Poor little thing

Ivy has a fever, and she is sleeping. We moved her portacot into our room (cooler) and she's been asleep since 10.30 am. Hazel is up and happy, being the Captain of the Boat.

Bottle train

Last week, the girls had their last bottles.

We had been giving them a bed-time bottle for ages. They are such big girls, but they really loved their bottles.

When they were six months old, they were fully bottle-fed. At night, we would wash the 12 bottles from the day, soak them in chlorine solution, make up 12 bottles of formula, and line them up in the fridge. It took ages. I loathed the task.

Over the next year, we gradually dropped one milk feed after another, until at about 18 months just the bed-time bottle was left. It was almost pleasurable to make up just two bottles at a time. There was no need to "sterilise", because we were able to make it up just before using it.

Then one day, we switched to plain cows milk. No more tins of powdered formula. Just tip in the milk, and plug it in.

Last week, Trudi's suggestions that we stop giving the girls bottles clicked, and I suddenly though it was a good idea. That night, no bottles. No-one said anything, and bedtime was no more ridiculous than usual.

Last night Hazel asked for a bottle, so they each had a glass of milk instead. Tonight, nothing.

My grown-up girls.

T-shirt

Today at playgroup:

Me:You look hot. Wanna take off your shirt?

Ivy: Leave green one on!


Me: Yep, right. I'll take off the long-sleeve stripy one, and leave the green t-shirt on.

Ivy: (Hesitantly) Not nude?

Me: (Snickering) No, not nude.

Dishes

Look at this! They are finally useful!

Ever since I told Hazel that the scrubbing brush was for cleaning dirty pots, she's been very keen to clean a dirty pot.

And Ivy is always partial to a bit of tipping-water-from-box-to-box.

By the end, the pot was actually pretty clean.

This morning we voted. Our closest voting place is the Preston East primary school (yes, the one we've been playing at). They had sausages in bread, so we stayed there for a couple of hours. The girls stomped in puddles, waved sticks around, had bogus toilet visits (four visits and just one wee!). Trudi and I chatted with Fleur and Darren. It was a very pleasant morning.

The joy of Christmas

This was in Lincraft. I'd been trying to find a bra extender, because my intentions of eating less have not become reality. Didn't find it, but Ivy found a Christmas tree. It was a tacky cheap-looking thing, but of course she doesn't know that. She delicately touched the plastic tinsel and the plastic baubles, gazed up at the wonky plastic fairy, and wondered at the electric lights. I look at stuff like that and see infuriating short-lived ugliness, but I think Ivy saw luminous glory.

More about the school playground

More! Have you noticed the time of these posts? Commuting. Forgot to bring a book both days. Anyway.

When we were playing at the school grounds for the second time, a bloke came over to us. I expected that he was going to tell us to leave. Instead, he said if was really happy to see us there, and what do we want to see done around the place?

His name is Brendan and he is the principal of one of the schools that is quietly running in the building. His school is Pavilion, an alternative high school for kids not suited to traditional schooling. Brendan took us inside to see a class of girls whe were learning about solid shapes - cones and cubes etc.

Some of those girls are young mums, so there is a corner of toys. Ivy and Hazel threw themselves at the little fake kitchen. Brendan said we could come inside to use the toys and the toilet. How cool!

Rock babes

We are learning how to jump off things. It makes my heart speed up, but what can I do? It seems to be time to do this.

Our local primary school has closed, and its enormous grounds have been mostly unused. This week I had an email from my local Sustainability Street group in which someone reported that an Education Department person welcomed community access to the school.

So on Monday arvo I put the girls in the pram, walked over to the school, wandered in through the gate, and commenced to play. There is a slightly decrepit set of play equipment... Slide, monkey bars, you know. Once that palls (takes four minutes), there are rocks in a 'dry creek bed', grass, trees, wooden walls to climb and walk along, plus a vegie and herb garden to ransack for lavender.

On the way home, Ivy and Hazel each had a long stalk of lavender, another of grass, plus roses and dandelions on their laps. Birnam Wood.

Morsby

It's a first - one of the soft toys has a name! Until now they have all been Green Bear and Tiny Rabbit and the like. Last night Hazel called the new red-faced Norwegian cat puppet Morsby.

I don't know where she got the name.

This morning she let me know that the other cat puppet (grey-faced) is also Morsby, but it might also be Cluffy. Yet another cat toy (the red one, from Estonia) is also Morsby.

Doors

A few weeks ago, we all went to a door shop, and picked out a new screen door for the front. The old one was literally falling apart - Trudi used cable ties to keep it in one piece, but it was essentially a piece of shit.

A week ago, mum visited (imagine some big doom-y music). As we all came in the front door, I propped the "security" door open by moving the little disc thingy on the thingy up the top... what it this called? Is it worth googling it so you will know exactly what I mean? Ok, Google is no help; I don't even know what search terms to use. Where was I.

Once we were all inside, Mum tried to close the door, but it was still propped open, and she actually ripped the door off its hinges! What a magnificent security door we had.

I put it on the nature strip and it was four or five days before someone took it away. That is a measure of how crappy it was - I put a garden gnome out once, and that took fifteen minutes to go.

Today a man from Michael's Security Doors came and put up a new door, plus one for the back. Now we can have the doors open on hot nights - bliss. The poor installing guy had a hard time with the front door frame. It's had a tough life - it seems to have been randomly shaved down in various spots, so he took half an hour of serious chiselling and hammering to hang the door. Somehow the girls napped through it all, and woke to a new door.

How did you get here today?

I can see which internet searches have brought people to this blog. Here are some highlights:

• front seat slow loris
• slow loris toy
• dr luke sammartino reviews
• sourdough starter smelling like acetone
• "weed in the potty"
• "slow loris" wearing a dress
• slow loris toilet trained
• slow loris dressed up
• how to shower slow loris

Sorry to disappoint, people.

Big beds, one day

Trudi has a thing about getting the girls to move from cots to big beds. I'm happy for them to be in cots for a looooong time.

We went to bed shops today, looking. The girls took their shoes off (well we did it for them) and they jumped on beds and played hidey under piles of cushions.

The beds are expensive and kinda crap. Trudi liked the look of the bed that the Anges have for Olive, and we even know where they got it. We'll wait until the January sales, and I think T will also try to haggle, cos we'll be getting two.

Tonight when we were trying to zip the girls into their bags, Ivy lay down on the floor, spread a cloth nappy over herself like a sheet, and closed her eyes, grinning. She was SLEEPING under a big girl's sheet. Maybe this big bed thing will be OK.

Climbing and talking

In the last couple of weeks, both Hazel and Ivy have changed a lot.

They now both like climbing... up ladders in playgrounds, and up stools at home. Hazel carries a stool around the house, wondering what to inspect next. Ivy is learning to climb those playground ladders made out of chains.

Time to go to the Anges' to see Tom and Toby, plus various adults.

At AMBA convention

This is an old photo. I am using my phone discreetly under the table, and I don't know how to blog without a photo. So. I came in to the room, found my table, and there sat some strangers and a long-distant ex. Haven't seen her for 12 years FOR GOOD REASON. Turns out that she has twins too.

Nearly 2

Today, Hazel had a big howl. She cried and thrashed and was miserable. After a while she calmed down. When she was lying peacefully on my chest, she said quietly, "Hazel misses Mummy". I said, "Which mummy", and she patted me. I asked "When do you miss Mummy?" and she said "At creche".

Wow. I am so proud of her.

Ivy is getting into climbing. At the playground she is having a go at climbing ladders, and those chain net things. Lots of complaining about how hard they are. After a few goes with help, she does it with elation.

The evenings are getting warmer, so we've tried out a long-held dream... alfresco dining. It's a nightmare cleaning couscous off the floor, and the chickens love it, so why not? It worked very nicely:

Back at work

Mmm, traffic jams. It's 4pm and I am on Hoddle St, driving from work to creche.

Geen Dess

Ivy loves her green dress. She calls it Geen Dess. "Wear Geen Dess! Want Geen Dess!" It's a hand-me-down velveteen thing with a zip down the front. Ivy has worn it since she was crawling - a crawler in a dress is a riduclous thing really, but it's short and didn't interfere too much.

I'm not sure why it's Ivy's dress. Most of Hazel and Ivy's clothes are shared. They have a box for t-shirts, one for jumpers, another for pants, and so on. Most items are worn by both girls, but a few seem to have become property of one or the other. The magenta jumper is definitely Hazel's (as she says, "Hazel is wearing the magenta jumper!"), and Geen Dess is Ivy's.

Geen Dess is getting too small. Or is Ivy getting bigger? She must be! Geen Dess is now more of a tunic than a dress, and it's rather tight across the chest.

