Monday, December 20, 2010

Tis the season

As with every year this one seems to have passed too quickly, and I find myself once again lying to my children so that they may be surprised on Christmas Day.

You may remember last year we installed a fridge box in the family room and told them we were babysitting our friend's fridge. They believed this lie so completely that they never even touched the box, which was good because if they'd pushed it hard enough the aquarium inside could have gone crashing to the floor.

This year Supernerd is hard at work building a garden bed in the backyard. But it's not really a garden bed.

It's my fault, really.

Last year I wanted to buy them something big, something bouncy. But we didn't have the funds so we got the aquarium instead.

This year I got a part time job and raised the money myself, so the big bouncy thing has been in three boxes under some old sheets in the garage for a couple of weeks.

With thanks to X-Man's Dad and his Pop as well, Supernerd has dug trenches and installed a retaining wall so that we can have a level space in an otherwise sloping back yard. It's looking awesome and I can't wait until it's my turn to help dig.

Meanwhile we uphold the fiction that we're working on a garden bed. Even when we're alone we still refer to the project as the garden bed. 

I'm so looking forward to their expressions when they see their big bouncy present on Christmas Day, but I'm also looking forward to not having to lie to them about it. 




Friday, December 10, 2010

Too much noise!

The kids love to help me in the kitchen. They each grab a stool and they sit up at the bench and help with whatever they can. This is a good system because it keeps them within my reach, and away from the stove and oven.

Over time they have learned that only Mum is allowed to touch the sharp knives, we have to take turns with the sifting and the stirring, and sneezing into the mixing bowl is definitely not cool.

On one particular afternoon they each had grabbed a couple of spoons and were banging them on the bench and whatever else was handy, belting out that Play School children's classic "Singing in the kitchen" with the emphasis on lots of volume rather than getting the pitch or lyrics right.

While I would normally join in at the top of my voice, I must have been doing something fiddly because I just couldn't tune them out in order to read the recipe properly. 

I looked up and growled at them.

"Please can you stop making so much noise!"

In reply Venus immediately began waving her spoons up in the air so they made no sound and declared: 

"Look Mummy, I'm making lots of quiet".

At that point, all you can do is laugh. 

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Could be worse

I started coming home from school at around age 16 complaining almost every day that I couldn't read the board in physics class.

It was a combination of factors, really. There were only four girls in the class, so we sat together near the back of a long classroom. Secondly, the physics teacher's handwriting was absolutely appalling. So for a long time I just assumed that nobody could read the board.

My Dad suspected that there might be a problem, and he was right. It turned out that I was a little short-sighted, and everybody else actually could read the board. That's when I got my first pair of glasses.

It's a good thing I have them too, because I'm sure I would have poked out one or the other of my eyes a dozen times since then. Not only do they help me see distant things in focus, they act a little like safety glasses too.

But every now and again, something gets past them.

Several months back I was in the kitchen crushing some garlic. I was using a garlic crusher that I wasn't entirely familiar with, so I leaned down to see what I was doing, squeezed the crusher, and filled my right eye with garlic juice.

How it got past my glasses I will never know, but I can tell you from experience that garlic juice in the eye, although not as bad as onion, is still pretty bad.

But the one time when my glasses really let me down was over breakfast one day. I was enjoying what's called an EBC muffin at our local cafe. It's an English muffin packed with egg, bacon and cheese and it's what we have for breakfast on Fridays.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but there was this stretchy bit of bacon that kind of gave way at the worst possible second and I... well... I managed to flick myself in the eye with bacon.

It's very hard to get bacon grease off an eyeball.

To add insult to injury, about twenty seconds later a toddler at the next table threw a bit of his blueberry muffin at me and it landed in my hair.

Supernerd tried not to laugh. He failed.

So now what has happened to immortalise this epic effort is that a kind of adage has come into local use. It's the kind of thing you tell someone to make them feel better when something goes wrong.

Things could be worse. You could have flicked yourself in the eye with bacon.


Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Nametag

This morning I was going out to do a bit of work, so I put my nametag on so as to look all official.

Venus came up to me and began the following conversation.

"Mummy, why are you wearing a nametag?"

