Yay for coffee

We made it!

We altered the plan a bit. Dan stayed up with Atti until midnight last night while I went to bed early so that I could wake him up at 4am.

Dan did a great job - took Atti to the supermarket with him. Apparently he was incredibly cheerful and helpful. I woke up at 4am, immediately had a cup of coffee (which Dan bought the night before since we don't usually drink the stuff) and went up to the boy. I sat on his bed looking at him sleeping for at least 10 minutes before I could finally work up to waking him up. Sleeping children look so angelic. I felt so slack!

But the kid is a real trooper. After having some breakfast we played with the marble run (I love that toy!) and watched some Yo Gabba Gabba (and I had my second cup of coffee...)

Atti at 5am

He stayed awake the whole journey to the hospital - the entire hour... until about 5 minutes away. That short sleep was enough to energize him so he didn't sleep during the test but I think they got good results. He was pretty excited because Dan had told him that he would be wearing a special "Space Hat". He couldn't wait to get it on!

Happy with his Space Hat on.

We'll find out the verdict in a few days.

The rest of the day he and I were write-offs.

But I have to say that I'm incredibly proud of how well our little guy did, especially considering the circumstances. Back to work tomorrow. I wonder how I'll do!

Sleep deprived child = sleep deprived parent

We're off to the hospital on Thursday for Atti to have an EEG to try and find the cause of these convulsions.

However, oh no! He has to be sleep deprived for the test! This means, according to the lady on the phone, that we need to wake up Atti 6hrs before he normally wakes. I don't know how I'm meant to keep him awake during this time.

God help me!

Weekend of horrors

Okay, well it wasn't as bad as it sounds...

Saturday, Atti had another convulsion. It's been months since he last had one - he's been off his meds since Christmas. He was having lunch out in the backyard when Dan saw him lying on the ground, out of it with foam around his mouth. A bit scary for us all but especially Dan. I was taking Dante to his Extension classes at the time. My father and Dan put him to bed and he seemed okay when he woke up.

Then on Sunday we took my mother-in-law to yum cha for lunch. All was going well until the end when we were getting ready to go. Elora, the little climbing monkey, was standing on her booster seat when she took a tumble and fell backwards flat onto her back. She had a big cry while I cuddled her and then promptly vomited down my back and on the restaurant floor. I felt sorry for the other customers!

Blargh. So that's the horror of the weekend. Now I'm waiting to hear from the paediatrician about Atticus.

Yo Gabba Gabba

We've recently discovered an excellent kids program called Yo Gabba Gabba. A hip-hop modern music show for kids. It's so much fun!

The songs/chants are completely entrancing and get stuck in your head all day. The dances are silly and fun. And the kids love it, of course. It's a hugely welcome break from Hi-5!

Here's an excerpt (Youtube, 2:01)


My favourite part is the "Cool tricks" segment. Every episode they have someone come on and demonstrate their cool trick. One girl does gymnastics. One man plays the theramin. One boy stacks cups. You get the idea? All sorts of random stuff and people.

The boys have really taken it to heart. They talk about what their cool tricks might be. Atti said his is stacking blocks. Dante's not sure about his at the moment. Elora's is falling off things. Hmm... I'm not sure about that last one!

The winner is me - Part Two

Lady Luck seems to be shining on me. I won wool the other day, and yesterday I won a lucky door prize at our local Apple shop re-launch party!

It was a good morning. Went to the Lost Property sale at Uni and picked up a cheap pair of sunnies and a bunch of cheap calculators. Then popped over to the computer shop and had lots of delicious snacky cakes and my favourite Lady Grey tea. After a while Dr Karl (a regular, favourite customer) called us to attention and started pulling tickets out of a box. First up, three lucky winners of iPod shuffles, two of them one number away from mine! Then, incredibly, my number was called. For the grand prize!

I won an iPod Touch (8Gb)! Can you believe it? Not one week after I got my hands on my very own 16Gb version. The most delightful hostess, Sandra, was beside herself with joy, so glad that a friend had won.

But no-one was happier than me! Off to buy a lottery ticket now.

The winner is me!

Rose Red, a craft blogger and fellow Sydney-sider, had a "Blogthday" competition earlier this month and I won! I was incredibly amazed, as I always am, at the generosity of the craft blog community out there. It's not the first time that I've won a give-away, but I'm still astonished when it happens.

The lovely parcel arrived yesterday and I tore it open with excitement (and help from little fingers). Hmm... lovely Fleece Artist sea wool sock yarn (Blackberry, 1 x 100g skein) and fair-trade dark chocolate from the Oxfam shop (I know this because I bought a block of it the other day for the new parents and almost didn't let it go because it looked so delicious. Karma looked down on me and brought the chocolate back to me). Yummo!


I couldn't wait to get stuck into it (the wool) so on my day off from work today (from paid work, I should say) I undid the skein, draped it over the back of a kitchen chair and started winding. It went swimmingly. I got half of it done in no time at all. The kids were busy playing, interested but not hazardous (or so I thought).