She wore it to creche last week, and Rena diplomatically suggested that Geen Dess might be nicer to hold and play with than to wear.

So - off I went to Shitcraft to get a pattern and some green fabric. I am making Geen Dess Mark II. The pattern has START written on it, and the instructions are aimed at novices and morons, which is just right for me. I still managed to sew the facing on the wrong way, and it took me 24 hours of puzzling to work out how to do the armholes. Tonight I'll finish the armholes, the side seams and the hem.

I showed Geen Dess II to Ivy this morning, and she called it Geen Dess and wanted to wear it immediately, so I'm heartened. I'd been wondering if taking 10 hours to sew a simple dress was a sensible thing to do, but I don't think I could find a bright green dress in a shop anywhere. Did I mention how saddened I am by kids' clothes? Little girls are expected to dress like grown women, and it gets me down.

If Geen Dess II works out OK, I'll make one for Hazel. I think she might like a magenta one.

Driving Miss Ivy

I took Ivy to my singing thing this arvo. Hazel was home sick with the other Mummy.

In the car on the way home, Ivy watched the trees and buildings whizz past. She wanted everything to be a tower.

"Tower! Tall tower with flags!"
"Yellow tower over there."
"Tower. Might go in a tower. One day. One day. Onnnne daaaaay."

Also, she wanted to have a terrible tedious little book called Aircraft. It's a tiny board book, and each page has a picture of a kind of aircraft (e.g. "Twin-propeller passenger airplane"). It's dire, so it's been banished (with its cousin "Boats") to the car. In the garage we keep a pile of books that neither mummy can stand to read again, and every few weeks the books in the car get put back on the pile, and others are cycled through.

Anyway, anyway. "Aircraft" was in the garage, not the car, so Ivy said:

"Mummy get "Aircraft". Ivy misses it."

Ohhh, she misses it! I think she knows about this because I've been telling the girls that I miss them when they are at creche.

Another cute Ivy story: both girls can now get themselves up onto the toilet seat all by themselves. It helps to have the little step in front of the toilet, but it's not necessary. I've realised that I sing them a few bars of that song that goes "All by myse-e-elf, don't wanna beeeee all by myse-e-elf"... because Miss Ivy now sings it in a strange drone when she's dragged herself atop the toilet seat. "Aw baaaah maaaaah se-e-e-effff".

We are not in Cairns

Instead we are in Melbourne, in the cold, in the rain, with snot.

Ivy has conjunctivitis, Hazel has it again, Trudi and I have new colds, and so does Ivy. Not sure if Hazel has the new cold or the old cold. Not sure that it matters. We are a mess.

We are really glad that we cancelled the Cairns trip. We would have been travelling on Saturday, which was a particularly low day for all of us. The girls would have had no nap on that day. Cos we were home, they napped for over 3 hours - and then slept 11 hours at night.

Hazel and Ivy have a new thing - they say that they are "a bit scared" about whatever it is that has scared them. "Ivy bit scared of the balloon" is a common one. A balloon that is bobbing around in a breeze always gives her the heebies. Hazel is testing the phrase. She looks around to see what to finish it with. "Hazel bit scared of... the couch." Hazel bit scared of... the floor."

Sick again

Again and again and again.

This time it's a cold that's turned into conjunctivitis for Hazel. The poor little possum is really foul. Snotty nose, snotty eyes... really grim. This morning she was weeping quietly as she sat up in bed. She was such a disaster that I just gave her a shower to clean her face.

Ivy got the cold first, but she's recovered nicely.She could do with a bit more attention though. Hazel is so pathetic that Ivy is getting less than her usual share of sunshine.

We are really really hoping that Hazel is better by Friday morning. That's the time that we have to decide whether we are going to Cairns next week. If she is still festy, we won't go. No point trying to have a nice holiday when one of us is miserable and waking many times each night.

Still making sourdough

When we go to Cairns next week, I will take a little jar of sourdough starter for Trudi's cousin. I hope the starter performs well in a different city. Higher temperatures, higher humidity...

Running builder!

Ivy loves the Bob the Builder book that I got from the Salvoes. The book has been banished to the car so I don't have to read it ever again. Ivy reads it on most car trips.

Ivy likes the book so much that she has decided that she is a builder. I think Hazel started this meme... one day, all of a sudden it was Hazel the builder, Ivy the Builder, Mummy the Builder, Minke the Builder, Nanna the Builder. Hazel moved on, but Ivy was captivated. Ivy Builder!

Ivy likes to narrate her actions. As she spins, "Ivy spinning! Turning Ivy! Turning turning! Turning builder!" As she runs, "Running builder!"

Today at creche I heard her narrating, as usual: "Jumping builder! Jumping jumping!" I mentioned to a carer that Ivy is a builder. Then Ivy crouched down to get to a toy, and because her jeans were coming down, there it was: a tiny little builder's crack.

Hazel and Ivy's first day at creche

Well it is their third day there, but it's the first time I have left them there.

The swings in the back yard are empty, and the heater in their room just came on, to heat an empty room in which no-one will nap today.

Creche

I cut Ivy's hair for the first time, this morning. Just the fringe bit, cos it was always in her eyes. Chris the hairdresser told me that she could not do it for a fortnight, and to do it myself and to not cut off too much. I used the nail scissors because they are sharp and tiny. I remembered to keep a tiny lock of hair. Poor Ivy has a bit of a mullet - she always did, but it's a bit more obvious now.

Creche is working out much better than I expected! Both girls are settling in, and they seem to enjoy it there.

Today was our third day at creche. We go on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and last week we just stayed for a coupel of hours on both mornings.

Today we got there just in time for morning tea, and stayed until 3:30 pm. After an hour and a half of me wafting around the room, BEING THERE, one of the staff members gently suggested that I could maybe go and have a cup of tea. That is, go away and leave us, we are fine with your daughters.

I told Hazel and Ivy that I would be going into a different room now, and that they would have their lunch and a nap, and Marie and Rena would help them. They did not seem to care. I went over to the Parents Room which was deserted and cold, and had no tea. Someone found we wandering the corridors (there is actually only one corridor) and said I was welcome to come into the staff room. It was full of other mums - plus a few staff trying to have a break. I ended up staying in there for the rest of the day.

After half an hour of waiting in the staff room, I popped my head out and looked through the window, only to catch Ivy's eye as she wept in Laura's arms. Laura frantically signed something at me, and I signed back - DO I NEED TO COME BACK IN? She smilingly signed NO GO AWAY so I did. More tea.

Later, I got a status report from Rena that both girls looooved their chicken noodle soup and were happily playing as the staff got people ready for naps. Ivy had cried briefly for me, but was easily comforted and distracted. After that she was fine. She used the toilet with Marie's help.

I kept popping out and checking through the window. Eventually the room was darkened, and everyone was in their little beds. These are made of a mat on the floor, plus a bottom and top sheet, and a tiny pillow. Like a doll's bed really. Marie stayed by Ivy, and eventually Ivy dropped off to sleep. Rena stayed by Hazel for an hour and a half, patting and shushing her. Hazel was restless and wiggly, and Rena said later HER EYES DID NOT SHUT! But eventually, near the end of nap time, they did. Hazel slept for about half an hour, which was just enough to keep her going for the rest of the day.

Ivy used the toilet again after her nap. She is amazing.

After they were both awake and trotting around again, I went back in. Ivy was happy to see me, and Hazel did not react much. I think she might have bottled up her feelings about me not being there. Or is that just me mentally rearranging things so that I am the centre of everything?

They had a snack, they played some more, then I said it was time to come home. NO said Hazel.Well I suppose that means she liked it there.

Off again tomorrow. I might even try to get there early enough for the staff to give the girls breakfast. That would be nice.

More stories from Hazel

She keeps on making up new stories. These are the ones that have made it to the Top of the Pops: they each get an airing many times a day.

Drive. Trike fell over. Fell off the trike.
       First day of creche, and she has a traffic accident. I didn't see it, but she tells me that she was on the trike and it "fell over". I think she might have driven it off the edge of the deck (a drop of about a foot).

Mummy burned the toast. Loud alarm.
       Our dang smoke alarm! It's waaay too sensitive. Or maybe I should just stop burning the toast.

Saw Dot and monkey.
        Every second Monday we go to Shake Rattle and Rhyme at the library. Coralie sings songs and the mummies and daddies sing too, and the kids look astonished. A kid called Dot and her mum Sarah often sit near us. Dot brings her monkey, and when Ivy or Hazel steals it, Dot's face falls. Repeat until it's time to go. Poor Dot.

Muddy feet at the undercover playground

We have a list of places to go for fun. Our weekends are jam-packed with fun, so we need a list to refer to.