"Because I'm going to work today."

"Oh." There was a short pause. "Why are you wearing your nametag on your left boob?"

I was taken aback.

"I'm not. It's on my chest."

She reaches up to pat my left boob and says slowly, reassuringly, as if I was stupid:

"Mummy, that IS your left boob."

In her defence she was pretty much right, and at the time I just wanted her to get her hand off my boob. She doesn't quite get that it's not okay to go poking around there.

But as I think about it now I realise that she knew it was my left side, so that means she can tell left from right. I have to say I'm pretty proud of her.

Now all I have to do is teach her not to fondle people.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Supernerd minus whiskers equals weird

For a long time, almost as long as I've known him, Supernerd has sported a beard. It's one of those ginger brown beards, with a moustache, longer on his chin and shorter on his cheeks.

He outsources the maintenance of his beard to Sam, his barber. Actually, he should properly be referred to as Sam-the-barber, as in our household following an ancient tradition, his name describes his occupation.

So for nearly twenty years his naked chin had not seen the light of day. Until yesterday.

He would never have shaved it off unless he had to. But he had to.

Why?

Because he landed himself a part in a short film in which he is required to play no less than five different characters, and those characters are to be differentiated by their relative amounts of facial hair.

On Friday morning he was a disgruntled slob with his entire beard intact, and clothed completely in carefully selected items from his own wardrobe, about which he is disturbingly proud.

On Friday afternoon he was a bullying boss with his cheek whiskers gone, in his own suit and a brand new business shirt. We still laugh when we remember how once Supernerd hung his suit jacket up near the front door and our children refused to believe that it was his, claiming it must belong to our friend Martin who sometimes comes to visit straight from work.

Then yesterday morning the chin whiskers came off leaving a moustache down to his jawline and he was a horrible dad, and then after one last shave he was the clean-shaven mate of the main character.

Now we've known for a bit over a week that this was going to happen, but I don't think I was really prepared and I'm just amazed at how much of a difference shaving off those whiskers has made.

In two days Supernerd has transformed from himself into someone who looked a lot like his uncle, and then into someone I've never seen before, and that's very very weird.

When he first grew his whiskers I complained. They were scratchy and went up my nose when he kissed me. But now, oh my goodness, I can't wait until they grow back.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Yellow


I love yellow. It's one of my happy colours, and when I say that what I mean is I wear yellow when I feel happy, and sometimes I wear yellow to cheer myself up.

Happy colour.

It sounds like a Japanese slogan for some kind of small jube, but it's true.

Yellow is my happy colour and that's why I have yellow shoes, yellow tops, a yellow cardigan and most recently, a yellow skirt.

But nobody, and I mean nobody, looks as good in yellow as this kid.





Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Singin' in the rain

So spring has finally sprung in this part of the world, for which we are all grateful, and with it spring has brought all the glorious symptoms of hayfever, about which none of us are pleased.

But today was different. Today we had some ripper thunderstorms with fantastic lightning and buckets of rain.

We just got home from my In-laws' house and did the mad dash from the car to the house in the pouring rain. As per instructions Mars was taking off his shoes before heading upstairs for bed, when he began to sing Singin' in the rain.

His Nana has been continuing his education in the classics, so he's seen the movie recently and now insists on singing show tunes whenever his father feels irritable, or perhaps I've got cause and effect confused there.

Anyway, as is his wont, he was changing the words around and came up with these lyrics:

I'm pimping in the rain,
Just pimping in the rain,
What a glorious feeling,
I'm pimping again.

So we told him to stop because that's a grown up word that we weren't prepared to explain. He was astonished that it turned out to be a real word, but he understands that some words are not for children to use. So he took off his other shoe singing these words:

I'm not doing it in the rain,
Not doing it in the rain,
What a glorious feeling,
I'm not doing it again.

Then he asked me if I could make a video of him singing his new lyrics, but I said no. I really think blogging about it is enough.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Can't type - coughing

It has been a long time between posts. We've been busy, and we've all been sick. Not life-threatening-off-to-hospital sick, but a persistent cough that we've had for about ten weeks and I for one am fed up.

So what's been happening?

