Here I go again.

In between watching Fixit's privates gradually return to something like their original shape and hue (he has recovered enough that he is even back on a [borrowed] motorbike now and ps massive thanks to Jen for lending us her car in the meantime), we have also been busy with the following:

Climber went to the District Swimming Carnival last Thursday to compete in the backstroke and I actually thought he was going to do respectably well in it, because he seemed to be swimming as fast as the other boys. Unfortunately he hasn't really mastered the go-straight bit of backstroke. So what with being tangled up with a lane-rope for a good 5 metres, then being tangled with that same lane-rope and another badly-steering-backstroker, then deciding to veer right away from that stupid lane-rope/backstroker at pretty much a 90 degree angle which meant that he had to stop to get his bearings approximately one-third of the way into the race, he stopped looking like he was in contention well before the race was over. Agonising to watch it was. He was of course last, and he was pretty dashed by that, despite my reassurances. So I made an executive decision to ditch school for the rest of the day, and we met up with Fixit (who was in between various ball-checking appointments) and drove to Carlton to spend Climber's birthday book vouchers at Readings and thence to Brunetti for cake therapy.



I think it worked.

Climber's teacher has been reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief to the class, and Climber has really been enjoying it. (Greek mythology meets 21st century American high school.) So we bought Book 1 and Book 5 with his vouchers (Readings didn't have Books 2-4) and he read it at every spare moment from Thursday when we bought it til Monday when he finished it. I never thought I'd see Climber-the-action-boy reading like that and it is making me very happy. So happy that I went straight to The Book Depository for the other 3 books in the series, even though it's not his birthday or anything.

Fixit's best friend the Bike Nazi is moving to Brisbane and his wife has been trying to juggle minding the 9-month-old baby and packing up the house. So the last 2 days I've taken the baby in the afternoon. Gawd it felt weird to be wheeling a pram again, and my goodness you move on quickly! I walked down to the school with her to pick up the boys then we headed to the park where we ate hot chips and I let her play on the equipment. The boys think it's great. She can't walk but she can climb up the little slide and although I am well-used to climbing children, I did have a minor heart-attack when she somersaulted face-first down some little stairs, even though I was guarding and -just- holding on to her. I thought she was going to break her neck, but she didn't even cry much to the amazement of the other mothers who saw it.

Me old mate Michelle was in Melbourne for a girls' weekend so I went to see Mamma Mia with her. Normally I say - with perfect truth- that I can't afford musical theatre, and I was not expecting for $110 to be sitting in the 2nd-from-back-row, but actually the back rows at Mamma Mia are a good thing because we were up and singing/dancing right from the start of the encore unlike the more staid front row types who had to wait till the cast encouraged them up. And that was totally good fun. You-oo can dance, You-oo can ji-ive etc.

The kids were ecstatic to have a sleep-over at Crafty's house on the weekend, and I think I can say with authority that they must have had an excellent time, because they both proceeded to be completely shattered -and in Cherub's case, rather tearful- for all of Sunday.

I took part in Sooz's big tea-towel swap and am very relieved to have posted my offerings a full 3 days before the deadline. I'm only doing a partial reveal here as don't know if they've arrived at the other end yet, but I worked with freezer-paper stencilling, which is unbelievably easy and effective, and applique, which was quite a bit more fiddly and lucky I was going for an arty look anyway because I doubt I could achieve perfection with that. Anyway, I was quite pleased with how they turned out. But I was so intent on getting them sent out that I forgot to photograph the slightly different one I made for Craftastrophies, so hoping that Kate will take a few pictures when her big move is over. Proper look at the one I sent to Jellybaby on my Flickr site though, if you want. My personal design brief was I wanted to make a tea-towel that looked good hanging on the front of your oven, which is where I always hang mine. I was also going for mild subversiveness.