A weekend well spent

This weekend, Norm, Derrick and myself spent the weekend getting Umina one step closer to family friendly condition.

While Derrick and I carefully shared a couple of kilograms worth of nails between the floorboards and and the scrub turkeys below, Norm put up the four corner posts. This means we've now measured the various distances, so that Norm can order the stainless cables and fittings to complete the rails.

Another weekend of work ought to see the railings go up, and perhaps even eliminate the need to walk the plank(s) to get in and out.


This picture was taken from the scrub underneath the house.

I didn't venture underneath the house just to get the shot, rather, it was just one of the many trips I made in order to pick up the hammer, screwdriver, clamp or piece of timber that I'd dropped through the not-quite-finished deck.


The lovely two tone pattern is a result of the different floorboard lengths being painted with different batches of paint on different days. Once everything is complete it will all get another coat of something more uniform.

Norm obviously did a pretty good job of estimating the amount of timber required. When we nailed in the last board on Sunday afternoon, we had none of the longer lengths left, and only a handful of shorter lengths and offcuts to spare.


While there is still some trimming to do before the rails go up, it looks very different up there with all the boards down.

It fells quite different under foot too. Not only because the boards are no longer cracked and weather worn, but also because for most of the floor we've added new supports between the old ones, and not just replaced them, meaning the spans are, on average, only half of what they used to be.

You can see all of the photo's I took on this flickr page.

If you want to compare this with the last bunch of photo's I took, they are in this post. Copying the links from that older post:

All the pictures I took from April 2007 are here.

All the pictures I took from February 2008 are here.

Just not tired

Tonight, after putting Elissa to bed, I've been back upstairs 3 times, in order to:

• Explain why Gerald and Sparkles won't fall out of her bed if she keeps them in the middle.
• Explain why no one will come in and steal Gerald while she's asleep.
• Assure her that I'll throw out any strangers that get in "if they have a key that's the same shape as our lock and sneak in".
• To explain that no one will steal her or Isaac during the night.
• To put some cream on her face that's "really, really sore".

To get my attention, Elissa has taken to sitting at the top of the stairs and tapping on the metal gate we have there. A couple of nights ago, because she was worried that she'd wake Isaac if she yelled out, I explained to her that she didn't have to make much noise. I explained that her floor is the roof of my office downstairs, and that I could hear her quite easily.

Elissa and I also successfully completed the our first multi night reading. It was Tashi which we completed over 3 or 4 nights. It was actually quite good, with enough text to keep the story interesting, but still some pictures to help her visualise things. In reality, we probably could have done the whole story in a single sitting, but I think the idea of continuing it over a few nights was appealing to Elissa too. We already have the second book in the series, although looking at what's available the compendiums might be a better idea, especially seeing as the kids have so few books to read...

Speaking of which, the pile of books beside Isaac's bed doesn't seemed to have changed all that much lately, although the Dr Seuss Shapes book is quite popular of late, and a relatively recent addition to our reading list, at least for me. I'll have to catalog the pile for posterity, but from memory I'd say his current favorites are:

• The Shape of me and other stuff
• How do Dinosaurs eat their food
• Not now Charlie
• Come on, Daisy, in which the eagle has become an Owl, surprise surprise.
• Kitten's adventure
• Sometimes I like to curl up in a ball

He's certainly pretty comfortable with his routine these days. He used to object rather loudly if I tried putting him into the cot while he could see a book we hadn't read that evening. These days, we say goodnight to whomever is in the last story, and as long as he's got his blanket and dummy, he's started to voluntarily lie down in my lap before I get the book down on the table.

He no longer complains when placed in bed (cot) and I leave the room, although he regularly rolls around, kicking and chatting to himself for quite some time before going to sleep. Occasionally I'll have to go back into him a find and replace his blanket, dummy, or occasionally one of the soft toys that he's tossed into the spot carefully calculated to be accessible only by lying on the floor and crawling a good way under the cot.

And the pictures? They're mostly to pretty up the blog somewhat. I don't think I've made any posts without pictures, and I'm under no illusions that people come here to specifically to read my ramblings. Tonight Elissa drew two pictures for me. The topmost one is "people in sleeping bags". She was very careful to point out that the little loops are "zips". The ear-like objects on top were added at the end, and are, I'm told, in fact, ears.

The second picture is a castle. It was somehow inspired by the tracing of the rubber insert from a non-spill cup, The yellow section is the tracing. Elissa drew the rest of the castle around it. I was instructed to draw the car in the dungeon/car park. The rest is Elissa's.

