Little Things

It's the little things that make you smile. Our kitchen doesn't have a pantry instead has many big drawers. Anyway the bottom draw we have dedicated to Ella and put a heap of stuff - plastic boxes, tins, wooden bowls and in general unbreakable stuff. Well today Ella managed to climb into the drawer, sit down in it then continue to empty it making as much noise as possible in the process. I stood in the distance watching her enjoying herself :)

Meanwhile for Andy, his little smile occurred today at his office when he was unpacking his laptop from it's cover. He noticed a lump inside the computer cover and initially thought he had left his usb stick inside. On pulling out the mystery lump, he discovered it was the window handle from the lounge room window (we have winding out type windows and the handles are easily removed!)

Timbertops

Timbertops is an orienteering area about 20mins outside of Bungendore.  A really nice open fast spur-gully area, and hence a fun course.  While Andy was running around the longest course possible, Ella and I unofficially completed the blue course.  Here is a pictorial of Ella's day:

 Off we go..

 There it is 

 Nearly there

 This one was easy

 See it just goes in here

  Playing around with dad afterwards

 OK ready to go home now.

Hats, hats and more hats

A hat is anything you can put on your head right?   

 

  

A is for Armadillo

B is for bat and X is for xtra large mouse! We recently purchased some removable animal alphabet stickers for Ella's room from Decorating Heaven.  At least for the moment Ella remains reasonably still on the change table as she is fascinated by the animals around her.

 

A Visitor!

Our friend, Fish (aka Stewart Fishwick) arrived last night for a 2 week stint in Canberra - working and visiting all of his old haunts.  Ella did her best, at 2 am, to announce that she was in the house - probably just as Fish was drifting off to sleep after arriving from Perth late that evening.  I wasn't too impressed as this waking in the middle of the night business is becoming a little too often for my liking.  It's not helped when Andy is snoring away not even waking to her cries!

Anyway today, after overcoming her initial boy phobia, Ella warmed to Fish.  In the afternoon we all rode down to the markets for coffee meeting up with Stace, Jo, BA, Jase, Zoe and Abby.

The place to be...

After bumping into each other at the local mall, Mia and Ella decided to hang out together at the Banana in Pyjamas car ride, as you do when you are a toddler. 

Happy Birthday Grandpa

Grandpa (Hogg) celebrated his birthday yesterday.  It was a particularly special day as he has decided to start the retiring process (only working 4 days from now on until the next birthday, then 3 days and so on).  Joshua helped Nana bake a carrot cake, decorating it with sprinkles and jelly beans in the shape of a car. Together with Luca, Mia and Ella we all sang happy birthday and enjoyed afternoon tea.

Hazards of riding

Rode to work this morning - it was 0C but sunny. So what's worse than your hands freezing off on the way to work even though you have one pair of wooly gloves with a pair of windstopper gloves over the top? Getting inside into the warm and having the blood return into your finger tips - bloody painful....

Missing Phone

Here begins the phase of things beginning to walk and disappear.  I have spent the last 30 minutes looking for the phone. Normally this poses no problem as you go to the base and press the 'find handset' button which then allows the handset to continuously beep until you locate it.  

Now a certain little girl (who will not be identified) thinks it's great to pick up the handset, press the buttons (which light up orange) and hold the phone kinda near her ear pretending to talk. Unfortunately the attention span of a 15 month old is pretty short and combined with the fact that she hasn't figured out how to end the call (to turn the orange lights off) the phone is often disgarded for the next thing that takes her fancy.  

The downside to this as I have found out tonight:

1. You can't find the phone,

2. You can't use the find handset button as the phone is engaged,

3. You can't ring the home number cause it's engaged,

4. You spend time trying to think like a 15 month old so you can locate the phone,

5. When you do eventually find the phone, it's run out of batteries so you can't make the call you initially wanted to anyway!!

So there is an advantage of having an old fashioned non cordless phone.  BTW I found the phone in the spare bedroom between the mattress and edge of the bed - Ella and Andy had been tidying the bedroom up in anticipation for the arrival of Fish later in the week.

Letterbox: Mark II

After much deliberation, we've decided to re-build a close replica of our original letterbox; we like to think that we don't let the terrorists rule our lives. Since taking this decision I've worked pretty much 24 hours a day in our shed, crafting the new version. While being similar to the original, we've taken advantage of the situation to improve the design slightly. The observant reader will notice that the new lid is slightly larger, and a different colour (designed to match the posts). It's also made of pine, and so is much lighter -- I'm thinking this may act as a pressure release valve for next time the terrorists target our property...

You can see that Pippa is once again guarding the letterbox. We've posted her out there permanently now, so let's hope she does a better job this time!! Nat also has high hopes of training her to fetch the letters -- I think it'll be faster to wait until Ella's old enough to get the mail ...

Puppy

Ella's 5th word (not that we are counting!)  Can I say she is very good at spotting dogs.  We were in the supermarket the other day heading down the pet isle to get some dog biscuits.  Of course there are heaps of dogs on the front of the biscuits packets so Ella starts saying 'puppy, puppy'. Then as I was deciding which box of tissues to get, Ella starts up again 'puppy, puppy' and on one of the boxes were some puppies and kittens!.

