Ivy has a balloon in her bed

And I can't believe it!

For about two years, until a couple of months ago, Ivy had a terror of balloons. At the sight of a balloon skidding around in the next room, she would shriek and stiffen, then scream until the balloon was dealt with.

When people found out about her fear, they would ask her if she was scared because balloons can pop. After being asked this many times, Ivy started to say that she was indeed scared because they can pop. I don't think that was the cause of her fear though. She had a time of being scared of lots of similar things - balloons, those round bouncy balls with handles that you sit and bounce on, and (wait for it) my breasts. All are round bouncy (or floppy) things. She also cannot stand jelly, cooked egg, or any other bouncy wobbly food. So I hypothesise that wobbly bouncy things freak her out.

So.

About a year ago we showed up to our Monday playgroup, to be confronted by about fifty balloons that were left over from a weekend event. They scudded and twirled when I opened the door. Ivy shuddered and went into overload. Eyes rolled back, screaming, climbing up me with talons extended.

My Mum was with us that day, and she found a big rubbish bag and ran around collecting the balloons. Ivy guttered and flamed over the horror, clinging to my head, while Hazel tootled around happily. Once she had all of the balloons safely hidden, Mum disappeared for a while, then came back to mutter something dire out of the corner of her mouth. Later, she told me that she'd found a blunt steak-knife (every playgroup kitchen has these) and stabbed each one to death in the backyard. No balloon onslaught was going to make her granddaughter have a bad day!

Our friends have been very understanding, and we have attended a few balloon-free birthday parties.

Hazel has occasionally been permitted to have a balloon in the house, but it was to be played with in one room only, and only when Ivy was at the other end of the house.

What changed? I have no idea. Ivy's fear of balloons loosened up. She enjoyed a balloon when we were out somewhere - I forget where.

I found a packet of unused balloons that I had bought over a year ago, when I had thought that having balloons around might help her get through her fear. a couple of weeks ago, Ivy and Hazel asked us to blow up more and more balloons. I want a red one. I want a blue one. Orange one please. I neeeed another blue one. I need blue ones because I am a boy (that's the stuff of another post).

Our house now has a small platoon of skittering, shrinking balloons. It feels special to be so normal!

A week ago, Hazel took a balloon to bed with her. And why not! Who among us would not like to have a rubbery-smelling, bouncy, squeaky, round person in their bed?

Tonight, Ivy chose a balloon to take to bed. She found it a warm spot under the doona, and snuggled in for the night. I think she is not scared of balloons any more.

Names

Hazel has been Harry the Dog (sometimes Harry the Puppy) for a few months now. Ivy was Minke the Kitten in retaliation.

Last week Hazel changed into Harry the Car.

Ivy shyly told me that she is a fluffy white bear. Today she is a fluffy pink bunny (with no particular name).

Clothes train

Now that Ivy and Hazel are 3, Trudi and I want them to learn how to get themselves dressed. Each girl can put on her own undies and pants, and they are getting a lot better at T-shirts.

To help them move to the next stage, I've invented the Clothes Train.

To make a Clothes Train, I lay out all of the clothes for one kid, in a row on the floor. Each item is laid out in the right orientation, so that the kid simply picks it up and puts it on. At the start is a pair of undies, then pants. Then comes the shirt, and a dress if that's on the agenda.

For the last few days I've set out two parallel Clothes Trains on the lounge room floor, and got them both started at the right end. that was enough - they both managed to get to the end with all of their clothes on. All I had to do was make choo-choo noises.

When I started writing this blog (waaay back when I was 18 weeks pregnant), I had intended it to be a record for myself. This post is a just what I thought I'd be writing about. Really boring content, but the sort of thing that I won't remember in a year or three.

Toast

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Mushed-Up-Toast-Made-Daily-Twin-1-Year-Old-Boys-/140637698718?pt=AU_SmallKitchenAppliances&hash=item20bea8fa9e

going forward

I just had my annual review.

