What we have been up to:

Climber.

• Back at school. In the Senior building. But he's not a senior yet, don't rush me kid!! They couldn't fit all the Grade 2 classes in the Junior building. He says he likes his new teacher - another male teacher! - and that he's nice and doesn't shout.

• Enjoyed his party despite having no school friends and no Harry Potter theme. He started worrying that his party was not going to be up to scratch in the week beforehand which was making me feel awful, but as my friends so kindly reminded me, he had a perfectly good party despite its low-key-ness. And do you really need to organise a theme party when 3 boys can pick up twigs for wands and run the length of the park bellowing Expelliarmus and other spells in between diving for cover and hiding from any enemies?

Fixit.

• Has been told some really good news on the job front but we're still waiting on confirmation. Touch wood, cross fingers.

• Has booked holidays in a week's time to fix up the Yamaha for sale . So he can take me couch shopping.

Bertie.

• Practising his pouncing. All. The. Time. He is really rather good at it.
• Helps me blog.

Our socks.

• Living in fear of Bertie the Sock Slayer. They are not even safe in their drawers, much less lying vulnerably in piles of unsorted clean washing.

Cherub.

• Had his first ever swimming lesson. And got quietly anxious about it, which was so sweet. See, what he knows of swimming lessons is Climber in the big pool doing laps in the deep water. So at first he told me he was too little for swimming lessons. After I reassured him he'd be in the little pool and it would be fun, he was still slightly worried, but willing. Then on the morning of the class we had a discussion about goggles and whether he would like to borrow Climber's pair. To which he responded: I don't need any gobbles mummy, I'm not going under the water.

And he didn't. His teacher didn't push it. It's his first class after all.

He did have a really good time though.

Stomper.

• Back at tap. I'm so happy. I've missed the weekly dancing, the endorphins rush and the smiling faces of my students. (And just quietly, it is really good to be earning again!! Things got a bit tight towards the end of January...) And the boards have been a big hit! Especially the stars.
• Forgot to bring a knife to Climber's birthday party. Luckily Nell is a dab-hand with a toothpick.

News from the front

In the school holiday battle for household supremacy, let it be hereby recorded that the children have categorically and undeniably won. Battlefield clean-up is scheduled for the day school begins and will be undertaken by the defeated army, ie, me. Offerings are being made to the weather-gods so they do not smite me with a heat wave until normality is resumed. Meanwhile, a warning to all who try to enter the battle-zone: please tread carefully lest a piece of lego become embedded in your foot or you go arse over elbow when treading on a small train. Clean clothes can be found in one of the baskets of washing lying scattered round the house. Consider yourselves lucky that there is food in the cupboards and meals on the table. Oh, and that I managed a cake for the Climber's low-rent birthday gathering in the park tomorrow morning. (Calling it a 'party' would be too ambitious .)

Roller Girl

If I had my own studio or if I taught jazz, hip-hop or belly-dancing, I would not have been out in the hot sticky weather this week getting black paint on my clothes and blisters on my hands. The thing about tap is that you can't just set up shop anywhere. For a start, savvy venue hirers won't take you because they have some idea of the possible damage. Plus you need a particular surface to work on. Carpet, for example, is no good. The venue I hire has lino [linoleum flooring] which was just okay for sound but not proof against scratches and dings (occupational hazard), much less long slides. So I bring my own floor. I started with 16 boards, but with bigger classes I now need 28. That's a lot of painting. I was even inspired to mess around with a stencil to pretty them up a bit.

Now I need to get cracking on some choreography. Yep, tap starts back this week, and I'm nearly ready....

This Boy is Seven

He loves lego and has crazy-boy-hair in the mornings.
He is an excellently good big brother.

He has lots of mates at school but his real friends will be the ones coming for cake in the park over the weekend. And his soul-mate came over today to help him build the birthday lego.

He writes notes all the time. If he's thinking it, he needs to write it.

He immerses himself whole-heartedly in games of the imagination - whether he's in public or not. He can dance. And what's more, he does. With those long lanky legs of his.

He is so very loving and affectionate.

He sees the cat on the window sill and decides he might like to sit up there too.

He is terrific, exactly what we wanted, and getting better every day. Happy birthday!!

Cinderella and the Fairy House-Cleaner

I've had a plan in my head for a good few months now. A housework plan. It's Plan B. Plan A was when I bought this book and thought I could keep the place sweet by doing 15 minutes a day, but it turned out that I prefer to have one really good bang at it and get it over and done with. In one hit rather than making house-cleaning some kind of never-ending treadmill, every day of my life - on top of all the cooking and tidying and laundry and shopping as well. However. Those big cleaning blitzes? They've gradually become further and further apart as I've progressively lost interest in cleaning. I like living in a clean house but I resent actually doing the cleaning.

