pick one : jenny/jenga/jentle/jengi/itchy/jk

bye bye tom

tom moved out yesterday. and after a final clean this afternoon, he gave us his keys, and that was that. almost 18 months we three had lived together in this little house (plus one for 14 of those 18 months).

it's sad in some ways - oscar will definitely miss "om", and tom is a good chap (pay attention ladies) - but i think for all of us it's good in other ways. i'm looking forward to us three being a little family of three without having to worry about being annoying, noisy, inconvenient, and boring to someone else (only ourselves). i'm sure tom is looking forward to being able to live with other people who don't require him to be quiet so much of the time and somewhere that he can have people over anytime. and somewhere that he doesn't have to climb over fences to get where he wants to go.

i'm also looking forward to moving some stuff around and having more user-friendly spaces. hopefully all our little plans for our room, oscar's room, tom's old room and the lounge room work well.

thanks for being a good housemate tom. we'll miss you!

bzz bzz bzz

have you ever heard the "alarm clock bird" (non-scientific name that i made up)? i hadn't until this morning. at 6:13am a bird started chirping outside our window. although chirping isn't the right word. neither is tweeting. nor squawking. it sounded much like the buzzer many alarm clocks have. you know the noise. it's the last thing you want to hear in the morning. but it's the only thing that you know will wake you up. so this "alarm clock bird" - it didn't stop. it keep buzzering for six minutes. and do you know what stopped it?! me getting my phone off the bedside table and putting on the voice recorder so that i could blog about it. of course. it buzzered 5 more times then stopped. and do you know what happened at the exact same time i started recording. oscar woke up. darn "alarm clock bird". i can't hit you on the head to shut you up!

here he comes!

once removed

tristan's birth got me thinking about cousins again. and how the 'first cousin', 'first cousin once removed', 'second cousin' bizzo works.

good old wiki helped me out.

now it all makes sense.

blue bundle

welcome to the world little tristan john gardiner - a baby boy for my cousin mel and her husband ben and a little brother for kaysey.

that makes three boys and two girls between us cousins.

hair and eyes

i gave oscar his first haircut today. just a trim at the back to get rid of his little mullet. i didn't want to do anything too elaborate. (a) i wouldn't want to stuff it up. and (b) i don't know how i'd get oscar to sit still for me to do anything much. so he's still got his curls.

mother and son

getting started

snip snip

done and done

the offcuts

in other news, oscar had his paediatric opthamologist appointment yesterday morning. it was a precautionary check because of family history. i did wonder how they would do eye tests on an almost 14 month old. but it went pretty well. he cried when they put the drops in, because they stung a bit. he had massive pupils for the rest of the day, so we stayed out of the sun.

and it seems distraction is the key to checking eyes. the eye doctor and his assistant had all kinds of little toys and attachments and inanimate objects to wave around.

in any case, it was all good news. his eyes are perfectly fine. and we were told that occular albanism (which howie has, and which seemed to be the main concern) is an x-chromosome thing, with girls as carriers. so oscar shouldn't have any issues with that, seeing as he's a boy, and there's no history of it in my family.

so that is very good news.

elkniwt elkniwt

howie has an app on his iphone where you record and change your voice.

i sang twinkle twinkle little star and then played it backwards. you can listen to it here. i think it sounds kinda of celtic.

13 month old faces

the other day i took a bunch of photos of oscar's gorgeous little face. he was pretty serious through most of it!

west

i'm one episode away from finishing season five of the west wing, for the second time. i love it. bring on seasons six and seven.

i am so glad that i decided to watch the west wing after not being so keen on the idea of it. thank you tom for owning it.

shoes

oscar and i popped into target this afternoon, just to check out some shoes. he's not walking yet, and when he is barefeet are best, but sometimes barefoot isn't practical or safe.

and i love the little red stickers on things at target, because it means sale! in the end i went a little crazy, BUT i bought various sizes to last him through a while. he's still a size 3 and i bought from size 4 up to size 9. i bought seven pairs of shoes/sandals. BUT the bargain thing is that for four of them, they were $20-$27 but marked down to $4.86!! another was $6.87 down from $15. winner!

so i don't have to buy shoes again hopefully for a while.

the one pair of shoes he has that he almost fits were a present from his second cousin kimberly - they are "green" volleys - organic cotton upper, recycled sole. very cool.

i also sorted through the various hand me downs we were given before oscar arrived, and i don't think we'll need to buy any clothes for at least the rest of this year or probably next year. particularly as he isn't growing at a particularly fast rate.

good on generous people. and sales.

