Breathe

Today Gremlin was at school, Chicken was at kindy, W@dsy was at work and I was home alone with Poppet. I loved it. It wasn't the first time, in fact it has happened twice a week for most of the year.

But today I stopped.

I stopped trying to catch up on laundry and baking and sleep. I stopped feeling guilty about being lazy and not doing enough housework or being a good enough mum. Poppet was screaming at me for no reason and she wouldn't stop.

So I stopped.

I took a deep breath, wheeled her screaming in her high chair to the bathroom and turned on the taps to the bath. She stopped screaming and just watched me. I stripped us both down and we got in. She was calm and happy. She usually hates baths, she spends the whole time trying to get out, normally she has one of her siblings in the bath with her (a parent supervising of course), but today it was me. Today we played in the bath, we giggled, we played with toys, we fed each other blueberries, we just had fun. I had been so busy for so long trying to get everything done I was missing out.

Its time to make myself breathe, accept that I'm not perfect and simply enjoy the amazing life God has given me.

Isn't she just beautiful.

Early Morning Funnies

In the wee hours of the morning our darling son Gremlin woke us, shortly followed by his sister, he decided that he would tell us all about what he learned in Kids Church on Sunday.

Gremlin: Guess what, God fought Goliath
W@dsy: Oh really?
Gremlin: Yeah and He chopped off his head.
W@dsy: Don't you mean David?
Gremlin: Nope, it was God
Chicken: Yeah and then Mummy needs to sticky tape his head back on
Me: ????

Grateful

My kids are growing up so fast, I was looking at them today and trying to remember what it was like when they were babies. I'm not sure, but I think it was quieter. I have to say though, I'm loving the cute things they are saying at the moment...

Chicken: Mummy, why did you change your clothes?
Me: I didn't darling, I changed my hair colour
Chicken: Oooohh it's blue
Me: Umm, no darling, it's red
Chicken: Oooohh it's red

Gremlin: Mummy, Daddy, you hide, I'll be the Seek.

Chicken: Mummy, you got spreckles on you (freckles)

Gremlin: Watch out the Hunk (Hulk) is getting you

Chicken: No Mummy, I want to plush (flush) the toilet

Gremlin is eagerly planning his 4th birthday party, so far he wants a Spiderman, Superman, Mr Incredible, Batman and Buzz Lightyear cake. I have to say, I'm having fun planning the party too. It's actually hard trying not to give him absolutely everything a little boy could want. I'm so grateful to God for giving me my beautiful children, and my lovely husband, who puts up with me wanting to buy "just one more thing for the party" He has blessed me so much.

How To Get Your Daughter To Scream Like a Banshee

It's simple really.

1. Just take a thumbsucking daughter, who has cut both sides of her thumb on her teeth from sucking so much.
2. Then cover the wounds with water proof band-aids, then tape those in place with medical tape.
3. Now watch the madness.

Chicken gets her thumb taped from time to time, and usually she gets over it and decides to suck the bandage (hence the waterproof bandaids) but not today. Today she screamed and screamed. She only ever sucks her right thumb, but today she tried all her fingers, eventually she calmed herself by rubbing her eyebrows gently with her index finger (don't ask me why but her favourite body part is eyebrows). She's a loopy little girl with a horrible scream, but I love her :)

The Song

Gremlin is fairly smart, he loves music and memorises songs very quickly. So when he made up his own song, I should have been proud right? Not really. His song had just one lyric, "Penis!" Yup, he wrote the Penis Song. My son, like most boys is very interested in his penis. In fact, he keeps asking me what happened to mine... Oh and he's started peeing standing up. I am actually rather proud of this one, he actually gets it all in the bowl which is pretty amazing considering his genreal lack of co-ordination.

Holiday Fun

Sorry Peeps, the holidays have been keeping me pretty busy. I have launched my new blog Actually Reading The Bible which I am trying to do in a year, I've been working on a few craft projects (I'll show you guys another day) and of course getting through the holidays. Spending this time with the kids only makes me want to spend more time with them. Don't get me wrong, they are absolutely exhausting, but I just love them more and more.

Here is our holidays in a few pictures

 Chicken opening a present, she loves her new Dora the Explorer

 Gremlin concentrating very hard on opening presents, BTW he looks so grown up in this picutre

 Chicken dressed up all pretty for church on Christmas

Gremlin is in seventh heaven playing the church drums on Christmas morning

Checking out some pelicans at the zoo with Daddy

Exhausted after a big swim and too much playing

Christmas Eve, first day of holidays

As much as I enjoy being able to go to work and escape the kids occasionally, I've really been looking forward to this Christmas break. I want to spend time with my kids and just enjoy being with them. So, Day 1 of holidays and this is what we did.