On our list of places is the North Eltham undercover playground. It's not far from the Diamond Valley Miniature railway.

The actual playground is wonderful. It's a huge wooden Ghormenghast, with steps and walkways and tunnels and landings.

Ivy and Hazel played around it for a few minutes, then moved on to the puddles. Back to the car to get gumboots, then off they went to get wet.

If you want to see the photos, just contact me and I'll get you a login.

First dry night

Ivy's night nappy was dry this morning! And what a stupendous wee she did in the potty.

Her days are mostly accident-less now, which is lovely. I still ask her if she needs a wee about five hundred times a day.

I love that she's done most of it on her own initiative.

Hazel's stories

Hazel tells stories. They are short, and they are few. When something dramatic happens, we know that a new story has been born. She tells these stories again and again. It has taken months for her first story to fade away.

Alarm. Loud.
       I burnt the toast and the smoke alarm want off. We all jumped out of our skins and the girls both howled. Mum took them outside to shelter from the beeping alarm, while I ran around looking for a broom to prod the damn thing into silence, then prod the other alarm which went off shortly after.

Boy upset.
        At Baby Bunting, Ivy and Hazel were playing with the trains. A slightly bigger boy came over to join in, and he took their stuff and played with it properly - his trains ran on the tracks. The girls didn't mind, so I didn't intervene. His mum tried to convince him to share, but he didn't want to. Then his dad loomed up and shouted at him, and the boy cried and protested, and his dad angrily scooped him up and bore him away. The girls were shocked.

Ivy's glass broke. Mummy cleaned it up.
       Nothing to add here. Except that in many months of using glasses at the table instead of plastic cups, only two have broken, and I think I broke one of them.

Seal broke. Dropped it on the floor. Dropped it on the tiles.
       Trudi has some little glass animal figures on the bathroom window sill. Sometimes, for a treat, Trudi gets them down for the girls to hold. The seal slipped out of their hands as Hazel passed it back to Trudi.

Big tower. Shot tower. Little windows. Tiny. Clock.
       We visited Melbourne Central, and both girls enjoyed gazing up at the shot tower. Also, there is a dire clock that opens up and has dancing galahs and cockatoos inside it.

Dangerous bottles. Not in the mouth.
       We keep our poisons in the garage, on a shelf up high. Hazel sees them as we put her in the car. Weed-killer, acetone, turpentine, paint... all sorts of good things.

Alex.
       Hazel is really really into one of the dads at our Tuesday playgroup. He's a quiet fellow with a very nice daughter. Hazel does not care much either way about his daughter. When she sees Alex she stands still, and quietly gazes at him. He's a bit shy about it all, but he smiles back and they say nothing.

Not Hazel, not Ivy, just for Mummies
       This is used for a range of forbidden things. Currently this includes: the cupboard that contains the food processor, bread machine, bamix, etc; the toilet brush; the bath-tap handle; tampons.
      
Touched the fire. Burnt hand. Very sore hand.
       At my aunt and uncle's house, we met our first fire. It was in a coonara-style box with a glass door. We talked a lot about how it's hot and not for touching, and eventually Hazel just had to check for herself. Luckily she just scorched her hand. By the next morning there was no redness at all. She must have touched it very briefly. It still caused half and hour of crying as she sat on Trudi's lap with her little hot hand in a box of cold water. Now I can't remember which hand it was, and neither can Hazel.

Thermometer in ear. Bandaid.
       This is the story of swine flu vaccinations. It doesn't mention the actual injection - just the precursor and the follow-up. Both girls hated their bandaids.

Leo scratched the foot.
       Mum's cat Leo scratched Hazel's foot, and hoiked off her sock. Hazel had been bothering him, and he'd put up with it for a long time.

Bill looked at Hazel's dots.
       The doctor named Bill examined Hazel's rash, and diagnosed it as a side-effect of cold sores, whereas I think it was Hand, Foot and Mouth.

Nanna fell over. Dropped Hazel.
        No need to explain this one.

She tells these stories seriously, but without much emotion. They are stories, not outbursts.

New dressing-gowns

My aunt Trix knitted sleeping bags for the girls, but they would have fit perfectly during summer, when they were hot enough without woollen sleeping bags.

But!

Trix's nifty sleeping bags were designed to convert into dressing-gowns by simply unstitching the bottom seam. So I did!

This video is a showcase of Trix's marvellous sleeping bags. It's also 2 minutes and 21 second of tedium, which could only be interesting to someone who is their mummy or Nanna.



If this video is gone from Youtube and you really want to see it, just email me.

Hand Foot and Mouth

Hand Foot and Mouth, not the disease cattle get (that's plain ol Foot and Mouth).

Hazel and Ivy have just finished a bout of Hand Foot and Mouth, which has made them miserable for about ten days. I'm glad Scott's visit came on the day it did. One night earlier, and they would have been here on our Worst Night Ever. Hazel was awake and crying 1:30-4:30 am, culminating in a half-hour bout of full-body screaming. Ivy woke at 5:15 and that was our night. I got 2.5 hours sleep, and that's when I got Hand Foot and Mouth I think. It's rare for an adult to get it, but I was vulnerable. Trudi also got no sleep. Crap.

Even their day sleeps were ruined, and they've been rock-solid for months now. But now it's all coming back together. Our nights have not been good since we had gastro at Easter. Always one or the other wakes in the night, needing help to go back to sleep. This week we've had two nights where both girls have slept through. Last night one person woke in the night, can't remember who or what. Maybe she went back to sleep on her own? I'm still pretty tired.

It's nearly time to open the girls' door. They've been sleeping for two hours. Any more, and they have trouble going to sleep at night.

Hazel and Ivy met their cousin Dustin

Five-year-olds are like fully-recharged batteries. They just go and go. He actually seemed to enjoy pushing both girls on their new swingset, on and on and on.

Here's a video:



It won't last long. Our new online policy is to have our videos up on Youtube long enough for interested family or friends to see them, then take them down again. If you read this after the video has gone and you really want to see it, just email me and I can give you a link or send it to you.

So anyway. Trudi's brother Scott and his son Dustin stayed the night, after they had trekked to NSW to pick up their new (old) boat, plus a dining suite. We had dinner at home with my parents, then in the morning we all went off to the zoo. That left lots of time for the three kids to hang out, and they had a really good time.

Pumpkin soup tea-party

The girls are sick. They have nasty ulcers in their mouths, probably caused by a herpes simplex virus, like cold sores. Plus they both have red spots, each with a white blister in the centre. Apparently this is a side-effect of the herpes.

The doctor today said that they don't give any anti-viral drugs to otherwise healthy kids with herpes simplex, because everyone is going to be exposed to it lots of times, so it's better to let the immune system get on with learning how to fight it.

Great.

We use Panadol, teething gel (which contains aspirin), and cuddles. Sleep is hard to come by, so we are all very tired. We are also contagious (or at least the girls are). The doctor said that by Friday they should be mostly recovered and no longer contagious, and safe to go to playgroup. We will see. I would rather not have our family be the epicentre of a herpes outbreak!

They aren't eating much, cos their mouths hurt.

One of Hazel's favourite books is Pumpkin Soup. The storyline is average, but the pictures are luminous. A cat, a squirrel, and a duck live together, and they make pumpkin soup. She requests this book daily, and we often have it as a pre-nap story.

The girls don't eat pumpkin much... an occasional mouthful, but it's not a hit. Last week I made pumpkin soup, and gave it to the girls in tea-cups. The lure of a Tea Party plus the glamour of the book allowed them to get past the taste and consume several tiny cups each.

I'm compiling a pumpkin soup now, from baked garlic cloves, slow-fried onions, and baked pumpkin. When they get up from their nap, we will have another pumpkin soup tea-party.

Wings

Mum gave the girls some fairy costumes - there are two fooffy tulle skirts and two singlets with tulle wings on the back.

If the girls' bedroom door is shut, Hazel hammers on it and howls SKIRTS SKIRTS WINGS SKIRTS! She likes to wear one on her head and one like a skirt, plus a set of wings.  This makes her look like Cyndi Lauper. Yesterday Hazel wore her wings to the library.

Ivy is not so keen on the skirt, but she likes the wings.

At the moment we are having a Sleep Issue. They've had colds for a couple of weeks, and it's hard to go to sleep when you are all snotty and stuffed up. Now that they are mostly better, Hazel is holding on to her new habit of howling at bedtime. She neeeeeds a mummy to hold her hand while she drops off. Last night I decided that she is well enough now for me to play hard-ball again. Nasty Mummy rides back into town.

So tonight there will be no hand-holding. There will be brief visits to tell her that it's all OK and it's sleep-time. There will be no talking and no patting. The poor little girl will re-learn how to drop off to sleep on her own, and I hope Ivy will sleep through the whole debacle.

