Check out the junk on the trunk**

Zoo birthday party a roaring success…

Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun (what a huge surprise). Additional apologies for the self-indulgent number of pics, so many great moments and images.

Sophie had a glorious party at the Melbourne Zoo yesterday – generous autumnal weather and gorgeously well behaved little friends (can you tell why she gets along so well with her friend with the rainbow wig? LOL – if not, just go back to the parisien chapeau post and all will become clear).

Plus a special surprise from her very favourite animals of all time – the elephants sent her their very own birthday card and she is the proud “adoptor” of an elephant for the year. We got to have lunch in the old elephant stables and go behind the scenes to have a hands-on experience with some creepy and other cute creatures (NOT the elephants, much to her disappointment LOL), followed by a carousel ride where Sophie rode on - you guessed it - an elephant!

With the help of her older sisters, we managed to secretly concoct a reasonable cake facsimile of an elephant’s head (although one of her friends did innocently ask “what’s that supposed to be?” - you mean you can't tell???). Fortunately, Sophie herself is a more forgiving audience – looking at her face, you can’t help but know she loves it, as mutant as it is.

Could that little birthday face be any more shiny happy? She glowed all day. Just love her to bits…..

Happy birthday Sophie Sunshine
xxxxx

** Junk on the trunk of the cake of course ;)

PS Fabulous new song is courtesy of my darling Kate who loves Sara Bareilles, thanks for the introduction Katie, I love her too xxxxx

Kicking gender stereotypes right out of the park

As mothers of children of the same gender will know, everyone thinks you keep having children to attempt to get the gender you don’t have yet – ie, the only possible reason for having a 3rd baby after two girls is to “get” a boy. (wishing for a eye rolling emoticon here)



Well, much as I have a soft spot for any cute cheeky boy who comes my way, who needs one in our family when you have girls like this? Anything boys can do, I am determined to do just as well/hard/tough etc kind of girls, ours. Kate started at a girls only secondary school this year and joined both the school’s cricket and AFL footy teams, much to her sisters’ respect and delight. And now Amy has come home tonight to announce excitedly that she is featured on the Auskick posters and website for this year http://www.aflauskick.com.au/, sinking the boot in mightily - have a look on the website front page and see if you can spot her. They love nothing better than heading down to the local park for a casual kick or a game of cricket or basketball with their Dad on the weekend. Or to go and cheer on their beloved Tigers at the MCG. Go sporty girls!

Je n’aime pas le chapeau parisien

Of all the hats in all the shops in all of Paris and he comes home with this.


It offends my eye, it’s so wickedly fluouro that my camera can’t even do justice, it literally glows in the dark for goodness sake! Where is the appropriately chic little beret???


Worst of all, she LOVES it. (sigh) I had to prise it off her head in bed the other night LOL And with no school uniform, it even comes to school with us in the morning, there is truly no escape (til I manage to lose it under the couch when she’s not looking).


I am woman enough to admit that the rest of us fared well – I have a gorgeous black scarf, Kate is thrilled with her own copy of a French Vogue and cool sunnies while Amy loves her absolutely inoffensive little beret-wearing French plush dog. But what was he thinking when he picked out this (in his words) “French urban” hat???


Well, that settles it. Next time, I will just HAVE to come to Paris too. ;)

pachyderm party girl

Sophie has a passion for all things elephant, hence our plans for a birthday party at the Melbourne Zoo next weekend. Chatting with Carrie, the most accomplished "Martha"* I know, http://carrieyoung.typepad.com/love_laugh_live/ about our children's parties, themes, invitations etc a while back, she generously donated a fabulous idea right off the top of her head for Sophie's invitations - a paper elephant chain, trunk to tail. So now I had the inspiration, just needed the execution (always the problematic bit for me LOL)

Sophie loves craft and wanted full involvement in the invitation process - from design elements right through to colour choices and "calligraphy" (8 yo style). This invitation had so many different and disparate activities involved, it took us an entire weekend which of course pleased her no end. We found a zillion cute elephant images on the internet that we individually printed, cut and pasted them into a collage to scan. Then we made a template for our cute rainbow family chain of elephant dolls with different party information detailed on each one. These sprang out from the inside of the invitation, making it 3D. But that wasn't nearly enough for Sophie (not a less is more kinda gal) who then needed to let loose with her elephant stamps as well.



