The full circle - mum, now I know what you were doing

As kids we'd go on a holiday every time there was a sniff of a long-weekend or school break. We'd leave early, trying to beat the traffic. I remember dad and us kids would be sitting in the car, loaded up and waiting for mum. And we'd wait and wait and wait. Sometimes the sun would even come up. Dad would growl and say things like "what is she doing in there?" and it would seem like forever before mum would emerge from the front door, arms overflowing with last minute stuff, and then we'd finally be off and away. I always thought it was mum dragging the chain, if the rest of us were ready, why couldn't she be ready too?

Well, mum, now I know what you were doing: you were turning off all the lights, picking up things off the floor, closing and locking all the windows and doors, filling a bag with all the last minute things we'd almost forgotten. And, as things do, we've come a full circle and now my family waits in the car while I run around trying to get everything we need - and that's not even for a holiday, just a normal day out. So mum, I finally understand. Thank you. x

Partitioning sound-space

In zoology it's known that many species time their calls to occur when another species isn't calling and so ensure that whomever they're calling to has the best chance of hearing them. It's termed 'temporal partitioning of sound-space". This 'partitioning' is why you often hear different bird calls after one-another and not over the top of one another. And so it is at our house. Adam and I have become adept at partitioning our sound-space so that we can hear each other between the cacophony bursts coming from our children. A typical conversation goes like this:

"Honey, I was thinking that we could-"

"Ahhhhhhh-aaaaa, mum-mum-mum aaaa!"

"-go to the door-"

"Mummy, I've got a poo!"

"- shop on the weekend to look at glass-"

"Ahh-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa, blllllllluuuuuuuur-oooh"

[pause] "-sliding-doors"

"OK, let's go on"

"Muuuuuummmmy - my poo needs changing."

"-Saturday after Gymba-"

"Ahh-errrrr-ah"

[pause] "-roo".

It takes a really long time to get to the end of a conversation, we often forget that we're even talking to each other and a million conversations don't get finished. I'm sure this phenomenon happens at most houses with children, I just thought it would be interesting to give it a name, and know that we're not alone in the wild.

Worf is NOT the yellow Wiggle!!!

How do you discpiline a child when, in the middle of a scolding he points to his father's favourite old threadbare Star Trek t-shirt and says "the Wiggles!!". Adam was not impressed, some things are sacred.









Monkey's obviously not the first one to notice the similarities, these comparisons were on the interweb ...

Not all vomit and snot ...

We've been off line with a house full of illness this past month, but we've had moments of silliness, so here are a few pics of our boys to show it hasn't been all vomit and snot ...

Monkey Boy ...

Bugalugs ...