Little pitchers have big ears

In the car on the way home from the zoo, Trudi mentioned that we'd better work out how to use the child lock on the car doors. One day one of the girls would have a go at opening a door. I agreed, and theorised that there might be a latch thingy on each door that disabled the inside door handle. Must work that out one day.

A few streets away from home, Hazel opened her door.

Trudi stopped the car, I ran round and closed the door, and we got home with no more door-based experiments. Once the girls were napping, I read the car manual and went outside to initiate Child Lock.

Hippopotamus

Hippopotamus
Rhinoceros
Elephant
Emerald
Amethyst

These are words that Hazel says (Ivy too, if she can be bothered). I think they are great. What ace little kids they are.

Yesterday we went to the Werribee zoo again. We got there early (it opens at 9), and when we arrived at the hippo pool, there was no-one about. Well it looked like that last time too, until someone surfaced to breathe - we saw NOSTRILS! So we hung about waiting for nostrils. Then a gate clanged open and a hippo peered out of its enclosure - they were being let out of their night-time quarters, back into their pools. We had a marvellous show of hippos lurching over dry land into their pools, and surfacing a long way away.

The male was in the furthest pool so we didn't see much of him. He bellowed GOOD MORNING in hippopotamus-ish to the ladies. Then there was a female on her own in the middle pool. Not sure why she was on her own. Then in the closest pool were two adult females and a baby. They nosed the lone female through the fence to say GOOD MORNING (in hippopotamus-ish). Then they all leapt and frolicked in the water. When they walk they look damaged and in pain, but in the water a hippo is a graceful beast.

The cheetahs are not on display - their exhibit is being renovated. Sad.

The zebras are neat and clean. Their stripes are clearly delineated, and they stand very still to give us a good view of stripy precision. We ate mandarins while we appreciated them.

The 40-minute safari bus ride was not a huge success. The girls were not that keen on seeing animals from a bus. Ivy has been sad and clingy for a couple of weeks, and chose a moment just before the bus ride to recover. Someone pulled the cord in the middle of her back, and she became a jiggling, laughing, giggling, manic wiggler. She was happy enough to look at the giraffes, bison, antelope etc for a few seconds each, but then she went back to bouncing, jouncing, squeaking, gasping, and generally carrying on like an elated pork chop. It's nice to have Happy Ivy back.

Bus car, bus chair, bus hat

Hazel has a joke! She made it up herself.

It started when she turned round in her high-chair and pointed to the little red chair. "Bus chair!" she said ten times until I got it. Laughed. Then she pointed to her plate, "Bus plate!" And it goes on. Bus mummy, bus Ivy, bus cat, bus train. Bus pool, bus ball, bus balloon.

Mummy Meanie

It occurred to us the other day that the girls probably don't know our names. So we introduced ourselves.

They pronounce our names with their own cute little accent. Trudi is "Turdy" and I am "Meanie". Great.

Hanging bears

Ivy loves those bats.

After our visit to Yarra Bend, where the bats sleep, the girls talked about bats a lot. Their conversations are limited, so a narration of our visit goes like this:

Bats.
Bats.
Sleeping.
Bats.
Trees
Bats.
Bats!!

Weeks after our visit, Ivy started a new game, called Hanging Bears. She gets her bed-bear (a little light-green bead-filled bear with no name as yet) and takes him into the kitchen, where she drapes him over the handle of a drawer. She then stands back and says "Hanging! Hanging!". Then she does the same with Hazel's bed-bear (who is the same as Ivy's but dark green). Then she takes them down and re-hangs them on another drawer handle.

It took me a week of watching this game to realise that it was about the bats, who hang upside down to sleep. Now I've started hanging Ivy upside down so she can be a bat, which she likes.

We might need to go back to Yarra Bend soon.

This morning when I was putting on her shoes, Ivy said "Bye bye toes!" to the foot which was being shod. Then she said it again to the other foot.

Child lock

Today Hazel climbed onto the teetery hall table, and it leapt out from under her and they both fell in a tangle. She now has a nasty bruise across her cheek. Hours later, when Trudi came home, Hazel reported to her, "Table fell over. Cheek."

In other news, a month ago, I would have told you that our dishwasher did not have a child lock. Now, I know that it does. What happened in the interim? Hazel.

Hazel has been keen on the dishwasher for ages. When she was first learning to stand, she would haul herself upright so that she could press the beeping Pause button again and again. More recently, she's learned to press the On/Off button too, and it was clearly only going to get worse. So I got the manual out and tried to initiate Child Lock. I followed the instructions with no success. Then I googled the situation, and found lots of people who have our (cheapy) dishwasher complaining about how the child lock won't kick in. So I gave up.

Then a month ago, I found that I could not make the dishwasher go. The little display said CL! All I had to do was hold down the Program button for ten seconds and it all worked again. This means that someone (probably Hazel) has fiddled with the dishwasher to the extent that Child Lock was initiated. 

Since then, Child Lock has worked like a dream. Hazel can still Pause the damn thing, but she can't make it start up without my help.

If I was the kind of person who saw portents in their kids' every action, I would suggest that Hazel will be a technical genius of some sort. But I'm not so I won't. Instead I think that our dishwasher sucks. When it dies we will get a Miele if we have a spare $2000.

Ivy's journey away from nappies

Ivy seems to be almost ready to graduate to wearing undies full-time.

This morning she wore undies to playgroup, and she did her first extra-mural wee. I had thought to bring along our toilet-seat with Sesame Street characters on it, and she was really happy to use it to do a wee on the toilet while we were there. Put her undies back on, and she stayed dry all morning. Wow!

We all went out to dinner tonight to a Vietnamese cafe around the corner (aren't we daring). Been there a few times now and the girls feel quite at home, so they are now making pests of themselves. Halfway through dinner Ivy said POO POO so I whipped out my dunny-bag (contains our little toilet-seat!) and we went off to the loo, where she uncoiled an enormous poo. Where does she store it all? It's like something a huge truckie might make! Why do I imagine a truckie might make a huge poo? It's a mystery.

Five minutes later Hazel did poo face, so Trudi took the dunny-bag and they went off for Hazel to stink out their toilet. By now Ivy was running around in her socks saying POO! POO! Luckily her speech is not very clear yet so most people would not get what she was saying (well I was telling myself that).

We will be going somewhere else for dinner next time. I think the staff might need a little while to get over us.

Dry Ivy

This morning Ivy wore undies, not a nappy, when we went out. I think we were out for nearly 2 hours, and she stayed dry. We did it again in the afternoon, and still she was dry!

This is a big thing for me. I think Ivy is quietly happy with herself too.

She is also practising putting on her own pants and undies. Any stray PJ pants or undies left lying around get the treatment. The outcome is not always satisfactory, but she is getting there.

Clarifying which things are dead

During lunch today I talked to the girls about the mice again. Hazel had been looking at a book with mice in it, and kept returning to the mouse pictures, and saying Mouse Mouse Mouse.

Then she started with the Mouse Mouse Mouse during lunch, so I said "The mice are dead because the cats ate them. We won't see the mice any more. They are gone and they can't come back."

That seemed to go down OK, then Ivy said "Bats. Gone."

Now that was interesting, because we've been talking a lot about bats. The bats that sleep by the Yarra used to fly over our garden every evening, and we'd all troop out there in our PJs to watch them fly, just before we put the girls to bed. The bats have not been around lately, though - perhaps they have eaten everything in Preston and are now pillaging other suburbs. They are supposed to migrate north during winter, but I am pretty sure that they no longer do this.

Every evening we talk about the bats, and their absence. We go out and look, if it's not raining. No bats.

Ivy mentioned the bats because they also have gone, and perhaps they can't come back, and maybe we will never see them again.

So I found myself trying to explain the differences between death and prolonged absence to a pair of 19-month-old girls who were eating lunch. Having toddlers is constantly and gently blowing my mind.

Ex-mice

Our mice are no more.

When we got home from the awesome tiny trains on Sunday, Trudi remembered that she'd left the box o' mice on the windowsill. When we got home the box was broken on the floor, lid ajar, and there was no sign of the mice at all. Trudi checked everywhere (under furniture, in the heat vent, behind the bookshelf, etc). Not even a foot or tail.

As T said last night, the cats are just like twins - they must have egged each other on. Maybe Minke got up on the windowsill first, to pat the mouse-box, then Selby would have barged up there too and tipped the box onto the floor. Then they would have both jumped in fright, then one would have noticed a mouse moving, and so on.

