gruff entertainer who didn't do a whole lot but had the street audience of kids lapping up his act. Why do kids so love obnoxious characters (eg. Oscar the Grouch)? This guy - for example - said, "I need someone to hold this tray," and as all the kids in front clamored, "Me! Me!" he looked at one boy and said brusquely, "Not you. I need a cute one." Which only made the boy laugh all the harder and press in to see what would happen next.

Guest Post: Daddy Bat

For about the last six weeks, first thing in the morning we have been playing the Baby Bat game at our house. I think this began one day when Anya crawled into bed with me and (maybe – I can’t actually remember what started it all) I was explaining about the fruit bats that fly around our house at night. They make a lot of raucous squawking noises as they eat nectar and fruit off the neighbourhood trees. The next thing, it was:

“Dad – let’s pretend that we’re bats, and you’re the daddy bat, and I’m a baby bat, and we’re flying through the forest together, and we’re flying really fast, and you’re squeaking to me like “Squeak! Squeak!” and I squeak back to you like “SQUEAK! Squeak, squeak!” and we fly some more, and ……”

And so on.

From these beginnings, we’ve developed quite a sophisticated storyline for our game. The plot for this is almost entirely spun by Anya. It’s like we’re in the Baby Batverse. It’s usually more fun to describe the plot of today’s game, in one long run-on sentence, than it is to actually play the game. Here’s the plot of this morning’s game.

There’s Baby Bat, Daddy Bat and Baby Bat Boy (Callum joined the game about a week and a half ago.) We live in a big cave with all the other bats, sleeping all day and hanging by our toes. At night we come out and we hunt insects. (We’re not fruit bats; we’ve become insectivorous about a month ago. Occasionally, we dabble in eating fruit when we see a nice pawpaw tree growing in the forest, but it’s been a fair while since that’s happened.)

We fly through the forest, hunting moths. It’s only ever moths we eat – ladybugs are too cute to eat, and butterflies are too lovely. We all catch them quite well now because we’ve practiced so much. When we catch them, we snatch them into our mouths with this sound – “Haraaamph!” Daddy Bat and Baby Bat Boy usually spit out the wings, but Baby Bat likes the wings the best – she always eats them.

Moths are pretty cool, but one thing that puts a cramp in our night-time hunting is our arch nemesis, the Owl. The Owl, you see, likes to eat baby bats. If he sees any, he swoops on them and tries to catch them in his claws. For that reason, although Baby Bat and Baby Bat Boy can fly pretty well, they usually cling on to Daddy Bat’s side as he flies around. This lets them hide under Daddy Bat’s wings if the owl comes, which happens frequently. Quite often, despite all the hiding, there is still some swooping, and Baby Bat has fallen out of the sky onto the ground. Then it’s a mad rush from Daddy Bat to locate her in the forest (she cries out “Help! Help, Daddy Bat!”) and get to her before The Owl does. So far, so good – although the Owl is a really, really fast flier, we’ve outpaced him because we can twist and turn as we fly much better than him. We then fly back to the cave, and the opening is too small for the Owl to come into. Plus, there are thousands of us bats living in there, so he knows if he tries to come in, he’ll get beaten up.

Even when Baby Bat and Baby Bat Boy are hiding really well, the Owl doesn’t stop trying. He flies up to Daddy Bat and says “Hey! Got any baby bats here tonight? I’m hungry!” Daddy Bat always tries to trick the Owl and he says “Oh, no – no baby bats here, no sir! I think I might have seen some over there, though,” pointing somewhere far, far away in the forest. The Owl usually falls for it, although he comes back surprisingly quickly and tells Daddy Bat that he’s been wrong.

So that’s the usual game. I should also mention that the last two times, the Owl’s been getting trickier. Yesterday, he came along when the Baby Bats weren’t hiding – they were right out in the open, playing in a tree! Only some fast thinking from Daddy Bat saved the day. Daddy Bat managed to convince the Owl that the two Baby Bats he was looking at weren’t actually bats. They were toy bats – they looked so terribly lifelike because they were made of rubber. Because they were rubber, you couldn’t eat them, either, because they’d taste just terrible. (Baby Bat snickered when the Owl fell for that one, let me tell you.) And this morning, we had to tell him the same thing again. We even had to fake having an on-off switch on the Baby Bats, and when Daddy Bat switched their switches to ‘off,’ they had to stop moving and pretend that they were battery-powered Baby Bat toys.

Today, a Non Sequitur

I accidentally spied this item on eBay while looking for Christmas presents. How cool is this? Now if I could only think of a reason that I need a 4GB USB that can transform into a jaguar...

Two Days in the Sun

To everyone living on the "top side" of the globe: yes, it is glorious summer here! Example: this weekend. Saturday was spent hanging about (literally) at Kangaroo Point, where locals like to rock climb, bike and rollerblade. We managed to do two out of three, and also fit in a barbecue breakfast with friends, as they had organised a 40th birthday celebration. I haven't been up a cliff face in over a year, so it was a slightly nerve-tingling experience. It was also a bit hard to concentrate, as Callum wailed like a banshee the whole time that I was aloft -- he didn't like my going up there! David had a turn as well, and could be heard commenting several times, "I might fall on this bit..." I told his belayer, "Don't worry, he says that all the time."

Anya achieved a personal best, riding her bicycle (with training wheels) along the bike path, making it her first real bike ride -- previous efforts have been cut extremely short with her hopping off her bike after just a few pedal pushes. Callum, meanwhile, tried out his scooter, but has only ever pushed it across the kitchen before, so he soon decided walking was more effective. We were all pretty red-faced after the very hot morning out, and had to cool off with chilled water baths at home.

Sunday was spent over at our in-laws, who have a pool and air-conditioning. Bliss! We had a mid-morning swim, and a big family lunch, then just as I was reluctantly concluding that we ought to head home, I got the brilliant idea of asking permission to stay. Callum had his afternoon nap on the big queen bed, and Anya jumped back into the pool for a second round of swimming. She was in heaven, especially because her cousins and a house guest (3 young teenaged girls + 1 ten-yr-old boy) played with her all day. It is really wonderful to see how confident she is in the water nowadays.

David and I, being the OLDIES we now are, each fell asleep at some point briefly in the afternoon, but that, too, was all to the good.

Beach Time!

We went to beach this weekend, and by happy coincidence, so did our in-laws. They have two sons, aged 5 and 10, and Anya and Callum both had a great time hanging out with their cousins. It was really interesting to see Callum in a different light as he did "boy" things with his cousins like throwing a ball back and forth. We also enjoyed a family dinner all together which felt cosy and homey.

Anya's shining moment was the second day of our mini-holiday, as she got into the waves and caught some "shoots," as the family calls them. She was so thrilled with her achievement that, even though she was shivering violently (it was a somewhat windy day), she insisted on going back in for more.

David was injured -- not while swimming, but rather while reconnecting various devices to the TV. Now he looks as if he's been boxing, with a nifty gash on his eyebrow. Please won't some genius invent a better way to install AV equipment than crawling around the back of the furniture?

Visiting Sodor

Not being a boy, I can't understand the fascination of Thomas the Tank Engine, but Callum totally loves him. This weekend we made it to a free event (provided by a local councillor) featuring life-sized Thomas, the Fat Controller telling stories, a bouncy castle, and mini train rides, hosted at Anzac Park in Toowong, which has some pretty nifty attractions in its own right such as the longest flying fox I've ever seen in a public park. I was dying to try the flying fox, but had to follow Callum as he trundled full speed down to the slides and fort area. All in all, a great morning out for both Anya and Callum (more photos on flickr here, here and here).