Flat Stanley...

The keenly observant among you may notice that that large green dip is in fact a volcano and is in fact in Auckland. And yes we do now live in Melbourne.

I am playing blog catch up. 

That is Flat Stanley and this year he came to stay for a week or so with us. He'd been with my old university friend and blogger extraordinaire Jane. Now Jane would not have taken I don't want to think how long to post these pictures... (Actually I know how long - I just checked and it was way back in June. Cripes.)

I love the Flat Stanley project - it's nearly as old as me.

Actually the book is WAY older - written in 1964 about Stanley Lambchop who gets squashed flat by a falling picture and so can post himself to see his friends (I don't want to spoil the ending but in case you're concerned he gets restored to 3D with a bike pump.)

The literacy project sees school kids connect with the world as they send Flat Stanley on from country to country. Of course now you can do it online and as an iPhone app. Our Stan was old school.

We took him to one of our favourite spots in Auckland - Mt Eden.  I wouldn't mind posting myself back there for a stroll.

Stan didn't say much but I think that smile means he liked it. 

Going, going, nearly gone...

Radio silence from here for way too long but this is why.

I have been tidying, cleaning, scrubbing and smiling (not) my way through a house sale. And it paid off. Sold with only a few tears from me. I have loved this house and our little villa life.

Oh yes,  mid marketing campaign this happened...

The three year old pulled a table down onto his big toe breaking it at a rather nasty fifty degree angle in the wrong direction. Apparently the table fell down "all by itself."

After a hospital visit to have the break reset he was plastered up to his thigh to keep him immobile and the toe still. That is working - we just have to lug him and another five kilos of plaster around. Kids though are incredible. He's perfectly happy and has adapted to crawling and bum-shuffling around on the floor and is very proud of his 'blaster'.

I think it's my fault... a few days earlier I had foolishly muttered something about the move going smoothly this time. How little I've learned.

Now I am three...

When I was One

I had just begun.

When I was Two,

I was nearly new.

Now I am Three,

I'm as big as can be.

I can run, I can jump, I can shout, I can laugh.

I know what I want and I know how to say it.

I want to be Bigger

and Bigger and Bigger.

Ann with apologies to AA Milne.

Flying high...

We are knee deep in paper. Not paperwork but paper planes.  It's my six year old's new obsession. He wakes in the morning and seconds later is on his knees somewhere in the house measuring, folding and smoothing.  When I need him to eat or dress or bath or do anything he's building another plane. He churns out six every half an hour.

We bought him a new planes book last week and it's the best I've seen. The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes.  It has ten plane designs including the Swashbuckler, The Hammer, The Professional and the Headhunter. Apparently they're not just paper planes, they're paper machines.

They have dihedrals, elevators, ailerons. My son mutters to himself as he works, "sloppy folds won't fly."

Luckily the instructions are so clear even I can make a paper machine though nothing to match the master.

The new book also came with forty sheets of 'flight-ready' paper in such groovy designs you could wallpaper a house with it. Too late for that of course, every last sheet is gone. And the recycling bin is full.

Baby steps...

Childhood is a series of milestones some big some small. Sunday was a big day. Dummy Deal day. 

We struck a deal to chuck the last dummy in the bin and then go and buy a BIG RED TRUCK (shouted excitedly every time it was mentioned). Of course it took a couple of weeks to plant the seed, then a few days to iron out the details of the plan and then jump when the moment seemed right. We've had practice - son number one swapped his dummy for a Tonka truck at the same age.

Step one. Dummy in the bin. 

Step two whizzing straight out the door with the whole family to go shopping for a BIG RED TRUCK. Only there were none... just this BIG RED MODOBIKE which he pounced on in the shop, clutched in the car all the way home, slept with on Sunday night and hasn't really looked at since.

I don't mind at all. $9.99 and another little baby step towards being a Really Big Boy.

Now I am just praying that there isn't a random dummy tucked away in a toybox... or rather praying that I find it first.

Adventures of a sleeping stuntman, part 316.

This is not a crime scene (apart from the offence against the Tidy Rooms Act) just my son, the sleeping stuntman at it again. I guess this time he's dreaming about firemen and heroic ladder rescues.