Until disaster struck:

In the blink of an eye a little blur came past and yanked the wool off the chair. That's all she did. One swift movement. Ack! It took my mother and I the rest of the afternoon to get that ball wound. A good four hours at least. Blargh.

Ah, but it's done now and I've started knitting a cover for my iPod which I've been contemplating since the moment we got it (and even before it was mine). Luckily enough, the most wonderful aforementioned Rose Red did exactly the same thing and wrote up her pattern. I've started it three times now, trying to get the right size, but I think I'm right with 44 stitches (I used the "Magic cast-on" on circular needles to knit it in one piece with no seams to sew up (which I hate doing)).

Little bite marks

The result of a little girl trying to eat an apple.

Party, party, play, sleep-over

An exhausting and busy weekend.

Saturday morning I took Atti and Elora to the 3rd birthday party of a girl from child care. It was a nice affair - the mother was totally stressed out by it (I can completely sympathise!) but everything went splendidly. A good handful of kids who knew each other, lots of sunshine and excellent food.

She did a great job with the party games. The kids loved them.

The first: Treasure Hunt.

She had some gold coin chocolates and showed an example to the kids. "There are these treasures hidden in the garden. When you find them, come and put them in my basket."

That was it. No competition to get the most. Just fun finding the treasure. The cunning part was that she kept walking around redistributing the "found" treasures so that everyone could have a go at finding them and they weren't put in too difficult places. It was incredibly successful for a bunch of 3 year olds! And at the end she divided the coins up evenly amongst the kids so that no-one missed out.

The second game: Pinata.

Just a bought pinata that all the kids had a go at bashing. Nothing too strenuous or complicated. The best bit about this was that it was actually a "string-pull" pinata so (once she worked this part out with some advice form moi) once all the kids had had a good go with the stick, she simply pulled the string and let them scramble for the goodies. Excellent stuff!

The chocolate truffle birthday cake was gorgeous. Elora made sure she ate her share. Atti was too busy picking out the pinata lollies that had been trampled into the grass (ack!).

But, we eventually made it home and managed to get Atti down for his nap. Elora fell asleep in the car and then woke up when I tried to put her in bed (typical!). The rest of us tried to have a quiet afternoon and I finally got her to bed at about 3:30pm... and then had to WAKE her so we could go to our next party!

Dan's sister's 30th "B" party (B for Bec).

Dante went as "Ben 10", Dan went as a buccaneer, I went as "a Billy Bragg fan". About as much costuming as we could muster. Elora had her ballerina skirt and Atti wanted to go as Spiderman (or "Bider-man" as Dante insisted we call him) except that he refused to wear his costume when it came to it.

We had a lovely time. Grandma was there and another boy dressed as Ben 10 (son of some of Bec's friends). Lots of littlies, too. The kids had a ball. Elora almost demolished all of the cucumbers from the snack plate before graduating to the fruit platter (blood oranges, mandarins, kiwi...). It took two of our friends (Anna and "Red" Bec) to hold down Atti and put his shoes on when it came time to leave. He was Mr. Hyper.

And it was a very late night for us. The kids were not in bed before 10pm. Yikes! Not so good because the next morning we picked up Dante's school friend Luke who came over for a play and a sleep-over last night.

He's the middle child with an eleven year old brother and five year old sister. He can sometimes play a bit rough but his manners are exemplary, he eats anything and is generally a mild-mannered, patient boy. I was truly impressed at the way he was able to handle Dante's bossiness and outbursts. Even more impressive was the way he made sure that my niece Jasmine (who was over with her three sisters while her parents went cycling) was included in most, if not all, of the play. The general noise coming from the lounge room or wherever they were was full of cackling laughter and excitement with only the occasional argument. It was lovely to listen to!

This morning we dropped Luke off at home on the way to work. I have to say, it was a relief to get into my office this morning and sit down for a while!

iPod-y Goodness

Woohoo! Dan got his iPhone today (and it actually works, too... I've been reading a lot of stuff around saying that people are having trouble getting theirs to work with their particular provider. Dan's worked first go! edited to add: Dan corrected me here. It certainly didn't work first time. "I was fighting it all day," he said.) which means that...

I got my iPod Touch tonight! (Okay, so it's a hand-me-down but only five or six weeks old and all mine! Mine, mine, mine!)

I haven't really played with it much yet - it's still got all his stuff on it, but had to share the joy anyway :)

Conversation between two boys

Boy 1 (age 7): What's your name?
Boy 2 (age 3½): Atticus.
Boy 1: What's my name?
Boy 2: Dante.
Boy 1: Okay, now you ask me what my name is.
Boy 2. Dante.
Boy 1: No, say "What's your name?"
Boy 2: Atticus.
Boy 1 (getting frustrated): No. Ask me what's my name!
Boy 2: Dante.
Boy 1 pauses. He's getting very annoyed.
Boy 1: Say after me, "What is"
Boy 2: What is
Boy 1: "your name?"
Boy 2: Atticus!
Boy 1: ARRGGHH!

<Background noise> Parents laughing heartily, trying not to be heard or seen.</background noise>