Back in the swing of it

So about that blog last week...  Sorry.

It was a pretty yucko week around here.  After months of colds and flus hanging around this joint, the absolute motherload of the flu hit me like a tonne of bricks.  Honestly I cannot remember being so sick in a very long time.  And the thing about being sick when you've got little kids to look after is that they don't care in the slightest that you aren't feeling up to the task.  They still want to be fed, entertained, cuddled and have their four millionth inane question answered.

Needless to say I wanted nothing more than to crawl under a rock and sleep for a month.  Thankfully Nick saw the agony I was experiencing (perhaps my sobbing and fevers in the morning before he left for work helped) and was able to come home early on my worst day, allowing me to spend the evening in bed.

The timing couldn't have been much worse though with Nick's project at the pointiest end of the stick possible.  Last week saw him working very hard and many extra hours, including two nights in a row when he didn't get to to see either of the kids.  Tough on him, tough on them and particularly tough on an already depleted me!!  Tonight will be another Nick-free night.  But the good news about this time is that it means the project is nearly done (I hope!) which hopefully means that life can start to return to some semblance of normality around here.

Right, big whinge over.

Evie is a handful.  Seriously.  She is into everything she can get her hands on, as you can see in these pics where she is destroying the DVD player.  She especially likes electricity and power cords.  Worse still is she knows she shouldn't be getting into them but just likes to push the boundaries.

She is also making herself opinions well and truly known these days.  'Don't want to eat that food?  Well, clamp your mouth shut and don't let any get in'.  ' Don't want to clean your teeth?  Same'.  'Want someone to look in your direction? Make short squealing sounds while looking at them until you get their attention'!!!  She is certainly strong willed and headstrong (Nick questions where she gets this from!?!).  I can certainly see some real differences in personalities from her and Ollie at this age.  Quite frankly I'm a little terrified of what a cranky pants this one might turn out to be.

But speaking of expressing herself... Evie can talk!!!!  So she isn't going to be giving any university lectures in the near future but she is starting to use actual words.  It started the other week when she and I were at the shops and I picked up her toy (which she had thrown for the three millionth time) and said "ta" to her, which I always do.  Turns out she has been paying attention as she replied "ta"!  And she seemed so super thrilled with herself.  Every time she said "ta" she would get a fit of the giggles.

But "ta" is hardly a word.  More of a polite sound.  So while we were all proud of her, we weren't claiming a word.  Yet.  It only took until the next morning when I was talking to her about "daddy" that she dropped the "dada".  Yay!  Cue more fits of giggles every time she said it.  And that was just Ollie, Nick and I.

So "dada" was pretty popular for a while but it seems to have gone by the wayside a bit lately.  She has also been making the "mama" sound a lot but I don't think it is a word yet.  The lack of giggles are a big clue.  I know it isn't far off now but it is bittersweet in some ways.  While I can't wait to hear her say it in that tiny sweet voice of hers, I know now that she probably won't stop saying it to me each day forty thousand times.  Which will be lovely.  But sometimes a bit annoying!! So I'm not rushing it.

Ollie has been surprisingly good lately.  He is still having some wonderful moments of naughtiness involving rough behaviour with toys, objects and people but overall he hasn't been too bad.  The only issue of late is his night time waking.  At least once a night we have needed to go into him lately.  In the pre-Evie days I probably would have let him whinge himself back to sleep but now that she is likely to be woken up, we find ourselves making a quick dash in to settle him.

I think he has gotten used to this and just enjoys the company when he can't get back to sleep.  Especially since Nick is way nicer than I am and will sit there with him until he snoozes.  I just go in, tuck him in, give him a kiss and then lie through my teeth that I will be back in five minutes to check on him.  Not likely.  I will actually be back in my nice warm bed resting peacefully.  But he can't tell the time so that fib works out pretty nicely for me.

But the excuses for calling out to us are starting to get pretty weak.  "I'm cold" or "I can't sleep" are to be expected.  But I nearly lost it the other night when he told me "Panda is on the wrong side of my bed".  Seriously?  Not that Panda had fallen out of bed.  No, it seems that while Panda was quite comfortably resting next to Ol under the covers (with Stanley on the other side), he was on the WRONG side of Ollie.  And given it was probably around 6 degrees that night, I was not a big fan of that excuse.  Lets hope this excuse isn't repeated again anytime soon.

Here are my two cheeky monkeys hanging out in the car.  They are pretty gorgeous aren't they?

The painting is finished!!!  I won't show you any pics (in case some of you are creepy stalkers!) but I can tell you that it looks pretty amazing.  But I'm pretty happy it is all over and done with as it certainly had it's moments of painfulness.  I think it would be lovely to go to work everyday and come home to see what work the painters had done in your absence.  But actually being there each and every day while they do it was a bit strange.  I filled you in the other week about their singing and games of 20 questions.  I also liked the feeling of living in a goldfish bowl not knowing at which moment a strange man was going to vault over the scaffold onto the back deck or walk past the kitchen windows.  Strangely enough, all the things I disliked about the process were probably the bits Ollie liked best!

But inconvenience aside, it was the dangerous bits that really weighed on me.  Like having scaffolding on the house or big extension cords running from inside.  Or the freezing bits like needing to have the deck door open to allow the cords to run out.  This open door/extension cord combo led to probably the funniest/equal parts most annoying moment of the whole process.

I had to leave Ollie out in the lounge to go and put Evie down to sleep.  I had been fairly apprehensive about this initially with the door a little bit open but Ol had been pretty good with this so I thought it would be okay.  Cue little feet running down the hallway and into the bathroom.  Tap going on and furious washing of hands.  "What's wrong Ol?"  "Nothing, I'm just washing my hands.  Don't look".  So of course I race to look.  Not that I needed to race since outdoor paints don't just wash straight off.

So there is Ollie with two light grey hands and two light grey feet.  And out in the lounge room is further evidence of the crime...

And here is what happened outside.  Innocent enough.  But not the kind of act that could go unnoticed.

Thankfully a bit of scrubbing at Ol and the floors restored everything to it's former condition.  The painters saw the funny side of it.  Ol did not.  He was quite scared the painters would get cranky with him and was nervous when he went to apologise to them but all was well.

Looking back it is quite funny.  At the time, not so much!