Our Wildlife

We took the kids to Sydney Wildlife World at Darling Harbour. Before Susanne did the research and told me about it, I had no idea it existed. It's next door to the aquarium, which I imagine most people, like myself, have heard of. It's a small-ish (when compared to your typical zoo) collection of exhibits showcasing a variety of animals, generally in glassed cabinets, which allows you to get quite close to a lot of the animals.


They have a climate controlled habitat for butterflies, which is what Elissa was most excited about seeing. Fortunately, this was one of the first exhibits we went past.

Taking pictures through the thick glass in what was generally quite dim lighting was a little tricky, although a handful of the shots aren't entirely horrible. Manual focus is one of the things you really miss using a compact camera instead of an SLR.


This is everyone looking at what is nominally the deadliest snake on the planet. I'm led to believe it's actually pretty tricky to measure these things accurately, nevertheless, I'm pretty glad the glass there was doing it's job.

We (as in Australia) have got (again, depending on how it's measured) the most venomous snake, most venomous spider (the funnel web, which was also on display) and one of few venemous mammals, the humble platypus. Of course, the honey bee (a European import) kills far more people annually than all of those combined..


I took this picture of Isaac as I thought it looked like he was taking a picture himself. Of course, the reality is he was just having a drink while the goannas wrestled. While he enjoyed it, I think his favorite thing was just running flat out through all the corridors and doorways.

Later that night we asked Elissa what her favourite thing was, her response was "Going through the plastic doors!". The plastic doors were just the standard large plastic crash doors you get in all sorts of industrial and medical environments..


We had lunch upstairs in an area where there were koalas sleeping in the trees. Neither of the kids were particularly interested in the koalas. Of the half dozen or so that were easily visible, only one could be properly described as conscious, and even then was only glancing around once in a while.

At this point, Isaac wanted to hide in the foliage, and Elissa was more interested in lunch. This area also overlooked a kangaroo and wallaby enclosure, which we walked through later, and which was a little more engaging for the both of them.

All in all, we spent the best part of a couple of hours looking at the various exhibits. Elissa got more out of the displays than Isaac, but on the whole it was still a worthwhile trip. Not quite as hands-on as Featherdale, but then, that was just the nature of a lot of the animals. We'll have to head back to Featherdale sometime soon. The last time we visited there was when Elissa was about the age Isaac is now, and she enjoyed it a lot.


Just before we left, Elissa wanted to play on the touch screens, with which she was right at home. Susanne chased Isaac around for 5 minutes while I tried to convince Elissa that the 10 or so terminals all had the same movies and games on them, and that she didn't have to try every one of them.

Any TV sets in the vicinity of our kids, and within arms reach, are bound to have a plentiful supply of fingerprints. And quite possibly mouth/tongue prints, depending on Isaac's mood.

The art of misdirection

"OK, you see this green ball?"

"Now, look into my eyes."

"Where's it gone?"

"Thankyou, I'll be here all week. There are still good tickets for some of my lunchtime shows."

If he does want to take up magic, I'll try to encourage him to be more of a Penn/Teller than a Uri Geller.

Growth Collage

I've done the side-by-side comparisons for the kids again. We're also at the point where we have pictures of them at almost the same age.

I've put this one together, showing that that at the same age, they're almost exactly the same height, if you ignore Elissa's birds nest. The eyes are at almost exactly the same level.

Really, Isaac has another 6 weeks to nudge ahead, which he may well do if you look at his growth for over the last three months.


This is Elissa's collage.


This is Isaac's collage.


This is their combined collage. Looking from the right, the pairs are taken together.

Banisters? We don't need no stinking banisters!

This weekend I drove up to Umina to give Norm a hand with the maintenance on the house. I just checked, and we were last all there to do a bit of work in April 2007. One of the nice things about keeping an accurate vehicle diary is that I can tell when my car has been somewhere, even if my own memory is hopeless.

The first four pictures are from the first trip, where we painted and then replaced a few of the main bearers with new ones. We also did a bit of other painting and general shuffling around of timber.

This is a view showing two of the main bearers from underneath. The balcony is on the right side of the picture. The bearers are the two large timbers running more or less left to right through the middle of the picture.


This is one of the outside posts on the entry side, with one of the main bearers removed. Essentially we just knocked out the old ones and gently persuaded (with hammers, bits of timber, and the occasional bit of vocal encouragement) the new ones into place, one at a time. Obviously, the second bearer took the load while we were replacing the first.


