Bunch of stuff
It's strange living so close to the east-west train line - it's actually quite noisy here - we get traffic noise from the Great Eastern Hwy and also non-stop trains all night long. How on earth do we humans have so much stuff to transport?
I've got a real hatred building for Peppa Pig toys. My MIL keeps buying them for Sam and they are universally cheap tacky plastic, fiddly bits that I find frustrating to deal with (let alone a three year old), poorly designed (so things like door hinges fall apart ALL THE TIME, or to put George and Danny in the rocket you have to thread them through a seat belt and click their feet in - these are 1 inch high jointed figurines, or the house has all these extra bits that you have to click into place each time you open it but if you do them in the wrong order it won't work) ... they are just shitty. And three year olds don't cope with shitty well. Sigh. And they are ridiculously expensive. And they limit Sam somehow - he *wants* to play with them but they are too annoying - the furniture won't fit properly into the house and the figures won't sit on them nicely, the stair case keeps falling off, blah blah - it's not been fun but he keeps expecting them to be and it's even more disappointing I think.
I saw the Wildflower Society of WA lady yesterday and got another 150 seedlings - a few of the first batch (of 30) have died - we're not babying them along - they go in and they'll make it or not - but so far so good. As for my neighbour who 'doesn't like gum trees, I hope you aren't planting any"... bah humbug. We've got very clay laden soil here, and it's pretty full on, so we'll see how this comes together - I'm hoping to get them really going before summer hits.
We've been digging about 30m of French drains (in that same solid clay) - the builder keeps just tossing more (local) sand clay on the quagmire and it's not helping, so we've dug these massive drains right across the back yard (it's pick axe work past 10cm, and these buggers need to be about 40cm deep) and they are working thankfully - now to fill them with a special hose pipe and blue metal. That's after spreading 6m3 of blue metal by hand earlier this week to head off the mud at the front door. Getting fit. Dealing with the mud. One broken implement at a time ;)
Sam is weirding me out a bit at the moment. He's a ninja reader (he talked tonight at dinner about something from the shopping we did today being 'overnight' and I realised he must have read the word on the packet of pads I asked him to toss in the trolley ...) but he's also acting really strange - he's talking less gibberish now (hurrah! less copying George overall - thank the monkey beans) but between his wonky eye (10 days to go until he joins the Kevill's in glasses :P) and his penchant to say things that are clearly meaningful to him but completely confusing and not related to the topic at hand I'm wondering if he's a shake short of spoons some days. "Yes I can have dinosaurs for dinner because I have these pants on" was last night's beauty. It took me a full five minutes to realise he meant there was a dinosaur on his track pants and THAT was why he was acquiesing to having chicken nugget dinosaurs for dinner. *Throws hands in the air* Right now he's loving the tv show Baby Jake which is a show about a baby about George's age - it fits him - it's a load of made up words, lots of sillyness, simple games that he can follow... I'm suspecting in all this that the OT is right and Sam might well have dyspraxia and this is how it's expressing - he needs the familiar to hold onto because new things are hard to get from brain to mouth/hand and when he does get something through it can be very very odd.
George turns 18mths old today. He's playing with the box house (I built the box house castle I put up on FB the other week - packing box heaven) by knocking on the door and waving hello and bye (and saying his version of same) when Sam opens the door, he's climbing EVERYTHING - I find him perched on all sorts of surfaces now. Eeeep. He's a very willful little man who knows *just* what he wants to do and by golly he's off to do it - gets his shoes and presents them to you if he wants to go outside, demands up and down as he wishes. Probably has well over 50 words now - even if most of them are words just I can interpret - he's telling us constantly what he wants and how and when - and we're starting to really get it with him - Sam didn't do this at this age so it's wonderful. Loves books and being read to. Loves to push trucks around the house and will do this on and off for a good chunk of each day (something Sam never did). Loves rolling around on our bed and sliding off it to just run around and climb back up. Hates being dependent and throws wobblies if you do things for him that normally he wants done - heaven forbid you peel his banana or load up his spoon or fork or pass him the wrong drink or tell him to get down off the stool. Sam never ever threw tantrums like this. His sleep is b0rked still. Fuck I'm sick of G and his sleep desire to play all the time. We can't have houseguests here overnight until he stops yelling at us all night for demanding he sleep. (and he only has one nap a day now - about 90mins, and he's not really tired by bed time *throws hands in the air*)
I've got a real hatred building for Peppa Pig toys. My MIL keeps buying them for Sam and they are universally cheap tacky plastic, fiddly bits that I find frustrating to deal with (let alone a three year old), poorly designed (so things like door hinges fall apart ALL THE TIME, or to put George and Danny in the rocket you have to thread them through a seat belt and click their feet in - these are 1 inch high jointed figurines, or the house has all these extra bits that you have to click into place each time you open it but if you do them in the wrong order it won't work) ... they are just shitty. And three year olds don't cope with shitty well. Sigh. And they are ridiculously expensive. And they limit Sam somehow - he *wants* to play with them but they are too annoying - the furniture won't fit properly into the house and the figures won't sit on them nicely, the stair case keeps falling off, blah blah - it's not been fun but he keeps expecting them to be and it's even more disappointing I think.