Ella has been given a few books with puppy stories.  There is a particular book called That's Not My Puppy' which goes along the lines That's not my puppy, it's paws are too bumpy', or 'That's not my puppy, it's ears are too shaggy'.  So now when we read this story, we can read 'That's not my (pause) at which point Ella will say 'puppy' and we will continue reading! It's very cute.

Commuting to Childcare

Andy has been wanting to ride in with Ella to childcare for several months. The only time he has (when she was 10 months old) resulted in tears and Andy having to stop and walk/push the bike towards the end. After that Andy went away, then it was too rainy, then too cold.

Recently Makhaya kindly lent Ella his michelin man blue furry suit which was intended for skiing. However Andy seized the opportunity and decided it would be perfect for her to ride to childcare in.

So the day finally arrived when it wasn't too cold (7C) and it wasn't rainy. All suited up - off they went!  Apparently she enjoyed the ride, wasn't too cold and was still smiling by the time they got to childcare.  Successful on all accounts - so much so that they rode home as well.

Great Hair Dad!

A bit of a worry really....

Morris Measure

Just for the record the latest comparison photo between Ella and Morris.

Good Times at Goorooyaroo

Orienteering was at Goorooyaroo which has almost as many o's as Ngangaguringguring has g's! Ella met up with her cousins, Makhaya and Luca.  Together they decided to tackle the 1.9km blue course, which being very easy is usually on big (pram friendly) tracks - not today. 

The course started off following a fence which had a nice vehicle track alongside, however after the 3rd control, the vehicle track veered away from the fence which the blue course was following.  The prams went into 4WD (actually 3WD) drive as the terrain became steep, rocky and tussocky - nothing like a bit of adventure!  Although Ella had the weight advantage (Richie was not only pushing the pram, but he was also carrying Luca in the baby bjorn), Makhaya was leading the way and spiking those controls.

Makhaya's control flow probably needs a little improvement.  At each control, the pram was carefully positioned, the control stand adjusted (which involved nearly pulling it over so it was at the right height for little arms to reach), then Makhaya would carefully place the dibber back onto one of his fingers and insert it into the hole.  The SI unit would beep, to indicate we had been to the control. Then it would beep again, and again, and again... perhaps up to 10 times before Richie suggests to Makhaya to take it out!  So Makhaya would take it out only to put it back in again (just in case it hadn't recorded the first time!) On leaving the control Makhaya would say "more? more?"

So we continued at breakneck speed around the blue course.  The second half of the course took us onto a large vehicle track to the finish.  Ella and Makhaya decided to walk the final section of the course.  Makhaya

 was fascinated by fallen logs.  He thought he was extraordinarily clever (which of course he is) as he stepped over each log (several times!)

We did eventually reach the finish - even though we were distracted by more cousins (Joshua and Mia).  Our time of 51.45 was the fastest team time for the day.

Terrorist Attack in Aston Cres!!

Some of our regular readers will remember our famous letterbox saga -- see here and here if you don't. Most of us thought that the letterbox saga was done & dusted by now, but tragedy struck again last night.

It was about 2:30 am when there was a loud explosion in the street. Nat heard it, but I (accustomed to sleeping through crying baby noises, and tired from watching the tour until 1:00 am) managed to sleep through it. Nat did think to mention the explosion in the morning -- how loud it was and how close it seemed, but neither of us twigged until we went out the front and ... our famous letterbox was in pieces. A couple of firecracker wrappers and the smell of gunpowder on the shards of letterbox was enough to confirm our suspicions that the state of the letterbox was due to last nights explosion.

I've uploaded a couple of images for you all to see the state of the devastation. The first shows the state of the box itself, while the second shows how far some of the shards were thrown by the force of the explosion. Naturally, the anti-terrorist squad arrived, took samples of the firecracker material, fingerprints (just Nat's, Ella's, the postman's and my own - the terrorists must have worn gloves) and have drawn up a list of suspects to interrogate. We expect to hear about arrests shortly.

Right now we're scratching our head on two counts. Firstly, Why did they do it? Has Ella been making enemies at childcare already? Is it religious fundamentalists enraged by my atheism? Or was it just random? Secondly, How do we react? Should we rebuild immediately in the same style? Perhaps it will just get blown to smithereens again. Try another design option? Or just put up the old (safer) letterbox?

What's next?

During the week it was the car battery.  This morning it was the toaster.  Tomorrow who knows? Into Civic we headed for some shopping and returned home with more than a toaster!

New Jumper

So it was Ella's turn at being sick during the week.  Now it's my turn and have taken the day off work.  No doubt it will be Andy's turn tomorrow! 

 

Ella went off to childcare (after doing some more reading!) with her dad in her new jumper that I finished knitting yesterday. Not sure if white and childcare is a good idea -- I suppose I'll find out tonight. 

Yesterday

What did we get up to yesterday if we didn't go swimming?

1. Read some books

2. Dropped nana and grandpa off at the airport

3. Did some sewing

4. Played with the camera

  

No Swimming Today

So Ella is sick again and last night I thought swimming lessons may be a no-go.  When Ella woke up at 8.30am this morning and seemed fairly chirpy considering her cold, I decided it may be a good idea to float around in the water for a while (otherwise it would be a loooong day at home). After walking Pippa round the block, we packed our bags and jumped in the car.  Turned the ignition on .... click, then nothing.  Well that was that we definitely wouldn't be going to swimming lessons.  The NRMA battery man came about half an hour later, installed a new battery and 2 new terminals. All good as new again.