Nothing like a cot bar up your butt to make for a comfy nap

Fast asleep wee toadlet.



And the mischief continues. Apparently jumping in his jolly jumper was much less interesting than using it to get to the basket of crap by the front door, dragging said basket of crap across to the middle of the doorway and pulling all Dad's hats out.


And we've discovered the bookshelf. Fortunately his books of choice for chewing seem to be Al's dreadful Sci-Fi jobbies. It probably helps that I shifted them all to the bottom shelf of course ...

The little ginger has a tooth!

Sneaky little tooth.

I swear he was showing no signs whatsoever of teething - well, that I paid any attention to, poor little ginger - and the next he's screaming the house down. Of course, even then it took roughly 4 hours for me to wonder, stick my finger in his gob and find a tooth. Woops. Ah well. Now that I'm paying attention, he's pretty well text book - off his food, sleeps are up the spout, grizzly, needy, chomping on whatever he can (except teething stuff - apparently he is of the 'screw the teething toys, I'll just chew the corner of the couch thanks' mind) blah blah. And, er, sporting the tooth of course.

I continue to be in a very ill humour about this ridiculous survey. Very ill indeed. Did I mention it's compulsory? Apparently the only exceptional circumstances under which they'll consider letting you out of it is "if you're dead". Excellent. I did refrain from asking the surveyor, when she offered up that circumstance, what about if she was dead? (We've just dug 5 new vege patch extensions, it might help the rhubard take off, you know?) Even though the kid had been screaming for hours when she turned up for our initial interview and I was feeling spectacularly frazzled and grumpy, I did think that might have been a wee tad agressive. Just a wee tad. Even for a ginger.

So, we have a 7 month old teething (vile), a husband changing shift patterns and jobs (he's going from line maintenance (inspection and defect rectification ... troubleshooting when aircraft arrive into the airport) to heavy maintenance in the hangar) for three months (not as vile as the tooth, but vile nonetheless), and now, this evil survey where we have to detail out everything down to how many sausages we buy at the butcher (exceptionally vile. The vile has given birth to baby viles and the whole damn family of viles and their vague friends from way back live at my house). And of course there's the detailing out of an entire years worth of spending, which apparently includes all payments such as rates, water, mortgage details, you imagine it, we have to detail it. Which also means I have to find the paperwork. !!!

On the bright side though, we've just discovered a wicked toy store quite close which has awesome wooden toys, and it just so happens that Cuinn needs some new toys. What a coincidence!

Short'n'sweet, but a blog post nonetheless.

Oooh ... this is going to be good (a bloggy restart)

Cheerfully, Statistics NZ has randomly selected our household to take part in a Household Economic Survery.

For. Pete's. Sake.

It's going to take weeks. And diaries of expenditure. And providing receipts. And blimming recalling all the major purchases we've made over the last year. And their idea of major, by the way, is $200.00, which is not exactly a spectacularly high threshold for trying to remember each time you've spent it on a purchase over a year. Can you imagine? GAH! The last YEAR! Honestly! Never mind that I'm part of this household, which means that this is not going to be funny. Not even a little bit.

(Don't think I can't hear you all laughing. I'll hunt you down, I swear. Don't think I won't)

A much better start to this whole business too would have been not standing on my doorstep arguing for about 10 minutes about whether I did or did not have a letter delivered to my letterbox over the weekend, and getting grumpy that I had potentially tossed the unmarked window envelope addressed simply to "The Residents" which would have looked exactly the same as countless other unmarked window envelopes that are delivered with our daily inches high stack of junk mail from the likes of real estate agents, chain letter writers, advertisers, you name it, before actually getting onto telling me why you were standing on my doorstep and what the blazes it was all about. Potentially we might have been more receptive (unlikely, but I did say 'potentially') had we not just walked in the door, the husband wasn't trying to get dinner on, and the both of us weren't juggling a 7 month old who wanted his dinner right now thank you very much.

I really would have preferred they'd randomly selected some other household that has a little less to do, thanks very much. Never mind that their idea of keeping information secure and confidential is bollocks, because hello? The husband is involved in the survey.

What a great big pain in the butt.

I'm not amused.

And I can't be arsed. Most especially, I can't be arsed.

Oh. And yay! Welcome back me! I miiised yooou!

Kisses from Cuinn too! Big goobery open mouthed ones with lots of tongue, all over your cheek/nose/chin/forehead. He's so awesome.

A dude's getting busy

What happens when you leave the kid in the middle of the room, nowhere near anything, and turn your back for half a second.

I persist in putting socks on his, but it's really all I'm doing is giving him something to do for 10 seconds in pulling them off.

Then of course, there's this wee development. This was a few days ago.

And this is today. He's getting more used to pulling himself up and is stronger with it.

See the daylight? Doh.

Just plain ol' mischief.

Tee hee hee

You'd think after this'd happened to the husband a couple of times he'd do what I do - keep out of poos and wees range during bare bum time. But no, instead he continues to give me the opportunity to improve on previous poos-on-dad photos. They've turned out a bit blurry in the past while my concentration on good photography has been marred somewhat by the husband bellowing about helping. No such issue tonight - aside from a quick dump (*snort*) of some previous photos off the memory card to make space - it all turned out perfectly. Well, except for a close call with the dog and poos mooshed between baby toes, which are surprisingly difficult to clean between.

Ah ... special memories ...

The zoo, the park, and a weird pondering-the-meaning-of-life pose

Frisky hippo.



Looking in the opposite direction to the lions.



A fellow ginger.

Tiger heading home for dinner.

Kitty.

At the park, feeding the ducks.

Watching everything.

Examining the grass.

Eating the grass.

Hangin' in the playground.

I have no idea where this little hand-clasping thing has come from, but 'tis very cute.

To be continued ...

I've hit a bloggy wall. I'm busy and my blogging is suffering. It seems to be the only thing in my day that has give in it at the moment (well, that and sleep), but I miss it. I miss knowing you're all there. I miss talking to you. I miss sharing stuff. I miss a lot. I need to organise my time and my thoughts. Make a plan. Not let life make mince meat out of the plan.

Watch this space.

I'll be back soon, I promise.

Photos will continue to roll. Talking bollocks will follow as soon as I've got my head in order, and the chaos that is my exitence, looking and feeling like something resembling spaghetti bolognese and more like an eye fillet. In fact, the first thing I should probably cover when I kick off is that Trademe have added the ability to buy stuff using your credit card. Dan. Ger. Ous. Very. More than ever before. Although handy too when there's a trader selling off a big lot of Crown Lynn, and you want a big lot of Crown Lynn. It's a fantastic idea then. Unless you're the husband who now can't understand why he has a collection of multi-coloured plates, saucers and teacups on its way via courier. But never to fear. He'll get into the groove. I'm sure.

And now ... the little dude. He for whom this blog was created, and he who seems to be a good part of the reason it's ground to a halt of late. Love him to pieces. More and more each day, and more than I ever imagined possible. He's awesome.

Where we seem to be going wrong mastering the sippy cup ...

His first rusk (well, the first one he's actually munched). I really wish I'd gotten a photo of his very first realisation that if he biffs food on the floor the dog's going to eat it too. Very funny. For us. He looked a bit horrified. Still, on a learning front, it means he's working out object permanence - he knows something is still there once it's out of sight, looked for it, saw it disappear and was a bit bollocksed that Jack ate it. Clever chap. Clever dog has worked out very quickly to follow the clever chap closely when he has food too.

And miscellaneous mischief, cos there's plenty.