Venus had her birthday party two weeks after it was originally scheduled, and it was awesome.

Almost all of our fish got fin rot and are now buried under the little tree in our front yard, and our local aquarium staffed by the very helpful Daniel has closed, because helpful Daniel has gone back to uni.

We celebrated my brother's birthday, Father's day and my Mum's birthday.

Little Bumblebee is now six weeks old, and last week he reached Mars' birth weight of 4.3 kilograms.

In due time these things will get their own posts, but for now I just wanted you to know that the blog is not abandoned.






Friday, August 6, 2010

Thwarted plans

Venus is turning four next week and her sparkly party is the day after tomorrow.

X-Man's mum very kindly offered to make Venus' sparkly birthday cake. Together we planned the shape, she got together all the decorations and everything she would need, and she would have been ready to make the cake tomorrow.

Or so we thought.

I was under the impression that she was really keen to make this cake, but you will not believe the lengths she went to to try and get out of it.

Even though she's not due to give birth for another two weeks, she started with some practice contractions on Tuesday, but spent a lot of time assuring me that she would still able to make the cake and come to the party.

I had my doubts.

On Wednesday X-Man came to our house for a while in the afternoon so she could get some rest, and by Thursday she could barely move around because the baby had its head so tightly wedged in her pelvis.

At 7.10am today we got a message to say that she was on her way to hospital to have the baby and I would have to bake Venus' cake myself.

I knew it! It was all a cunning plan to get out of making this cake.

What she didn't know was that Mars had a cunning plan of his own.

Last night he developed a strong histamine reaction to something, taking the form of a spreading rash, and had an elevated temperature as well. By 9am today I was on my way to the doctor with Mars, whose rash had spread to his extremities and whose temperature had not dropped.

Later in the morning I sent an email to let everyone know that Venus' party would have to be postponed for two weeks due to Mars' illness.

Which means, you guessed it, that X-Man's mum will still have to make Venus' cake. Supernerd would point and shout "Woo hoo! In your face!" at this point, but I shan't, because I have manners.

Anyway, the story ends well. Mars is feeling better after a day of rest, X-Man's mum won't miss out on the party, and Venus' disappointment at not being able to have her party on Sunday was washed away with delight when we told her about X-Man's new little brother, Bumblebee.

But seriously, some people will do anything to try and get out of making a birthday cake.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Morning

Most often, the best part of my day is in the morning.

On school days I usually get up first, wake Mars and make sure he's getting dressed, and then I creep into Venus' room to wake her up.

She is a little angel, wrapped up in her bright blankets with that serene expression that happily sleeping children share.

I kneel down beside her bed and I kiss her on the cheek. Her eyes slowly open and then she smiles, and the sun shines.

She says "Mummy!" and she wraps her arms around my neck.

And even though I know that later there will be tears over something unimportant, it doesn't matter because at that moment, there is only love.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The world game on the table

At home there is a chart on the wall with the children's names on it, and when they do something particularly impressive they get a sticker, called a positive, beside their name on the chart.

When they have ten positives each they get a treat. The first time they chose their own treat - a special lunch at a local pancake restaurant. The second time I gave them a really cool easel from Ikea.

Lately Venus has been making special efforts with helping to clean up around the house among other things, so she had more positives that Mars for a while and this was causing him some unhappiness. So when he finally caught up to her I wanted their treat to be something they could use together, and something that Mars would particularly like.

I gave them one of these.



They absolutely love it. It is cheap and not particularly well built, but they really enjoy playing "table soccer", as it has come to be known. When I first gave it to them they played for about thirty minutes without a single pause.

Within five minutes Venus had rewritten the rules of the world game. When Mars scored two goals in a row she was most displeased. We got our first amendment to the rules.

"Mars, you can't score two goals in a row!"

If only someone had explained that to Germany before the World Cup.

Friday, July 9, 2010

The church that was

I didn't grow up in a church, but when I was nearly sixteen I started going with my friend. It was within walking distance of home and I came to love the place, even though the building was nothing special. It had no stained glass windows and really its only concession to ornamentation was two wrought iron sculptures on the two feature walls, one depicting a city surrounded by the holy spirit and the other a meshing of the alpha and omega symbols.