Ah, in the old days, I might have been too precious, too perfectionistic to let her mess with my originally minimalistic and roolly classy concept LOL, but after lessons learned from wiser friends, 8 yo creativity and choices reign in this household. And just look at the fabulous result - no, not the invites - the proud as punch, beaming child who totally owns and adores that creation. Little does she know how many gifts she (we) continue to receive from Ava and Sheye http://www.sheyerosemeyer.blogspot.com/





* "Martha" - noun (mar-thuh)



a creative individual, usually female, who possesses the ability to make everyday items/food/craft/homewares/moments look effortlessly chic and gorgeous: origin - American, from the infamous homemaker/felon

Thanks Carrie MWAH
xxxxx

For Georgie...

... who needs a good laugh













Found the talented Jen on http://madeit.com.au/ - (her seller id is maxifunbutton). Madeit is a fun etsy-esque treasure trove of hand made goodies. As you can see by her badges, she has a wicked sense of humour that has me PMSL. Jen, I wore my “bad grammar makes me [sic]” badge to school today and cracked up the teachers no end, thanks sweetie.

And Georgie? Eat your damn lemons girl LOL And if you want one of the “keep your shitty music to yourself” ones for that friend of yours from the badlands), just let me know ;)

coast is clear

We got down to the beach over Easter, catching up with family and friends and basically living at the dog beach between Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff. Lucky lived up to his name, getting to chase approx infinity + 1 balls down the beach, bunny-hopping through the waves and wearing all other canine competitors into the ground with his singular obsession. Sophie hit the water immediately and turned into a sea monster (most tanned bum crack in Victoria, that girl LOL), while Kate and Amy climbed some rocks and sat and watched the Sophie and Lucky show from afar together. Just look at that second pic of them on the rocks together – can you believe that they are only 2 years apart? Kate is 12 and Amy is 10 – it looks more like 16 and 7 or something LOL They eventually braved the water too and took part in our very own Easter miracle – look - Jennings girls can walk on water!!!

Had to share this - they breed ‘em smart down the coast, check this story out about the Cats supporter whose tattoo went terribly wrong, nearly made me spit out my easter eggs LOL:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22751214-5006301,00.html

Have had self-indulgent homesick songs lately, this feels much more joyous. Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and boys gave girls tapes like bouquets or love letters, mine gave me this one. I adored it and him, sent it back to him recently (well, the link, not a tape LOL). It stands the test of time better than most 80s tunes and so has he…..

Would you let this woman work with YOUR children?

I just discovered something new about myself. After taking on Susannah’s photo challenge http://soozadoo.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/dare-you/, she commented that my pic was disappointingly normal after my talk of a scary serial killer worthy photo on my working with children id. Inspired by contagious hardcore efforts like Stomper girl http://stompergirl.blogspot.com/ and caught up in a rare fit of bravado I emailed Susannah the offending pic which made her laugh. With that laugh I realised that I would rather be funny than beautiful and resolved to post it here. Yay - humour outranks vanity :)

This was taken a few weeks ago and as I stood mug-like against the wall and presented my most pleasant smile, I was told sternly I was not allowed to smile, not even a little bit. And that if my fringe had been any longer, I would have had to pin it back off my face on the spot “for identification purposes”. WTF? I am starting to think that all these rules were put in place purely to give passport checkers a good laugh at our expense – are they just trying to make us all as ugly as we could be? Anyway, in return for baring my worst/oldest-looking/harshest face EVER, I demand that in Soozadoo all passport/id photographs be taken by photographers of the caliber of Sheye and Carrie, generously, softly lit and that everyone can smile.

between a rock and a marred face

For Susannah http://soozadoo.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/dare-you/ because you're right.

No kid buffers/distractors/cover-upperers (always my first instinct).