Anyway. Plan B was me thinking that I could use some of the money I make from teaching tap to pay a cleaning lady once a fortnight. Classes are going well and business is expanding and paying someone for 2 hours a fortnight would probably not cost more than, say, Fixit buying 2 coffees a day. Which he does.

I've pondered it of course. Mostly in a wouldn't it be fantastic to not have to clean the toilet? sort of way, admittedly. But also in a can I justify this when (i) I am a stay-at-home mother so if I were to use my time efficiently I wouldn't need to do this and (ii) this is a luxury and we aren't really in a financial position to bear luxuries and (iii) I would probably object if Fixit suddenly decided he wanted to outsource the lawn-mowing.

I answered myself with this sort of stuff:
...staying at home is about looking after the kids, not about cleaning the house. No-one needed to Stay Home and Do Cleaning before we had the babies. Before Children the cleaning was seen as something we both did. Now, even though I'm child-wrangling, volunteering at both Climber's school and Cherub's crèche, teaching 9 classes of tap a week and doing the admin involved with having my own business, doing ALL the cooking, doing ALL the grocery shopping and 80% of the laundry, even with all of that, somehow the house-cleaning falls in my To-Be-Done tray. Despite the fact that the labour involved has trebled since the advent of kids into the domestic scene. Not to mention the mound of stuff jibbering away behind the door of the Spare Room, which should be sorted; there's this tone Fixit gets when he mentions this which stems from his space (the shed) being organised to within an inch of its life and my space (the house) being a whole lot of cardboard boxes filled with god-knows-what stacked up in a darkened room with a pretty cloth thrown over the top. (Oh and also his conviction that blogging has taken over my life to the detriment of the household but that's a separate issue.)

To be honest, in answer to my doubts (i) yes, I could get it all done if I lifted my game (ii) yes, luxuries are out if we ever want to think about getting a mortgage and (iii) yes, I probably would think Fixit was frittering away Our Money if he hired Jim's Mowing.

But. My little dream persists. For all sorts of reasons.

• It's my money, after all. (Unlike the grass-cutting money which would be our money.)
• Business is looking up.
• I'm domestically lazy.
• I prefer doing stuff like reading or blogging to cleaning.
  
• With the Family Allowance and my tap earnings, I pay for all household expenses and extras, so I'm putting in financially and domestically.
• Even if we cut out all luxuries, we probably still couldn't get a mortgage in the current housing crisis in Australia.
• If kitty-cats and motorbikes are okay then why not this?
  
• I would -theoretically- have more energy to look at the junk in the back room.
• I would be happier.
• The house would be nicer.
  

As you can see, I've talked myself into it. It all sounds perfectly fair to me. And then on the car-trip to Canberra I blithely announced my intentions to Fixit, thinking he would be pleased to know that the house would be regularly nice again and that I would be happier with more time to sort out crap etc., and I am sorry to report that I received a Very Negative Response. You know, based along the lines of (i) (ii) and (iii). (That always makes it worse, doesn't it, when you know the other person's objections are grounded in truths?) But I was so gobsmacked and so angry that my stomach started burning from just ... acid.... and even if we hadn't been in a confined space with the kids I don't think I could have coherently argued my corner. So I spluttered a bit and didn't mention it again.

So we were at a bit of an impasse, and, true to form, neither of us was bringing it up to discuss it. You could be forgiven for wondering who would emerge happy from this lack of seeing-eye-to-eyeness ?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, Plan B is alive and well. I got the number of the cleaning lady today so if I was a horse the knowing ones would be backing me.

The Drones Club

Nell came over to meet our new kitty.

Oops. Silly, that isn't Bertie Wooster. Here he is.

Of course she also came over to see The Cherub...

...and The Climber too.

Oh sorry. I meant this Climber.

What ho.

Meet Bertie Wooster, Bertie for short.
He is a 12-week old chocolate Burmese, purchased from a breeder in Seymour. He's been here exactly one day, and he is quite at home and we are all besotted.
Even though a pet is for life not just for Christmas, he is a Christmas present (from Fixit to me). It's been 6 years since my last cat crept quietly away under our neighbour's house to die. That was when we lived somewhere else and Climber was a crawling bundle of baby, and then we moved here and had Cherub and for a while there a pet would have been beyond our means and our energy. Now though, we need a pet. 'Specially Climber.It is so nice to have that little purring bundle of fur to cuddle; when we are not being entertained by his kittenish scampering antics, of course.