Saint Ivy

Today Miss Ivy came to play. Each time she comes I am sure it will be the last, as Cassidy must drive her completely and utterly insane.

If Ivy ever had a whim that was unrealised, Cassidy would realise it for her. For example it was obvious this morning that Ivy must want to play hairdressers when she wandered over and sat down at the play vanity set. Before her little bottom could make contact with the chair, Cassidy was falling over herself to get to her, giving her a blow dry, inserting plastic curlers in her pig tails and telling her to "just sit still Ibee".

Many times during the day I expected Ivy to give Cassidy her best "you're crowding me woman" right hook, but it never came. For some reason she has chosen to tolerate Cassidy's dominatrix style of friendship without complaint.

At one point Ivy was dressed up in sunglasses and handbag and Cassidy shook her head at me and said, "ohhh, she's cute isn't she".

Next thing she's going to be pinching her cheeks and saying "oh to be two again...."

Miss peaches and cream herself.

This one makes me laugh. I am sure Cassidy had cartoon-style spirals in her eyes....

...."look at moi Ibee"...

Such ladylike little flowers they are :) :)

Game on.

I was having a cuddle with Isaac recently and said that he was my best boy (see previous post).

I then asked him was I his best girl. Shameless fishing for a compliment from a five year old by his insecure mother, I hear you saying. Shameless fishing it may have been, but I was pretty confident of his answer....until there was The Pause.

I said, "Isaac? Aren't I your best girl?" Picture me waiting expectantly.

Another pause, accompanied by a sigh.

"Weellllll...."

I sensed at that moment things weren't looking good for me.

"You and Ebony. Well...you're the same"

"What do you mean 'we're the same'"?

(He said the following softly and somewhat apologetically, obviously aware he was about to abdicate his mother off her shiny pedestal)

"You and Eb. You're both my best girls. I love you the same".

Okay so I know she's 21 years younger than me, blonde and draws him pictures of lady bugs, but really this is not happening. Not on this mummy's watch. This chicky babe is going DOWN.

:) :)

Pictures taken by Steve at the kids' athletics carnival.

Daddy Wuv.

Taken when Steve walked in just after Cassidy got up from her sleep. Steve has a great way of whipping her into a frenzy by doing "tickle tension"....he creeps slowly toward her for a tickle.

She can't handle the pressure and dissolves into hapless giggles followed by, "do it again daddy!" :)

Workin' it.

Cassidy came in to our room this morning wearing her jammies and stretchy fabric Alice bands all over her in sweatband style. Her babies were in full matching gear as well.

She looked like what I reckon Jane Fonda does on her off mornings.

The Biggest and the Best.

It's quite common place for Isaac to be referred to as Biggest or Best around our place. I think it started after Cassidy was born and we often called him our Biggest Boy or our Best Boy. It stuck and now most of our family call him our Biggest or Best quite often. If he walks over to me or enters a room I will often say, "it's the biggest and the best" as I put my arms around him.

My family has done the weird nickname thing for as long as we can remember, a habit I think that was encouraged by Dad who still refers to me as Mouse (because I used to creep around the house in the early hours).

Emma had it worse and went as Emmsa, Em the Dem or Em J.W. Louiso (no, they are not Emma's middle initials....her middle name is Louise but that's as far as this nickname makes any sense) and one I remember from when she was very little was Bomber. Don't ask because I don't know.

I think Steve had genuine concerns about the state of my families' mental health when he first began to spend time with me. Funnily enough though, I will often hear my very normal and down to earth husband calling the kids by one of these abnormal nicknames and it always makes me smile. I'll make a nutjob out of him yet.

Cassidy doesn't escape, in fact if anything she cops it worse. Ones that come to mind are Cass, Dee (the more normals ones you would expect), Cassa Dassa (little weirder and started by me), Mooshski, or the shortend version of just Moosh (don't ask).

Weird? Potentially damaging? Identity confusion?

Well maybe, but we turned out okay. And with that, here's the Biggest :)

Our third child.

Call me crazy, but when I think of the word "beautiful" I think of things like our children. A sunset. Chubby baby legs. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Even clothes from my most favourite shop in the world that I can't afford I would call beautiful.

But even if I was trying to name every beautiful thing I could think of, I am pretty sure that a switchboard would not come onto my list. That's right, a switchboard.