The working scaffolding was partially built from timber we needed as we worked, so we started at the extremities and worked back. The scaffolding was perfect for holding us all safely, and also at the perfect height for me to smack my head against the beams once in a while, just to keep me on my toes. I think Derrick and Alan felt the same way. There are times when it probably doesn't pay to be slightly taller than the master engineer.


This is the scaffolding we used for replacing the bearers under the balcony on the stair side. While I think we worked quite sensibly, it's probably safe to say that workcover may not have given us their seal of approval.

Enough of the background, now we're on to this weekends festivities.

This is Norm while when we were about two thirds of the way through removing the handrails and supports.


I had to do most of the work, as Norm and Derrick were always sleeping on the job.*


This is the unobstructed view from the balcony. The lines are nice and clean here, but it was about to get uglier.


We wanted to remove the outermost timbers, as these were going to be replaced, and would be the mount points for the new railing. In order to get to them, we had to cut some of the floorboards, and pry the ends of them out.

Norm was working near the top of the picture to the right. Derrick and I were removing the timber which was originally nailed to the exposed timbers shown in the lower right, I was just commenting to Derrick that we should probably secure the timber before going much further with the floorboard removal, as it was getting rather "wobbly" (that's the correct engineering term). One floorboard later, and gravity took over and removed the rope option from our list of choices. Fortunately, it wasn't the timber above the power and phone lines, and no one was underneath. Needless to say, we secured the timbers earlier on during the procedure from this point on.


Here is a view with all the new exterior timbers in place. These will be where the new handrail supports are mounted.


This is a similar view from the entry side, showing the new exterior timber. We also removed the entry ramp, so that, once the final plank was removed, no one could accidentally wander onto the balcony in it's less-than-general-public-friendly state.

All in all, we got more done in a weekend than I originally expected.


More pictures:

All the pictures I took from April 2007 are here.

All the pictures I took from February 2008 are here.

All are from my phone, so the resolution is mediocre.

Footnotes:

* Yes, I'm kidding.

For more info on the inspiration for this post's title, read this. The version in my head sounds like this (found on this website). It originally got in my head, somewhere in the 80's, by virtue of being sampled on the track "Medicine Show" by Big Audio Dynamite, an album I really should get out again. Aint the Internet grand?

Dangerous things

I saw a video online recently, titled "5 Dangerous things you should let your kids do". I agree with most of it, at least in principle. Click here to have a look, it's an interesting clip and not too long.

Of course, the word "let" is key here. What you let them do, and what they just decide to do regardless aren't necessarily the same thing. I'd still estimate about 50% odds that Isaac will have a trip to casualty before he's 2. He's generally far more reckless/adventurous than Elissa was at the same age. This could just be my (admittedly inaccurate) memory, but I don't think so, or it least it's not entirely that.

Here he is playing with random tools from the toolbox in my office. Keeping the lid closed and fastened used to be enough. Seeing him play with the locks now, I'm not convinced he wouldn't get in himself. Elissa loves getting tools out too, for that matter, it could be me or Elissa he's emulating, I suppose.


Isaac servicing a computer. There's no power connected to this box,so the only real risk is the tool itself. (Not counting the risk to the computer)

Both he and Elissa love playing with the 3.5" floppy drives. It actually makes a pretty good toy. Once you get the disk inserted correctly, it rewards you with a nice loud "clunk" and pops a button out, which is just perfect for pressing. Rinse, repeat. I've probably got a dead one (or four) around the place, what's one more toy for the toybox?


I was in the bathroom downstairs, when Isaac wandered in, had a look around, grabbed the stool for the basin, and took it into the shower. He put it straight under the taps, climbed up, and proceeded to attempt to turn them on, as pictured.

When he couldn't get the desired result, he shuffled over to his right, grabbed the rightmost tap with his left hand, dangling his right foot in mid air, and had his right hand flailing around at random in the soap dish for whatever might be in there. Foiled again, it was empty.

I don't have a photo of that, as by that point I'd moved in in case he fell. The comments at the top of this post notwithstanding, I'm not totally irresponsible, there's no need to call DOCS just yet.


This video is just general purpose silly behaviour. With Isaac copying Elissa's dancing efforts. They're playing together interactively far more these days, as opposed to just playing near each other.


Note that his last action is to start climbing onto the bench seat.

