Growing old / up and recycling

A recent post over on John Scalzi's blog really hit home.


Go here, seriously:
Unexpectedly Misty Eyed
As with many good blogs, the real treasure is in the comments.

I wouldn't have thought Elissa was ready for Calvin & Hobbes yet, but I may be wrong. I might pull out one of the compilations I have and see what she thinks. Isaac is quite a way from reading them, although he's somewhat more Calvin-like, in terms of raw ability to increase the entropy in his local environment.

I may have mentioned previously, but some of my Star Wars action figures have made an (admittedly minor) comeback. My lego has also been popular lately, with both of the kids, so no complaints here. Not that the kids are short of new toys...


Note: I don't believe the original artist has yet been identified, so I'm using this under what I consider to be fair use until I hear otherwise. My apologies if you're reading this with no comic attached.

First day at school

Today was Elissa's first day at "big school", aka kindergarten. As you can see, she was pretty upset about the whole thing.

You should be able to click on some of these photo's for a larger version, although even the larger versions have been shrunk and cropped for the blog. All of the full size originals are in the complete set, but you'll need to sign in to see those. Contact me if you want details.




Without the hat. I'm not sure if she looks littler with or without it.

Her little red tie-like-thing now has a couple of extra additions; a name badge with a colour code designating which class she's in, and a little "perfect" sticker because, according to Elissa "She did good work".


With the hat. It has her name on it, which is supposed to reduce the time it takes to return to the owner when lost or forgotten. I wonder how long we'll have to wait to test this theory?



Carrying her bag, which is about half her size, but not overly heavy, yet.

Like the hat, it also has her name on it. So far I don't think she's met any other "Elissas", although I'm sure she's met an "Alyssa" or two at various other activities. According to couple of web sites (like this one), "Alyssa" is about 30 times more popular than "Elissa", so she can trade off the uniqueness against having to spell it for people.
Click on the graph to embiggen.

Obviously the population at large disagrees with me, but I still prefer "Elissa". I may or may not be biased.



We arrived about a couple of minutes after our appointed time, but Elissa was still the first one to her class room, so she has managed a little one on one time with her teacher already.

We spoke to her teacher briefly in the playground when we picked Elissa up in the afternoon, apparently she had a good day and was quite talkative.

I can imagine Isaac's one-on-one teacher time being mostly out of school hours, or whenever they hold detention when that time comes around.



Note: One of these children may not be an actual kindergarten attendee. Perhaps one of Elissa's tasks should be to get in a few pre-emtive apologies on Isaac's behalf.

For all the yelling they do at each other at home, Elissa is still quite protective of Isaac when we're out and about, and will often go around telling everyone "That' my brother Isaac, he's two and a half." (yeah, the one over there poking the polar bear with a stick)



Here's the view Elissa will be seeing a lot of this year.



All in all, she was pretty happy with her day, and says that she's ready to go back tomorrow. 1 day down approximately 2600 to go, well, until the end of high school anyway. The way time flies by these days, I estimate that ought to happen some time before Easter.


Here's the drawing she made and coloured to bring home.

She was singing to herself in bed tonight when I left her, keen to do it all over again.

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.