Alice's tent

Cousin Milly visited us in March and gamely helped Alice to collect enough coupons to send off for a Huggies playtent by gamely filling her Huggies nappies as fast as she could.

The freebie has at last arrived and Alice is quite delighted with it. There are windows to peer from and a doorway through which one can crawl in and out. It provides a sanctuary for reading and for playing with ones credit cards. It comes with tent pegs and insect nets in the unlikely event we ever use it for camping - ha ha - it is far too useful for storing books and toys to get it dirty.

Memories

The trouble with a large age gap between siblings is that you don't really have the experience of a shared childhood. You do all the same things, either altogether or because your parents repeat experiences/tried and tested means of keeping you quiet, but memories diverge.

Aunties Jenny, Rosie and Ruthy (all born within 18 months of one another and let's not talk about the thought of having twins in 8 weeks time, which would be what would happen if the pattern were repeated) often come up with memories of experiences where I was either absent/too far into teenagerdom "this is soooo boring"/ or in the case of the following, shared delusions, where they have talked about something so much that they now believe it to be true. Or so I thought.

Alice has a cold - she's gone back to back on these two rounds of the snots and so we have tissue stations everywhere. I have tried to make blowing her streaming little nose seem fun - as far as this is possible - by making a trumpeting noise when I wipe it, which she sometimes emulates and even succeeds in blowing the nose. We have also learned to point at our nose (and ears, head, cheeky cheeks, chin and tum) so that just adds to the delight (how the long winter afternoons fly). Anyway. She has recently shown great willingness to going to fetch a tissue for said endeavour. She will also go and fetch books, toys, flashcards, and generally anything that you need that is within reach. It's very handy. Yesterday, as she returned from bringing me my mobile phone, I had a little flashback. The Aunties are full of tales of how I used to get them to do all my fetching and carrying. I've always denied it, but perhaps it is true. Alice is so well trained that I must have learned how to get others to run about for me in the past. In fact, my skills as a layabout have greatly increased, as Alice can also be prevailed upon to put things away. She's just tidied up the living room. Skills have evolved, as I don't remember the Aunties ever being very skilled at that.

In other blast from the past news, the recent stormy weather has caused such beach erosion at Coogee as to have revealed the foundations of the old pleasure pier (picture of the original on website link below). These are usually covered by sand and sea and are rarely seen, even at low tide.

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mons1/pier.htm

Apparently the extent of the protrusion from the sand is a once in a lifetime event, so Alice rode down on her bike to have a look. Obviously this lovely photo of her sitting on the foundations will be one for the family album (if you ignore the dribble, snot and snivelling).



Later, having returning to her bike, she cheered up considerably.

Arts and Crafts 2

Still a bit peeved at Alice's non-perfect school report, I thought it would be nice if we did a little bit of a little bit messy play at home. Since Alice had show an interest in crayoning, some crayons were purchased and Alice did a lovely drawing for Grannie.

Then I got really keen and thought that perhaps we could do some baking together. Last week I made sugar-free banana and pear muffins which were quite horrible to the adult palate, but which were greedily consumed by all children under the age of 3 who were presented with them. Even little friend Amba, who only eats parsnips and spaghetti bolognaise pronounced them, "lovely". I thought that Alice and I could make some more, since they are relatively healthy and that cooking would be a nice thing we could do together.

Alice thought differently.

The bits on the floor are the remnants of the mixing bowl.

Yesterday I made a banana and chocolate banana bread without any tantrums which is adored by young and old alike. From now on, cooking and crayoning will take place concurrently.

Fending for themselves

Alice and her pa had to look after themselves for a whole 46 hours last weekend. Alice spent a total of 27 of those hours asleep, approx 3 of them eating meals and 1 in the bath. This left approx 15 hours for her father to fill with milkshake drinking, excursions on her bike to the park, swimming, a trip to an indoor playground and chasing each other around the sofa, pretending to be tigers who roar (in a very high pitched "rah" if you are Alice the Tiger).

They both coped admirably with my absence although Alice gave us all a scare by starting the weekend refusing her Friday day sleep at daycare. Definitely not ready to drop that. All followed smoothly, with Daddy particularly enjoying hanging out with the other divorcee Dads at Lollipops playland on Saturday morning.