But somehow none of that mattered really, because the people are the place and they became part of my extended family. Then when my Gramp died and my Gran moved house to live in the street behind the church, she became part of the congregation too.

I was married in that church, and my Gran's funeral was there. I became part of the music ministry almost as soon as I joined the youth group, and I continued to play until we finally left to change churches more than ten years later.

Now what was the vicarage is six or eight two-story units crammed together, and what was the church is a day care centre. And today for the first time I had occasion to visit that day care centre and the feelings that I had just walking around in there took me by surprise.

I don't know if it's because I miss that time of my life, or because I miss my Gran, or just the feel of the place that was such a big part of my growing up. But I'm sitting here crying without really knowing why.

I guess that's just part of life though, change. My Gran would be happy to know that the children who attend that day care centre all seem happy. It's a nice place with lots of bright colours, children's art on the walls and generally a nice feel.

Still, things won't ever be like they were.


Sunday, July 4, 2010

The installation

For a couple of hours yesterday afternoon Mars and Venus worked together on a project. A big project. An installation of such size and location that it almost completely blocks egress from the front door to most of the house.

It happened in just the same way as I remember from when I was a kid. It started out as a small idea, and then it got bigger and bigger. They'd do some work on it and call us in to look at their progress. Then we'd go back to what we were doing and after twenty minutes or so they'd call us back in to show us something new they'd added.

Eventually they came into the kitchen and announced that they'd finished, and then asked me to come and take a look.

I came around the corner to see this.
Venus sits in the front on the pink chair with Mars behind her on the blue chair, both of which are tipped over to make them into bucket style seats. The boxes on each side hold toys, and you can see they've incorporated their water bottles into the design, to stave off thirst. When I asked about several other features I was told they are "for decoration".

So finally I asked what it was.

Venus replied "It's a boost off."

I asked "What for?"

Venus replied "A jump circuit."

So there you have it. If you ever wondered what a boost off for a jump circuit looks like, now you know.

What I want to know is, when the time comes, how am I going to get them to dismantle it?

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Doctor Venus

We are playing Doctor and patient. I am the patient and Venus is the doctor. Occasionally she finds something she doesn't know the name of in her doctor's bag, so she'll ask me what it's called and what it's for. Our stethoscope is broken, which she finds most inconvenient.

She has put bandaids on my legs, given me medicine in my mouth and in my arm, looked inside my ears and has even waved a blood pressure cuff in my direction.

She has checked behind my neck and she says she saw something, but she won't tell me what. She is taking copious notes and muttering to herself.

And her conclusion?

"It's a bit of a virus."

"Really? Venus, what is a virus?"

"I don't know, but that's definitely what it is."

The irony is, I really am sick and I really do have a virus. I wonder how she knew.


Thursday, July 1, 2010

That elephant stole my car!

I didn't go to the zoo today with Supernerd and the kids to meet the baby elephant, but I should have. If I had, maybe they wouldn't have lost the car.

It's partly my fault, even though I wasn't there. I have a rotten head cold and I really didn't sleep well last night - I felt like I was waking up every half an hour all night because my sinuses and glands hurt so much. So when the time came to go I realised that I was feeling too tired and sick, so I piked.

We planned to go to the zoo mid-afternoon because it's school holidays here and the zoo is usually quite busy, even when the weather is awful. At about 2pm I remembered that the baby elephant is only on view from 11am to 3pm, so they'd really have to hustle if they were going to get there in time.

They arrived at a quarter to three, so naturally Supernerd was keen to park the car and get going. When he arrived he found that the zoo was not as busy as he expected, and he found a parking space right near the front gate.

They rushed into the zoo and got to meet the baby elephant, and then visited the butterflies, the tiger cubs, the orangutans, the sea lions, the penguins and the giraffes. The kids played on the playground while Supernerd drank the worst take away coffee ever (apparently), and then they headed out the back gate, because we always park near the back gate.

Can you see the problem?

