Fight or Flight

Nothing jumps you on edge while watching Phineas and Ferb with your son than seeing a threatening arachnid advancing towards you.

Gah! No fear, SUPER MUM is here! With a single bound she leaps into action and rolls up an old Life & Style section while simultaneously reaching for the can of insecticide (SUPER MUM, much like Elastogirl, has arms that extend way beyond human proportions. That is why she can juggle bags of groceries as well as her 15-kilo pre-schooler while exiting her vehicle.)

Spinning around, she tells her son to hold his nose so the noxious gas doesn't fill his lungs, then sprays the bejeesus outta that spider. It starts running back towards the wall so she sprays some more. Then freezes when she sees not one, not two, but 100,000 (or it could just have been 15, the adrenaline was really pumping) mini little baby spiders disperse from Mama spider's body as she struggles forward.

OMIGOD! I'd destroyed an entire family of spiders! She was probably transporting them to a safer location when she made a wrong turn somewhere!

Poor Mama Spider!

As a combatant in the jungle fray it was fight or flight mode for me. But as a fellow mum, I felt truly sorry that she who was trying to protect her children met such a fatal end. Was Papa spider wondering where his family has disappeared to? Why his little incy wincies weren't climbing up that spout again?

Alas, only a decent burial would do. So I gently scooped all their little bodies up with tissue, and ceremoniously dumped them into the bin.

A day in the life of...

It's only mid-day but I thought I'd share what a Thursday's usually like for us in the Soh household.

Today we started off pretty normal, with Aidan and I snuggling in bed, reading a book and horsing around. It's Day 3 of him sleeping without a nappy at night, and we're pretty excited that accidents have been kept to a minimum. And of course, my rambunctious son likes to jump around and crack jokes. Like "Aaah! The spaceship! It's attacking me!" or "HA HA Mum, I FARTED! In the BED! HA HA!" or

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Boo"
"Boo Who?"
"Oh don't cry Mum, it's only a joke!"

He was playing pretend again, "Aaah! Somebody's shooting my nan-nan! HA HA HA!!" (I think all this nan-nan business arose from this incident.) To which I replied drolly, "What, is it target practice?"

Harrumph. Boy fart jokes.

Anyhoos, we had a lovely late brekkie of a sausage on cheese toast with milo, and Aidan started to pretend that we're at a tea room. By the way, conversations like the one below are quite typical in this household!

Aidan: "Would you like some tea?"
Me: "Why yes, thank you."
(Goes off and pretends to pour a cuppa)
"Here you go."
Now it's my turn.
"Would you like a cup of...coffee?"
"But, I can't! I'm not a grown up yet!"
Oops, my mistake. "Er...how about some hot chocolate then?"
"No, tea thanks."
"Ok, would you like a cup of tea?"
"Yes please."
I go off to the pretend teapot and pour a cuppa.
We both calmly sip our "tea", me secretly thrilled we can play tea-party pretend even though he's a boy and not a little girly girl, when he suddenly spits out his "tea" and shouts, "YUCK! Why are there WORMS in my tea?!!"

So much for my tea party.

And then it was off to swim class, where he's getting better and better at his strokes and stretching out his breathing. (Not that I can tell, I'm off in the big pool trying to get rid of the belly bulge from my love affair with chocolate bikkies.) But we get back together after the lesson and pop into the play pool where he and his friend Nati splash around, jump around and go up and down the froggy slide.

Until he threw up. And the pool is witness to the horrific Exorcist sight of Aidan spewing red bile and bits of sausage. I had to do the painfully embarrassing task of telling all the parents in the pool to Leave Leave Leave, my son has just puked, good God don't get it on your child!!

Typical day.

The boy who cried wolf

THE MOST HILARIOUS THING HAPPENED YESTERDAY.

It was just a typical Monday, filled with soccer practice, Chinese lessons (me teaching him 1 to 20 in Mandarin, and drawing out the characters; he picked it up pretty quick I must say, he can recite it all! Must be all the repetition before bed when EG pats him and counts to 20 in Chinese...anyways, I digress...) and the usual household errands.