My manager is a lovely person and very sensible. She wrote up a review that was in English. But, she also had to tack on a bit written by someone else, intended for everyone in my department. I picked out some of the more resonant phrases from this tacked-on bit:

       evangelize our new strategy

       aggressively expand

       grow your product knowledge

       fully leverage

       we are all tasked with the following key strategic initiatives

       the overall content footprint

       participate in the vision

It's like a poem, isn't it!

Hazel "swims", and she does it "underwater"

Snow in summer

Twirling in Inverloch

Ivy now has a pair of fins, and this is what she does when she wears them:

Ivy's bunny

Ivy loves her bunny, and she puts her to bed at every opportunity. She even squealed "a bed for bunny" when she saw a cardboard box, minutes after I read this blog post.

At the moment we have a dolly pram (thanks Darebin toy library), and Hazel does not get a look-in. The pram has been colonised by Ivy's white bunny and her green bear. Ivy covers them lovingly with sheets, puts snacks in there "for later", and then slowly walks the pram around the house, radiating motherly pride.

A couple of weeks ago:

Hazel: Ivy, what's your white bunny's name?
Ivy: White Bunny.
Hazel: And what is your green bear's name?
Ivy: Green Bear.

Yesterday morning:

Trudi: Ivy, why do you like White Bunny?
Ivy: She is white.
            pause
        She has wiggly funny arms.
            pause
        She is soft.

My tower will be wewy high

Hazel: My tower will be wewy high!
Ivy: My tower will be even higher!
Hazel: My tower will be wewy WEWY high!
Ivy: My tower will be. Will be. Um. Wewy high!

Then, a bit later:

Ivy: Can I knock down your tower please?
Hazel: Certainly!

STOP!

Also, NO! and GO AWAY! and CLOSE YOUR MOUTH!

Hazel has discovered her inner martinet.

It was a near thing

Look what we nearly had for dinner!

We are in a cute cabin with a perfectly good kitchen, and we brought emergency dinner supplies. Luckily the local pub was willing to feed us at 5.30 pm. We can have the tin of alleged spaghetti sauce another time.

My very early morning

The following post has been stuck on my phone since very early on Tuesday corning. My phone periodically forgets how to talk to the internet,  so I have texted this to Trudi and now I'm posting from her phone.

Last night we talked about the logistics of the coming day. Usually Trudi gets up at 5.50am, leaves the house at six, and starts work well before seven. On my work days I get up at 6.30 and take the kids to creche, and get to work by 8.30.

Last night we decided to shake things up a bit. I would be the early riser and Trudi would do the creche run. By the time we made the decision we were in bed and ready to sleep. I set my alarm and all was well.

This morning I got up and left the house twelve minutes later. I forgot my hair clip so I will have to use a bulldog clip filched from the supplies cupboard... Not too bad for such an early start. I have my laptop, my train ticket and some fruit. I feel accomplished.

The bus comes, it drives right past me so I leap out into the mad and do I a mad semaphore dance, the driver sees me in time to stop and all is well.

Then I check my watch.

It is 5.10. I am an hour early. How did this happen?? and the next train is not for another half an hour. So here I wait at the station when I could be asleep. The air is cool and some birds are singing, but I would rather be asleep.

Coda: In the night, my clock put itself an hour forward, and now cannot be changed. I suppose it has been defeated by small people.

Meaty pants

We have some favourite tracky pants. I think we have six pairs... three pink and three grey. They are size 2 and the legs of our  enormous almost-3-year-olds stick waaay out at the bottom. They are too small to notice though.
Anyway. Hazel calls them meaty pants. Any grey marle fabric is meaty. Not sure why, and I suppose that we will never know.

Wild night

Swapped. Trudi is now in the bathroom and I am in the bar at a table by the window by myself. The litte tealight is a fake perpetual electric thing.