We always always always park at the back, and Supernerd had zero recollection of parking the car at the front gate and rushing in. So, from what I understand, they wandered around the carpark at the back for a while looking for the car. It doesn't help that the walls and pathways all around the zoo look the same, so Supernerd had a really good idea of where the car should be, he just didn't realise that it was way over the other side of the zoo.

He then did three sensible things.

He explained to the kids that it was possible that the car was lost, but it was more important that they were all okay.

He rang my Mum and asked her to come and get them. We only have one car, and it was lost.

He rang the police and reported the car as stolen.

When my Mum arrived with emergency rations for the kids (chocolate, milk and bananas) and blankets, she bundled them into her car and Supernerd suggested they do a lap of the zoo, thinking that maybe someone had taken the car for a joyride and left it elsewhere in the carpark.

Sure enough, they found the car just near the front gate, right where they'd left it.

Then he did four more sensible things.

He sent Mum off to bring the kids home.

He rang me to tell me what had happened.

He rang the police to unreport the car as stolen.

He brought home fish and chips.

When the kids got home they told me all about it, and their version pretty much agreed with Supernerd's story.

When Supernerd got home he told me that the baby elephant had moved the car.

I didn't believe him.


Saturday, June 19, 2010

Lego Star Wars - it begins

I had never really seen any of the Lego games that have been around for quite some time now, but a while back Supernerd got two games consoles on loan to do some testing, and then headed off to our local video shop and hired Super Monkey Ball and Lego Star Wars.

One of the main characters in Super Monkey Ball quickly became known as Stupid the Monkey as I struggled to navigate him in his little bubble away from some weird Boss character with flaming balls shooting from its wrists, or something. The details are vague now. But the point is I tried about 782 times to get Stupid the Monkey off the platform and onto the bridge and the more I tried the angrier I got, and with one child on either side of me I really had to rein in all my rude words.

Having said that, we had much more fun with Supernerd's other choice. This was our children's first real introduction to the Star Wars world. Mars tends to be very frightened of scary elements in movies, so at six years of age he is still far too young to watch the movies, and it goes without saying that Venus also falls into that category.

But with the action reduced down to lego characters running around, building stuff and solving problems, that's something they can really get into. Mars was particularly impressed when Supernerd figured out how to get Chewbacca to rip the arms off a stormtrooper. Somehow the violence becomes a lot less confronting when the destruction of your character is represented by lego bits flying everywhere, which then reassemble a moment later.

Within hours the children were running around the house referring to themselves as Luke and Leia (this version of the game started at Episode 3) brandishing "lightsavers".

More and more their imaginative play turned them into jedi knights, searching every room of the house for R2D2 and affectionately referring to Chewbacca as "Choo choo".

And then one Saturday morning the children were up first and were playing in Venus' bedroom. I got up to get them dressed and as I walked into Venus' room she asked in her most condescending tone "Mummy, you do realise you're in Jabba's palace?"

I replied "I'll be careful."

I waited for Mars to say "You'll be dead!", but I guess we're not up to that yet.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Chinese whispers over dinner

As you would expect the children don't like all the foods I like, and I try to avoid some of the foods they like. Mars is never happier than when you place in front of him a plate of vegies, chicken nuggets and chips. He doesn't care that I cook them in the health grill instead of deep frying them. He just knows what he likes.

The other night we had to have dinner in a hurry. Supernerd was out at a sporting event with a mate, so I grabbed nuggets and chips out of the freezer for the children and I had a bowl of wonton soup with noodles.

Now Venus has seen me eating wonton soup before and she seems fascinated by it. She doesn't want to try it, she just wants to look at it.

So when I sat down to eat with the children Venus looked over and said "Mummy, are you having wonton soup?"

"Yes" I replied.

Mars misheard what was going on from the other side of the table.

"Tonton soup?" Mars asked.

"Yes" I replied. "I'm having tonton soup with oobles."

"Tonton soup with oobles!" Venus squeals, laughing. "Silly Mummy!"

Just wait until they're old enough to watch The Empire Strikes Back. Then they'll get to see what tonton soup with oobles really looks like.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Headtorch


Last year we took a day trip to the snow with friends, and because it was a long day we wound up coming down the mountain when it was well and truly dark, which meant that when we got to the bottom of the snow fields and had to take the chains off the tyres we were working almost blind.

