Sunday, March 11, 2007

Corners of My Home

You know there's this nice bloggy thing where you post gorgeous pictures of corners of your home? Well, this is a corner of my home at the moment. Because I'm not proud.

It's driving me nuts. In fact, I am off to Bunnings (Hardware store) toot sweet to get some more storage containers for the bloody Lego. And then there will be some serious packing up. Followed by chousing of resident and visiting kids to help pack up when they finish playing. For a couple of weeks anyway.

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I was watching the boys playing a ball game with the visiting Next-door-kids. Formalities must be observed first when you are 5 or 6. Sometimes rule-making can take up the entire playtime. Climber decides to call the roll before commencing play.

"Climber Fixit?" he asks, seriously.
"Yes" he answers.
"Next-door-boy?" he asks.

"(You have to say yes or here)" prompts Climber.

"Here" says Next-door-boy.

"Next-door-girl?"
"Here" she says.
"Cherub?"
"Here."

"What about me?" I say, teasing.
"You're not in the game" I'm informed.
"Ohhhhh..." says I.
"You're a grown-up" they chorus, firmly, but kindly, as though I were a pesky 2-year-old.

"No fair" I say, pretending to stomp off.

Next-door-kids are smiling in delight. Climber looks stricken. Cherub gives me my marching orders.

"Go and cook the dinner!" he shouts gleefully and bossily.

Climber, still holding the ball in one hand, continues to look worried.

"Cuddles?" he asks, and offers me a hug before getting on with the game.

Ahh, the difference between 6 and 3!

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The boys were playing hide-and-seek this morning, which is hilarious because Cherub is really hopeless at it. "I go hide under my bed," he announces as he runs off. And when it's his turn to seek, he wanders from room to room calling "Climber where are you, I can't find you...". Today I was helping him seek, when Climber suddenly emerged from his latest hidey-hole.

He was INSIDE the washing machine, and suddenly the lid lifted and his head popped out! Readers, I screamed and jumped! I wasn't fast enough to get a shot, sadly (and apparently he didn't want me to put it on the blog, but life's tough, kid, you can't always get what you want.)

*********

Fixit is off on ANOTHER motorbike ride today. The payback for which is that I am off to Daylesford tomorrow (Labour Day Public Holiday) with my best girlfriends, Nell, Astrid and Jenny. There'll be shopping, lunching and then we're each having an hour-long massage.

Fixit is under STRICT instructions to come back in one piece today because I will be extremely cross if I don't get to have my girly day and my massage!

23 comments:

  1. Most of the lego mess in my house was my husband's when the kids were little.

    I watch children play at lunch time. The boys spend 25 minutes organising the rules of play, then play for only 5 minutes. The girls just take the ball and make up a game as they play for the full 30 minutes. It is something genetic.

    My son would always shout out 'here I am' as soon as the counting finished when playing hide and seek as a toddler. He only played HIDE, but couldn't get the SEEK. (He said 'sink' not seek)

    Enjoy the blissful girly day.

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  2. Now THAT's a home corner I can relate to.

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  3. Cherub's chauvinistic tendencies are more than compensated for by that sweet Climber!

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  4. "Cuddles"...if that doesn't melt your heart...

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  5. Oh my - where to start on this doozy ;):

    1. Lego - that would drive me nuts too. Stepping on Lego ( I am always in bare feet ) HURTS. I am mean, I would ban it. I know, I know .. you can't ban Lego ...

    2. 'toot sweet'. I saw the original Benita in a Play School performance today. I commented to my friend that her pants were a bit Kath Day-Knight...

    3. I get told to "Shoo" and make dinner too :(

    4. - Those tiles !! They rock !!
    I bet you can buy replicas at IKEA for all those young retro warehouse-conversion couples. Classic stuff...

    5. - MmMm, massage. Sounds divine. Fixit will be home, don't worry. He knows where his bread is buttered, i'm sure ... speaking of which, better get onto that curry, or no dinner for anyone here ...

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  6. Tracey : It does not surprise me that the girls are better at going with flow and fluid organisation!

    Joke & Molly : He is both sweet and good. (Mostly)

    Shula : Glad it's not just my place..

    H&B: You can credit my landlord for the retro tiles. He would have found them in a hard rubbish skip by the side of the road. Also, YES, lego bloody hurts. Good luck banning it though, it's all I'm sayin'. And really, Benita? I thought she'd retired ages ago.

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  7. If I posted a pic of how Chickie's room looks, you'd think you were a complete neat freak. I don't know what my son's got against tidy toys...

    I love that Climber was concerned about your feelings :)

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  8. Oh enjoy your massage! How simply divine...

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  9. Your boys are so wonerfully individual!
    Our puppy-boy makes almost as much mess with his toys, as a human child!
    Thanks for visiting my blog. I didnt know about the possum skins. I know you can buy souvenirs made from their skins, in Aoteoroa, but I have no idea if you can bring them back here.
    (Personally, I wouldnt want one!)

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  10. I'm with Em, enjoy your massage. I could do with one of those myself!

    As for Climber, I am simply not going to say how gorgeous that kid is - not again.

    I love your messy corner. I have plenty of those. I just don't have any kids to blame for them...

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  11. I hope Fixit got back Toot Sweet! Don't get me started on Kath and Kim (I still can't get them Irish dancing - horizontally - out of my head!)

    And that story about the cherub and his hide and seek method. I'm just wondering what would happen if he and the darling played. "I'm counting to ten and I'll expect to find you under the dining table..." "OK, I'm under now, come and find me." Gails of laughter when "found".

    Hope you had a GREAT time away. V. jealous over the massage :-)

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  12. I see that corner in my son's room! Not so many small pieces of course, otherwise they'd be making their way through his system, but otherwise, it's EXACTLY like that!

    Your little Climber is a darling. Oh to have mine turn out to be so darn thoughtful and caring, and not a mini sociopath as is currently the case.

    Have a fabulous time. Lengthy descriptions of massage and shopping adventures, please!

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  13. Wait.

    Why do these Legos require 3-D glasses?

    Perplexed,

    -J.

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  14. Well, our lego is only 2-dimensional here so you put the special glassses on to make actual structures..

    Why? What's it like in America?

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  15. Hope you had a good day out.

    On the Lego, back in the day my Mum solved the Lego problem by making what was essentially a giant draw-string bag. She used a dark sturdy fabric, cut in a giant circle, with a small seam around the edge and a draw string. All the Lego lived the bag and when we wanted to play with it we would open the bag until it lay flat on the floor in a big circle with all the Lego in the middle. Then we could build the stuff using the bag itself rather than the floor as a base, and at the end of the day just pull the bag together again with all the Lego inside - and we had a lot - and just hang it on the bag of a door. I think it took her about half and hour to make.

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  16. Uli : what a fantastic solution. Wish I'd thought of that BEFORE I went all out at Bunnings...

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  17. Over here you are blindfolded and have to assemble in a pseudo-Braille way.

    -J.

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  18. I do hope you've added that picture to the Corners of My Home flickr group.

    (I am sooo over Lego).

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  19. I usually say "Right I am getting out the vacuum cleaner and whatever is on the floor will go up it and I will not be sifting through dust and dirt to find any bits!!"
    I do wait until they have finished playing with it and move onto something else!!

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  20. PS. I hope the massage and time with your friends was fabulous!!

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  21. Just a corner? My whole house looks like that sometimes!

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  22. MrV is enroute home from Ikea (yes it is past midnight over here - they stay open late) with some storage boxes for the FB's ever increasing toy stash.

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