grassy knoll

with howie's mum here for a few days we've been having fun hanging out. we went to brooklyn for a picnic lunch today. we took bread rolls (although i forgot oscar's little esky of food, so he had my sandwich instead) and bought chips and drinks. we sat and watched the boats go by.

oscar was sitting on the picnic rug with his daddy, and having a bit of a crawl around trying to get various things that he wasn't allowed - phones, chips, wallets, bottles. he got to the edge of the rug and his reaction to touching the grass became a funny game.

now, please don't think oscar has never touched grass before. he has. lots. we have no idea why it was all tickly today. but it was funny.

weather

I'm pretty over this weather. I don't like heat much, but add in humidity and it's just gross. I hate feeling all sweaty and yuck. And Oscar doesn't seem to enjoy it much either, the little hot pocket. Thankfully he's able to sleep through the hot nights. The same can't be said for his parents.

I can't wait for autumn. The crisp air. The pleasant temperatures. It'll be nice when it's nice to be outdoors again.

visitors

Jo and Victor came to visit this afternoon. I didn't realise it is already halfway through February and so they go home to Guatemala very soon. That is a bit of a bummer coz we haven't really got to see them much. Oscar continued his racist tendencies, crying when Victor got too close. But it didn't take too long for them to be mates again. Phew. (As an aside, he's yet to warm to Martin though). It was nice to catch up, albeit briefly and with baby distraction. Hopefully it's not too too long until you're both back here again.

baby steps

one of oscar's favourite things at the moment is practising his walking. he loves it. our backs don't. he spends the whole time smiling

and when things need a little more concentration, out comes the tongue

he's still very wobbly, but he is getting braver

i dare say our late crawler will also be a late walker. and i'm fine with that.

unfinished business

we finished dirty sexy money last night. it was only two seasons. it was cancelled. so, as with many of the shows we seem to watch, it left us hanging with an unfinished storyline of virtually every character ... lame. i think there should be a rule in television production. sure, cancel shows as necessary, BUT if you're going to cancel a show at the end of a season or during an hiatus, then you MUST make one last episode that wraps everything up. because it is totally sucky when you like a series (las vegas i am looking at you!) and it just ends with everything up in the air, with no closure. sure, you can choose your own adventure, but that's not half as good.

i'm up to season 5 of round two of the west wing. i'm glad to know that when i get to the end of season 7, it will round itself out. see, it means i enjoy the show more if i know it's not going to end abruptly.

Emptied

I hate feeling or being sick. So the last 16 or so hours haven't been awesome. All the more sucky coz I can't just lay on the couch with my doona and DVDs. I'm glad though howie can stay here for part of the day. But I'm just so sore - my back and leg muscles from all the tensing with the abdominal pain. Plus little sleep and funny insides still. I'm quite ready for today to be over. Assuming tomorrow I feel fine.

blocks

oscar's grandpa made him blocks for his birthday. i think howie and i enjoy playing with them more than oscar at the moment, but i'm sure that will change.

i had a good time today building some block towers.

but someone wants to be a demolition expert when they grow up

he worked with precision to start with

but that mustn't have been quick enough so he stepped it up a notch

and mission accomplished.

they're great blocks - love the natural timbers. well done howie's dad!

almost famous

It's "Doppelgänger Week" on Facebook, where you change your profile pic to someone famous you've been told you resemble.

And I don't think anyone's ever told me I look like anyone famous.

Howie told me tonight I look like a monkey, so I should make that my pic. That coming from Mr Nicky Webster.

gummy

perhaps it's just me, but if i were visiting someone's house and was chewing gum that i no longer wanted, i would put it in the bin. or swallow it. or just keep chewing it.

apparently, someone who has visited our house doesn't feel the same. howie and i just found an old piece of chewing gum stuck under our portable bench in the kitchen. nice.

but really! who does that! very gross.

if only there were instant DNA test kits with no privacy laws attached to them so we could find out who did it.

fly fun

I got these in an email forward from Mum...

~~~~~~~

What to do when you are bored...

1. Kill a few Flies

2. Put them in the sun to dry for one hour.

3. Once they are dry, take a pencil and paper..and let your imagination flow.

Here are a few examples...

~~~~~~~

Someone has a little too much time on their hands!

two year commitment

My phone contract ends in april (I think). And I'm not sure what to do. These are the facts:

1) I am staying with Virgin
2) I cannot justify $70/month for an iPhone
3) I'm staying on my current price plan
4) The only phones I will consider are Nokia
5) I don't like qwerty keyboards

So I think these are my two options.

The 6210 is the new version of my current phone

The 6700 is a phone

Wow, isn't life hard.