Bundoora Park and Shepparton

This photo is of Hazel 'fishing' at the park. Why do both girls love 'fishing' so very much? Tonight we are staying in Shepparton. Today We went to their cousin's 8th birthday party. Kids ate cake and lollies and cheezels. Imagine their moods. Just put the girls to bed. We are all in the same room so I am sitting on the toilet wrapped in a blanket waiting for then to fall asleep. Trudi is going for a walk in the rain. We will swap roles later. Another wild night in Shepparton!

The demise of Tanogga

For a long time, Hazel's name was actually Tootle.

A month or so ago, she announced that she was no longer Tootle the train, and was now Tanogga and Tanogga is a big boat.

A few days ago, she said that she is not Tanogga any more. She is now Hazel Spider. This morning over porridge, she informed us (with giggles) that she is now Hazel Spider Cat Train Boat Dog.

Ivy's new name is Ivy Butterfly. She's been that way for about a month.

Another thing about a car

Trudi thinks this one is as bad as the other two, but I think it's not too awful.

When we dropped the hire car off at Hobart airport, I was getting us out of the car and internally sighing at the thought of dragging into the car hire office. I imagined us standing around waiting to hand the keys in, and Ivy getting bored and refractory.

Instead, as I got out of the car a man in a safety-yellow vest with a clipboard came pacing over to me, and said he would take my keys and no need to go to the office.

I was relieved.

I got our stuff out of the car, gathered Ivy, handed over the keys, and off I went.

Trudi's jaw hit the floor when I described this scene. I was very happy with the insightful customer service, but she saw an easy scam. Hang around with a clipboard, and people will throw keys at you and march away. He could have been anyone!

Indeed he could, but we haven't had a bill or phonecall from the car hire people, so it was probably legit.

More about cars

On the Sunday of my Hobart weekend with Ivy, we went to that nice bakery in New Town, what's it called. I always think of my cousin Miriam's husband Rory's sister Phoebe when I go there. She lives nearby, and Trudi and I stayed in her house some years ago, and bought good things from the bakery

As we waited to buy bread, Rory's other sister Brie (who lives in Melbourne) said Hi! It took me a while to calm down. Too weird. She was having a Hobart weekend too. Had a chat out on the footpath with Brie & Phoebe & family.

We walked back to the hire car, and I opened it (bee-beep said the key). I asked Ivy to get in the back seat, and she commented "Not our car" and I agreed. This is the hire car, and at the end of our  holiday, we will give it back to the car hire company.

As I threw my bag into the front seat, I noticed a piece of orange paper on the floor. I didn't have any orange paper, how did that get there?


Oh my, this really is NOT OUR CAR.

I hustled Ivy out  and closed the doors. There was our hired silver 4WD parked right in front of the silver 4WD that we'd just burgled. No-one saw us, so it didn't happen, off we go, got our bread, no problems here, no not at all!

Flippan Hobart people, they are not concerned about crime and leave their cars unlocked, allowing me to inadvertantly invade them.

Just remembered the name of the bakery: Jackman and McRoss.

Cars

I'm not fond of cars. I appreciate their convenience, and I respect our Forester, but thoughts about cars in general give me a swimming feeling in my head, and my feet try to walk away from car-related conversations.

My recent car-related behaviour makes me think that I need to change my ways.

Last month I took Ivy to Hobart for the weekend, to visit Chloe & family, and to be an only child for a little while. It was her first time on a plane, Chloe has two big boys and a baby plus a trampoline, and Ivy slept in a little cute bed-let on the floor that Chloe compiled for her, complete with tiny felt chickens and a Maisy doll. So it was a brilliant weekend. We had a lovely time, and then we arrived back at Tullamarine.

On our way in, we'd been running just a little bit late. I'd parked the car in the long-term area, and then we hooned over to the bus stop. An orange bus came to take us to the terminal, and our weekend started.