Why is it that I cannot see past teeth that should have had braces, shiny face, crows feet, glasses askew, hair a mess? Trying to just see the happy...

missing you already

been doing this awhile now, my weary traveller
best part of business trips is the home-coming
xxxxx

Watching you disappear into clouds
To once again dance with (corporate) wolves
Protecting your flock
Providence no accident of fate
But hard-earned with your Eiffel-esque towering diligence

I imagine you hurtling into a faraway parallel universe
The land of topsy turvy
Decompressing in plastic, bland
Mini-barred cells
Where homework does not exist
Nor netball runs
Nor goodnight kisses
As you go undercovers
Not our own

It is easy to let you fly
Hard to let you go
A colour lost from our rainbow
The bass missing from our now-too-shrill
familial chorus
I have a hankering for
The rumble of your freight train snore
That keeps the night on track
There is no solace in the tiresome silence
(be careful what you wish for)
Detesting the absence of your throaty reassurance

There is so much air and space between us
Yet you never get a page ahead in the story
Absence never makes your heart go wander
So fly high
(But not too close to the sun)
Fly safe, fly home
Knowing you are always
in sight, in mind

Bunnies in the oven

I often idly think about writing a parenting book based soley on warnings. Eg- to all young, enthusiastic, naive parents – do not start family traditions, especially those tied up with mythical holiday figures, that you are not prepared to continue with for years and years, long past the point of novelty wearing off. Do NOT, I repeat do NOT come up with cute, creative and complicated easter egg hunts if you don’t want to be forced to continue to be cute, creative and complicated forever or risk ruining the myth for those fresh-faced innocents. It’s a hard thing to justify trying to convince kids that the Easter Bunny was just really tired this year or couldn’t be bothered LOL There are so many wellmeaning, misguided rods in/on ?? this back of mine, that it's really a wonder I can even sit down anymore. The girls do a great chorus of “but it’s a family TRAD-I-SHUN, Mum” LOL

Anyway, I was gonna bail this year, I really was, the kids could just get a pile of chocolate on the table and then all my slack intentions were railroaded by childish excitement and memories – I swear children can smell potential maternal slothfulness and rev their manipulative joy up a gear quickly to get me guilt-stricken and beholden again. We spent Easter at my parents’ house in Ocean Grove, it’s been some time since we were there at Easter and Amy was raving about the wonderful Easter Bunny treasure hunt they had there “remember, he left us a real letter and we all had bags and all the eggs had Hi-5 stickers on them and I had Tim and Sophie had Nathan and Kate had Charlie and we had to search all over the house and it was the bestest Easter ever! I hope we can do that again”. Dammit! And she would have been only about 4 at the time and I can’t believe she can remember the whole thing so vividly. So the Easter Bunny was up at midnight with a couple of drinks under her belt (Mr Bunny fast asleep and snoring like a steam train), whacking eggs and plush toys in all sorts of really quite amusing places. Fortunately the kids are macabre enough to love the sight of plush rabbits hidden in the oven in a baking tray and it gave EB a few giggles at midnight too LOL Hey, whatever gets you through the hunt… ;)

And can’t pass up the opportunity to have a rant about Easter excess while I’m here. Back when I was a kid (start rolling your eyes here, I’m used to it) and dinosaurs roamed the earth, the only person we got Easter eggs from was the Easter Bunny. These days, my girls get a couple of kilos of chocolate from each set of indulgent grandparents, more from doting aunts and now they’re even bringing truckloads home from school courtesy of friends and teachers. The Easter Bunny is completely redundant, but unfortunately unable to sit back and retire with a nice big payout, but instead ends up having to sneakily bring very small amounts of chocolate that still look exciting (hence the chocolate Cluedo game – how cool is that? And plush animals because lord knows we don’t have enough of them around here…)

Anyway, getting off track mid-rant, the amount of chocolate the girls get is blardy ridiculous and has turned me into the Easter Nazi - probably closely related to the Christmas Grinch - (turn away from the horror now Susannah, I am your worst nightmare) who insists on monitoring and rationing out every morsel of chocolate the girls are allowed to eat. It’s not the calories, the health ramifications, not even the potential dentist bills, it’s the crazy sugar high/inevitable post sugar high plummet that I can’t, I really just can’t deal with. And it’s school holidays - I have nowhere to hide for weeks LOL At the paltry rate I dole out and the sky-high pile of confectionery here, we’ll still be eating eggs at Christmas, maybe we can leave them out for Santa ;)

Still gotta love pics of happy kids in flan pjs holding up their score. :-)