Pandy and Andy create a baby...

Sunday, February 15, 2009

GodMee!

Hot.

Damn Hot.

After the heatwave of the week before and thinking it couldnt get any worse; it got worse.

Melbourne's hottest day in the full 154 years of record (46.4) and a whopping 47.3 measured above our backyard in the Baghdad-end-of-Hampton.

Thats too hot.

The boy, of course, was largely oblivious, but still took a somewhat evil delight in taking his water gun and wetting all and sundry with its fine mist spray. Followed by a cry of:
"GodMee!", even though he had in fact, "Godcha"; we'll work on the 3rd person a little later.

Still, it kept everyone in our unairconditioned house cool. Well, that and watermelon, for which he now appears to have something bordering on an addiction.

The spraying and "GodMees" is all really a sign of the lateral thinking of the lad; sometimes too lateral.

He watches, listens and absorbs like a sponge., and we're constantly wondering "How did he know that?".

For instance, mum was rushing off to a big wig conference and was getting herself all dolled up and just about to waltz out the front door when she stopped and mumbled...
"Oh damn. Earrings."

And then there he was.
Standing with her jewelery box and a look on his face as if to say;
"Madame. The diamonds or the pearls?"

Then again some of the incidents are not quite as cute. Oh ok, they are cute, but, well, they're also a right pain in the arse.

For instance he has discovered opening the fridge door.

At much the same time he has discovered how to get off twist top lids.

And we all know he has a fondness for "moolk" (a.k.a milk).

Add 1+1+1 and you get a wee lad standing in the open fridge door, cap off 2 litres of Pura, chugging it down like some pint-sized milk-swigging Solo man.

Completely with Betsy the cows finest dribbling down his chin and pecs. And across the floor.

Then theres case in point #2. And #3.

As dad was sitting on the deck reading the Sunday paper, he heard a little cry of "Cake!!".

And there emerged the lad with a zip lock bag from the fridge containing the leftover slice of a rather nice carrot and walnut cake his mum was saving for Ron. (a.k.a Lateron.)

"Oh sweet fanny adams... awright... damage done... you can have it."
(NB: Yes. Bad parenting 101.)

Back to the paper dad went, and was heavily involved in some of the articles on the bushfires and climate change (of course they are linked, are you blind?) and soon realised that several minutes had passed since he last heard hide or hare from the boy.

So he went inside.

To find a wee lad with his stool up against the "hot drinks" corner of the kitchen, open jars of caro and drinking chocolate at his hands, and a face only a choco-holic mother could love; a smear of brown from ear to ear in a make up effort remarkably like the Joker from the Batman fillum.

Oh no.

And then the lad turned around fully, to reveal a shirt and pants covered with brown powder from head to toe.

Oh dear.

"Off to the bath you you lad!", and in he went.
Upon which the water promptly turned into something resembling a Rotorua mud pool.

Of course in the intervening seconds before the bath gained enough volume to enable boy immersion, Master M had gone to the check out the toilet, lifting the lid to peer inside.This put chocolate all over the seat and its surrounds, making what would have appeared to a man landing from mars, a scatological disaster area.

Thank god the queen didn't come and visit.

Granted though, the thinking has also manifest itself in added clinginess after mums recent and sudden trip away, but then supposedly thats fairly common at this age too.

The terrible twos.
"Are we there yet?"

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Hot. Damn hot.

The last cupla weeks have been a whirlwind of holidays, hotty days and home-with-dad and nana days.

And permutations and combinations thereof.

Firstly there was the trip to Sandy Point (yes, yet again) for the Orstraya Day Weegend.
(To pronounce it any other way is, well, un-Orstrayan.)

There was beach sessions and sand castles and finding shells and chasing the other littlies around, but the clear highlights were (in no particular order):
a) Kara Kara Kara. A friend of a friend who very quickly became Master M's bff after she laughed and waved and encouraged the lad with great big smiles and cheers every time he said her name.

It was love at first night.

To see him running down the stairs on the last day saying Kara Kara Kara, only to find she'd had to leave to catch a plane, was like something out of Gone with the Wind. Only soppier.

b) Kayaking (see pic); sitting ontop of C&M's brand spanker new Anaconda special gripping a tow rope, with mum paddling sedately out and into the shipping channel of the Sandy Point inlet. With approved and suitably strapped-on life jacket of course.
Life was clearly far less exciting when dad took the helm; he fell asleep.

c) Mozzies. Yes, just like the Cape Conran trip pre-xmas, the mozzies decided this toddler bloke was fair game, and hence when the lad was put to bed for a relaxing snooze they descended upon the poor tike en masse through an open window in the kitchen, and chewed his bloody arms orf.

Or at least left one side of his face looking like such a pin cushion that fully a week later, after he was dropped off at daycare, dad received a phone call from a carer pooping herself that the lad had chicken pox.
"No, they're just mozzie bites mam...."
"Oh. Dear. {pause} Can you pick him up anyway?"
Tru dinks.

Secondly there was the not-so-pleasant passing of his grandfather, and hence his mum's unexpected bolt to Sydney for a week, the only upside being she missed the joy that was Melbourne's second hottest day (45.1°C; thats 113.2 in the old scale) since records began in 1855.

For the lad though it meant being cooped up in his bedroom during the day with stay-at-home dad, playing in the direct wooshing line of the pathetically inadequate portable evaporative cooler while dad attempted a few work emails on the laptop in between cheering on a Melbourne record via his very own temperature worm.

"Go you good thing!!! Geez mate, its bloody hot..."

Though again on the upside, with the house reaching 35°C inside (there had been 2 preceding days of over 43°C; again an all time Melbourne record), there was no patience for the heat of cooking and hence dad bought him {gulp/dont tell the council nurse} take away on two nights.

Including {double gulp} his first ever Hungry Jacks junior meal ("Well i did get him the juice instead of coke...")

Which they ate together on a picnic rug in the backyard cos the "cool" change came through and dropped the temperature to an almost chilly-by-comparison 34°C (93.2F) outdoors.

Sunday night it was fish and chips on the sand at Ricketts Point, watching the guys out windsurfing (and hence making dad eat his liver that he wasn't out there) and feeding the seagulls.

This proved to be a classic in itself, as the boy a) insisted on feeding them without dads help, but b) can only throw about 1 foot in front of himself.

Hence each time he chucked a chip he was descended upon in a scene straight out of Hitchcock's "Birds" fillum.
Dad was just relieved to see him emerge relatively unpecked.

We only hope he didn't develop a life-long avian phobia.

The beach picnic ended with a romantic dusk stroll along the sand, which suddenly, with no prompting or the like and after 30 secs of meditative silence, saw the boy turn to dad, look him in the eye, and say:

"Mummy Gone."

It woulda broken your heart.

Then he said it again.
"No mate- shes coming back soon. Just a few more sleeps. Mummys not gone."

And he didn't mentioned it again.

In its own funny way, it was the most incredible communication of his life.

Not just for its sweetness, but because it showed clearly that his brain no longer just thinks of the bird, the chip, the milk, the keys, the shower or the car that he can see or hear or get hunger pains for.

He can think.

Therefore;
He is.

------------
This post is dedicated to David Hope, 1921-2009.
Artist, poet and devotee of this blog.
There is something vaguely wicked
about wearing your shoes
with the laces untied...