On the way back, it was not so easy. The flight was fine, but as we came out of the glass doors, the bus left. We had to wait for ages for the next one. As we waited, I slowly slowly realised that I could not remember which bus stop we had parked near.

It's a big carpark.

It was about 6:30pm when a bus finally came and took us to the carpark. I was deliberately trying not to think about the car's location, hoping it would shimmer up from the green depths of my stagnent pool of a mind.

I remembered the path we had taken from the car to the bus stop. If I found the right stop, I could easily navigate to the car. But which stop?

I picked stop E, because it had seemed like a long trip from the stop to the terminal. We got off, and Ivy took my hand. She was pretty tired. I had a little wheely suitcase with a long handle, and we commenced to search.

The car was not near E. I put Ivy on my back, and we searched near F. No car. I moved Ivy to my left side.

Had we really parked this far down? The car was not near G. Shifted Ivy onto my back again.

We totally did not park around here. I searched around H just in case. Made Ivy walk for a bit.

Then we searched around G again, and F again, and E again, then D again.

We'd been looking for 45 minutes, so I went into a bus stop and rang the emergency number. A man would be able to come out and help me in another 45 minutes, Right now he was doing a census of cars, and could not come. I said I'd call again if I needed him.

We kept looking. Ivy said "Mummy, my legs hurt. I'm tired."

Trudi rang to see what was going on. She'd expected us to be home an hour ago. I confessed. She said she was going to get Hazel out of bed and come get Ivy, and leave me to search. I said I would look for a bit longer, but yes let's do that if I get no results soon.

As we talked, I saw an abandoned luggage trolley. Joy! I piled the flippan tiny suitcase onto it, and balanced Ivy on the top, and off we went. So much easier. Look around D again. No car of mine here.

I was sure it was no use, but by now we were quite close to C, so we did a quick check.. and there it was! Got in the car, phoned home, drove, Ivy fell asleep in the car, put her to bed at home with no trouble, all's well that ends well.

Next time, I will write the bus stop letter on the parking card.

No ice in this freezer

Also, no filth in the microwave, a loaf of bread rising, and some toxic stuff in the oven. Never used oven cleaner before. I hope it does not dissolve the oven.

I have a day off!

Trudi has taken the girls to Scienceworks. I am cleaning out the deep freezer. Fun!

Frog spawn and moon shine

Here we are in Hobart, just Ivy and me. Last night I commented to Chloe that Ivy does not yet do much imaginative play. This morning in bed, Ivy wanted to joosh my hair. She patted and stroked and detangled. Then she applied imaginary shampoo and conditioner. Then some QV. Then she massaged in some frog spawn. She said it would make my hair nice and wet and shiny. Then she looked out the window at the watery early-morning moon. She picked something off the window pane and rubbed it into my hair. I asked her what it was, and she said, 'moon shine'.

Hazel is a little baby

At playgroup she makes a bee-line to the baby rocker. She wedges herself in, and deteminedly plays with the hanging toys.

Unconscious

Seven tracks

Today it took until Track 7 of The Best of ABBA for Ivy and Hazel to fall asleep in the car. They are totally wiped out after a long weekend in Tatura with family, and no day naps.

Pretend twins

When we were picking the girls up from creche the other day, one of the carers gave her usual extended-disco-mix account of my girls' every move during the day. She's very young and keen, so I listened politely to the most tedious details (Trudi was already in the car with Hazel by this point). Then the carer leaned forward and said "Can I ask you a question?". I love this moment, people have the funniest questions.

Carer: Are they REAL twins?
Me: Um, yep. They grew in my tummy at the same time, that makes them twins.

(I've been talking to the girls about twins lately, so the toddler-appropriate explanation came to mind.)

Carer: Oh um right. I just. You know.
Me: Did you think they might be pretend twins?
Carer: Well um yes. Ah.

It turns out that she thought that Trudi & I might have each had a baby at about the same time, and decided to call them twins for the fun of it. All the other twins at the creche are really similar frats, or ID, so that might have made her think that really really frat twins were suss.

