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.