The poor lil mice were just learning to walk. However, they were also getting very thin. Not sure how much longer they would have survived anyway, but STILL! Must have a chat with the cats about We Do Not Eat Our Co-Pets.

I have been talking to Hazel about We Do Not Whack People Or Animals. She likes to whack things (and people, but not yet animals, thankfully) with the hoop. Also she gets a Whacking Look in her eye when she finds a long stick.

We've told the girls that the mice are dead because the cats ate them, so we won't see the mice any more. I wonder how they have assimilated that information.

Popcorn tea-party

We had a big weekend (that's "big" on our post-kids scale).

Can't remember Saturday; will write that up if I recall anything interesting.

This morning the girls slept until 7am, but Trudi had been awake since 4:30, and I awoke at 5:15. We went to the pool at 8:30 am, and toodled around in the toddler section. Hazel fell under the water a few times, but she only inhaled water once. Ivy trundled around the pool, throwing a ball I stole from the basket used by the swimming teachers. We all got cold, and vowed that next time, the girls will have their wetsuits on.

We got home in time for Trudi to collect her cousin Liv and her daughter Shanti, who are visiting from Cairns. Shanti is 9.5 months old, and she is walking confidently... amazing. She is almost as big as Ivy! So the three girls played together, bopping each other and yanking on shirts.

Because Ivy and Hazel enjoy their plastic tea-set, I've been planning to give them some real tea  in tiny china teacups. I used our visitors as an excuse to have a popcorn tea-party on the lounge-room floor. We had a big nappy as a picnic rug, and all three tiny girls had a little tea-cup. Shanti had water and the Ersvaer girls had milky weak Rooibos tea, plus they were all digging in a big bowl of popcorn. It was as much of a mess as you might imagine. The girls all entered into the spirit of Tea Party - tipping tea from cup to cup, stuffing handfuls of popcorn down their throats, drinking tea, putting popcorn into tea cups, and the like.

At lunchtime, Hazel touched Shanti's arm and said "SHANTI!!" and laughed, then she did it again fifty times.

By the time Trudi took Liv and Shanti to the train station, it was nearly an hour past their usual nap time. I put them to bed while Trudi was out, and they slept for two hours.

When they got up, we all went to the Diamond Valley Miniature Railway. I'd heard from other mums on the AMBA forum (other families with twins, triplets, or more) that it was good, but nothing prepared me for the geekiness and attention to detail. The trains and rails are 1/6 the size of real trains, and there are signals and points and dinging bells at crossings. There are two tunnels, and the girls had a blast. They were still and focussed the whole time, just drinking it all in.

Here's the embarrassing bit (there had to be one of these). I must be at a vulnerable point in my cycle, because the evident dedication of the railway dudes (and they did all seem to be blokes) touched me so profoundly that I got weepy and wavery. I confessed this to Trudi in the car on the way home, and she said that she'd noticed I looked weepy, plus my voice went squeaky. So. Great. I get publicly weepy over a miniature railway. This is not as bad as a time when I was pregnant, and really really very hormonal and vulnerable. I was in the car, listening to the local radio station report on a new roundabout somewhere in Melbourne, and that made me weepy. All those dedicated municipal workers SHAKY INHALE toiling for the safety SOB of the rate-payers INHHHHHALE and their chiiiiildrennnnnnnn HOWL SOB WAIL. I had to stop the car. I am not that bad any more. Really I am not.

Today Hazel has perfected the word HAVE-IT. She points to a book, and says "Have it", which means "I want to have it: give me that book". In the car on the way home from the railway, She kept saying "Cup. Have it. Cup. Have it," so Trudi stopped the car and I went around to the boot and got the bloody cup of water, and Hazel drank half of it in a few powerful slurps.

Just in case you thought I would not mention poo, POO. And also WEE. Ivy stays dry during her naps these days, so she wears undies. Hazel is often dry, and today she was not happy about having a nappy on, so I asked her if she wanted undies. She did. They were both dry after their 2-hour sleep.

Influx

I just found this draft post from a long time ago, so I'll post it. None of it is true any more, but here it is anyway.


One Ersvaer, two Ersvaers, a housefull of Ersvaers (well three actually). Even though one of them is an Ersvaer's daughter, and another is not Ersvaerish at all.

Trudi's cousin Heidi and her friend Margarethe are on their World Tour. They've Done Bali, they've Done Merimbula, and they've Done a little bit of northern Tassie. Now they are Doing Preston. A wise choice.

They are 19 I think, and very tanned, because they are holidaying Scandinavians. Hazel and Ivy are really really into their new audience. Hazel brings treasures to them (plastic cars, a wooden letter Q, a terrible little monkey doll). Ivy jigs and grins.

This morning Trudi's brother Scott came, to stay tonight. He is in Melbourne for a job that has fallen though due to a company entering liquidation. So that must be really relaxing for him.

The visitors are all off at IKEA, so I suppose they all feel that they have been bad and need to do some penance.

Wonky feet

Ivy's feet are still a bit wonky.

My Alexander Technique teacher Jane met the girls yesterday, and she agreed that Ivy is a little wonky in her gait. Jane said that their shoes were awful, and I must say she was right. Terrible broken sloppy soft-sole sandshoes. So the old broken shoes are in the bin, and I bought new shoes today.

Jane liked that Ivy climbed up on the play equipment at the park, and tottered around on the top of things. All good practice as she learns to use her body.

Jane also suggested dance or movement classes, and I will vaguely investigate this idea. However, I'm over the whole one-mummy-with-two-toddlers-at-a-class. The music class was such a trial, and I'm not keen to embark on a new burdensome event. I do not like being the only one there with twins. I don't like hearing "Oh I don't know how you do it" and "My you have your hands full" and "I could never do what you do" and the rest of it. I also don't like forcing the girls (but Hazel in particular) to conform to the class's requirements. She's a bit of a free spirit is Hazel, and she resists attempts to get her to do what the rest of the group is doing. So I hate the idea of more fricken classes, but there you go. Maybe this is just because I am a tired grump this week.

Today's shoe-buying went well. We visited Bilby Shoes, which is run by David the Pedorthist. Last time we visited, he said to keep the girls barefoot or in soft-sole shoes for a while longer, so we did. He pointed out some aspects of the girls' gait that showed that they were too little. The only thing I can remember is that they both still walked with their arms bent and hands up. Now they don't do that any more, so he was happy to find proper shoes for them.

Trudi and I think Hazel walks just fine. David agreed and said she is very strong. I would expect she would be - she practiced standing for nearly a year before she walked!

Ivy is slightly wonky though. Her left foot turns out a little, and she seems a bit unsteady. When he watched her walk, David told me a bunch of things that she was doing, but I could not pick up on any of it. He is a fluent reader of gait, and I am illiterate, it turns out.

David feels there there is nothing seriously wrong, just a few small tendencies that we can do something about. Better now than later, I say! He suggested that we take her to an osteopath, so we're off to see the person he recommended, Dr DeFazio in Heidelberg, this Monday arvo. Then he got out some white sneakers, and when she walked in them, he was happy to see an improvement. That means that some of her issues do come from her feet. The osteo might unkink something in her legs or hips as well - who knows!

Hazel has the same shoes, but Ivy's feet are a little smaller, so her pair have insoles in them. Unfortunately, their new white sneakers have pink flowers and hearts, and (wait for it) the hearts light up when they walk. I mean, really.

The importance of pain

Wow. This crystallises some thoughts I've been having, and then takes it a step further:

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/half_full/?p=1661

Ivy is a crow

Hazel's first sentence! They were being crows in the backseat on the way to the zoo (creaky-voiced Aaaaah! Aaaaah! Aaaaah!) and Hazel let rip with her first full sentence. It has a verb and a subject and everything... so proud.

Just had a visit from Alon, to talk some more about my return to work. I'm still hoping that 2 days a week is going to be OK. He's had a couple of ideas about what work I could usefully do in so few hours a week, and they both sound good to me. It remains to be seen whether his boss concurs.

I made a terrible cake that is so bad that I can't offer it to visitors, but not so bad that I need to throw it in the compost, so I have to eat it all myself. It is Apple Barm Brack, from the Nursing Mothers of Australia Cook Book. I suppose I brought it on myself. OK, I've just googled barm brack, and the photos show that what I made is how it should be. Odd.

A morning off

Trudi and the girls have just piled into the car for an early-morning zoo visit. I am knocking around the house wondering what to do. I've just put the toilet-roll holder back on the wall. Guess who hung off it long enough to rip it off... Then I'll make luch for when they all get back, and I think I then will have a cup of tea on teh couch with a book. Yum!

Trudi has changed our website, oceanbug, to require a login. We've both been feeling more and more uncomfortable with having our entire personal lives (in photos) on there for all to see, so it's now hidden behind some security. If you want a login, just let me know. Family and friends are most welcome!