Poor sweetie, she was ever so nervous! I thought she was very brave for asking.

Not my usual sort of poo story

Trudi told me this story. I hope she puts in a comment to fix up all my exaggeration. She tells me that when I re-tell a story of hers that I embellish it... pretty up the boring bits, and mix it in with other events. So stay tuned for the real story.

Here is what I remember...

Trudi took both girls out in the afternoon for a run on a nearby oval. We Prestonians are not well served in the parks department, so they went to the local trotting track (yes, I did see horses being trained there once, years ago). The middle of the track is a cricket pitch in summer, and an off-leash dog exercise area too.

The girls took off, and were running around having a good time, when Trudi saw Hazel pick something up - is it a bag? Shades eyes, peers a bit more (we are not getting any younger, are we), it IS a bag. Shouts, HAZEL COME BACK.

Now Hazel is 2, and she is doing a very good job of it. HAZEL COME BACK is filtered through her 2-year-old ears into her 2-year-old brain, and the message she receives is HAZEL, RUN AWAY, I WANT TO COME CHASE YOU. So she runs.

I'm not sure what Ivy is doing at this point. I choose not to embellish.

Trudi runs after Hazel, and gains some ground. She sees that Hazel is holding a small black plastic bag, and that it has something fairly heavy in it. HAZEL PUT DOWN THE BAG is translated into HAZEL, WHIP THE BAG AROUND FURIOUSLY, I WANT TO SEE HOW FAST YOU CAN DO THAT WHILE YOU CONTINUE TO RUN AWAY FROM ME.

Trudi runs, and gains more ground. It's clear now that the bag contains dog shit.

She catches up with Hazel, who is daubed in shit. She somehow gets her back to the car, gets most of Hazel's shit-smeared clothes off, puts the girls in the car and drives home. When they arrive home, Trudi is ashen and shaken, and she says to me: Hazel is covered in shit, you clean her, I can't face it, and off she goes to the car to clean it.

For the next few days, each girl tries out the words DOG SHIT a few times. Ah, we don't say that word. Mummy said it because she was upset, but she should have remembered to say DOG POO. Little kids should say POO, not SHIT.

WHY would someone go to the effort of scooping their dog's shit into a bag, and then leave the bag behind?

Pretend mouse

It was a big day yesterday.

Hazel was wandering around the back yard with a big dry leaf in her hand, chatting to it. I saw her from inside the house, and my feet walked outside. I was driven by a vague feeling that I needed to hassle her a bit.

Is that really a leaf? That is a very long stalk. That leaf is kind of mouse-shaped. Like, actually, really mouse-shaped.

By the time I was on the deck, Hazel had come over to show me. Thankyou, feet, you brought me to somewhere that I needed to be.

Hazel said, "I have a pretend mouse. It doesn't move."

I said, "Oh ah well that actually is a real mouse, but it's a dead one. That's why it doesn't move. And, you know what, we don't play with dead creatures. Here, let's pop that on the ground right here, and go inside to wash hands. After you play with a mouse, a dead one or an alive one, you must wash your hands. Let's get a bit more soap on your hands. And here's the scrubbing brush, I'm scrubbing your hands, wow there's a lot of soap here, you will be really clean!" And so on.


Later that day, she covered herself in dog shit, but that's a story that I'll let Trudi tell.

Roving ring-a-ring-a-rosie

At Melbourne Zoo yesterday, Ivy and Hazel played a wrestlin' version of the game with Zara.

Risotto made with sushi rice

Noone will know if I don't tell them.

Drawing Hazel

Ivy had a snack. I heard her saying Drawing HAZEL Drawing Hazel. Here is her rendering of her sister (milk on table).

Divvy divvy

You put the Yo Gabba Gabba DVD in the machine. Then you turn it on with the mote control. Then you don't stand too close or... or... you don't stand too close to the telly or... the mummies talk! They talk and talk and they say "Don't stand too close or I will turn it off".