Our friend opened up the glovebox of his car, pulled out his headtorch and got straight to work. We looked over and Supernerd said "Man, that's a good idea. Why don't I have one of those?"

So for his recent birthday we gave him a headtorch, and although he seemed pleased I don't think he saw an immediate application for it.

Within a fortnight of his birthday one of the loungeroom light globes blew, and it just so happened to be the light that shines on the television and the cabinet underneath it that contains all the tech gear. What it somewhat fails to illuminate is the area behind the cabinet, where lies what I can only describe as a snake pit of cables from each device to the television and seemingly every other device.

On the weekend Supernerd did some testing which resulted in the PVR being unplugged, so the next time he sat down to watch a recording he had to then get up again to dive into the snake pit and reconnect the PVR. Of course it was good and dark back there so he reached into a nearby box, turned briefly to me and said "I love my headtorch", put it on his head, turned on the light and headed on in to the pit.

I should've known he'd find a tech problem for which the solution was his new headtorch.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Don't say you weren't warned

X-Man's mum is having a baby and she's due in about three months.

When we get together we seem to spend a lot of time laughing, which is great for the moment, but closer to her due date I'm going to have to be careful about what I say.

Why is that? Well, I'm glad you asked.

It starts with my Gran. She had a wickedly dry sense of humour that she passed on to my Dad, and he passed it on to me. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of sense of humour that can get you into a lot of trouble, particularly at those potentially disastrous moments when your mouth is faster than your brain.

I don't know how many times my Dad was nearly suspended from school because of his sense of humour, but I do know that he's always been able to put people at ease and make them laugh.

In one of his more famous moments he made a grown man wet his pants, but what really concerns me is that he has reportedly sent three heavily pregnant women into labour just by making them laugh, and herein lies the problem.

As my dear friend gets closer to her due date and grows more and more tired she will no doubt want more support, but can I spend more time with her knowing that I might wind up driving her to the hospital as a result of some feeble joke that I blurt out before I've even thought of it?

So you see my conundrum. I've done all I can do. I told her about my Dad and his superpower and I've cautioned her that I don't know what I'm capable of.

She can't say she wasn't warned.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Lost without Lost

I've come to the conclusion that Supernerd, myself, and three of our friends are the only people left in this country, maybe even the world, still watching Lost.

The last episode will screen here later this week and it has been such a long and drawn out saga that I'm wondering what it will be like to not have to wonder about it any more, which is based on the assumption that all our questions will be answered in the final 50ish minutes of the program, and that seems somewhat unlikely.

So that leaves me wondering about which of the unanswered questions I will wonder about.

Silly, really.

But it's so kind of the producers to go to all the trouble of making the final series, just for the five of us still watching. I must send J.J. Abrams a nice email to thank him.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

A source of information

Last year Mars' class went on a school excursion to the Botanic Gardens where they learned about many things including bamboo.

Mars can now explain to you that bamboo is not a tree or a bush, but a grass. Not only that, it's the fastest growing grass in the world and can grow up to a metre within a day of germination.

I've just been sitting at the kitchen table doing not much on my computer, and Mars has been sitting across from me working on a puzzle that Supernerd got for his birthday.

As is so often the way with children, a question comes at me from left field.

"Mum, why does bamboo grow so fast?"

"I don't know Mars, what do you think?"

"I think You need to go and ask your Dad."

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Give it a new name

Something we've learned from the television program Charlie and Lola is that sometimes, if you're very lucky, by giving a food a funny name you can get your child to try it, maybe even eat it.

I can't remember having to do this kind of thing very much when Mars was little, but Venus likes to randomly give up whole food groups for periods of time ranging from one meal to two months, so some nights we try everything we can to get her to eat.

Anyway we started off by using the names that Charlie uses to get Lola to eat certain foods. He calls fish fingers ocean nibbles, carrots become orange twiglets from the planet Jupiter, peas are green drops, cherry tomatoes are moon squirters and mashed potato is cloud fluff from the top of Mount Fuji.

