Royal Wedding update

Princess Alice is still marginally obsessed with Prince William and Princess Kate, whom she confuses as little with my friend Cate who watched the big day with us.  I am forever having to comply with orders in games to "be Auntie Cate and get married and I'll be Prince William"

Last week, royal fever hit a new high, when she pronounced that "I'm Queen Alice and you must bow to me.  If you don't, I will banish you from the planet".  Word for word, I promise.

The bunny underworld

Somewhere out there, is a shadowy group of people who frequent cheap shops and buy up cheap toys that children may, perchance, grow to love.  Juliet has befriended one such toy and we have been sucked into a mysterious eBay underworld of people who seem to just sell "comforters".  I didn't actually know what a comforter was until I started absent mindedly looking for a spare toy for her to snuggle, while Bunny No 1 was in the wash.  Alice has a small gang of toys upon whom she randomly bestows the favour of co-sleeping; more often than not she'll cuddle up to a book.

Juliet, on the other hand, is obsessed with an Asda bunny.  She sucks it to sleep and it gets quite manky, quite quickly - both because of the ferocity of the sucking and because she still has 3 sleeps a day so it gets quite a workout.  No problem, thought I, we even have family members who work at Asda, I'll just get another for washing days.  I'll never either of them fall into the Thames and need a replacement, I thought, smugly.

But no, the shadowy underworld have their own ways.  They are eBay users with 600+ feedback ratings, all related to cheap toys.  They pull them from sale if it looks as though they'll sell for the reserve price; they describe their wares as "lifesavers", they claim to "make sure you don't lose sleep", they exhort you to "buy your child a new best friend or a spare".  "Never be without".  Worse, because the Shadowy ones have bought up all the cheapie toys, most comforters on eBay are now described as "rare" and you can't simply buy a replacement or a spare from Asda yourself.

The Northern grandparents have diligently researched many Asdas and it seems that the Underworld is now our only hope.  I've already bought one and my competitive hackles have me bidding on another before the bunny is disappeared altogether (and sleeps with the fishes?) 

I'm starting to think it would be easier if she sucked her thumb, but am still pleased that we haven't come to that.  Like Alice, she has self weaned from a dummy.  Weaning from bunny, on the other hand, may be a lifelong process.

The sleep of the innocent. 

The Royal Wedding

There was great excitement at Alice's pre-school, in the run up to the Royal Wedding.  They built carriages and castles and were all invited to dress up as Prince and Princesses for the day.

It all sounds very entertaining - this is an exerpt from the daily report.

"Following our small group play time, the children returned to the large group for the beginning of the “royal reception”. We began our second morning group time by discussing the royal wedding. I asked the children if they knew who was getting married. To which Abigail stated confidently, “Kate!”. I then asked who she was marrying…. “him!” was the answer I got, as they pointed to a picture of the couple posted on the wall. After some thinking Abigail and Amelie decided “him” was William. We then asked the children what Kate was going to become when she marries William this evening. They all agreed that she would become a princess. Katie then asked the children which country Prince William and Princess Catherine will be prince and princess of. Abigail’s hand shot into the air as she stated “ENGLAND! I am going to visit them in England!”. Following our discussion, we decided that we would practice our “royal dancing” just in case we ever need to attend a royal wedding in the future.


Unfortunately, there were not enough “princes” to go around. Alice and Piper had some beautiful ballet moves as they twirled around the room.  To end our dance the girls elegantly curtsied and the boys regally bowed to the girls. Quite the refined dancers!"

Later on, Alice was allowed to stay up and watch the wedding.  She peaked a little early, getting very excited when all the guests arrived ("Where's my Nanna?  When will she get to the wedding?" and, on catching sight of Prince Charles, "There's Grandad").  She was thrilled at William's red jacket "I like red now" but was bored by the time Kate arrived, so had to be put to bed.  We watched the hymns and the vows again the next day to slightly more interest.  But not much.

Stu had much more fun with the whole event, orgnanising a big bash at work, with two very special guests of honour:

Happy Easter

Our Easter was a game of two halves.  With Stu recently back from the good ol' U S of A, we enjoyed the first few days, getting out and about as a family.  We spent a lot of time at Centennial Park, feeding ducks, kicking a football about and driving round it to get Juliet a quick nap and also popped up to Fairlight to see the new pad.  Auntie Niti and Uncle Dougie came round for roast lamb, which was fun and Alice and I embarked on an Easter Egg hunt in Centennial Park (again) which was stunning - it was a beautiful day and Alice loved following the map and hunting down the clues.