We are in the car on the way home from Merimbula, and Hazel just uttered this monologue. After a stop in Orbost for lunch at 10am, we are back on the road, hoping the girls have their nap soon.

Up high

Ivy likes to be up high. Here she is the maccas playground in Merimbula, up very high. When your kid has a cold and you had a night of crying, you do whatever it takes, and sometimes that means going to maccas to use their playground and toilets. I took Hazel to the beach, and Trudi took Ivy to the boardwalk and playground. We all got by.

Tootle

Hazel is a train. Some days she is a spider-train, and occasionally she is a spider-cat-train. Lately, she's mostly just a train.

She likes to be called Tootle. This is a Golden Book, about a train who keeps getting off the tracks and having fun in a meadow. Eventually he learns his lesson and grows up to be a fast train betwee New York and Chicago.

Hazel (sorry, Tootle), does train arms, where she waves her arms around as she runs. They are meant to be train wheels, I think. Her technique is a bit sketchy.

Ivy also professes to be Tootle, but she's not as heartfelt about it. I think she wants to be Tootle so that she can match Hazel.

Me: Hazel, can you please come over here so I can put your socks on?

Hazel: Tootle!

Me: Sorry. Tootle, can you come get your socks on please?

Hazel: Tootle is getting her socks on. Here I come. Socks on Tootle's feet. Tootle has socky feet.

I made pesto

This was a while ago.

The basil was burgeoning, so I brought handfuls inside to make pesto. I have a tiny food processor that goes onto the end of the bamix, but it makes a huge awful noise. My girls are not keen on the mildest of machinery noises, so I stood there wondering what to do. Then I remembered that I have a large granite mortar and pestle.

I have not ground curry ingredients myself in the last two and a half years, but the mortar is still fragrant. Mmm, one day the little girls will be big girls who eat adventurously.

I got the mortar and pestle down, and Ivy cruised by to find out what I was up to. She watched with interest as I washed, dried, and then pounded the basil leaves. Because she was interested and Hazel was occupied with Lego, I was in no hurry, so I pounded those leaves for a very very long time.

Eventually I noticed that the basil was creamy and smooth. I'd never made such a lovely pesto base. I added the pinenuts, more pounding. Garlic and salt, more pounding. Oil, gentle mixing. My goodness, the pesto was lovely.

When I used to make pesto in the food processor, the ingredients never became unified... the basil was in tiny pieces, the nuts were in really tiny pieces, and the garlic was too. The oil stayed oily. It was good enough to make again, but not good enough to serve to friends. This pounded pesto was smooth and the flavour was that of pesto, not that of basil + oil + garlic + pinenuts.

Ivy has become a pesto fan. I no longer make pesto in a food processor. I'd rather have no pesto that eat that rubbish again.

Now it's autumn, and the last tough flavourful basil leaves need to be either picked or sacrificed to the cold nights. I think I'll make the last pesto of the summer on the weekend.

It is finally sinking in

After a visit to Bright (Hi Fred!) I started drumming in to the girls that We Use Kind Words. Hah, as if. One day we will use kind words.

I think that day is dawning. In the bath this evening, Hazel was playing with the plug. This is OK, because they actually have two separate baths, each in their own bucket. Saves on tears, and means that no-one can pull the plug out. Anyway, Hazel had the plug, and Ivy coveted it. Did Ivy lean over and snatch it? No! Did she screech? No!

Ivy said, "Can I play with it next please?"

And did Hazel turn away in offended fury? No! Did she screech? No she did not.

Hazel calmly handed the plug over and found something else to play with.

My goodness. I sat silently, drinking it all in. Then Hazel stood up for the tenth time, in defiance of her mother's instructions, and fell over, bonking her head on the tap on the way down. Screaming, tears, misery, end of bathtime.

Still, there was a glimmer of civilised behaviour.

A bad few weeks

We've all been sick.

