Rock and Roll all night and party every day (II)

Three.
The boy is three.
No, we can't believe it either.

But the boy could, and hence he announced to all and sundry that he would be having a party "just like Dash!" (Dash being his best friend. Well, unless he has declared someone else his best friend for the day.)

And he declared who would be attending.
"Aaron, Dash 'he's my best friend!', Baden, Ashley, Ava, Lily, Maladyn (actually Madelyn, but we dare any practising speech pathologist to get the boy to say it right), Mitchell, Owen, Archie, Georgie, Josh, Inge, Joseph..."

"What about {insert name not on list here}?" suggested mum.

"No."

Ooookaaaayyyy then...

The day started well enough - though arguably a bit frantic - with grandparents and Mistress P on food duty and dad on cake purchasing and "get the boy to have a goddamn sleep or we'll all be in BIG trouble" responsibilities.

The latter involved whisking him off to the local pool for a toss about in the surf (the place has a wave machine; yes, we know, massive greenhouse footprint and all that. Hey, everyone's entitled to get a root on their birthday - in the boys case it was of the planet) and a slow drive home in a warm and cosy car.
Always does the trick.
Even for dad.

The visit to the pool also presented the first age-associated conundrum.
Kids under three - free.
Kids three and over - $2.70.
(Adults $5.50)

In they walked.

"Just here for a swim" offered dad to the nice lady on the desk as he handed over a tenner.
"That'll be $8.20 thanks" she said. "Oh - how old is the boy?"
Dad pondered momentarily.
"He.. was... three... yesterday..." he grumbled.
"Happy Birthday!" exclaimed the woman to Master M.
"And here's your $1.80 change sir."
"Thanks..."
Dang nabbit.
The free lunch is over.

The party itself was all cheer and good wishes and presents of an embarrassingly generous nature. (We now realise how cheap we are- sorry everyone we've ever attended a party of.) As of Saturday, the Baghdad end of Hampton has become the Lightning McQueen capital of the free world, with a fair dash of Thomas the Tank Engine and even Chuggington thrown in for good measure.

There can't be a toy shop in greater Melbourne not in severe animated cartoon character deficit.

This of course meant that the boy was, and remains, like a pig in poo.
And not just because of the chocolate icing smeared all over his face.

Of course there was the mandatory cake with candles, which refused to light in the seabreeze. Which is a bit of a bugger when you have to do it several times for all the little-uns to have a go at blowing out.

Candle-blowing was followed by a few rather tuneless renditions of Happy Birthday, though (thankfully?) dad had had a couple too many and forgot to do a speech (he argues he didn't forget and that it was a party for the kids, so speeches weren't necessary. Some may argue if that was the case, neither was his beer.)

Come closing time, Master M was doling out kitty-cute goodbye hugs and kisses with all his mates - which in reality may just have been a police-line pat down to ensure none were skiving off with one of his Lighting McQueen characters down their pull-ups - and all was declared a big success.

No fights.
No tears (well, maybe one or two when some realised it wasn't their birthday...).
No spewing.
Ticked all the boxes really.

Plus mum and dad had bribed the folks at work to turn on a pearler of a 27°C autumn day, foregoing the thrill of watching kiddies, parents and family flirt with hypothermia, as occurred at the lads first birthday.

Granted, there was one downside; namely Mike's bottom.

Or rather, its ability, late in the party day, to produce farts of stunning (literally) stink.

"Its probably been the crazy mix of foods he's been eating today" someone opined.
"No it isn't" piped up the boy, "I've just eaten cake!"

And so he had.
As you should on your birthday.

The Boy is three.
Wow.

Addendum:
1) The party also coincided with Mistress P's big four oh. Mike, ever the gentleman, allowed her a candle blow out and Happy Birthday rendition (one only).

2) Little Miss S survived the day on only one sleep (she normally likes to get in two to three) and a concerted raid on the fairy bread. Yes. We know. Hundreds and thousands are possibly not exactly on the prescribed baby food list. Can't stop the party girl.

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Rock and roll all night and party every day (I)

Ok.
That's it.
We're moving to Queensland/DoubleEwAy/the EnTee if that's what it takes.

Yes, it's that time of the year again.

The switch from daylight saving back to sun time, and hence once again we're doing the baby backstep battle. Because, seeing as the majority of her life has been spent an hour out of whack, getting her re-whacked is proving nigh on impossible.

Prior to the clock switcharoony, little Miss S was sleeping blissfully until 6:30-7am (i.e., 5:30 until 6am, sun time), when along comes the end of daylight saving.

For adults, well its a doozy. In fact you feel, for the first few days at least, like someone has given you an extra hour a day to fritter away as you see fit.
Its great.
You get into work 'early', leave 'early' and generally spring about like there's 25 hours in a day.
Which, if you have a sub-1 year old, is prolly what you need.

Cos in our case... she kept waking at the same (sun) time.

Well, almost.
And by almost we mean earlier.
Way earlier.
First morning: 4:40am (Just for clarity: Four. Forty. Ay. Blessed. Em.)
Then: 5:06am
5:16am
5:51am (we saw light at the end of the tunnel!!!)
5:05am (...obviously the loco coming the other way.)
5:05am (at least we're being consistent, though with a short nap in mum and dads bed afterwards)
...and so on and so on.

Its proving to be cruel and unusual punishment, and surely deserves a Geneva convention, if not full blue helmeted U.N intervention.

The boy, granted, adjusted within a few days. Lets count our blessings there.

Still, all this clock changing shenanigans hasn't stopped the girl from advancing on in leaps and bounds.

The latest 'first' has been pulling herself up onto stuff.

We'd kinda forgotten the joys this bring, such as finding your beautiful little daughter, tottering up onto her knees and raiding the bottom drawer of the change table, chowing down on a set of mum's disposable breast pads.

Of course this also means that its back to baby-proofing the house again, and hence the hair tie has been strapped around the crockery cupboard drawers and, given her propensity to eat anything paper-ish, all books and magazines lifted at least two foot above the ground.

We also figure that if the girl is mobile, she must be ready to move out of home. And hence... yes, at the tender age of nearly eight months, she's been packed off to childcare.

Ok, its right next door to mum and dads work (perfect for a lunchtime snack on mum's mammaries), and it is only one day a week, but still... she's out there and doing it.
And without much grumbling either we must add.

As for the boy - well, it appears he likes chocolate. And that he's quite aware that mum and dad think there should be some form of rational thought into how much gets eaten in one sitting.
Which is not much (that should be eaten... there should argubly be lots more of the rational thought).

The lad, on the other hand, thinks too much chocolate is barely enough, and hence when he laid his hands on a slab of the Easter bunnies finest that dad decreed exceeded the volumetric boy-intake limit, he (as in the boy) stuffed as much as he could into his gob in one gaggingly large hit.

Let us describe it in mathematical terms.
One massive chocco blob + gushing boy-drool (cos its chocolate) = a Syd-harb worth of brown slobber distributed across the floor.

And his shirt and himself.

But he wouldn't spit a molecule out, despite its suffocating qualities.

"Breathe through your nose!" said dad, arguably being helpful.
The boy did.
The boy survived.
The shirt didn't.

The kids know how to party in the Baghdad end of Hampton.

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