Black and white

emoji rocks for mother's day

grace at the optometrist

nina playing the trumpet

ruby's 12th birthdya party

grace and lily at the underpass

Lil at my work

The kids have played a round robin of colds and flu.  This week was Lil's turn.  The first day she had a temperature and was miserable so I stayed home but the next day she was pretty chirpy so I took her into work with me.  How much did she love my whiteboard!  She's just hit that stage where she wants to write everything all the time.  This says Gols (girls) and, behind her head Bois (boys).  Sweet sweet sweet.

Nina gave up the piano and took up the trumpet.  I maintain that I don't care if they learn music or not, but that if they do they have to practice.  Piano practice with Nina was unbearable, for both of us.  As a child I was also an incredibly grumpy instrument practicer, but was blessed with a much more patient mother.   Nina is not so blessed and in the end it was not worth the insanely ridiculous levels of rage I would experience trying to get her to practice an instrument that she professed not to particularly care for.  The wonderful wonderful thing about the trumpet is that I know NOTHING about it.  I learned piano for about 15 years, but the trumpet I can't even blow.  I don't know how to make the notes and I can't help her, even should she want me to and I think this is a great thing for us both.  Because, however much I try, I am just not the sort of person who can listen to the piano being played without butting in with my ever-so-helpful suggestions and my little carping criticisms.  It's something I especially don't like about myself.  So when she plays the trumpet and calls out 'how did that sound?' I say 'great!' or 'much better', and when she says 'it sounds kind of wheezy' or 'the valves are sticking' I say 'oh dear' and 'remember to ask your teacher about that'.  Oh sweet relief of an absolution of responsibility.

Ruby turned 12. Twelve!  She got her ears pierced.  I took her to a crazy hipster tattoo parlour where her ears were expertly perforated by the most tattooeed and pierced person I have ever seen.  Even his eyelids were tattooed.  He had holes through his nose so you could see daylight from one side to the other.  He was an incredble looking man, with a gentle and professional manner and I would highly recommend getting ears pierced with a needle over a gun.  She has had not the slightest hint of redness, blood, infection or weeping from either ear in 4 weeks.  

Gracie (she wants to be Gracie now) got new glasses.  She wears a kilt with suspenders, a crocheted poncho and runners, like an escapee from the 70's.  Sweet sweet sweet.  Today in the car she asked me what a convertible was.  I remembered coming across that word in Nancy Drew book and never knowing what it was (but surmising it was some sort of car).  I explained and said, why do you ask?  'Well in my book, there's this girl called Nancy and her father gives her a convertible'.  Turns out she is reading Nancy Drew.  Ah the passing of time and all that. 

Grace's Birthday

Grace, aged eight:

Cartwheeler

Handstander

Red-riding-hood wearer

Wombat lover

I am Special

I am special because I have very nice friends and they are very kind to me. Grace

Boundless Plains to Share

Refugee Week

This story was very sad but it was exilent too. Because it shows that Australia is quit rich. We have food and clothes and water too. We are lucky and we also don't really let refugees in our country. We should help refugees somehow. We need to share. 

Grace wrote this after a school visit from a young man who came to Australia as a refugee from Burundi and is now a successful hip hop artist. All my girls were very impressed and moved by his story. 

Little things of no great importance.

Every day a hundred words, a thousand thoughts, a million moments forgotten.  Did the invention of the camera aid or inhibit the process of memory.  Do I remember my newborn's face, or do I just recall the photograph?  

Captured forever: the muddy feet; a completed sunflower stitching; singing in the rain; the end of autumn; taking a bow; preparing for lunch with friends.

I'll look back on these in a year or more and perhaps remember the lunch - we had tuscan bean soup and salad and bread; how kinder was unexpectedly closed so Lily came to work with me; how much Grace and Lily loved making a muddy mess of the newly-dug-up veggie patch; walking to tap class through the autumn leaves, Lily and Grace playing clapping games along the way.

I remember Ruby teaching Nina those clapping games.  I remember Pauline Mak teaching me 'My Name is Aitch Eye Aitch Eye Chicken Boy Chicken Boy Uni Uni Eye Eye Eye' in grade 2.  Back and back it goes.

And a few more years will pass and perhaps I'll forget the lunch and remember only the bowl and the tablecloth. I won't remember who did the stitching but might remember sitting with my girls, helping them pull yarn through hessian.  I won't remember why Grace and Lily are bowing, but will remember that house with the high picket fence and the forget-me-nots that poked through it in the summer, Saturday mornings at tap, watching the Fred Astaires and Suzy Q's be absorbed into little feet and minds.

I wonder how our memories are distorted by photographs.  How the act of capturing that image gives it a disproportionate importance and corrupts the truth. 