We'd just returned from the park and I decided to fill the tub so he could have a bath rather than a quick shower. His "swimming pool" as he calls it. And I ducked downstairs to start preparing dinner.

All of a sudden, I heard cries of "Mum! Mum! Muuuuuum!" and I rushed upstairs in a panic, only to have him shout "Mum, the water, there isn't enough!" Hmph. So much for an S.O.S. I filled the tub with a little more water then left.

Ten minutes later, another cry for help. Again, I rushed up, only to have him tell me "Help! Help! The water is draining away!"

"No, it's not, there's still enough water in the tub for your to play in. And have you heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? I am NOT coming up again, I have to cook dinner, and no more cries of help!! Because I'm not coming up again, do you understand me?!"

*Pause*

"Are you going to tell me the boy and the wolf story?"

!!!!!!!

I went back downstairs. Five minutes later, I hear crying. REAL crying. Not wracking sobs, but teary enough to warrant another trudge up the stairs...sigh...

I entered the bathroom to see his tear-stained face and asked what happened. "Sniff...my...my....nan-nan." he sniffed, clutching his chest. "My fish bit me."

Turned out his fishy bath toy had accidentally clipped his nip, and I'm so terribly sorry, I'm a bad mother but I BURST OUT LAUGHING and then quickly kneeled by the bathtub and hung my head so he couldn't see me fighting the giggles while I tried to comfort him.

"Oh you *gasp giggle* poor thing... *choke chortle* are you ok? Does it still *pbbbttttHAHAHApbttt*... hurt?"

And inside me I was thinking, Talk about karma!

Big fat sigh

Today has been one of those days when I want to remind all my friends without kids about birth control.

Heather Armstrong

dooce.com

Today was a beautiful day. 22 degree weather, sunshine and a breeze.

We had a great morning with Milo cereal brekkie, played with our Bop It! (and scored 22 points together - teamwork!), then read about construction machines and Thomas the Tank Engine.

Aidan can read/recognise a few words other than his name now. Like THE and AND. Whenever we read books together I make an effort to point the words out and pause so he can fill in the blanks, and he's always excited when it's his turn to read THE or AND.

In the arvo we visited EG at the cafe and caught up with friends of my parents and their daughter who's planning to study here. Then visited TWO libraries and even squeezed in 20 mins at the Boathouse playground. Phew! So many activities!

By the time I got home I was ready to crash, and was thankful we had enough leftovers to constitute dinner. But I decided to get a head start on a cake I needed to make for a party this weekend. 

And that's when the s**t hit the wall. LITERALLY.

Since the last time I made the cake for another party it didn't rise as much as I thought it would, I increased the amount. It filled the tin just right. And I assumed it would rise a little bit, but not by much.

20 minutes later it looked like a sludgy Jabba the Hut.

I freaked out! Then calmed down, removed the oven's base plate (because the chocolate batter had oozed out and dripped down onto it), popped the cake tin onto a baking tray (which I should have done so in the first place, duh), and shut the oven door. And since the oven temperature dropped I adjusted the timing.

But it just kept oozing and oozing! Molten lava from a chocolate volcano. My hopes of salvaging the cake melted like the village of Pompeii. ARGH.

I turned to bring Aidan up for his bath, and the sweet bunny had finished his dinner and was bringing his empty bowl to the kitchen...dropping a million grains of rice along the way, as well as around his table. But he gets a gold star for the effort!

Back to the oven to stop the batter from oozing over the side of the baking tray and onto the exposed oven base. Too late! ARGH!

This is what it looked like, fully cooked. 

Jabba the Hut cake monster...nomnomnom I wanna eatchooo....

I'll see what I can fix tomorrow...sigh!

Back to Aidan...who had gone upstairs all on his own to poo! Good job!

I decided to take the vacuum out to clean up the rice mess he'd left behind, and as I was vacuuming the kitchen, I inadvertently sucked up the floor rag. ARGH. Which means to retrieve it, I'd have to dig around in the vacuum bag, pull it out covered in God knows what's already in the vac, and have it washed so I could use it again.

