Awww

It's not often we manage to get these sorts of shots. Melts your heart, don't it?

We're gonna let him play bull rush too

Apparently, when you're a 16 month old ginger kid of a certain genetic combination, the way you open a door is to stand by it and jump into it head first, head-butt styles. It's hilarious apparently. Except when said door is actually closed as opposed to just pulled-to. Then it's an inconvenience as you yell for someone to open it enough that you can head butt it. Awesome. I'm either ordering a girl next time, or an 18-year supply of Ritalin.

* * *

Because being inside in the warm and dry just isn't cool. What he was actually looking a bit displeased about here was his sock was too wet to be able to yank off himself.

The puddle-sitter-inner taking off at full speed as soon as it looked like he was going to be grabbed and taken inside for dry clothing and ... well ... taken inside.

Toys? Who needs toys?

He had me in stitches this morning. He tipped a bag of rolled oats out on the floor ... well, part of a bag - I learned my lesson the other day and as soon as I heard pouring I ran for it and managed to save about 3 rolled oats. Go me! But, he also worked out from the other day that we clean up with the dust pan and shovel, so he worked away, got a whole lot of rolled oats into the pan, and then toddled over to the rubbish bin and pulled it out (we have a drawer bin in our cabinets) ... losing everything except about a dozen rolled oats along the way, and those he lost lifting the pan up to empty into the rubbish bin. He was absolutely determined, so he plonked down, picked up a (yes, single, nevermind the other 10,000) rolled oat, put it back in the pan, stood up and tried again. And again, and again, and again, until there were tears of laughter from me, and his poor rolled oat was no closer to actually making it to the bin than it had been about 10 minutes before. Then I think the cat ran past and it was game over for the rolled oats, and game on for chasing the cat.

He's just absolute magic at the moment.

You know, I just actually don't care

Sometimes, if you can't see the kid, and you hear the sound of something being poured, it's better just to finish your cuppa before you have a look.

I feel as though I should care, and yet I don't. He's playing. It's easily cleaned up. We left the wheat where he could get to it (actually, we left it on the bench top, where it was out of reach a week ago ... our bad. I also left a cake cooling on the bench this afternoon, and came back to find little ginger finger sized holes poked in the side, with a few dents where taste tests had been made). Seriously. Don't. Care. He's not being naughty, he's being curious. I think. Mostly he was just handling the wheat, seeing what it felt like and investigating it.

Anyway, this is what a bag of whole wheat all over the floor looks like ...

And, it turns out, that every now and again it is actually rubbish that he puts in the bin - usually it's all manner of very UN rubbishy things that end up in there. Nothing like having to check the bin every time you walk past it just in case (and having to retrieve things like the cover off his high chair pad, books, shoes, socks ... the list goes oooooon)

And then the husband made the hilarious (to me) error of giving the kid the brush and pan to 'help' clean up after he'd broomed the wheat into a nice wee pile. Heh.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork

Just a quick review of Advisory Circular AC66-2.21 in relation to Air Law.

Don't ALL babies do that over lunch?

The little dude gets his first haircut

Before

During (not a good chin angle for me ... ugh!)


After


And these because I'm stupidly proud. I think this is the first time he's played an imaginative game where I've known what he was doing - he made a 'cake' out of my recycling, mixed it up, and then set about 'eating' it with a spoon. The photos give you a vague idea. He's also this week moved on from 'what noise does the dog make?' and 'what noise does the puss make?' to 'what noise does Jack/Jess/Jazz make?' and he gets them right, so we know he's learned his animal's names, as far as receptive language goes. Awesome!

One for Poppa

Noms noms noms

After this ...


And this ...

It was almost a relief to give him this ...

He walks, he's weaned and he's thieving off the bench

He's also learning 'Where does your hat go?' (he smacks himself in the head) and 'Where do your socks go?' (he grabs his foot and falls over) which is absolutely hilarious and very cute.

This morning, he was stealing the bird food. This on top of half a cup of porridge, an entire banana and a slice of marmite toast. I should probably point out too that this is Al's homemade bread which you could probably use as a foundation for a house it's that loaded with seeds and grain and stuff.





He had his Plunket check the other day and it set charted him above the 85th percentile for weight, and in the 97th percentile for height. We're very proud ... just a bit broke from fuelling him.

I also found him happily sitting on the floor by the fridge the other morning, nursing a beer, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. Once I'd picked myself up off the floor, he'd buggered off to terrorise the cat.

Getting my brave on

I've been spending a lot of time in my head lately. Messy business. Very cluttered. I store a lot of crap in there. More crap than normal at the moment actually because Al bought me a Fashion Quarterly the other day. Doesn't he know that those magazines tell you where you can buy all the awesomeness featured on their pages? And that I'm quite fond of shoppy-plotting? Reading FQ is like shopping from the couch (actually, add in a bit of internet and a telephone and it is shopping from the couch, but what he doesn't know yet won't bite me in the ass till later). Maybe he was assuming it'd be like most other issues where I drool over the glossy pages of gorgeousness, but silk dresses, underwear almost on the outside and shoes so high I fall over just looking at them (even when I'm sitting down) aren't my thing and a Hermes Birkin is beyond even my twisted accounting methods. But this issue ... Woah Nelly. Have you seen it? Full of cardys! I love cardys. I love cardys a lot. Marvellous, snuggly, beautiful, woolly cardys. The poor husband. Heh.

But, I digress. Significantly. And waffle. Again, significantly.

I have angst. Or I did. Several hours ago I had angst, and for weeks before that I've had angst, but I've spent so much time staring at this page trying to put words on it this afternoon to try and work through the angst that somehow I seem to have swept the angst out at some point and just not noticed when it went on its merry way. I wish the rest of my housework was like that.

The general whatever has been that despite our decision to move ahead with another little ginger (let's face it, we're all going to be a bit weirded out a little if it's not a ginger), which I know is the right one, I've been ... well ... packing it. I touched base with my obgyn about pre-transfer obgyn stuff the other day as part of ongoing preparation, but subsequently had kittens and am yet to actually suck it up and make the appointment to visit his rooms and discuss it. Chicken, I am. BAAAWK! (That's a chicken noise. In case you were wondering ...)

My thoughts have been so locked in there I haven't been able to get them out, and I've been over-thinking it to hell and back. Quite literally in fact (the hell bit). I keep going back to how damn hard that first eight months was, and as soon as my mind winds back to those days, my entire being turns to concrete. I'm trying to get my head into a space where I'm ready to do that again, but my head's just petrified. And yet, I had a dream a few weeks ago where we were back at the clinic for an embryo transfer, but it was the last one and the others had failed, and I woke up feeling really unsettled. That feeling has stayed on the periphery of my thoughts since and it's been prodding me like a proddy thing, constantly. I can only suppose it's acknowledging my subconscious fear of the potential reality that we'll get through those embryos and they won't take which doesn't stack up with my other fear that they will. I think.

I don't know why I can't get past that first leg - I don't want to ever be that close to losing my mind again, for a start, and knowing that we were just managing through that time was devastating. But on the flip side, we know Cuinn so well now - we know what he needs and why and we've learned so much from him and about him, and most importantly we've learned how to learn from him, and we've gained enough confidence through that that I'm sure (ok, perhaps really, really hopeful more than sure. Sure might be stretching it a bit) we'll be ok. Besides, the baby brought us both to our knees, but the kid ... the kid is awesome.

So why the fear? Buggered if I know. Maybe it's just always there.

White men can dance

Cuinn has a boogy to Hollie Smith

And some walking progress.

The kid being clever