• Cut kids' hair, Chicken's fringe is a little too short, but it'll grow
• Gremlin bumped the dresser and one of the wise men from the nativity set lost his head.
• Did some housework
• Had my friend Niki over 
• W@dsy bumped the dresser, and now we are down to only 1 wise man
• Niki, Gremlin and I assembled a gingerbread train
• Finished knitting a headband for Chicken
• Painted the kids faces ('cos you know, why not?)
• Ducked to the shops to buy ice for tomorrow
• Read books, sung songs, was tackled by children
• Children fed and put to bed

 Daddy Wrestling, a favourite pasttime

 The Little Engine that could.... be put together that is. (Please ignore my very bad attempt at an icing design on the front)

 Little Miss Chicken modelling her new short fringe and the headband I just made

 Gremlin as Spiderman (what did people used to facepaint before super heros?)

Chicken and her butterfly (I practically had to tie her down to get her to sit still long enough for this)

Phew, I'm exhausted. Are the holidays over yet?

A Day in the Life.

Today was busy and strange.

Firstly Gremlin and Chicken decided to sleep in. It was scary, I can't remember when they slept past 6am. They didn't wake up until 7:15am. I was concerned that maybe my husband finally snapped and drugged them in the night, (apparently he didn't).

I then spent the morning at a friends birthday morning tea, there were heaps of kids there and they all played to their hearts content. Apparently this wasn't enough, my children refused to take their afternoon naps. Grrrr. After over an hour of trying to get them to sleep I gave up. I had to babysit anyway.

Because I'm insane, I thought I'd help my friend out and baby-sit so she could go to the beautician. She has 3 girls. So this afternoon I spent with 5 children, 1x 6 year old, 1x 3 year old, 1x 20 month old, 1x 17 month old and 1x 10 month old. Oh and my husband ran away and hid in a coffee shop, because well, because he's not insane like I am. We all survived, without any injuries!

Gremlin was trying very hard  not to fall asleep during his dinner. This was rather unsucessful. So I decided to put Gremlin and Chicken to bed early, I can still hear them squealing in their room, objecting to sleep.

But Mum, I'm not tired

Not Quite a Princess

When we went to the doctors to take Chicken for her needles I was concerned. Not because of the needles (although she put up a pretty good fight), but because of her height and weight measurements. She is tall and thin, not unhealthilty so, but tall and thin nonetheless. And she's blonde, and she's pretty. My very deep concern is that she'll keep up this trend and become a tall, thin, pretty, blonde teenager.

See she's just too pretty for her own good.

I have one comfort in all of this. She is gross and violent. Okay, I guess that's two things.

Chicken is the kind of girl that you might pass in the shops and think "What kind of mother lets her kid get that dirty?" She constantly has food on her face and in her hair, she rolls around in dirt and sand and she eats it too. She farts all the time. She is constantly getting rubbish out of the bin and playing with it.  Chicken is also quite violent. Gremlin may start most of the fights, but she sure finishes them, usually with a pretty solid bite, poke in the eye or squeal in his ear. She is also pretty unforgiving to herself, she is forever covered in small scratches and bruises. In fact she even sucks her thumb so hard that she cuts her thumb on her teeth. So it could actually heal, we had to put a waterproof bandage on her thumb and then tape up the entire thumb so she wouldn't take the bandage off.

So hopefully she'll stay gross and violent as a teenager too, that should keep the boys away. At least for a little while.

It's Getting Out of Control

I'm referring of course to Gremlin's Jedi mind powers.

Here are the things that people have given us in the past three days alone:

 Yet another lady from day care went op-shopping and bought this for Gremlin. She actually tracked it down on the internet, went to Townsville (a 4 1/2 hour drive away, gee I hope she was there for some other reason than my son) and bought it for him.

Yes and our really nice neighbours gave us clothes and bikes, their grandson has outgrown these things, so they thought they'd give them to us.

The people in our life are too nice. They are all in his thrall. We asked him to use his powers and get us a house, we'll see if it happens.

My Son has Jedi Mind Powers

Yes, I'm pretty sure Gremlin is a Jedi. Why? Because of the number of people that are in his thrall.

When we pick up the kids from daycare we get bombarded by carers telling us how sweet and charming our son is, how they wish more of the kids were like him. We figured that once he was settled in he would show his true self, you know, the tantrums, the stubborness and the sibling bashing, but it's been almost a year and the gushing hasn't stopped. It has in fact gotten worse. One lady actually purchased a Wiggles bag for him while op-shopping, not for the daycare, but for him. Another is looking to buy guitars for the Junior Kindy room, just because he likes them so much.

Gremlin even has the other kids in love with him. When we arrive, an older child takes him by the hand and includes him in their game. He has the entire Junior Kindy room playing the air guitar with with him whenever they play a Wiggles CD. It's crazy.

The real question is, will he use his powers for good or evil?

Gremlin's Wisdom for the Day

Gremlin was sitting on the loo. I was frustrated because it was way too early to care about toilet training, but I could hardly get mad when he did the right thing by asking to go to the toilet.