10 minutes later... Not so good job; he was standing outside with his underwear pulled up over his t-shirt, POO was smeared on the walls, his toothbrush cup (what the?) was hanging off the toilet paper holder.

DOUBLE TRIPLE ARGH!

Here's my theory. He'd finished his business, somehow got poo on his fingers and tried to climb up to the window sill where the toilet paper was sitting (EG'd put it there 'coz he keeps unravelling it while sitting on the dunny). He realised the mess he'd made, then dashed to grab water in his toothbrush cup to clean the mess up. Sigh...

This is what the poo mess looked like:

Just kidding!

Off to the bathroom. No recriminations. But no bedtime story either.

Cupcakes

Another foray into the baking world today, this time for Maddie's 1st birthday tomorrow!

We got a couple batches going, and will frost them tomorrow morning. Will upload more pics then!

Anyhoos! For those who haven't been following the drama on Twitter and Facebook, we got burgled on Tuesday. The day before my operation, to remove a bone that's been growing behind my ear for about 1 1/2 years now.

What? you say, A bone? Growing out behind your ear?! And a break-in?!

Yes. An osteo mastoid. But it's been successfully removed, I'm still recovering, but as you can see, am up and about running the house as well as my chores as per normal. But as if preparation for major surgery wasn't nerve-wrecking enough, we had to have money and my wedding jewelry stolen too. :-(

For the love of beeswax! And other random stuff...

Lots have been happening lately with us over the last few days, so let's get right into it! In reverse chonological order...

Today (Wednesday):
We just made banana and choc chip bread together, and it's baking in the oven. How cute! Aidan helped me pour the ingredients into the bowl. He also helped mash the bananas too! Then we chanted "mix mix mix" (he's SO clever at repeating words now, even the 'S'-sounds which are typically hard to master) as we stirred the batter, and poured it into the loaf pan. Mmmm....the smell wafting out of the kitchen is delicious! All right... shan't be a food flirt, here's the recipe! It's really easy, got it off May Q, no butter!

Banana Choc-Chip Bread
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 C sugar
1 1/3 C self-raising flour
50 ml milk
50 ml olive oil
2 eggs
chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts)
chocolate chips (or chopped choc pieces)

Mix them all up in a large bowl, pour into a greased loaf pan, bake at 180 degrees C (160 if using fan-forced oven) for 20-40 mins till outside is golden brown, and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Serve warm and eat! (If you're really indulging, add a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream. TO DIE FOR!)

(Sorry if the pictures are a little fuzzy...took it on my 2MP camera-phone.)

Er...the Ribena doesn't go into the cake...it's for the baker's stomach...

He tried to lick the wooden spoon, and got a face full of batter...

The cake should look like this. If yours doesn't, well, maybe baking isn't right for you... ;p

Yesterday:
It was time for childcare again, and neither of us was really looking forward to it particularly. It's always so hard to leave, watching him cry, but necessary. I do believe he needs that interaction with other kids, and plus I need some ME-time! So for the sake of both our sanities (and development), he goes in once a week, while I'm at class.

Turns out, he's adjusting a lot better - less crying, and getting better each time, say the people who work in his room (Pre-kinder one). I can't remember if I've blogged about this, but, he was bumped up to the Pre-kinder class 'coz of some admin error (they thought he was still in Babies), and seeing how there wasn't room left in toddlers, he got bumped up (plus he was close to the right age anyways).

Last week, he was such a little scrapper, pushing back against this other big kid who kept pushing him (in a 'duh...i'm a big giant, hello little thing. Whoopsies, you fell! Duh...whad happened?" kinda way). He kinda reminded me of a feisty chihuahua who won't stand at being bullied, the way he barked back and flailed his arms about as if in a girlfight. This week when the other kid came by, A just ignored him. Haha... well, you gotta preserve yourself somehow when you're smaller and younger than everyone else in class!

As for me, I learnt "i bicchieri va nel'armadio" and "no, non gioco mai tennis". I think I conjugated that correctly...