Every night he's not where he should be, soon he'll be sleeping in the hallway. Maybe I should just do away with the bed altogether?

Little things...

It's the little things that make life so much easier. Such good advice from a friend and fellow mother.* She told me once that if you find a spoon or bowl or cup that works for your child buy three so you're not always looking for it.  That explains the drawer full of plastic in my kitchen.

That's the trouble isn't it - the little things can add up to a drawer stuffed full of little things. That's why I'm usually against those kitchen gizmos that will apparently make your life easier (by skinning a mango or slicing an egg). Despite this I still have a drawer full of crap.

So what does this have to do with a batch of freshly backed biscuits, Ann?

Well, the other day in a weak moment (other women have their weak moments in shoe shops, mine come in kitchen shops) I succumbed and bought a cookie scoop, rather like this one. 

And you know what? It's fabulous...  go and buy one now.**

I made a choc chip biscuit recipe where the instruction was to roll into balls... I scooped instead and it took seconds and I wasn't covered in sticky dough up to my wrists. 

It was so quick and I was feeling so chuffed I made anzacs too.

Now to find the device that controls the two year old dough monster.  Luckily my 'helper' is not that heavy as he ate his body weight in biscuit dough.

*I have had an awful lot of advice from friends and fellow mothers (and dished out rather a lot myself) but not all of it is good.

**See there you go, more advice. Sorry.

Farewell to summer...

Summer is slipping away... and the air in Auckland is fresher again. Humidity here can over around 98 percent at the height of summer but as the temperature is rarely higher than 25 (centigrade) it's rather pleasant.

The sea has been unusually warm this year. Blame La Nina. Or thank her.

The boys have been getting braver and braver in the sea. Now the lunatic two year old thinks he can surf too thanks to a quick lesson from his grandfather. I dress them both in red rash vests (not the grandparents, the boys). It makes them so much easier to spot in the waves.

There might be a few more swims in the coming weeks before the autumnul weather sets in.

And yes I did just post this so that I can use the word autumnul. It is one of life's rather lovely words. Au-tum-nul. There, done.

Diary of a crazed cake decorator....

Next time I see a cake I am not, not, not going to think "I can make that...."
I do that a lot. Year after year in fact.  Last year my midnight icing job produced a wonky, chocolately caterpillar that looked more like a train than a creature.

This is the cake that started it all last week....

A cake made by our seven year old neighbour's grandmother for his soccer party. How cool is that? Of course I thought, 'I could do that'.

I was given her cake mould, the board, the figures, the green spray paint stuff for the coconut grass... I went to a professional cake shop and wrote down everything the girl told me. She told me the roll out icing was too iffy in the humidity, piping would be better. Advice from an expert and all the right gear. Success would follow. Surely?

Friday 10.30am
I baked my first ever pound cake. A mission in itself - 6 eggs, a packet of cream cheese and three cups of flour and three cups of sugar. No rising agent. It was like a brick and took two hours to cook. A tasty brick though and one that would stand up to the rigors of a soccer shaped cake mould.
Et viola (ah yes I bake and speak French - sort of)

I went to bed feeling very pleased with myself. The party looked on track for the next day. Outsourced entertainment (a soccer coach) and low key party food - just chocolate crackles and lots of store bought additive filled rubbish chosen by the six year old. Boy heaven.

7.50am Saturday morning
The kids skipped off to cricket with Dad leaving me alone with a bag of icing equipment I didn't really know how to use. No problem... I've made notes.  I'll knock it off in an hour.

First I made the icing. Butter icing made with the cake decorator's friend - fat in a bucket. They don't call it that or you'd never buy it. Look away now if you ever want to eat a commercial cupcake again.

But I wanted white icing and this is how you get it. A cup of gloop, 500g of icing sugar and a dash of milk.

8.15am
Now to make black icing.
W.R.O.N.G. Two batches of grey, sludgy brownish icing.

Food is just not meant to be black. I was told in the cake shop that the black colouring goes straight through children so warn their parents. I should have stopped then but I was blinded by that picture of the perfect soccer ball cake. Damn, I'm shallow and stupid.

8.45am (the weather is warming up nicely and so am I. Humidity at around 85% already).
I gave up on black, tossed out the icing and started again.