Gremlin: Poo Mummy!
Me: Yes, darling
Gremlin: Poo! Yucky!
Me: Yes..
Gremlin: Don't eat it!

At this point I cracked up, all thoughts of early morning grumpiness went away. I love my son and the crazy thing he comes up with.

One

I happened, my baby girl turned 1.

She isn't supposed to grow up, she's supposed to stay small, sweet and cute forever.

How did she get from here

To here?

Cramming all the party people into our tiny duplex was a feat, fortunatley it stopped raining long enough for us to go into the backyard and let the kids play a bit. We ate cake, had way too much sugar, and the kids were sweet and charming.... and as soon as all the guests left, they both threw a tantrum.

P.S. Here is the cake I made, I'm very proud of it.

5 Lovely Moments for the Day

Today is one of those days when the kids are super cute. They just do one cute thing after another and it makes up for all those bad days.

1. While I was singing on stage at church, Chicken was in her stroller, grinning at me, then covering her eyes with her blanket and playing Peek-a-Boo.
2. Gremlin was playing with his toys and jumped up, yelled "toilet" and ran for the toilet, and he made it.Yay!
3. Chicken playing with the hats in the dress-up box.
4. While playing in the paddle pool, Gremlin discovered that if he sat in the water and stood up, water dripped down his undies making it look like he was weeing. So he kept dunking his butt in the water, standing up, then bending over so he could see himself "wee."
5. Both kids attempting to dance with the Wiggles DVD.

 Nice Hat Chicken

Sneaky

My two and a half year old has out-smarted me and husband.

We thought we were being clever and sneaky, we told Gremlin that if he asked really politely he could have one lolly a day. The lolly was just a sweet flavoured multivitamin for kids. Gremlin however insisted that we would have our lollies at the same time he had his. Taking this opportunity we remembered our multivitamins.

However the little rat has been cheating. In order to get himself two lollies a day, he has been waiting to get each parent alone and ask for his lolly then. He even figured out that if he asks us really early in the morning we are generally too tired to ask the other parent if he's had his lolly yet.

If he can trick us now, what will we do when he's 17?

The Puppy

Nope I did not go out and buy puppy. I don't need to. I have Chicken.

Here are the things my little has in common with a puppy:

1. If she's just had a bath, she'll somehow manage to find something dirty to roll in.
2. She hangs around under her brother's chair to catch falling food scraps, even though you just feed her.
3. She tests out her teeth on everything she can find.
4. When you come home from a day at work, she greets you by toddling over and trying to climb up your leg.
5. When you think you have finally cleaned up the last of the poop, she poops again.

Though for some bizarre reason I am considering buying the kids a fish...

Addict

My daughter is an addict.

She is addicted to....receipts?

She just loves eating them. I'm not sure how she finds them, but she does. She finds them all over the house. And she is aided by her brother, who has recently discovered that he can open doors. If she is quiet it means she is either asleep or is eating a receipt. Can kids die from receipt poisoning? Gee, I hope not.

Problem. Solved

Gremlin is a smart little boy, he has very creative ways of solving problems that come up in everyday life...

Problem - He sneezed and got snot on hands
Solution - Rub snot all over face

Problem - He feels like playing the drums but no drum kit
Solution - Push sister over so on belly and use her back like a bongo drum

Problem - He can't see Winnie the Pooh in is favourite cereal bowl
Solution - Empty cereal onto tablecloth

All before 6am

Sorry

Gremlin's new word is "Sorry"

He says it in a little sing-song voice that can calm a very angry parent such as myself. However... I'm pretty sure he has no idea what it means. He's clever enough to have figured out that "Sorry" is what you say when you've done something wrong, but he's not exactly repentant.

Need an example or two?

When Gremlin trips on his own feet (a common occurance) he says "Sorry" to himself.

When Gremlin is cheekily tipping his water bottle all over the sofa, he grins and says "Sorry, sorry sorry."

And shortly after getting in trouble for squishing his sister, he toddles back over to her and declares "Sorry!" as he squishes her again.

Oh well, one day he'll learn what "sorry" means. :)

Friends and Kids

I'm pretty sure that God made kids cute so that they would survive to adulthood.

Gremlin still refuses to sleep any later than 5:30am and turns his nose up at any food that isn't toast.  But he's just so cute when he tries to imitate his daddy doing Wii Fit exercises. And Chicken, she is going through a stage where she wants to be held all the time but then she turns to face you and gives you a ridiculous grin and you just melt.

I wouldn't trade my kids for anything but some days you just get so exhausted you don't know what to do. It's those days I especially thank God for my friends. I have a few friends I can just call and chat to and hear a happy voice instead of a cranky one. I can always call my husband and he's a fantastic support but there is only so many times I can call him while he's trying to get some work done. My friends are such blessings and I don't know what I would do without them.