Leila – “How did the mans build our house? With glue and sticky tape?”
Me – “No, they used bricks and cement.”
Leila – “And a candle!?”
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Tags: Family
Leila and I were in The Reject Shop today and saw those cheap voice-changing microphones they make for kids. She wanted one, so I bought two – one for her and one for Finn, in different colours.
This seemed like a simple and effective plan: A microphone for each child, identical in every way, except that Finn’s is blue and green and Leila’s is pink and yellow. No chance of confusing which is whose and no reason to fight over them. At 2 bucks each, a cheap and cheerful afternoon’s fun with little to no risk. Or so I thought.
I went outside to bring some washing in and left the kids happily yelling (aka ‘singing’) at each other through their mikes. As I was coming in with the first armful of stuff I spied Leila crouched on the ground while Finn attempted to put the fake bit of cable hanging out the bottom of his mike into her ear. I was suitably horrified and made a big deal of telling both of them that we never, ever put things in other people’s ears (except their hearing aids, of course …). Finn accepted this cheerfully enough and then promptly attempted to insert the same bit of cable into his own ear, past his hearing aid mould. I cut the pieces of cable off both mikes and went back outside.
After a couple of minutes I could hear Leila crying so came back in to see what was going in. When I got there she had her mike, but was still upset. I asked her what was wrong. “Finn took my microphone and gave it back when he saw you coming.” (The clothesline is outside her bedroom window) I bet Finn is starting to regret the days when he used to complain that Leila couldn’t talk …
I asked him why he took Leila’s microphone. “Because I wanted it.” I didn’t bother to ask why because the answer would only have annoyed me. Instead I sternly told him that there was absolutely no reason for him to take his sister’s microphone and that if I saw him with it again he would lose his own, along with his Lego. An over-reaction, perhaps, but necessary to make the point I thought.
I went back to what I was doing, only to find them a few minutes later, playing sword fights with the microphones … I suppose it was too much to expect they’d just use them to sing through.
Pattern: Little sister’s dress (Kjole til lillesøster) by Tora Frøseth Design, found on Ravelry
Yarn: Clan 4ply (vintage)
Photo taken pre-blocking and without buttons
I reached a point recently – half way through two pairs of socks for Finn – where I suddenly lost all interest in knitting. I’d knitted a few pairs of socks in a row and started a couple of jumpers that I didn’t have enough yarn for and felt horribly dissatisfied. I did want to knit, but I didn’t know what to knit or what I had enough yarn to knit. It was very deflating.
I thought about having a break from the needles, but I found it very hard to sit still of an evening without some in my hands. Besides, I realised, I didn’t even know what I had in my stash anymore, so how could I decide what to knit? So I did an inventory.
I pulled out every ball of yarn I own and made a note of it’s weight, the quantity I have, the type of fibre and the colour and put it all in a spreadsheet. It was quite exciting. A certain amount of stuff that I couldn’t imagine using went into bags to go to the op shop (which I must get around to taking there), but I kept the bulk of it and went on a quest to find suitable patterns for it all. This is where Ravelry came in.
Thanks to the site’s excellent advanced search I was able to put in the type of yarn I have, including the quantity and get back a selection of patterns to choose from. One lot of yarn that I had almost tossed out consisted of 14, 25 gram balls of 4 ply wool in a mustard-ish colour. A search for something to knit it into returned Tora Froseth’s Little Sister’s dress/tunic , which I promptly cast on for Leila. It’s gorgeous and easy and, even better, the pattern was free and a great introduction to Froseth’s designs. I’m now smitten with most of them.
I’d love to knit Angle and Sweetheart for Leila, but she’s probably too big for them now. Truck is definitely on the list for Finn and I can see Magda in Leila’s future, or Big Sister’s dress when she outgrows Little Sister’s. And, if I ever get around to knitting for myself, Glaze and All dressed up for me.
Of course, there’s a distinct possibility that I’ll never knit any of them. Best laid plans and all that. But it’s nice to be excited all over again by knitting and have lots of things to look forward to.
Tags: knitting
Ten years ago today we moved into a big empty house on the edge of the ‘burbs with 2 cats and not enough furniture. At night it was like being out in the country with the city lights in the distance and the blackness of empty paddocks beyond us.
Today that same house is bursting at the seams. We’ve lost a cat, but gained 2 dogs and a couple of wee munchkins and a collection of chooks and fish have come and gone. The edge of suburbia has moved on and those wide open spaces are a memory.
I wonder what will have changed 10 years from now.
Leila is wearing underpants almost all the time now. We use nappy pants (or pull-ons) most of the times we’re going to be away from home for a while. And it’s mostly been going well … mostly.
Our toilet score for today is not great. We had 4 wee accidents, including one on one of the couches in the front room and one in the car (my car smells like wee now, wonder how long that will take to dissipate). On the upside, we got through all of her gym class in underpants without an accident, and she managed to do poo in the toilet (TMI?), so it’s not all bad. Except for the bit where my car smells and I have piles of bicarb all over the floor hoping to kill the smell so that the dogs don’t think it’s OK to wee inside.
I say ‘we’ when talking about Leila’s toileting because it is a joint effort. Wet or pooey pants are at least as much of a failure on my part as on hers, if not more. She’s still getting a handle on how to respond to the sensations that precede going to the toilet and can’t be relied up to always respond to them in a timely manner. I need to be watching her body language and thinking more about what she’s been eating and drinking and how long ago to pick up on when a trip to the toilet is necessary and get her there. Like, after she’d drunk a cup of diluted juice followed quite closely by a cup of milk, there was a pretty good chance there would be a lot of wee, wasn’t there? Didn’t occur to me at the time, although it was pretty obvious after the two puddles.
And now we get to why I hate toilet training. I am just not vigilant enough. I don’t watch my kids that closely and I have the “In a minute!” response to calls for help down pat. I don’t necessarily feel bad about this – I don’t want to be a helicopter parent (always hovering) and I think it’s healthy for the children to realise that I’m not their maid and will not come running at their every utterance (and I’m trying to train Finn to come and speak to me, rather than hollering from the next room all the time) – but at times like this my inattention irks me. It bugs me because it causes me more inconvenience than hovering would. I had a load of towels, underpants and trousers to wash yesterday and I now have a couch cover, two seat cushion covers, a cushion cover, and a cushion on the clothesline, along with more towels, underpants and trousers. And I’ll need to wash the cover of her car seat tomorrow (no time to get it dry today and she can sit on a towel tomorrow morning so that she doesn’t smell). I’m glad Leila’s at daycare tomorrow: It’ll give me a chance to catch up on the washing.
Of course, I’m only whinging like this because today has not been a very good day, toilet training wise. On Thursday we’ll take a couple of steps back and revert to half hourly visits to the toilet and go over the basics again and one day, one day, the switch in Leila’s brain will click into the fully on position and this will all be a memory.
My shrink rang and apologised for missing our appointment. She did get caught up and the useless receptionist was supposed to let her know I was there and didn’t. So we’re all good to try again next week.
We’re having soup (from tins) and cheese on toast for dinner. We were supposed to have homemade meat pies, but we had homemade quiches last night and I couldn’t be fagged defrosting the meat. And it feels like a soup for dinner kind of night.
I’ve done bugger all today except put on a load of washing far too late to hang it out today and finish the socks I’m knitting for my sister’s birthday yesterday. If I’m lucky I’ll get the kitchen tidied up before the family come crashing through the door.