Crime and Punishment

When I was a child I was obsessed with robbers, and believed that they came to our house every night, not to take anything, just to lurk in cupboards and freak me out.  So I was amused to see Grace's weekend entertainment: this 'Robber Weekly' magazine, which kept her amused and chortling to herself for quite a few hours.

I love the names she came up with: John Dickly, Thomas Stoe, Dick Beensly, Marshel Owen (the only female robber in the band), Oscar Pleed, Matt Tissly, Joe Deen and Marct Tistoe.  Don't they just sound like a list of convicts?

The Punishments 'Stay out in the cold with no food; Stay with me but no food: Do chores for me'.

And the Crimes: John Dickly stole the boat that peapol were on and sank it.  Thomas Stoe stole the line of 'i's (family joke).

Red Riding Hood, as told by Grace

My favourite part of Grace's re-telling of this tale? - Little Red's finger, pointing to her Grandma's house. And the wolf's response to being asked where he is going 'well not rilly enny were'.

Disco Seven

Ruby and Nina collaborated on Grace's present, making her a stone hedgehog and a special book to hide treasures in.  They asked me for a really dull book title that no one would to read and I gave them a few ideas, but they landed on the 'History of Taxation in Australia' by B.Oring (get it?).  It reminds me of a job interview I went to as a final year law student.  I knew where I wanted to work but wasn't sure I'd get offered 'articles', as they were then known, at the law firm of my choice, so I applied for various other firms, including one that specialised in taxation law.  The interview went along these lines: 'So I see that you haven't done tax law yet?' 'Uh, no.' 'You know that we are a taxation law specialist firm?' 'Uh yes'. 'Do you intend to do tax law?' 'Um no.' 'Well I strongly recommend you do tax law.'  Silence. We looked at each other, the interviewer and I.  We'd only been in the interview for about 5 minutes and he clearly didn't know what to do, so he gave me a tour of the library - a library in which, it was abundantly apparent to us both, I would never have the opportunity to work. When a respectable amount of time had passed, he hastily made his escape, leaving me to find my own way out.   

Grace was delighted, which was good because it was a lot of work ruling all those straight lines to look like the pages of a book.  Lily did a colourful drawing of eyes? peacock feathers? a tree with leaves? None of us know, and she changes her mind frequently.

Grace had settled on a disco party, so I did my now traditional 5 minute icecream cake (gotta work fast before the icecream melts).  I have learned that hours labouring over amazing cakes is not time well spent.  Chuck some lollies and sprinkles on it and watch it get wolfed down in minutes.

Grace had a sparkly skirt and a tinsel wig which she abandoned after a few dances as it was making her head hot.  Her friends danced shyly at first and then with increasing abandon until it couldn't really be called dancing - more leaping on each other in a display reminiscent of a 'stacks on'.  We did the limbo and played muscial chairs and danced like our favourite animals and then had honey joys and lemon slice and cocktail franks and all the traditional party food (but not chocolate crackles which I cannot abide).  Grace opened her presents, we danced some more, had the cake and the party was over.

Grace at seven is such a pleasure.  She remains enthusiastic, generally happy, sweet and just the slightest bit vague.

Suprize

'Graces note

To mummy and daddy and Ruby Nina and Lily to see. Love from Grace

Ps I did this puzzle when you all were asleep 

Suprize.'

What I had for Breakfast on Friday 15 Novemba 2013

The Beat Goes On

Nina and Grace have started tap classes. I find I am very keen on tap. It's the first time any of them have done dance classes, apart from the ubiquitous 'creative dance' that all children under 5 seem to be required to attend. Not that I have anything against creative dance. It's very cute to see 3 year olds run around and 'make a shape' and play with pretty stones and pretend to be a wind. But I find something about these tap classes really appeals to me as I sit and watch each Saturday morning while Craig takes Ruby to netball. It's the rhythm, the discipline, the coordination within the group. When Nina's class do their warm up and they are all in sync it is just really cool to watch (and hear). It's interesting too, seeing how kids do it - some all small and compact and precise in their movements, some all arms and gangly legs.

On Sunday they were to perform their rhythms at the Collingwood Toy Library Fair. The top picture was what greeted us as we arrived. It got steadily worse. Decisions were made to cancel, but in the end they moved under the old bleachers and performed on the concrete, for their damp and cold parents. I was so pleased that they got to do it, and that both girls remembered their routines. Grace concentrated so hard that, if you didn't know her, you'd think she was having a miserable time. She was actually having a ball and was terribly thrilled with herself. Ever since, I've woken to hear her thumping out her steps down the hallway.

Things to Do When You are Bored in the School Holidays (Pt 6)

Line up your collection of mentos wrappers and take a lot of photos of them;

Make a billion pompoms;

Then teach your friend how to make them;

Have someone over for a play who is also the youngest of four and as sweet and stubborn as you;

Beg your mum to take you out for pho;

Take iPhone photos to compare eyes with your siblings.