The 3:30am wake up call

It's never a good one - and your heart sinks as you leap (or stumble blindly in my case) into action. Arrive in child's room. Attempt to see the problem through pre-dawn gloom... to be greeted with:

"My bed's being sarcastic!!!" wailed at full voice.

Translation = I've kicked off my blankies, it's 5degC, I'm freezing and can't get the blankies back on the bed.

Parental attempt to muffle hysterical laughter - fail.

Sudocream

Sudocream
Originally uploaded by Wenchilada

I suppose it could've been much worse...

christmas pressies anyone?

Cracked.com has a list of 20 Baby Products Great for Traumatizing your Infant.

I may, or may not, have snorted my tea. Just sayin'

cross-posted at my blog

Potty Training With Dr Phil

Someone sent this to the Beijing list I am on today: http://www.pottytrainingconcepts.com/Dr-Phil-Potty-Training/Dr-Phil-Potty-Train-in-One-Day.htm

Actually, they linked a different part of the website, so once I waded through all the paraphernalia, I finally got to this spot.

Not sure how I feel about it as it seems over the top. But hey, here's some tips in case anyone's interested.

Hope everyone's well and happy,
Wenchi

Looking for a good kids book?

You may not think much of our current Premier, but he does have a fantastic list of books under the Premier's Reading Challenge (I know, it's all the hard work of public servants). The list is here and is divided into K-2 and so on. I haven't been able to get the PDFs to download (I think they are fixing it) but if you click on the links in the purple sections you should be all right.

Be surprised at how many books you already own, how many are familiar from your own school days, and how many you immediately want to buy. Or maybe that's just me. Some really great kids books here, and it may take some of the hassle out of choosing a special book for a special little person. Or give you too much choice. Happy book hunting.

Dear Zoo

The young miss is into letter writing at the moment. She declared that she was writing to the zoo. Word was set up, wingdings added in for decoration (with my help) and the resulting letter (in 48 font) was emailed off to the general contact address at the zoo. I wasn't actually expecting a reply and had said that "they might be very busy looking after all the animals".

To our utter delight the following came back the next day:

....the little lady who sent the letter to us,
Thank you very much for your lovely letter. We are very pleased you love your visits to the zoo so much.
We hope you continue to visit, and enjoy and learn about the many animals here at the zoo.
Kind regards....

How sweet was that?

Boobies!

G demanded Boobies last night as Daddy was putting her to bed. 'G has boobies', she was told (when she is tired she likes to slip her hand inside your shirt and onto your chest, a hangover from breastfeeding). 'No, boobies!' she demanded. 'No, G I'm not going to give you boobies' Daddy replied. Then she points to her shelf of teddys and dolls. 'Okay, which one do you want?' asked Daddy. 'Boobies!' was the reply. Then sensing that Daddy had no idea what she was on about she added 'hat!'.

All was revealed. She wanted a very strange little doll that has tiny pink thread knot nipples and a large hat. I think the doll is designed to go in the bath and the splotches of colour on her fade so that she is 'clean'. We haven't put her in the bath because not all of the other toys which would then immediately follow her would be so forgiving of a bath.

Some mothers dress their daughters as fairy's and princess's but not my mum.

Poor Gabriella, We attended a fancy dress 1st & 2nd B'day party for Peter's side of the family and as I suspected everyone dress their daughters as fairies and princess but Oh not us. Though she was a hit and everyone loved the hat.

not wrong at all! nooooo

via Modern Mechanix

Blue Steel!

Blue Steel!
Originally uploaded by Wenchilada

Zoolander has nothin' on her!

Snotty, grotty and completely beautiful...

and two today.

Oh, the joy!

Of being by the sea

For discussion...

How independent do we let them and when does that start.

Go here and read what prompted this question

having a Darling Baby is never enough.

sanity helps too.

I know the Food Whore is linked over at For Battle, but I thought her latest post just fitted right in. Go here and have a chuckle, shake your head, and know that you'll (most likely) never be that freaky ;-)

I have survived...

a two hour 5th birthday party with 8 (including Charlie) 5 year olds. There was screaming, tantrums, laughter and lots of fun. There was also lots of junk food, then we sent them home to their parents. Only one child turned up unexpectedly (he was invited but hadn't RSVP'd). It took longer to clean up than it did to hold the party. It took almost as long to work out which bit of plastic went with which little thing that had to be assembled and have stickers stuck all over it. We didn't count on the almost two year old being so razzed up on sugar that she wouldn't go to sleep until 10.30pm when we went to bed and then only after threats from Daddy of being put in her own bed if she didn't stop kicking him.

I think I'd do it again. Maybe. We were worried what to do to keep them occupied, but I realised that hey, they're in kindergarten if all else fails we'll read them a book. Fortunately an Easter Egg hunt, a pinata, and a pit stop for drinks and scoffing food took care of all their needs. I had help, one lovely Mum stayed the whole two hours and apart from a short coffee break played with the kids all the time. A couple of other Mums stayed and were an extra pair of eyes which was great since I was still trying to make the icing for the dodgy Woolies sponge I was trying to turn into a birthday cake. The kids didn't care, half of them didn't have room for cake.

I'm so grateful that I'm at work today, Gemma is at daycare and Charlie is at school. I don't want to have to deal with the come down from all that sugar and excitement. I'm a coward.

and you thought Torbenspang Huntington-Smythe was bad

How about Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" (pronounced "/ˈalˌbin/")

Freaks

My Tiny Astronomer

On the slide with the baby.

Baby points into distance.

"Ball!"

"Ball!"

"Where's the ball honey? I can't see any ball."

This goes on for twenty minutes.

As we're leaving the park I finally realise that the ball he's talking about is the Moon that's visible in the afternoon sky.

"No honey, I can't get that ball for you. That's the Moon."

"Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball!"

"Sorry sweety, that's, like, a quarter of a million miles away (must Google that fact)."

"Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball! Ball!"

Baby proceeds to bitch and cry about the fact that I can't get the ball for him.

He's still obsessing about the moon after his bath and dinner.

It's funny, though, to think that in our age there is at least a very remote possibility that my little boy will one day stand on the moon.

SCA frocks to a good home - size 1

I've got two quite nice frocks that neither of my girls can use. If anyone knows of a good home for them let me know. There are two frocks, 2 linen shifts and a cap suitable for size 0-1.

Modern Dilemma

We were sitting outside in a pub beer garden with the kids. With the new anti-smoking laws, the beer garden is now the only place people can smoke within the pub grounds. When we went out there we were the only ones, and we decided to sit outside and have a drink because it was a nice day, and the kids could run around without being a nuisance to anyone.

Then someone came and sat at an ajacent table, and lit up a cigarette. Immediately Charlie started announcing loudly that someone was making poor choices and that smoking made you sick. We were trying to get him to be quiet, because although we don't smoke and would prefer that the gentleman in question wasn't smoking in our vicinity, we could hardly ask him to stop when we were sitting in the designated smoking area. So we found ourselves in the strange position of defending, to our almost 5 year old, this man's right to smoke even though it's a bad choice and makes you sick. Mostly we were just trying to get him to stop talking about other people at the top of his lungs. Each time someone else came out and lit up he was off again.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Apart from moving away from the smoker, what did you do?

Squeaky shoes?