Yet my husband, whom shall we clarify is not prone to psychotic outbursts, led me into the garage to show me our new switchboard and said "isn't it beautiful".

Granted, he has done an amazing job organising all this. You may not realise this, but this is a state of the art switchboard. Not even new houses have ones this fancy cause most people just can't be bothered installing one (in fact, I didn't even know there was a choice when it came to switchboards). But we have one. So there, stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Consider yourself enlightened people. I know I am :)

Operation Playroom

Because of the studio reno, we had to do a serious storage space recognita.

Our storage space under our stairs which began as our shoe cupboard got turned into the current studio storage which meant the shoes went into the laundry. Now I want the shoes back under the stairs, the studio storage into the playroom and basically the garbage that had bred and multiplied in dark corners in the playroom GONE. Still with me? Goodness, I hope not or you are way too interested in my storage.

So, bring on Ikea! Our trip the other day was everything I predicted it to be. As Sheye said to me afterwards, there's no point in setting your hopes high for a fufilling trip to Ikea, cause they just don't exist and it would be better if I just accepted this fact. Smart lady :)

Although there was a few things I wanted and came home without, I did get the best thing I think Ikea sells - their Trofast storage frame. We alread had one frame, but I wanted another to get all the toys out of random boxes and into something that looked semi Better Homes and Gardens -ish. I also ditched our heavy timber table for one of the plastic classics that Ikea are famous for. The cute rainbow chairs were a "just couldn't leave them there" purchase (you wouldn't know anything about those sort of buys, would you Jen?!). I also got a $60 bookcase to get all the books in one place.

One night with my man weilding the alan key, a cordless drill and me in a mood that resembled an organisational tornado later, we have one spiffy looking playroom. The only thing left I want to re-vamp is the old timber kids kitchen from my family daycare days. It's begging for a spiffy retro paint job!

When Cassidy first spied the new chairs she said, "Mum, there's RAINBOWS in there!!" :)

Toblerone

Growing like a weed would be the best analogy for Toby.

Lyall took him to the vet a week or so ago for us when we couldn't make the appointment and said the vet told him we have a labradoor that thinks its a poodle.

Definition: A poodle's brain trapped in the body of a labradoor.

Toby would quite happily spend his life in one of our laps, trouble is he is fast outgrowing laps. His long gangly legs don't match the rest of his body so I guess he going through the gangly teenager stage.

Now truth be told, I am not much of a dog person but someimes I just can't resist this face. His furry little body just asks to be ruffled.

Hi, my name is Kate.

And it's been almost a week since my last blog.

It really is infuriating for me when I look back on a week and can't remember what I've done. I know I've been busy - I don't recall many times where my backside and a chair have been in close contact - yet, I still really can't tell you what I've done. What I haven't done is take photos. The weather has been uninspiring and as I'm already uninspired, uninspiring weather does nothing for my inspiration :)

Maybe the best way to summarise would be point form.

# Studio is still going well. Not a lot of major action as we helped Graham and Katrina move in to their new place last weekend and Steve has a hectic week at work. Still, Lyall comes now and then and sands something so I assume all is well in there. Once the paint fumes start drifting through under the door I'll get really excited. Sanding plaster is great, but it doesn't exactly float my boat in the excitement stakes.

# The kids have been bickering a lot. It makes me think back to when mum would tell Emma and I "don't breathe the same air". Sometimes it really does seem that's all it takes to peeve the other one off. When Isaac answered a question from Cassidy in the car the other day in a rather terse voice she said, "Did you hear that mum? He didn't use a very nice tone". Hmmm.

# I couldn't resist and bought a teensy weensy gorgeous kids piano off ebay. I was unable to bid so Lyall bid for me. When he rang to say I'd won, Steve answered the phone and Lyall was obviously short on the details. He stuck his head round the corner into the office where I was and said "You bought a PIANO???" like I'd bought the kids a pet elephant. Luckily I explained the "toy" part and I'm still married.

# Mum and I have planned a trip to Ikea tomorrow. This is not something I look forward to. I'm pretty sure people have been known never to come out of that building, I think for one of two reasons.

1. They got lost. The arrows showing you which way to go in that place are a sinister joke. I think they're only vinyl and they move them around in different directions each day.

2. They are still waiting for the salesperson they finally nailed down who them told them to "wait here, I'll just go find out about that for you".