He's taken to spinning in circles, as in the video, a bit lately, I'm not sure if it's the spinning itself that's the most fun, or the dizziness afterwards. He'll also occasionally put a cloth / T-shirt / pillow over his face to play peek-a-boo, as per the international I-can't-see-you-so-you-can't-see-me rules. This is pretty normal behavior, I'm sure, and quite harmless, except that occasionally he'll start walking around with his head still covered. They're only bruises, I suppose.

Cookies and chaos

Today, while Elissa and Susanne were out, Norm and Lyn dropped by. Isaac seemed to sense that there was "stuff" to be had, and woke up 90 minutes into what has typically been between 2 and 3 hours of his lunchtime sleep.

Here he is opening the first item of loot he spotted when I brought him downstairs, a new toy for the car.

It's steering wheel for backseat drivers, with various sound effects, buttons and levers. Isaac quite likes it, but I don't know how Susanne will feel about it. It may require a volume modification before it makes it into her car. Mind you, the volume modification may be to make it louder, to drown out the arguments in the bag over who gets to play with it.


Here he is once we got it open and assembled. Well, almost assembled, it actually has a rod with a suction cup for attaching to the side window. We tried improvising by putting on top of the T-ball stick, but Isaac was happier once he'd removed all the extraneous bits and just held it in his hands.


The second bit of booty was a bag of cookies, or as Isaac refers to them "Bikky bikky bikky!".


I wonder if kids can suffer from induced ADD through having too many toys to choose from? Probably not, but there are other risks:


1. Trip hazards. Most of the toys are actually put away. What's shown here is just the typical "base set" of cars and people the kids use to keep their games going happily. I think Elissa is in the picture somewhere.


2. Overcrowding. It's difficult bathing either of the kids amongst this lot, never mind both of them. Of course, they still manage to argue over them. Usually it's the Dora toys that are in highest demand.

This is an actual shot after bath time. There are still some toys not shown, on the floor and in the shower.

Needless to say, we can probably take bath toys of the wish list.

Jumping in

Today Elissa decided that it was fun to jump into the pool, feet first. She's been pretty conservative up until this point, only jumping in from one of the steps when already half way in.

Once she'd done it once, she wanted to do it again and again, slowly increasing her height and distance. She's doesn't like the water getting into her eyes, but still refuses to wear goggles. Two of her friends visited recently, Chelsea (~8) and Abbey (~6), both of whom were perfectly happy to put them on. I thought having bigger kids wear them might inspire her, but it hasn't so far.


Below is a 10 second video clip, including a live laugh track courtesy of the studio audience, Susanne and Isaac.



Isaac still isn't quite as keen on the water as Elissa, but he's much more comfortable floating around for a while than he used to be. His favourite activities are chasing the "noodle noodle noodle" or floating thermometer, which has a plastic frog on top.

Most of the time, however, he'd rather be outside the pool, running laps while giggling madly, perhaps because it ensures we have to chase or follow him closely in case he cuts a corner a little too closely. He also likes to throw in any pool toys or floats that aren't already in the water.


This is Isaac "flying" the little people toy plane. Susanne has a much smaller one nearby, almost out of shot. It would probably be safer to swap the two, as Isaac will often discard toys with extreme prejudice when something else takes his fancy.

Opto picnic on Brisbane Water

That's actually a pretty cryptic title for the uninitiated. The "opto" refers to an old moniker for the university crowd, although it's changed significantly since our University days all those years ago. It's well over a decade ago as I write this, yikes.

Brisbane Water is also nowhere near Brisbane, it's actually Paul & Kate's back yard on the central coast. There may be a more specific name for the bay/lake than that, but neither google maps nor whereis could provide it for me.

Everyone who attended is in the picture, sans the ugly mug holding the camera. From left to right are Paul, Jamie, Hamish, Tom, Stephanie, Jasmine, Elissa, Susanne, Isaac, Kate and Will. (Click on the pic to embiggen)


This is Doogie and his newest offspring, Hamish. I won't say he looks like his father, as he's still too young to defend himself. The beer that looks to be almost in reach may or may not have had a rubber teat on it earlier. Genetics can be such a curse.


Paul supervising the playground.


Yes, there was cake. amongst many other goodies. As usual, we have the ladies to thank for all of the food. The men did at least cook, if not catch, some meat on the BBQ, as suits their levels of expertise. Jamie showed off his Y chromosomes in true style, forgetting to bring the meat, but remembering the beer.


A good day was had by all, adults and kids alike. This was a bit of a last minute thing as I was on leave and we were at Umina for a few days, but we'll have to organise a larger function with all the usual suspects before new year in 2009. If we get our act together, we might be able to do a lazy day by the pool before Summer leaves us. Thanks to Paul and Kate for putting up with us and whatever carnage the young'uns inflicted.