You had to find 9 letters which spelt out a secret word (Egg Hunt) which were hidden all over the park.  You reported the secret word to the Easter bunny (pictured at the very back of the third photo above) and he gave you an egg.  Or you had a complete meltdown at the sight of him, screamed blue murder and made your mother look as though she was trying to force you to do something awful.  I was completely happy to walk away and not get any more chocolate, but that made her scream even more.  In the end the Easter Bunny's "minder" gave Alice an egg and she was delighted and skipped away happily.  Now, each time we drive past spots in the park where clues were hidden, Alice has a touch of the Walter Mitties about the whole thing.  "That's where we found the last clue", "That's where I met the Easter Bunny", "That's where the Easter Bunny gave me my egg and I didn't cry" etc.

Unfortunately the last two days of the long weekend (we also had the Tuesday off) were spent hiding from the rain, waiting for the on-call doctor to come out and see Juliet for her poor cough and making Anzac cookies for Anzac Day.

Om nom nom

In amongst all this activity, Juliet has quietly gone about the business of starting solids.  She is a champion eater.  It has been so much fun to cook for her as she has gobbled down everything that has been set before her.

We are up to pureed casseroles at lunchtime now, so apart from the 2.30pm bottle, she's basically on three meals a day, which makes life much more pleasant.  I've found it much easier than with Alice, since I've been at home in my own kitchen and also because I got started on making vegetable purees about 2 weeks before Juliet started eating them so I had a big selection ready to go.

Finger food has been slower going, although she did devour a rusk (healthy Australian style, rather than Farleys sugar-coma inducing) yesterday.  I'm still trying toast and Philadelphia in the mornings.  She's not impressed:

I find it quite odd that literally anything and everything else goes into her mouth, but toast and pieces of carrot are strenuously resisted.  Still, the rusk gave me hope (and a whole pile of washing as it went everywhere) so I'll persevere.  I can't believe she'll hold out for long.

She's also a big fan of water.  Give her her sippy cup to hold at lunchtime and she'll giggle and shriek in an excitement usually reserved for when she catches sight of Alice.

Vale Eastern Suburbs

It's been a while, but it's been a busy time.

A brief recap would include a trip to New York (Stu); a first ear infection (Juliet); croup (Alice and Juliet); a cold that won't go away (me) - NB most of these events took place in the same week, although Juliet saved her cough for Easter weekend - oh, and, we bought a house.  We move on Tuesday.

I won't post the link because obviously it contains our new address, but no doubt there'll be lots of photos in the future.

House hunting with Alice was an interesting experience.  Stu had me schooled in nonchalence, so that we could drive a harder bargain, but Alice would wander into a place and if the kids rooms had good toys, would start proclaiming loudly, "Oh Mummy, it's gorgeous.  Really gorgeous.  Do you like it, Mummy?"

She's seen this house a couple of times - Juliet and I did the initial reccy and then the rest of the clan followed for the second viewing.  We've been back to do some measuring up (by which time, the furniture had gone) and Alice is still finding it hard to understand that it'll have all our furniture there, when we move in.  There have been a couple of moans about not wanting a blue bedroom (the previous owners had two boys so the beds had blue covers on them) but I think she has the idea now that her "Dora" bed (ie her bed with a Dora cover) will be in place.  Last night I thought she'd got the hang of it: "Will my toothbrush be in the new house?"' "Will my toys be in the new house?" "Will your bed be there?" "Will Juliet's cot be there?" etc.  Of course, answering in the affirmative to the above passed nearly a whole car journey so I was pretty content to do this, with one ear on the radio.  When I realised that I had agreed that the traffic lights at the end of our road and our bath would also be there, I knew I needed to pay more attention.

The next battle is packing boxes.  It's like having my mother around, as no soon as I try to throw something out than it is rescued and "I really need that" is heard.  We now have a babysitter coming this afternoon and tomorrow so that some actual packing rather than unpacking can take place.

Here are some photos, including the infamous blue bedroom:

Obviously some of these photos were taken by a photographer for the real estate pages and one was taken by my iphone.  Spot the difference!

So we're off to the Northern Beaches.  It's very exciting to be in our own, lovely house, but still a bit unreal to imagine that we'll be living so far from everyone and everything we're used to.  I hope it doesn't feel like moving to a new city all over again.  Fairlight seems like a lovely suburb, with lovely harbour beaches and apparently great snorkelling (hmm, very handy at this stage in our lives).  We can get the ferry or jet cat to work from nearby Manly or the express bus stops outside our house.  There's a brilliant primary school a few blocks away and a supermarket just down the road.

Can't wait to be in, although I can't say that the next few days hold much excitement!