The day before:
We went to the Collingwood Children's Farm! It was great, we got to see sheep, goats, pat horses, watch chickens cluck and geese and ducks, and a big fat black pig with her little piglets. Aidan had a ball of a time, even though he fell over into the dirt, which got into his nose and mouth. Eww. But other than that, no real anima poo incidents that I had to clean up. Although A seemed more interested in dirt and rocks - kept picking one up after another and wandering around with them. Funny boy! Pictures will come soon in FB.

Another milestone - he's really able to feed himself with a spoon now, quite accurately in fact. He's quite adept at spooning yoghurt into his mouth, although rice, porridge and pasta tend to me messier.

He's also developed a fondness for the blue Ikea kid's chair I've been using to sit on while bathing him. He can actually carry the whole thing, and has been doing so from room to room. He'll even turn it upside down to sit IN it. It's just like how instead of sitting on his Pooh-bear walker, he STANDS on it! Quite proudly too, with a ta-daaaah face! The things toddlers do...

New words spoken: eyes, nose, ear, mouth, amen, chicken!!

As for me: Another celebrity dream - this time, John Mayer called me up, we had a great conversation, and he invited me over to hang out! EG came home and helped me pick an outfit with whatever I had there and then (a black top and a puffy skirt which did NOT go together), and I got into the car. Woke up before arriving. Dang!


The day before the day before:
Aidan found a Forever Sharp knife on the edge of a table in church (& if you've seen those knives, they're really long and serrated at the edge, with twin prongs!), which we had used for cutting a cake. He'd actually reached over and above to grab it. Started wandering around brandishing it, which thankfully a horrified friend discovered and removed before A hurt himself. Or worse, stabbed the Pastor (although at the rate his sermons have been dragging on...doodeedoodeedooo... nahhhhh.)

Pretty eventful first half of the week!

I swear it's true...

I've never really won a significant competition in my life so far. Yes, there was that Christmas-card contest in church, some lucky draw, and most recently, a Border's gift-card for creative feedback. So it's to my chagrin that I'm awarding the Worst Mother in the World prize to myself, for successfully locking my son in the car, WITH my car keys, AND my bag, AND my mobile phone.

It felt like something out of a movie, or a poorly written sitcom at the very least. I stupidly handed my keys over to Aidan to play with after I parked in the garage on Monday arvo. As I got out of the car, the door shuts behind me (which I doesn't usually matter since I'm holding the car keys, right? Ohwaitaminit!!), and just as I reach Aidan's door, I hear a "phoomp", the doors are locked, and I'm standing there flabbergasted as my son looks at me gleefully through the car window. He'd clicked on the remote and LOCKED HIMSELF IN!

The next few minutes see me coaxing and pleading with him to press the "unlock" button on the car remote. He doesn't get it. He then drops the key. Then wails at me. I try not to panic. I call EG frantically, several times, but he doesn't pick up 'coz apparently he's on his bike returning to the store from the coffee roaster's. I call Chris, whose home number is saved on the house phone, and she starts looking for numbers to locksmiths on the internet. Finally, I get through to EG, he leaves the shop to come home with the other key. And I wait.

In the meantime, A is getting cranky (rightfully-so) at being trapped in the car, while I am standing outside singing silly songs and pulling funny faces, in between sprints upstairs to upturn every box I have looking for the spare manual car key (the type you insert directly into the car door).

Alls well that ends well though. EG finally got home, A was released from his prison, and I'm convinced not to let him play with valuable objects no matter how much he whines. The little bubba clung onto EG for dear life though, and shook his head violently whenver I reached for him. Serves me right I guess!

A couple of things I'm grateful for though:
1) The weather wasn't too hot - thank God it wasn't the 47-degree day! A was still pretty sweaty though, after being in there for half an hour.
2) We'd reached home when this had happened, and the door from my garage to the house wasn't locked, so I could call for help.
3) We'd JUST found our other car key the night before (hidden in the TV cabinet for some unfathomable reason).

What a day.