We've taken to calling various shapes of pasta by new and interesting names. Penne are tubes, macaroni are rainbows, gnocchi are pillows and tortellini are belly buttons. Broccoli has become green trees and cauliflower is white trees (although my children won't eat it no matter what I call it), and potato gems (or pommes as they are sometimes called) are now known as dinosaur eggs.

Recently X-Man's mum made some fantastically delicious apple and raspberry crumble and very kindly brought some over to our house. So that night when we were all finished with dinner and were waiting for Venus to finish so we could have dessert, I heard myself say the words "Venus, if you eat all of your dinosaur eggs you can have some gruffalo crumble."

Sadly, she didn't eat her gruffalo crumble. Happily, I got to eat it for her.

Friday, April 23, 2010

It's not a footy scrum

A while back we had our neighbours around for dinner. They have a son, let's call him X-Man, who is about six months younger than Venus. X-Man, Venus and Mars get along famously and often play together.

At some time during the evening I put something in front of X-Man's mum - I can't remember what it was now. Maybe it was their dessert or maybe I gave her my phone to play with, but whatever it was she was sitting at the table and she suddenly had a veritable swarm of children around her right elbow trying to jostle their way into the best position.

She said "Woah, hold on. Stop pushing please, it's not a footy scrum."

Among the background music and all the noise the boys were making I could just make out Venus, who had obviously misheard my friend, quietly chanting to herself "tushie scrub, tushie scrub."

Serves me right for introducing the word "tushie" into her lexicon, I suppose.


Thursday, April 22, 2010

Car alarms

Car alarms really drive me crazy. I don't quite understand why someone would park their car in an underground carpark beneath a shopping centre, activate the alarm and then set off upstairs to go shopping for the day, completely unable to hear their car alarm when it starts going off for no apparent reason. The function of the car alarm then becomes simply to irritate anybody within earshot, which is a long way when you're in an underground carpark.

So when we had to replace our car around 18 months ago we had our mechanic disable the alarm, so nobody could ever accuse us of being those annoying people with the annoying car alarm.

Recently I was driving Venus around and we had to stop for petrol. It's normally Supernerd's job as I can't stand the smell of petrol, and even when I do go I wouldn't normally take the children with me, but we got stuck this particular day and I had no choice.

While I was inside paying a car alarm started to go off and it was clear from the noise level that it was one of the cars at the petrol station. I said smugly to the attendant "Well that's not my car. We don't have an alarm," to which she responded "Yeah, so many people bring their kids and they start touching things in the car and set the alarm off." So I said "That's why I don't normally bring my kids to the petrol station."

We finished our transaction and I headed back to the car to see an older couple parked behind me, patiently waiting their turn at the bowser. So I hurried a little and smiled at them to be polite and thank them for waiting. I got my keys out and as I pushed the button on the remote to unlock my door, the horn beeped. And that's odd, because the horn isn't supposed to beep when you unlock the door. An uncomfortable suspicion began to form in my mind.

As we drove home I asked Venus whether she had heard some loud beeping back at the petrol station and she said yes. I asked her whether it was our car and she said yes. I groaned.

"The car went beep beep beep for ages and ages, Mummy."
"Did you touch anything sweetie?"
"No Mummy, but the beeps were really loud."

So as I was trying to work out what set off the alarm she says:

"Oh. I opened my door for you, Mummy."

So that was it. I'd locked the car and walked away, and she unlocked her door (still strapped into her car seat) and set off the alarm. I was clearly wrong wrong wrong about the alarm and how it (still) works.

Now picture the whole situation from the point of view of the nice people in the car behind mine.

We pull up, there's no bowser free so we park behind the silver car. Then the alarm starts going off for absolutely no reason. The noise is really loud, the car lights are flashing, and is that a child in the car?

Then the stupid woman who owns the car comes out of the office, jogs back to her car and smiles at us because clearly she's either too stupid to know that was her car alarm, or worse, she does know and she doesn't care. Then she makes her car go beep again before she gets in, and drives away.

So the bad part is that I was so smug and it all came undone. But the worst part is that from their point of view I've become one of those annoying people with their annoying car alarms that drive me crazy, and there's no way to go back and explain.

But we're back to the old policy: no children at the petrol station.