This means that the photos on this blog now won't be visible to you, unless you have an oceanbug login. Bit of a nuisance, but there it is. I think I will leave it all as it is, rather than going back and removing photos. Reason: laziness.

Yesterday we visited Tatura. The girls seem very comfortable in Trix & David's house. Naomi, Tony & Gillian visited, and my mum & dad, and Grandpa came after he marched in the ANZAC Day parade in town. All in all, a very pleasant day. There's been rain in central Victoria, so the gutters were leaking and the grass and weeds were green.

New jeans

I cannot believe that I just spent $100 on a single pair of jeans. It was a laughable event, from start to finish. Society in decline, in action.

I went to Northland, which was absolutely packed with people escaping the first chill breath of autumn by nestling into the warm heart of retail. Not that anyone seemed to be particularly nestled.

The girls were napping, and I wanted time to have a massage before returning to duty as co-Mum, so I zipped into the first shop I saw that had one of those daunting walls o' jeans. Boot cut, mid rise, relaxed fit, boyfriend cut, straight leg...

Yep, boyfriend cut is actually the name of a style of pants. These are way too big and chunky, as if a girl were wearing her boyfriend's jeans.

The nice young lady who came to check on me ("How are you going in there?") laughed when I came out to show her what I had on. I'd been thinking that I should go up a size, and she said "Way too big!" and marched off for a smaller pair. I have been wearing massive jeans for a while now, out of compassion for my ridiculous twinny belly, so I'm not used to the feel of jeans that fit.

I'm sure i had something profound to say about this, but now I am tired so I'm going to bed. Goodnight.

Improving

Trudi has gone to work today, for a rest. The girls are having a huge nap (2.5 hours and counting), and I am dagging around wondering what to do with myself.

The gastro is mostly gone. The girls still have diarrhoea and I am all well again.

Hazel has said a couple more little sentences - "Door closed" and something else that I can't remember right now. Mum, do you remember?

And she's also been saying "Soon" a lot - repeating it when I've used it. The night before last, she kept saying it while Trudi was brushing her teeth ("Soon!"), and then kept on during the bedtime books. "Soon! Soon!" Once they were in bed, I said "Good night girls, sleep well. See you in the morning", as I always do. "Soon!" shouted Hazel. I managed to not laugh, and I closed the door gently.

Ivy sad

Another sentence from Hazel yesterday. When one girl is crying and I am listening to her, sometimes the other girls wants my attention. When that happens, I say that Ivy is sad, and I need to listen to her right now, and we will play or read or whatever, when she is finished. Yesterday Ivy fell off a new play item in the backyard (hint: it has a slide attached), and clonked her head, so of course she cried and I listened. It's a marvellous thing, this listening. After about five minutes of howling, her crying turned to weeping, and then she showed me where it hurt (the back of her head), then where it happened (she fell off a bench in the new cubby). I described what I thought might have happened, she listened to my point of view, and off she went, calm and happy. In the middle of the crying, though, Hazel turned around, pointed to Ivy, and said "Ivy sad". She was right.

We are all a bit sad at the moment. On Thursday night I felt a bit average, and ended up with vomiting and diarrhoea all night. The girls threw up too, for hours in the middle of the night. Miraculously, Trudi did not succumb. She put on a load of washing at midnight, and the washing machine has been going ever since.

On Friday I was a mess - all wafty and miserable. I lay on the couch for much of the day. The girls have reverted to having two naps a day, and so did I. Yesterday I was heaps better, and the girls seemed to be improving too. They played on their new cubby and slide! This tired them out, and in the late afternoon, Hazel sat on the couch in a miserable pile, and said quietly "Sad". She was right.

But last night Hazel threw up her bedtime bottle, and Ivy threw up a couple of times in the night. They are so wiped out that they are sleeping through the night without a peep, except for the vomiting.

This morning both girls were pale and listless. They drank water, and then immediately went back to sleep. When they woke again - more miserable listlessness.

So we all went in to Emergency at the Austin, which is only 5 minutes drive away. The paediatric nurse barked and seemed scary at first, but ended up being very pleasant and solicitous. The girls obediently sucked on the frozen orange-flavoured electrolyte solution, and they ate a little anti-nausea tablet each. We came home with the advice to not worry about food, just water and electrolytes.

All day, the girls slept, cried, shat, slept more, slept, drank orange stuff, and slept. An hour ago, they both got up, and demanded "dikidikidikidikidiki", which is a bickie. Since then they have each demolished a handful of dry crackers, and suddenly seem to be not terribly ill. Hazel walked for the first time all day, and gave a bickie to the toy monkey, and figured out how the dustpan and brush work. Ivy smiled and ate bickies.

Now Trudi is out walking the girls around the block in the pram, and I am having a rest. This has probably been Trudi's worst birthday weekend ever. Because I have been ill, I've had some rests, but she's been on the go the whole time. I'd better go appreciate my rest, and actually rest.

First proper sentence

At the library this morning, Ivy was running away and hiding between the shelves. She'd pop back to grin, then disappear again.  The third time, Hazel pointed and said "Ivy gone".

I count that as a sentence - it has a subject and a verb, right?

Then I realised that each time she disappeared, Ivy was running over to the entrance and setting off the automatic door. Luckily she just stood there and watched the workmen, instead of racing out into the building site that is the front of the library.

Article from The Age

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/beyond-the-straight-and-narrow-20100327-r42d.html

Ivy and Hazel in the chicken pen

Our chickens were completely free-ranging for a few weeks but I got over the shit everywhere, and the flies. so now they are in a pen mostly, and free-ranging in the late afternoon.

However the kids miss them, and go in to play with them when I open the gate.

My beautiful daughter Hazel

Loves playing in the dirt. She has toddler knees - dirty and scratched! She loves enumerating her scratches.

Sleep update

It's been a while. I used to complain about sleep stuff on this blog every day, then every week, then less often. Now, I'm here to say happy things about sleep!

The girls are in a great phase. Note that I call it a phase, so that when it all turns to shit I am not too disappointed.

They are having great naps in the day. We have lunch at 11.30, then I try to get them into bed as soon as possible afterwards, which is usually 12:15. They then usually sleep for 2 hours. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but usually 2 hours. Unbelievable really. When we go out in the morning I make sure we are home in time for lunch-and-nap. Lunch at home seems to be part of the wind-down process.

The longer naps started a few weeks ago, and they are very very welcome. They wake up happy, and ready to belt around like the hoons they are for the afternoon.

Soon after I complained to the AMBA forum (other mums of twins & triplets) about how early the girls wake in the morning (usually 5:30 or 6), they started sleeping in until 7! Just like that!

I read all the lovely advice given to me by these marvellous experienced mums, considered it all, agreed with most of it, then did nothing new. Somehow it all resolved and for four glorious mornings the girls woke around 7. Then on Monday morning we had to wake them at 6:30 to get to an appointment, and the two mornings since have been early ones again. I'm back to my old pattern of waking up at 5:50 when Trudi gets up, then lying awake until one of the girls wakes, then sitting on the floor between their cots whispering "Ssssh, it's still sleep time" and "Ssssh, it's not 7 o'clock yet" and "Lie down love, it's still sleep time" and so on and on and on and on. Then we all get up and start our day.

The third lovely sleep improvement is that most nights both girls sleep through without needing any help from me. Ivy had a nightmare a couple of nights ago, but apart from that and a couple of other wake-ups, they've been sleeping through for a month. Even when they do wake and need me, they fall back to sleep a lot more easily than in the past. It's all coming together, and not a moment too soon.

Unfortunately, my own sleep skills are not great right now. These days Trudi and I both usually sleep badly, with shallow sleep and many hours of lying awake each night. Sigh. I am sure that I will improve as the girls need me in the night less often. I think I am on alert all day and night, even though I don't need to be any more. Seventeen months of springing out of bed to calm weeping babies has trained me to sleep lightly, and I really hope that one day I will learn to sleep solidly again.

Music and playgroup

I went to a new playgroup today. In that sentence, "I" means me, my two girls, and my mum. Mum is around a lot these days because she is in the hiatus between surgery for breast cancer and radiotherapy. She gets measured up tomorrow, then the radio starts soon after. the surgery was successful and she has no need for chemo, and things are looking good. She's not working this semester, so she's spending a lot of time with her granddaughters. Depending on how taxing the radiotherapy is for her, she might be able to keep seeing them most days during her treatment. I hope so!

So anyway, anyway.

I've been on the lookout for a new playgroup, cos right now we can't get to our rainbow group due to nap times. If I get around to shifting the girls' nap earlier we will make it, but somehow it never happens. Soon. Anyway, anyway.