I saw the Wildflower Society of WA lady yesterday and got another 150 seedlings - a few of the first batch (of 30) have died - we're not babying them along - they go in and they'll make it or not - but so far so good. As for my neighbour who 'doesn't like gum trees, I hope you aren't planting any"... bah humbug. We've got very clay laden soil here, and it's pretty full on, so we'll see how this comes together - I'm hoping to get them really going before summer hits.
We've been digging about 30m of French drains (in that same solid clay) - the builder keeps just tossing more (local) sand clay on the quagmire and it's not helping, so we've dug these massive drains right across the back yard (it's pick axe work past 10cm, and these buggers need to be about 40cm deep) and they are working thankfully - now to fill them with a special hose pipe and blue metal. That's after spreading 6m3 of blue metal by hand earlier this week to head off the mud at the front door. Getting fit. Dealing with the mud. One broken implement at a time ;)
Sam is weirding me out a bit at the moment. He's a ninja reader (he talked tonight at dinner about something from the shopping we did today being 'overnight' and I realised he must have read the word on the packet of pads I asked him to toss in the trolley ...) but he's also acting really strange - he's talking less gibberish now (hurrah! less copying George overall - thank the monkey beans) but between his wonky eye (10 days to go until he joins the Kevill's in glasses :P) and his penchant to say things that are clearly meaningful to him but completely confusing and not related to the topic at hand I'm wondering if he's a shake short of spoons some days. "Yes I can have dinosaurs for dinner because I have these pants on" was last night's beauty. It took me a full five minutes to realise he meant there was a dinosaur on his track pants and THAT was why he was acquiesing to having chicken nugget dinosaurs for dinner. *Throws hands in the air* Right now he's loving the tv show Baby Jake which is a show about a baby about George's age - it fits him - it's a load of made up words, lots of sillyness, simple games that he can follow... I'm suspecting in all this that the OT is right and Sam might well have dyspraxia and this is how it's expressing - he needs the familiar to hold onto because new things are hard to get from brain to mouth/hand and when he does get something through it can be very very odd.
George turns 18mths old today. He's playing with the box house (I built the box house castle I put up on FB the other week - packing box heaven) by knocking on the door and waving hello and bye (and saying his version of same) when Sam opens the door, he's climbing EVERYTHING - I find him perched on all sorts of surfaces now. Eeeep. He's a very willful little man who knows *just* what he wants to do and by golly he's off to do it - gets his shoes and presents them to you if he wants to go outside, demands up and down as he wishes. Probably has well over 50 words now - even if most of them are words just I can interpret - he's telling us constantly what he wants and how and when - and we're starting to really get it with him - Sam didn't do this at this age so it's wonderful. Loves books and being read to. Loves to push trucks around the house and will do this on and off for a good chunk of each day (something Sam never did). Loves rolling around on our bed and sliding off it to just run around and climb back up. Hates being dependent and throws wobblies if you do things for him that normally he wants done - heaven forbid you peel his banana or load up his spoon or fork or pass him the wrong drink or tell him to get down off the stool. Sam never ever threw tantrums like this. His sleep is b0rked still. Fuck I'm sick of G and his sleep desire to play all the time. We can't have houseguests here overnight until he stops yelling at us all night for demanding he sleep. (and he only has one nap a day now - about 90mins, and he's not really tired by bed time *throws hands in the air*)