Ivy caught some virus three weeks ago, and had fevers for five days. Eventually Trudi said "Take her to the doctor" and I said stuff like "what can a GP do about fever, it's just a cold thingy, blah blah". So I took her, and the GP diagnosed post-viral croup & bronchitis.  Bad mother. Two doses of prenisolone and a course of antibiotics, and she is better.

Of course the rest of us caught her virus, so T & I battled sore throats, coughs, and then I got sinusitis. Throbbing awful snotty and disgusting. I was totally repellent. Plus Trudi somehow injured her shoulder.

Hazel started with the fevers, a few days after Ivy started. She was on alternating panadol & nurofen, but her fevers keep going up to 40. I took her along to the GP for a checkup with Ivy, and because she had nurofen in her, she looked fine. GP listened to her chest, all OK.

Late that afternoon, Hazel said her tummy was sore, that it had been scratched. There was no mark. She woke screaming at 8:30pm, saying her tummy was sore, plus a fever again. Nurofen, back to sleep. Woke again just after midnight, miserable, still saying her tummy hurt. The kid is very consistent! So I rang Nurse On Call, who eventually said to take her to emergency.

So Hazel and I were in hospital for the rest of the night. They never found anything wrong with her tummy, but her oxygen level was low, and they gave her a chest x-ray and diagnosed pneumonia! Bad bad bad mother again. Antibiotics, all better now.

Both girls were so wrecked that they were having 2 and 3-hour naps every day, and still asleep by 7:30 at night. I had 3 hours sleep on the night we went to hospital, I am worn out after a three weeks of broken nights and rough days, with one bouncy kid & one miserable one.

They have both now finished their antibiotics and are pretty fit. They are eating again (each went on an unnerving hunger strike). Off to creche tomorrow.

But... at 5am yesterday, as I was leaning over to wipe Ivy's bum on the toilet (yes you needed to know that), my back went Ping. So now I am hobbling like a 90-year-old, and looking forward to my follow-up osteo appointment on Friday. Poor me.

Sleep changes

Hey look! I found an old post from 24 January that I never actually posted. I am so cool and techno-savvy.

Here it is:

Today is Day 6 or 5 (or something) of Hazel's new sleep regime. Ivy joined late, so she's on Day 3. The new arrangement is...

No day naps!

Ivy and Hazel now get up in the morning, keep going all day, and go to bed at night. I can hardly get them to stop... it's a struggle to get them to slow down and have "quiet time".

They are pretty cranky about it though. Last night they went to bed at 6pm. Tonight, it was a little later.

The reason we've made the change is that they were just not tired at bedtime. They would hoon around for two hours or more, being bored hooligans. It doesn't help that they are now in big beds, not cots. They can easily hop out of bed and open their door. One night, Ivy came out five times before she went to sleep.

So far it's going well. They both get pretty cranky by 3pm, but Trudi comes home before 4, so we just muddle along until bedtime. My day has changed a lot. I used to tidy the house and make dinner while the girls were sleeping after lunch, but no more. because they are more tired, they really need me around, so I can't just wander off and do housework unless someone is here to be with them. Last night I made enough bolognese sauce for four dinners. That takes us through to Thursday night. Will have to think of something for Friday... sufficient unto the day.

Where is Ivy?

Hazel is playing CDs, Trudi is on the couch, I am also on the couch. It's 4pm on a warm autumn evening. I can hear a lawnmower somewhere nearby. Where is Ivy? I can hear quiet clinking sounds of industry from the kitchen.

Trudi heaved herself off the couch (I have a bad back today) and comes back with a giggle. Go look! she says.

Ivy is on the dining table with no clothes on (it is a warm arvo and I've re-dressed her twice already). She is sitting on my wheat-filled heat sack (cool though). Using a threadbare old cloth that we use for wiping faces after meals, she is washing her legs from the water jug.

Will you say Yes if I offer you a glass of water when you visit?