I found a thing called a Natural Parenting Playgroup. Another term that freaks me out. If I don't do Natural Parenting, am I being unnatural? Anyway, that's my problem and no-one else's  :-)

We went to the Brunswick NP playgroup, in a park, where we met a bunch of mums and one dad, plus lots of little kids. Most were about the same age as my girls, or younger. I'd been dreading it a bit, but it was lovely. Funny that I dreaded something that I also wanted to do. I was really hoping that it wasn't going to be one of those competitive events where everyone subtly mentioned how cool they are because they do co-sleeping or are still breast-feeding or whatever. Not that I mind people doing those things, or talking about them, but the competitive thing gets me down. So I was dreading this imaginary competition, which never eventuated.

Instead, I had some nice chats with other mums (didn't get around to the dad), and my mum nattered too. The girls ate everyone else's nicely cut-up fruit in boxes, and the other mums assured me that this was fine. Hazel went on the slide, and the whirly thing on a stick. Ivy insisted on the swing.

The only bad thing was the distance. It's about half an hour away, which is a long way when little girls are tired and want to go to sleep in the car on the way home. Mum sat in the back between them and frantically read story after story. She fits back there because we are driving my mother-in-law's capacious new Volvo. not sure how we will go with future visits. It's a very pleasant group, but the car trip is a drag. We will see.

In contrast, tomorrow we are not going to the music class. We did three weeks of Suzuki music classes for the girls. These are the classes for tinies (up to 3 years old). Lots of nursery rhymes, bashing on plastic drums, skipping in time to the beat, and all the rest of it.

It was not much fun at all. Suzuki is supposed to be all about the love, but this was not. It was more about social control. If you aren't sitting down or walking around in the right direction, you are disruptive. This attitude is communicated by indirect means - saccharine praise to the kids doing the right thing, and increasingly tense instructions to toddlers to sit down, or stand up, or wait their turn. The actual music stuff was great, but not worth all that control. They are too young. Maybe in a year they will enjoy it - or maybe not!

I feel relieved to not be going any more. Now we can go to the market on Wednesday mornings instead.

The word list is getting ridiculous

So we have these twin daughters... did you know that? Stop me if I'm repeating myself. I do that a lot, especially when I'm leaving a message on an answering machine. If you have ever received one of my messages, I apologise, and if you haven't, you might, so I apologise in advance.

Where was I? Repeating myself, I think. So, my daughters are clever little packages. Ivy and Hazel have about the same level of receptive language. They both understand requests like "Can you please put the cup back in the drawer, then close the drawer". They both can point out butterflies, ducks, clocks, cars, Nanna and Pa, Minke the cat, and anything else they've seen named more than once.

When it comes to saying words, Hazel is a junkie. She gets her fix from learning new words. No sentences yet, but a lot lot lot of nouns. Ivy can say words too, but she's happy to let word-learning opportunities come when they want to. Hazel marches around the house scaring word-learning opportunities out of their hiding places and holding them up to the light.

This week's list of new words includes:

Gate
Tassel
Wetsuit
Elbow

Old favourites include:

Handle
Fork
Tine (the pointy bits on a fork)
Flower
Shower
Foot

I am going to bed now.

I left the house at night

I went out for the night, with some lovely twinny friends,. We all have twins around the same age (except for Megan whose girls are a few months younger). We were trying to have a farewell dinner for Chrissy, who leaves for the UK soon, but she was too busy with family to come. So we had a kind of wake for her, in which we went out and had a good time and mentioned her with fondness.

This is the second time I have been out without Trudi or the girls since they were born. It went just fine! I was home and asleep by midnight, and Ivy woke to start her day at 5-ish, so it was a short night. This was not too bad though, because the girls have been sleeping through the night this week. Five nights in a row with no night wakings!

Tomorrow our new rainwater tank will be delivered. This is one of those blog posts full of tedious trivia. I am going to bed now, to eat chocolate eggs and read. Then I will go to sleep.

Goodnight.

New roof soon

Our roof is a bit broken. The concrete tiles are old, and they break easily. Whenever someone goes on teh roof, they break tiles, then the rain comes in.

We are getting it replaced with a new clean shiny steel roof, plus we are getting a 10000l rainwater tank at the same time.

Because they will be loudly banging around on the roof all day, I will decamp with the girls to my mum & dad's place, so they girls can have their midday nap.

The roof people are very weather-dependant. They have delivered the materials but did not work today due to the possibility of storms. Sigh. So we will probably be at Heathmont most of next week, unless there is some weather.

In praise of not praising too much

I think I praise my daughters too much. Well done, you put the wee in the potty, that's great, you closed the drawer.

This article is my touchstone for change:

http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm

Wish me luck...

Wombat Bend is a lovely playground

This morning we drove to Westerfolds Park, where we used to stop off and go jogging on the way to work. I had visions of us putting the kids in our backpacks and walking for a while, then letting them run around a field. I remember that there were fields.

There probably are fields, but there's also a new playground which was being installed just at the time that we last went there a couple of years ago. Our office moved, so Westerfolds Park  was no longer on our way to work.

The playground is just lovely. It's all planted with native plants and trees, and there are winding paths and sculptures set into the ground, and a maze, and a flying fox, and a whirling thing where you strap your kids into seats on cables, and they whirl around with silly smiles on.

Hazel loved going on the slide, and Ivy whirled and swung (with a silly smile). Hazel found some glazed tiles with pictures of cars ("CAR! CAR!"). Ivy poured dry sand down her shirt. Both girls made friends with a 13-month-old boy who waddled around and whacked Ivy's head gently. "Gently!" said his mum. Ivy bowed her head under the rain of very gentle blows.

We will go again. I hope Chrissy can bring her boys before they fly away to colder climes.

We are home and Ivy has a cold

These things are connected.

Words Hazel says

Knee
Toe
Car
On, off, on, off, on, off (while switching a lamp on, and off, and on, and off...)
Cat (used to be pronounced "aa-oo" but now "cat")
Dog
No
Yes
Up
Down
Car
No
No
No
Up there! (usually means "aeroplane")
Kite (as in "kite surfer")
No
Book
Car
Car!
Wheel
Rice
Meat (that one is new tonight)
Plum
Bum
No
No
No!
Sand
Water

We went to a cafe

All four of us! And we sat down AT A TABLE!

It gets better.

There were two highchairs, and neither was in use, and only one was only a little bit broken!

There's more.

Trudi got two coffees and two babycinos, and the girls enjoyed their little cups and spoons and fluffy milk, and we drank our coffees at a leisurely pace. I did not burn my mouth. The girls ate a small plate of little cubes of various cheeses.

We did all this at the Bega cheese factory, which has an olde worlde touriste trappe with old dairy implements which put me in the mind of horrific obstetrical instruments from the eighteenth century. Not that similar, but somehow a bit similar. Aside from the grim reminders of past milking technologies, we had a very pleasant time.

Doesn't Ivy look grown-up here:

We went to Bega to see a panel-beater, and to get an estimate for fixing our car. Yesterday afternoon it was pelting down (the last hurrah of that cyclone), so we went to Merimbula Aquarium. The girls were mildly interested in some of the fish, but they loved the two flights of carpeted stairs. Anyway, anyway, anyway. The carpark at the aquarium is cut out of the side of the hill, and we parked against a cliff. and a bit of the cliff fell off onto our car. Minor damage, safe to drive, but if we don't fix it, rust will set in. Sigh. Insurance, blah, blah.

The panel beater said he could do it, but not until next week and it would take four days, so we will wait until we get home. Easier to be without a car at home. There is no tram or train here in Merimbula.

In other news, Hazel has learnt to say No. She says No a lot. She says No. No. No! No. In a cute broad Aussie accent. I spose that's how we sound... it's not like she learned to speak by watching Neighbours. Trudi is trying to teach her Yes, but that seems to be a much tougher concept, and harder to pronounce.

Pre-surfing chix

Yesterday we took the little tiny girls out on my bodyboard, in their little tiny wetsuits. One at a time.

Here's Ivy being a surfie chick:

There's no photo of Trudi taking Hazel, because I didn't think to take a picture when they were out. I was surprised that both girls really enjoyed their zooming around. They've both been a bit wary of the sea, what with its wet sand and its (tiny) waves.

Earlier in the day we went to a bush park, where I envisaged the girls stamping around in the undergrowth, getting virtuously dirty in the leafmould, but instead they found the newly installed decking and ran around on that. City kids:

Our little girls are growing up

Our housesitter, Pip, messaged Trudi yesterday:

Egg!

One of our baby chickens has grown up enough to produce a little egg! They are 4 months old.

Four beach visits in two days

We are in Merimbula.

