Back on deck

Survived the second week of term fairly well. Too many late nights though... need to stop burning the midnight oil. Most funny moment in class today, had the model brain out & a couple of students (who have something of a resemblance to a certain pair of cartoon characters off MTV) were holding one half each... it was a real Kodak moment. Oh well.

More funniness from Freya, this arvo I was singing the Freya song & she said "I want Frieda to sing it." I said "She can't sing it," and Freya said "She's got no hands!". Then we ran around the house & tickled lots.

Well that's that...

Currently suffering from a lack of sleep and major post-Harry Potter comedown, having bought HP7 yesterday at 9 am and finished it this morning at 2.16 am. Really enjoyed it... a bit of a slow patch in the middle but the ending was fairly rip-snorting.

In other news, the first week back at skool went pretty well. Freya has a bit of a cold at the moment, poor wee chicky. Reb & Freya went to the aquarium with Kate & Chloe on Thursday, as it was a training day for creche. Reb and Kate have both blogged about it, sounded like heaps of fun.

That was much better than I thought...

On the way to work today I was thinking about a blog post called "Fear and Loathing on Mt Doom". When I went back to skool in term 2 I felt quite anxious (that was the fear part) and going back today I was feeling rather negative about the students (hence the loathing!). However once I got there, it was fine... the kids were pretty good today, they seem to be in a fairly good mood after their holidays.

I had been stressing out a bit about the imminent return to school. After about 10 days of holiday, my stress level was pretty low but then I started to wake up early in the morning thinking about school! And I was a crankypants on the weekend... not much fun to hang out with.

Anyway, now that I'm back it feels pretty good.

Picked up Freya from creche, she was having fun in the sandpit while a couple of the other little girls had a set-to about possession of a spoon. In the car I noticed a little tear on her cheek (the wind was cold) and I commented on it as I wiped it off, she said "I cried". I asked why, and she said "Chloe and I were snatching". Funny chick.

She was a bit cranky this evening, she gets upset when she's tired and doesn't seem to know what she wants. She calmed down when I started to read a book & then we had a good book reading sesh. She knows most of the words in her Numbers book.

On the subject of spiders, this is pretty cool!

This (Spider) Baby's Clever

After Freya's nap (she was well cute, asleep on her tummy with her drinking cup underneath her hips) we went with Kate & Chloe to the DFO (local mega-uber factory outlet thing) where we got some shoes for me (some Converse thingies that Dr Who wears) and got some wee ones for Freya too. Was quite cute seeing Reb (who has some already) walking around holding Freya's hand, & the two of them with matching shoes!

Home again, and as I was getting Freya dressed in her spider pyjamas, she asked me to sing the "Spider Man" song. Now I don't know the right words, and am always inclined to customise them to make them a bit more interesting:

"Spider man, spider man,
Friendly neighbourhood spiderman,
Spins a web, way up high,
Catches thieves, eats their eyes,
Lookout, here comes the spiderman."

(I'm sure many of you will find it difficult to figure out which of those lines is mine...)

Anyway, I sang that, and then I sang the "Spider Baby" version, and when I had finished Freya said "Spider Daddy?" So I sang that, and she then said "Spider Mummy!" and then "Spider Sheep!" (for her little toy lamb)... we had spider duvet, spider blanket, spider toothbrush... great fun.

Stand back from the edge...

This morning we had a bit of a lie in, followed by some book readin' before breakfast. Then we headed out to get some more wool for the cardi Reb is knitting for Freya. On the way back we headed to Kate's, for coffee & some of the date & wallnut bar I made, followed by a trip to the park. It was largely empty when we arrived, just a couple of other creche kids there, and we had a really good time. Chloe & Freya impressed us all by climbing some scary stuff quite well! Lots of good photos to come...

Home again for lunch, poor Boog was a bit over-tired and tantied-out on us, but she calmed down & was in a good mood at bedtime. She took a while to go to sleep and we are worrying that she's starting to try to climb out of the cot now.

Unfortunately, I found that when I tried to turn Odin (my home computer on) it was completely dead. I bought the motherboard 2nd hand a couple of years back, and it has served fairly well but had a few quirks (such as really irregular fan activity on startup), but this was a bit of a surprise. I had actually unplugged it a few nights back, because there was a bit of lightning happening. The main problem now is that I have kept so far back from the bleeding edge of computer technology that I have just about fallen off the other side! I will be struggling to find a new mobo that will take my cpu and ram, so I might have to go second hand again. The other option is that I upgrade, but that seems a bit of a waste... the old stuff was doing fine! Poor Odin, it served me well.

BEST MOVIE EVER!

Late start this morning as Reb has the day off. It had poured down in the night, for a few minutes. After the usual kerfuffle about whether of not we would have eggs for breakfast (no, Freya, that's only on the weekend) we took Freya to creche. They had let Molly & three of her babies out, and they were happily hopping around the floor. Freya was quite thrilled to see them, and not at all concerned when we left.

We went to Wasteland to catch the 9.30 sesh of Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. Was most enjoyable, much better than the last one (very disappointing), I thought it was at least as good as any of the others. Now I want to re-read the books again! And it's only 8 days until book 7 comes out... oooh, how exciting!

Did a wee bit of shopping & headed home. Picked up Freya in the arvo... when we got there one of the baby buns was still out, very cute wee beastie! Home again, & we had a go at making date & walnut bar from the Metropolitan Bakery cookbook... went OK but not quite what I had hoped for. Went to the shops... Freya chucked a wee tanty when we left, but settled down once we were down the road.

Did the usual bath, books etc... Freya slipped over in the bath AND banged her head on the bedroom wall, but fortunately neither was too bad.

Only three more sleeps to term 3... how sad.

Funny stuff

When we got home this evening, Freya said "I want to ride on Grom." Gromit did not share her enthusiasm!

Later, Grom was in Freya's way and she said "Get out of the way or I'll make you dead!" Where did that come from?

Today I did some school work but mainly spent time on a couple of long-overdue DIY chores. Did some work on the fireplace, which has been in a state of disrepair since Freya ripped the scabby wallpaper off months & months ago. It's on the way to being semi-respectable. Also realized that a piece of wood I had been hoarding would be useful for mounting my Dexion racks in the shed, so I spent an hour or so fixing that up... looks good!

Here's the fireplace (a work in progress)...


My most excellent tool board (almost finished) made from 99% salvaged materials:


I also had a small DIY task bought home from creche - just need to cut some MDF to size and screw it onto some box sections.  Did the cutting this morning.

A big blowfly buzzed into the house today, and I caught it and threw it into Auxilliary Blackie's web. She's been out & about a bit lately, and I thought she might like a juicy midwinter snack.


Here she is with the fill light up a bit, so you can see the coloration:


Creche rang at 3pm and I went to pick up Freya.  Normally she rushes up to me (or at least saunters) but today she was fairly keen to finish her afternoon tea, so I sat next to her and she had a big serve of yoghurt, some banana, some pear and one of the biscuits they had made today.  (Great way to get Freya to eat - ask her if you can eat something and she goes "No!" and scoffs it.) Then she wanted to dance with the other kids (spinning around in a tutu is being a butterfly, apparently) before they all went outside and played for a while. After this she finally decided to leave. She's obviously pretty happy there!

We went for a stroll at the shops, ended up buying a little Thomas book (about Harold the Helicopter - Freya wants us to sing the little song all the time) and had a little milkshake.

There were a couple of other funny moments today which I have forgotten... interspersed between moments of high level contraryness!