This time green made with Kelly Green colouring. How appropriately on trend. I just love to be on trend. Mmm, a green and white soccer ball. He'll love it. Again a vision floated before me of THE perfect cake.

9.15am
I commenced piping stars. My hand killed. It looked alright, almost professional but you could see the brown of the cake in the gaps.

A little surge of panic. THERE SHOULD NOT BE GAPS.
I should have worked through it. I didn't.  I wiped off the stars and started again.

This is where I lost it. Hence there are no photos. I was hot, sweaty and getting beaten by a cake. Again.

10am-ish, (heck I don't even know what time it is now...)
I made more white icing. The white icing was smeared over the cake. The soccer ball's ridgey bits disappeared - a few crumbs appeared in their place. Professionals do NOT have crumby icing.

Disaster didn't just loom, it engulfed me. I wiped off the icing, again.
The fat in a bucket was gone.  I was out of piping bags. The car was at cricket.

I counted to ten (around ten times), had a shower, came back and started piping again with some icing I salvaged from a previous attempt.

10.45am-perhaps (it felt like 1am).
Husband reappeared from cricket looking very unsurprised that the cake preparation had descended into stress and that icing covered the bench top.

Luckily my neighbour was also on the scene. My calm, encouraging, wonderful neighbour. Even her 7 year old son whose grandmother had made the Best-Soccer-Cake-Ever  knew what to say, "It's really good that you're making a soccer cake," he said encouragingly. Bless him.

11am
Saintly Neighbour zipped off to buy more white fat and more piping bags. I resumed piping. Things were looking up. Disaster and her friends Tragedy and Defeat tiptoed back and hung around in the corner of the kitchen waiting for me to fail again. I didn't. And I had help. Many hands do make light work....

It looked okay in the end.

Good actually. Heck, great in fact. Whoo-hooo!!!!!

So now a few days later and I've forgotten the pain. It's like childbirth. I'm even thinking 'next year I'll make something a bit harder, really push myself.'

See how stupid I am?

My son, the one who's now six, says he doesn't even like icing. If I were more sensible and actually listened (to him and those whispers of doubt in my head) I'd give him what he really wants... just a cake.

By the way - If a cake tragedy makes you chuckle then please do read this blog - it will make you laugh and laugh.  

Island life...

We spent the weekend at Kawau Island... a little less than an hour north of Auckland and a thirty minute trip across the water from the mainland. It's a little private patch of paradise, coves lined with jetties that lead up to the baches built up on the hills. Our friend's family has had theirs for thirty years.  

 

The weather was not on our side - it was wet but warm enough. We swam a little, kayaked a little, ate a lot and all in all had a lovely weekend. Life on Kawau (Cow-wow) revolves around the jetty...

This is our two year old 'bombing'  - about a two metre drop off the jetty into the water. 

I did spend a few seconds wondering whether we should let him try it but he popped up out of the water like a cork with a big smile on his face, then jumped again and again shouting with glee. The kid is crazy.

We'll have to go back one day when the sun is shining.

Simple silhouettes...

I am quite pleased and rather proud of myself. I don't really DO much in the way of drawing or sewing and craft projects generally bring me out in a rash so my sense of pride may well outweigh the result. 

This little project happened largely by accident one sunny Sunday afternoon while the boys were playing outside on the deck and I was inside playing with the camera. Our white duvet cover drying on a rack was the accidental backdrop for a silhouette shot... 

I snapped these (and about 45 more) without getting up from the couch.  Trying to capture a two year old whizzing by on a scooter was challenging... they got a bit sulky but like any good mother I ignored that.

Eventually I  nailed the two pictures I needed...

 ...played around a little with the very basic photoshop functions on iPhoto and popped them in frames. Christmas gifts for the grandparents and a set for us too.

There are a lot of very crafty people out there with advice for making silhouettes the traditional way but the mere mention of black paper, scissors and tracing paper makes me start itching and I don't mean itching to get started.

My way all you need is a camera, sun, white washing and a little luck.

Now we are six...

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

AA Milne, Now We Are Six, 1927

Our boy is six. In his words a 'big six year old boy'. 