The EIGHT HOUR DRIVE to get here was fine. Unbelievable. We stopped off for a wee and a run around at Trudi's aunt and uncle's place in Traralgon. I had not met Grethe and John before. They are very kind and Grethe gave me some plum jam, plus we ate some banana-and-coconut cake. The girls went mad running up and down their carpeted hallway. Considering installing a carpeted hallway at our place.

We had another stop at a park in Orbost, and then pressed on. The girls were marvels. Ivy had two short naps, and Hazel had three! But they could not get to sleep at night. They were way too exhausted and keyed up. They both were finally asleep by 9pm.

Trudi and I are plum tuckered out. We have a lie-down when the girls have their after-lunch nap. Lunch is at 11.30am these days, because they are pink-eyed and weepy by then, and have to nap at midday.

The girls have tiny little wetsuits. They are size 0.5.

We are happy

That the playground at Northland is back. It was packed away so that the santa photo place could fit in. The last time we were here, Ivy was not walking.

Sailing away together

In a dinghy on a spring, in a dry dry park in Bundoora.

Teeth again

I had prepared for this, but you know that preparation thing, it's usually no use.

The girls each grew six teeth when they were seven months old. They've both had four on top, two on bottom ever since. Until this week, that is.

Hazel now has a new molar, plus one or three new incisors (hard to tell), plus another molar about to break through, plus maybe another two molars not far behind. She's been justifiably shitty about this.

Ivy has a new incisor I think, plus about ten molars about to erupt out of her head in all directions.

The last four nights have been dire, and I am back in that Place, the Place where everything has a thin glowy rainbow halo, and my eye sockets ache, and my brain is set on Mute. I didn't visit my sister & mum yesterday because I am clearly not safe to drive more than a few minutes.

We bought a new twin stroller today, to replace the one I lost. Did I mention that I lost our stroller?

I lost our stroller last week. I loaded the kids into the car, then I loaded in the shopping, then I just drove off!

I didn't realise until late the next day that it was gone. I rang Trudi at work to ask where she had put it. We worked out what I must have done.

In a lot of ways I hated that stroller in comparison to our Mountain Buggy, but at least I could lift the damn thing into the car without having to make an osteo appointment. And it was expensive!

My mum has lent me her twin stroller. It's a much cheaper thing, which a friend gave to her. It's pretty horrible to drive in comparison to the one I lost, but it's better than nothing.

So what do I do the other day?

I loaded the kids into the car, then the shopping, then I drove off without the loaner pram. This time, I realised about 2 minutes later, then zipped back to pick it up. It was still sitting there, lonely, waiting for me. THIS TIME.

Today Trudi tactfully asked me "What do you think you could do differently, so you don't lose another pram?". Because I am not a horrible person, I didn't bark "get some sleep!" Anyway, this happened before the teething thing, so I was fairly well rested.

And so to bed.

My daughters

My daughters MY DAUGHTERS my daughters slept all night until 7:30am without waking in the night.

My daughters each have three or more new teeth coming through. They are on very different schedules, physically, but for some reason they do teeth in lock-step.

My daughters run in different directions when we are in public and I am the only growup.

But mainly, my daughters slept all night without waking until 7:30am.

Astronaut baby

Ivy rolling around the floor this afternoon:

 

With a slipper satellite orbiting her.

Typo alert!

Do they all say this?

Bubbles

...and a section of my bum.

Contract

It's been a big week. Rooster-girl, the lost pram, and now the roof.

Our roof is made of 57-year-old concrete tiles, which are brittle and let some rain in. We decided to get it replaced rather than re-sealed, and then found a roofing company that would put on a new roof, replace the gutters, and also install a 10,000 litre rainwater tank.

The tank will be a right shit to get into our backyard. It won't fit down the driveway, so they would have to hurl it over the back fence from the laneway. Happily, they agreed, and we signed the contract. Canny Trudi insisted on a clause about how it all had to be finished by the end of next week.

Yesterday no materials were delivered as we had been told to expect. Trudi's calls went unanswered. Today she got to talk with Roger the Quoter, who has been a very bad boy. He tells us that they are happy to start the job on Monday, only a day later than planned, so long as we give them an extra $2000.

!

Roger made a mistake in his quote, so they want us to pay the difference. We are totally un-keen on that option. There is a standard clause in the contract that says that they don't have to do the job if they decide that it is not in their interests to do so. Which I think is not very good.

Not sure what we are entitled to here. Stay tuned for details of the arguments Trudi will have with poor hang-dog Roger and his boss. Roger seems very embarrassed and sorry, but that doesn't get us a new roof.

I am a nong

I'm not even breastfeeding any more, and I am a big nong with no way to excuse it with Hormones.

The level of my nongyness unveiled itself when I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday afternoon. The plan was to drive to Moreland train station, meet Ange and her kids, then get on the train to the zoo. I was running late, and when I took our bag out to the car, I saw that there were no prams in the boot. An aside: we have three prams. One is a 4WD thing with big wheels that is lovely to drive but heavy and a shit to get in and out of the car. The next is lighter, smaller, a bit annoying to drive, but I can get it in and out of the car without having to make an osteopath appointment. The third one is a little light stroller. Did I mention that the other two are doubles? Well of course they are.
So there were no prams in the car, and I couldn't see one in the carport. I rang Trudi, who was in a meeting. I assumed that she had moved them all to a secure location for a good reason. She said the single pram was on a shelf in the carport (it was), the 4WD pram was in the house as usual (it was), but she thought the other pram was in the car. I took the single stroller and wore Ivy on my back in a sling. All fine, we had a great afternoon, but where was the bloody stroller?

The most likely story is that I drove off without it, after shopping for toys and books at Savers, a few days ago. Seems most likely. How ridiculous is that! I would have unloaded the toys and books into the car, then shifted the girls into their car seats, then just driven off, leaving our forlorn stroller on the footpath. I feel guilty for not liking it more, now.

Mum has a similar but much cheaper double stroller that was given to her, and I am going to trial it this weekend. I hope hope hope it's OK to drive and doesn't chop off my finger when I'm collapsing it. Trudi is checking eBay to see if someone is selling our pram. I have written our name and phone number on our other prams.

The rooster is gone to a happy rooster farm where all the roosters play together in a big green field

This week Trudi and I agreed that the smallest chook, the one with the attitude, was looking a bit rooster-y. She was mounting and being bossy, and then one morning she crowed.

This morning I took him back to the breeder. She opened the lid of the box, glanced in for a picosecond, then said Oh Yep Definitely A Rooster. I think that means that we are useless first-time chicken owners, who let this whole is-she-a-rooster thing go on for far too long. Well she didn't say that, but that's how I read the situation. So she took him back, and gave us a new hen, who is now being pecked and shouted at by the three old hands.

The rooster will either stay with the breeder (he is awfully pretty), or go to one of those travelling children's farms, where he will be patted mercilessly. Could have been worse. "Worse" is being dinner for a zoo inmate.

It's going to be 43ºC

So the chickens are inside. The weather people think it might get to 45ºC. Last time we brought the chickens inside, they had a lovely time in the shower. There was shit right up the walls. Yes, I mentioned poo. Good morning!

My life is so exciting

I took this video a couple of days ago. It seemed full of portent at the time. Not so much now.

Ivy charges around

Today was hot so we went to the museum, where we met Ange & Toby.

The kids hooned around in The Box, which is a kid-focused room with all sorts of stuff to look at and play with. It is great. Hazel gets all passionate and runs from thing to thing, fiddly with the drawers of butterflies under glass, whacking the button that plays the sound of an emu, and running up to the life-size model seals to fondle their noses.

Last time Ivy was in a clingy mood, and did not venture far from the stalacmite display:



This time, she was in Walking mode. The stalacmites got another workout, plus she marched (rather, lurched) from end to end of The Box.

We went into a kids performance called Wild Party which I'm sure would be lovely for bigger kids, but we got scared when everyone had to roar like a lion, and bored at the rest. A bloke played a guitar for a while which Hazel seemed to like.

After we'd wandered in the museum for a bit, we went outside to a lame "artistic" playground that was badly designed (no handrails on the ramp, weird steps, lots of sharp edges) and so it had to have a sign saying that it was not for kids under five. But our three kids (all under two) loved it. Ivy walked up and down the shallow ramp, up and down, back and forth, turning around at the top and mostly not falling over.

Time to go and make up the bottles for tomorrow.

Another acceptable loaf

What a great idea to bake a loaf of bread on a hot night.

Add them to your meals

The great mystery of what to do with mushrooms: solved.

Another weird thing for sale at Safeway

This was just before Christmas. They must have hoped that these would be really popular gifts.

Hot cross buns

It is January folks!