the bear went over the mountain

Friday, March 31, 2006

Seems I've got my hill legs back - can push Becca + laden pushchair over the ridge to J'ville and back again with scarcely any pain at all.

In other news, multi-vitamins are a remarkably quick fix for feeling run-down and shitty. Who knew?

Permanent link - 0 comments

scotch mist

Thursday, March 30, 2006

One of Rebecca's favourite books is Rod Campbell's excellent Dear Zoo: she especially enjoys pretending that each of the animals it depicts is an elephant ('What's that, Becca?' 'YEYEPHANT!'), then giggling. So I suppose I should have seen it coming when, at the zoo the other day, she pointed at the zebra enclosure and solemnly declared 'Yeyephant.' When I hastened to correct her, she stared at me with pity in her eyes and explained, enunciating clearly: 'That-was-a-JOKE.'

Permanent link - 0 comments

use your words

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Language modelling so assiduously inculcated into Becca at the early childhood centre (must stop calling it a nursery) proving a mixed blessing. They've taught her to say 'Stop it - I don't like it!' when affronted, but now she chimes it out at the slightest provocation - offers of anything to eat other than raisins, attempts to stop her from flinging herself under passing cars or to make her wear shoes. Even looking at her askance can earn you a firm reprimand. And don't get me started on last week, when she was croupy and had to be forcibly medicated - repeatedly. (I knew my years as a paediatric radiographer and thus daily overpowerer of small people would come in handy one day. Other than for, you know, making a living and that.) Still, it occurred to me this morning during swimming lessons (while sagely counselling a fellow mum of slightly younger tot) that I can't remember the last time she bit anyone.

Permanent link - 0 comments

dem bones

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Slept on the floor last night - not due to some marital dustup, but because Rebecca came down with croup in the middle of her second birthday party and went to bed so distressed and restless I didn't want her to be alone overnight, so kipped out next to her in a sleeping bag on a Pilates mat (she was too irritable to share a bed with and I didn't want her overheating).

Incidentally, comfortable as a Pilates mat may seem during the relaxy bit at the end of yoga (did I mention I've taken up yoga? and knitting [again]? probably not as haven't had much time to put digits to keyboard lately) I wouldn't recommend spending an entire night on one: turns out I have more bony protruberances than I'd hitherto been aware of.

Pathology aside Rebecca's party went wonderfully well - filled the house with children and refined sugar, dotted a few adults around the place to forestall attempted plummets down the front steps and so I could have the odd distracted conversation about children's literature, the local housing market and, for the admittedly dubious benefit of those yet to procreate, why the people who claim that breastfeeding shouldn't hurt if you do it properly are LYING, and before I knew it I was farewelling the last of the guests and sponging chocolate icing off the paintwork.

Poor little Becca is still coughing like a drain so we're having a quiet day at home, hence unaccustomed interval for blogging. My parents, in town for the festivities, have taken themselves off to the other side of town for religious worship and shopping (apparently these things are now entirely compatible on the Sabbath). Having grandparents to stay providing some unexpected boons: I haven't touched a clothespeg or a dishcloth for several days, and my mother keeps making my father do the hoovering. Result! or, as I believe we say in New Zealand*, score!

Happy Birthday my darling little Rebecca. Who is now uttering complete sentences, conjugating verbs, mastering regular plurals, can count to twelve (or fourteen, I forget which), has colours pretty much sussed and has recently discovered the concept of the joke. What's more, the other day she prefaced the Alphabet Song with something I couldn't quite understand until I realised that it was 'toru, wha!' (Māori for 'three, four!'). Who knew sending her to a childcare centre with a curriculum and a bicultural ethos would reap such direct results?

*The other day a friend informed me that now that we're back on the south side of the globe I should describe large quantities of anything as 'heaps' rather than 'loads'.

Permanent link - 0 comments

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Another good woman done gone.

Permanent link - 0 comments

one for the annals

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The Packing Bots have excelled themselves. You remember how I said, back in Cambridge, that if I'd've put down a cup of tea while they were at work, I would've turned round to find a slightly steaming package, probably marked Elder 53580: Beverage? (I may not have said it here.) And my mother-in-law, veteran of many a transcontinental move, tells of sandwiches being packed practically mid-bite. But how many people have opened up a box labelled 'Boxes, Linen, and Weights' to discover a neatly bagged, but nonetheless used nappy. At least it wasn't a pooey one.

Permanent link - 0 comments