Then to make it better, I have never once come home and not had a critical part of one of my purchases missing. Really the whole experience makes me want to insert one of their alan keys into someone. If it weren't for cheap melamine, I would avoid it like the plague.

# Because of the impending trip to Ikea I somehow got the idea to clean out all the cupboards in the house. That's right - all the cupboards. I live life in the fast lane.

Stay tuned for another thrilling installment of Kate Daily. Who knows what tomorrow could bring...I may even hang out some washing :)

Her again.

Do not let the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile fool you. She is the smallest person in our house, yet she obviously feels pressure to use more verbs, adjectives and nouns in one twenty four hour period than the rest of us.

Isaac is learning phonics at school, and what he worked on that day is a common topic of conversation in the car on the way home. This is one of those rare times where I will look at Cassidy in the rearview mirror to see her gazing at Isaac, listening intently.

Today we were driving around doing jobs together when from the backseat I hear:

"Mum, Toby starts with "t" doesn't it".

"Yes Cassidy, Toby does start with "t".

"Oh! So Toby and me start with the same letter".

"No darlin', Cassidy starts with "c".

"No mummy! Listen - (sounding out the letter) t-t-Toby and t-t-Tastidy!!"

I don't recall "teaching phonics to a self-righteous three and a half year old with a lisp" being in my job description.

This afternoon she got in trouble for being silly and spilling a huge milk drink all over the carpet in the playroom at Nanna's (can I just clear up before Nanna protests, that she wasn't in trouble with Nanna, only her mean and cold hearted mother).

She knew I was very unimpressed, and took herself off to the bedroom before I had the chance to put her there. I cleaned up the milk-soggy carpet then strode off to the bedroom to give her a talking to. As I entered the room, she held up a book of her baby photos in front of her face like some sort of medi-evil sheild and before I could speak, said "lookmummyIamsuchacutebaby".

Her attitude was like, "look into the eyes of the baby, woman. Let's see you stay mad when faced with this sort of cuteness".

I vaugely remember seeing a movie ages ago called the Negotiator. From memory, I think it starred Kevin Spacey. His job was diffusing tension and negotiating a deal with some psycho that made threats against the rest of the city.

Kevin, if you ever need a stand in, I have the girl for the job.

Branna

Cassidy and Brianna (or "Branna" as Isaac and Cassidy have always called her) are great friends. They are both quite similar in personality with their "I like it the way I like it" attitudes and don't mince words very often.

I would have thought that this would make for a rather volatile friendship, prone to bust ups and "she's not my friend" episodes. Funnily enough, it's quite the opposite. When they go to each other's places, it's rare to hear from either of them the whole time. They usually just flounce past in their fairy skirts and handbags in between activities, nattering away like two old ladies at the hair dressing salon. It seems they have a healthy respect for each other's opinion and they know what they're up against in the stubborn stakes.

Now that I think of it, somewhat similar to the friendship their mummies have :) :)

When I walked into the room and asked the girls if I could take a photo, they did this:

Life's tough for Tobalicious

Obviously the phrase "typical male" wasn't just penned with the human variety in mind.

Yes, he was asleep.

Rainy days and Sundays

I asked her to hold up some of the fruit. Obviously that was a bit too much to ask :)

Love rainy days, but they're not very inspiring with everything we're trying to accomplish around here. Do you know how much longer the plaster in the new studio takes to dry in the rain?! I used to look forward to rainy days for the dark mornings and sleep ins, but alas two little people at the end of our hall have bought an end to those sort of frivolities.

A rather uneventful week for us with gloomy weather, Isaac unwell and a puppy to restrain. He has come close to an ad for himself in the trading post on several occasions by breaking in through the cat door and strewing random objects around the house. Steve thinks his brain is not growing as fast as his legs.

Sheye and I trekked into PMA where we met up with some of our photography forum friends - it's so exciting to meet some of the girls in real life! We joked that now that we've actually seen each other, we can write "sighted by ----" in our forum signatures so there's proof to others that we really do exist :) We spent much of the day oohing and ahhing over gorgeous albums and other new products. We came home physically exhausted but with showbags full of inspiration :)

The boys have been powering along on the studio and it looks like they may get to painting this week - more photos to come :)

Feeling uninspired, I dragged Cassidy into the studio this afternoon to brighten the gray day. She thought it was wonderful. I know I am often complaining about my wayward daughter, but I really wouldn't swap her for quids. She brings sunshine to our lives every day.