Shopping on the interweb.

In exciting news, I made my first ever foray onto ebay this last week, with good results. In fact I was the only bidder on the item I wanted so I won! I've held off for a long time because it looked to me that shopping on ebay could be mighty addictive, but when your 4-year-old tells you that that what he desires most in life is a Thomas the Tank Engine turntable, it seems sensible to at least have a little look...

Of course it was very exciting when the clock ticked down and we'd found we'd won. Climber, Nell, Fixit and I were all smiles, but they were as nothing to the Cherub's face when the parcel arrived in the mail later that week. Earlier this month he had informed me seriously, as he examined the picture on the side of a cardboard box that had once housed James (an engine from the Thomas the Tank series) and which featured other items available, that I fink I need more pwesents. Christmas can do this to a young boy.

The downside of our exciting win is that we are now unable to walk through our family room. And Cherub gets quite stern with us if we interfere with the track at, say, dinnertime, when access to the table is required. I don't like it when you break my track, he says. So don't do it.


In other on-line purchasing news, here is Nell modelling her Christmas present from us, a bracelet from etsy made from vintage typewriter keys. I also found her an "N" pendant from the same shop, which is my way of trying to help her work through her childhood misery at having a name that was NEVER used on keytags, drinkbottles, nameplates for your door etc. (And if anyone ever finds some crappy merchandise emblazoned with *Nell* please let me know!!)

But wait, there's more! Another online purchase; ostensibly for the Climber who has been taking an intense interest in my Facebook scrabble battle with Sussanah, but actually utilised 95% of the time by an unhealthily obsessed me. The benefit of having this is not having to wait 6 days for your opponent to have her go...

One more purchase from my online browsings to go; but this one requires that we drive to Seymour (1 hour out of Melbourne) this afternoon to view before we hand over any hard-earned. I don't want to say yet in case it doesn't happen but fingers crossed that all goes well. Climber has been counting the days, writing me letters about it and making lego models.

In all his gap-toothed glory.

Nephew!!

In what must be my most prolific week of blogging ever, I would like to announce the arrival of my new nephew. He weighed in at a respectable 9 pounds 2 ounces (I know we're all metricated here in Australia but babies should always be measured imperially otherwise no-one knows if it's big or small), and is showing slight signs of forceps intervention. Ain't he sweet? I don't name names (very much) on this here blog but I will tell you that he shares a name with a movie hero in the sci-fi/action genre, so don't be fooled by those bubsy mittens.


Love and congratulations to the proud parents xxx.

That was quick.

There's been carnage on the new trampoline.

Don't worry. It's only the wobbly tooth that we predicted would be gone by the end of the week. (And just as an aside it's about time!! It has been a long time between tooth fairy visits for this little blonde bunny)

But it gave him a big fright. He was still recovering from the incident involving grazes and splinters from yesterday's stay in the gym crèche. So he was not as stoic as usual and there were screams from the tramp till I ran out, and much spitting of blood, and then there was a fair bit of sobbing until I was able to clean him up a little and talk it into something he could deal with. That tooth was coming out anyway the face-washer will stop the bleeding it couldn't have been too bad or other teeth would have come out too now the tooth fairy will have to come you are going to have quite a lot of money what with this and your other savings I wonder what you'll buy with it probably lego. He's okay now. Just gotta hope the daddy tooth grows in quick to disguise that horrible gap.

Boing.

My dad gave the boys a trampoline for Christmas, and Fixit spent a large chunk of Sunday putting it up.

Of course, one must test drive these things before completing the job...

Yep, it all seems to be fine.

Shuffle ball change, shuffle-kiss

This is the first time I've ever choreographed a kiss into a tap routine!

This lovely couple started coming to my tap classes last year and liked it so much fun they decided to do a bit of hoofing for their bridal dance at their wedding next week. So although I'm officially on a tapping holiday, I've been working with them on their routine - to Jimmy Jazz by The Clash- and they look fabulous. You wouldn't even pick them as beginners to be honest, except occasionally when they concentrate so hard they forget to smile. But every time they catch each other's eye, the smiles reappear. They are a terrifically nice couple and you can tell it's going to be a gorgeous wedding. I was only going to charge them for the hall-hire and make my time/choreography their wedding present but they forced money into my hand at the first session and wine & some Clash cds for the second. They're under strict instructions to show me the wedding video when they get back from their honeymoon.

Scienceworks.

We went to Scienceworks on Friday. Good air-conditioned activity for a hot day, and we're members, so it's free. Children love it because there are heaps of hands-on activities. This construction site below is fantastic, the kids all mobilise when they get to it. Large-scale co-operation like you wouldn't believe. Highly channelled energy goes into shifting blocks: into a wall, out of the wall, down the chute, into wheelbarrows, up conveyor belts. It's all totally pointless when you look at it dispassionately but the kids have a ball.
My almost-7-year-old is probably at the perfect age for this and he enjoyed himself greatly; dashing eagerly to each new thing, exploring, having fun, interacting with other people.

The 4-in-a-corner-year-old was for the most part a big sooky-la-la.

Mostly. Throwing a ball into a vortex would cheer anyone up, I suppose.

I'm adoring the fact that my big boy is still so unselfconscious. Not only did he happily don the rabbit ears, he also gaily hopped (like a bunny) from activity to activity, quite oblivious to anyone else. So much so that he didn't realise that I'd had to take the Cherub into a corner to deal with a mini spak-attack. Fortunately he is also quite mature in lots of ways, so he took himself off to the entrance desk and announced to the woman that he was lost. A colleague was called in to help the Climber find us, but by this stage Cherub and I were walking round the exhibit in search of him, so it was not long before we were re-united. He had to blink back a few tears and needed a little mummy-cuddle, but I suspect he was slightly disappointed that his name was not called over the loudspeakers.

Happy New Year, Everyone.

If that superstition is correct, the one that says whatever you are doing on New Year's Day is a good indication of what the next year holds for you, then I may spend a lot of 2008 in hysterical tears. There may also be swimming. What else can one do in a heatwave??

New Year's Eve 2007

We spent New Year's Eve happily in the air-conditioned comfort of Astrid's house, only to come home after midnight to find it was actually hotter inside our place than the oppressive 35+ degrees out. The 4 of us all slept in our bedroom that night with the portable air-conditioner roaring noisily away, but the house was still so vile the next morning I stupidly started scouring internet real estate sites to try and find us somewhere nicer to live. Only to realise of course that we could not afford anything else. Normally I don't mind our lack of money but in the searing heat I couldn't find my happy space. Clearly it had melted.

New Year's Eve 2006

When all is said and done I would always value having a life partner who treats me nicely over one that spoils me with material goods, and this held true when, after howling and wailing at Fixit that I needed to get out to swim or to the movies just anywhere but this hellhole & I didn't want to have to do all the organising for once & I needed a break because I'd had to do the single parent thing since our Canberra trip because he'd been off having fun during the first heatwave & how the thought of signing a year's lease to live here was unthinkable when the summer was this bad so early in but that there was nowhere else for us to go & so on, he stroked my hair, he packed us all off to the pool and back, he minded the kids while I went to the movies on my own, he heated my dinner when I got home, he brought me a glass of wine and sat with me while we watched an episode of Jeeves and Wooster. And I felt much better.

Which made it, I suppose, on balance, a happy New Year's Day. So maybe I won't spend 2008 in a waterlogged state. Fingers crossed.