I took the camera with me, so there's no photgraphic evidence of activities performed by the intrepid duo. Instead a shot of me at the lovely Byron Bay.



And Byron Bay this weekend. Thank goodness we went last week!

Blowing a kiss

Aaah.

Bookworm

Some other photos of Alice from daycare. A theme is emerging....

Note that the other children are sitting obediently in a circle so that everyone can see the pictures...

Arts and Crafts

Getting grubby is neither Alice nor my favourite pastime. I'm sure that she gets most of her aversion to it from me, although I am less willing to put my hands in my dinner to smear it over my face or to pick out individual peas than she is. I think that she gets quite enough dirt-induced immunity from her continued refusal to walk and putting her hands on the floor all the time as it is.

The nice ladies at daycare asked last week if Alice could be formally excused from craft and messy stuff, since she gets upset when they try to get her to participate. Seeing no need for her to be unnecessarily upset during the days that she attends daycare, I readily agreed. As you can see from this photo of her making Mothers Day cookies, she's just not that into getting her hands into stuff.

The cookies were great and I completely ignored the comment that she had "sort of helped to make them".

Last week we received a couple of CDs from the centre, one containing all the photos that have been taken of her to date (great) and one containing Alice's "portfolio", which is really a school report (average). It seems that, as we already know, Alice love books, music and has settled in nicely; also that she is simply not a "crafter". Most of the "assessments" that have taken place involve Alice, an observer, an artistic activity and a disappointed sounding description of how much she didn't enjoy it or develop "sensory participation" or somesuch. Undeterred, we read the report and then go about our business. Suddenly, *BAM* - 24 hours later, we receive the following e-mail and photos from the daycare place:

"Alice has had an amazing week this week and had participated in many wonderful experiences.
Alice enjoyed some crayon drawing this morning; she chose which colours she wanted from the crayon box then using large arm movements created brightly coloured orange and brown patterns on the paper.
Alice also explored our sensory bags, holding the bag out in front of her she shook them up and down vigorously watching the brightly coloured feathers swirl around in the bag pointing with the other hand and babbling to herself while watching."





I know the last bit isn't exactly "crafty" but I like the bit about her babbling.

What's in a name?

Alice and I have started Gymbaroo again. We had deferred from last term, since the class was scheduled at what became naptime.

We tend to see littlies with normal-ish names. However, these organised activities draw out some interesting ones.

Gymbaroo classmates currently topping the interesting name league: Aramis, Cacharel
Daycare classmate (highly commended for interesting name): Savannah

Living in Australia, they will invariably be known by nicknames: Ara, Cach and Sav?

Sneaky

I've been a little under the weather and so Alice and her papa spent the weekend dashing from activity to activity to keep her amused and to let me sleep. They enjoyed the Aquarium, the park, swimming, a playground and another playground. Plus lots of bike riding in an amongst those amusements. Alice was quite exhausted and was seeking her bed at around 6pm on both days.

As would be expected of a weekend spent with her Dad, Alice enjoyed a few treats, including a strawberry milkshake for breakfast. Nominally Stuart's beverage, it was at least halfway consumed by Our Heroine. (It should be noted that this milkshake was in a container which was almost as tall as Alice. She didn't need to eat for the rest of the day after her gluttony). Still she wanted more. When Pater had guzzled the remainder and discarded the cup (to a background of much grumbly complaint), Alice sat quietly for a minute. When she thought we weren't watching, she then picked up the container, carried it on her knees across the room and hid behind the sofa. There, she got herself comfy - by stretching out her little legs and making sure her back was resting nicely on the back of the sofa - and began sucking on the straw as hard as she could. Sneaky behaviour. Nature or nurture?


Later, she repeated the endeavour with a yoghurt. Which she was completely allowed to have (although I had been trying to wrestle the nearly empty pot from her for quite a few minutes) but she seemed to enjoy pulling the wool over our eyes - or at least the belief that she has achieved this.





Sneaking off


Heh heh heh, no one will see me here


The guilty party caught red handed