I've made all of the pics (there are only 9) publically available at this URL. I'll revert them back to private in a few weeks, after everyone who's wanted to see or download them will have had plenty of time. If you have a flickr/yahoo account, drop me a line and I'll give you permission to see all our pics. Clicking on most of these images won't necessarily get you any larger, or higher resolution images, as most of them are cropped and/or resized versions of those available at the link above.

Holidays and more

I'm ridiculously behind on these posts. I've just recently posted a couple for events after this date, so that it doesn't get worse.

I'll probably post any new ones by the posting date (the date I put them up here), rather than the date of the events themselves, which will mean the posts won't be in chronological order for a little while. This may be a little confusing, I'm hoping that it will at least be reasonably obvious which one's you've read, and which you haven't. If you go backwards through the posts, you can stop as soon as you see one you've already read, and know you've seen them all.

Feel free to let me know if you think this is a particularly bad idea, and especially if you have a better one.

Still to come:
* Christmas
* Our Lithgow trip
* Our Umina Trip
* A whole bunch of posts I half wrote in late 2007.

Wacky things

It's 8:30 (in the evening), and both the kids are in bed. I've had dinner and Susanne's out at the gym. It seems quiet, and strange to have the place to myself this early. Isaac's always in bed by this time of course, but Elissa often only starts getting ready for bed about now, and by the time we've gone through the tooth brushing, books and stories it's closer to 9:00.

Elissa's bedtime routine goes something like this:

After she brushes her teeth we go to her bedroom, where she picks a book or two to read. Then we have to prop up her pillows, and select one of her soft "friends" to sit in bed and read with us. Lately it's usually been Gerald, the Giraffe (shown to the left). We read the book and then fix her pillows flat for sleeping.

I then duck outside her room and set her lights to fade out over 5 minutes while I "tell her a story". While I'm out for all of 5 to 10 seconds, she hides. Under the covers. Always. I then come back in and have to pretend to look for and find her. I have to be careful not to "Squish her" or keep the sheet/quilt too tight, or I get a lecture on how she couldn't get out.

The it's time to "tell her a story". This is a made-up story of her choosing, although for the last several weeks, it's always been "one where Dora sees wacky things". This involves me having to make up a story where Dora (yes, the explorer) sees, surprise surprise, "wacky things". The wackiness is inspired by the book "Wacky Wednesday", which I had to read every night for several weeks.


After I've finished with the made up story, her room is already dark and I say goodnight to her and get ready to leave. It doesn't matter that I do it the same way almost every night, she still has to tell me:
1. "Put on my yellow light" . This is a small night light.
2. "Put on my coloured light" This is a small lava lamp thing which cycles through various colours for a minutes or two and then goes out.
3. "Leave the door open." I normally leave the door open about 15 cm. Often she "sneaks" out of bed again to open it wider. When I ask her why she wants it open, her response is "So I can see". Of course. If I suggest that she doesn't need to see when she's asleep, she responds "No! I sleep with my eyes open."




Isaac's reading routine is also fairly predictable, apart from which books he'll like, and in what order he'll want them in on any given evening, but I think that's a topic that ought to get it's own post.


The picture to the right is an older one of Elissa reading in bed (notice the winter pyjamas), but it's not that old, and seemed to fit.

Maeghan's Party

Maeghan was guest of honour at two ceremonies today. The first was her christening, the second was a naming.

I'm not entirely sure whether this is a puzzled or stern look, nor what I did to deserve it, but I thought it was pretty cute.

The only pictures I took at the church were with other people's cameras, although I actually spent most of the time trying to amuse Isaac so that he didn't start giving a speech of his own. Even without amplification, he would've given the priest a run for his money on the volume scale, had we not resorted to letting him have as many sultanas and rice crackers as he could fit into his mouth at once.

Needless to say, it all went well, and then it was back to Lisa & Derrick's place for the naming.


I didn't take a lot of pictures at the party, but I've put a few snaps below. I've made higher resolution versions temporarily available here.

Lisa, Derrick and Maeghan.


(Great) Uncle George does the honours. Maeghan's chinese name is Oi Mai. The "oi" refers to "love", the "mai" to beautiful. I apologise if I've spelt "mai" incorrectly, it may be "may".


A wide show of the yard. Hopefully it shows a little of the work Derrick and Norm put in to getting things ready. They were ready for rain, even if it never showed up.


Cutting the cake.