His proudest achievement is that he can now skim a rock and make it bounce three, four or even five times if he chooses the right one. He nailed it on Friday and dashed back down to the shore the next morning, the last of our holiday, to check he hadn't lost the knack while asleep.

We also discovered that he can kayak by himself, jetty jump and swim a lap freestyle and breathing properly (that averages out at about a two hundred dollars a stroke if you add up all the swim school fees - well worth it of course). 

He may be all grown up but all my new six year old wanted for dinner was cheesy pasta. That's plain old pasta, white sauce, grated cheese and peas. And he insisted on a tickle pat at bedtime, so I'm pleased to say he's still our boy for a little while yet.

We've been holidaying in a marvellously untouched part of this end of the world this week. But that's a story for another day, tomorrow perhaps.

For the grandparents...

Our sleeping stuntman has been at it again. Almost every night when we pop in to check on him he's assumed some ludicrous new position. He is actually sound asleep here and seconds after I'd moved him he was back like this.

I'm so very glad we bought him a trundle bed which (almost always) provides the perfect crash pad when the stunt sleeping misfires...

After a very busy day he's lying here dreaming of parks, balls, chockut cake and the 'birthday' Father Christmas is bringing.  The festive concept is a bit mixed up but I think that means he's well and truly got a handle on the present thing this year. Bring it on Santa.

Christmas whispers...

There's a lot to do at this time of year and of course even more if you are Santa's eyes and ears.

It is my job to make sure Father Christmas gets all the amendments to the various Santa lists that are drafted from about September through to the 24th of December. These lists are made on scraps of paper, written at home or at school, spelled out in conversation with me, Dad, the grandparents, the teacher and other boys.

Unfortunately they're not reliable documents. Often they're made in my five year old's head. And the items on the lists change. A lot.

It's like a game of Chinese Christmas whispers with all the whisperers in different rooms. Impossible.

Unfortunately the loudest whisper  I've intercepted is Bey Blades. Bey Blades. Bey Blades.

Those of you without boys will think I'm off my head.
I am.  Bey Blades are sold out in New Zealand.

I have visited four toy shops and one two dollar shop where I could have found a fake if I'd been faster. They're sold out too.

My name is on a list - I am hoping to be among the lucky few who get one of the Bey Blades being air freighted in to NZ. Did I want a two pack? Yes, if they're the last ones in the country, you bet I do.

I have put the call out to Australia to my son's Cool Uncle. "Get Him a Bey Blade," I texted (but a bit more politely).

Cool Uncle is not yet 30. He will know what a Bey Blade is... he will know how important this is. As important as that Ben 10 watch and the Bakugan ball things gathering dust in my son's room. IMPORTANT.

Meantime the huge boxes of lego and six year old bike might ease the pain. Might...


I'd like it noted that:
1. My children don't actually get a lot of Christmas presents but I know that they do very, very well considering the plight of most of the world's kids. They too will know that one day.
3. I know as a blogger I should be handcrafting felt toys and sticking bits of fabric together to make him a dress-up Bey Blade outfit. The sense of failure weighs heavily.
4. I once said I'd only buy my children handcrafted wooden toys but that was a long, long time ago...

And you may well ask what the hell a Bey Blade is? Does it really matter?

Boy racer red...

There's a bit of an accidental theme on the blog in the last few weeks or so...  I'm not obsessed with red but obviously I do rather like it. It's a great improvement on the before which might look rather shabby and chic to some of you but actually just looked rather 'kicked around' shabby. Isn't shabby a rather silly word when you look at it too long?

I decided not to distress it. Putting it in the bedroom of a five year old boy is quite distressing enough...

Summer fun... and a winner...

I don't really need to say much more do I? While part of Australia is under water the Land of the Long White Cloud (or our end of it) is basking under endless sunny blue skies.

It's heaven for those of us with only a patch of grass (and two boys) to water and no herd of dairy cows to keep alive.  More to come the forecasters say and the likelihood drought will be declared again in the north.

Now down to business. With the help of my boys (the younger one helped by not actually helping) we have drawn a winner for the giveaway - thank you all who entered - the winner is....

Ange from Chair Up - I suspect she'd rather I send her a ticket back to Auckland... maybe next year!