Primed for government work

Ellie is rule-obsessed. Even her imaginative play is completely rule-bound, which makes it challenging for other kids (including Stephanie) to play with her and remain within all set parameters. Over the course of the summer holidays, we tried to create opportunities for her to live free from so many rules, such as water play or free art time where we emphasize how fun it is that there are "no rules!"


We've had mixed success with this training, as evident by this little snippet from this afternoon's painting on tree bark. As we set up, Ellie explained,

There are only two rules:

The rule is you have to use a lot of paint to make nice color on bark.

The other rule is there are no rules.

Those are the only rules! Just two!

I think we're making headway, don't you?

If the goggles fit, wear 'em!

Stephanie had her first swimming lesson today, and she is particularly proud of her new goggles. In fact, she's still wearing them. Three hours now and counting...

Back to "normal"

I've just uploaded a large batch of photos to the computer, and you've missed a lot of great stuff! I know I keep saying this, but I really need to get back into the blogging habit here. So many moments, big and small, so worth sharing with you. We've had a lot of big changes in the past few months. First the move, then Oma arriving, then Ellie's school holidays, then Oma leaving, then Ellie's new school year...whew! Today was the first day in a LONG time that felt "normal", and the familiar is such a wonderful thing. Just how "normal" was it? Stephanie went to bed and SLEPT within minutes. This has not happened since the move. Every night has been a two-hour (or more) battle of wills...but tonight, she slept. It's probably fair to say that it finally felt normal to her too. We had such a great weekend together as a family, especially yesterday, and today was routine. That is so comforting to a small child, and we like it too.


Yesterday, we decided to get out and about a bit, and we made reservations for lunch at the Millbrook Winery in Jarrahdale, about an hour's drive from home. To make it more enticing for the kids, Markus located a new playground friends had recommended we visit. They had dubbed it the "Dr. Seuss playground", and we were intrigued.



Aside from the red and white striped poles reminiscent of the Cat in the Hat's hat, we couldn't see much Dr. Seuss about the place...but the girls LOVED it!




Stephanie climbed up and jumped from the little mounds over and over and over again.




Ellie thoroughly tried out just about everything.



They would have stayed and played happily for quite a long time, but that vicious Aussie sun drove us back to the car and on to Jarrahdale, where we stopped at a little roadside shop/cafe for a snack and a short walk before Mama and Papa enjoyed lunch at the winery (and the girls enjoyed the bread). On the drive home, we stopped at the zoo for an hour or so. The girls had fallen asleep in the car, so they missed seeing this:



In case you heard about the fires in Perth yesterday, this is the closest we got. Although our house smelled strongly of smoke due to open windows upstairs, the damage was in the hills, miles from us. For now, the only news I've heard is there are no fatalities (thank God!), but dozens of homes were lost as the fires raged out of control in very strong winds yesterday (gusts up to 60kmph). Australia is really copping it this year on the natural disasters front. The fires here are always a summer threat, but it's worse this year because of such low rain this past winter; the land is bone dry. Queensland was just hit with a record-breaking cyclone. Catastrophic floods in and around Brisbane before that. The word is that this is all due to La Nina, a phenomenon that should abate after summer. Let's hope so.

Meet Baby Harrison

Our nephew Harrison Kendell Salter was born just a few hours ago. He weighs in a 8lbs 6 oz and stretches to 22 inches long. He and his parents are doing well! Here he is with his very proud papa:



Congratulations Elizabeth and Matt, and welcome Baby Harrison!

41!

Every year, Markus tells me he doesn't need to celebrate his birthday, and every year, I tell him that's just crazy talk. We keep it simple, but we definitely try to make it special! Given that Wednesday was Australia Day (a public holiday), Markus took Thursday and Friday off too, making it a five-day birthday weekend! Hooray!


The girls helped make this birthday banner before breakfast (nice alliteration!). Of course, we enjoyed Geburtstagsbrezel complete with birthday song and candle for breakfast. Start the day right is what we say!

Thanks to a cyclone somewhere off the Western Australian coast, by 8am the thermometer looked like this in the shade.


Yow. We opted for a day inside, and we headed to the Maritime Museum in Fremantle. After a quick browse around (we were just there on Monday), we enjoyed a snack in the cafe and then participated in some school holidays craft time. The girls really enjoyed it, and it kept us busy for the entire morning. Then, it was time to head home and enjoy a rare treat: lunch out! We walked over to Maretti's (Italian bistro), just close to our house. The lunch was fantastic, leaving us with that lazy, relaxed and happy feeling that a great meal can bestow. At home again, the girls danced to the ballet recital DVD as Mama knit and Papa snoozed on the couch. (I'm so out of the habit of blogging that I didn't think to take any photos; sorry)

Once the DVD was over, Markus decided to have craft time with the girls. Grandmary sent him a really cool ship-in-a-bottle kit that he and Ellie couldn't wait to try, so they worked on that while Stephanie glued tissue paper to cardstock in artful ways. By the time they were done, Ellie was trashed and very whiny (unfortunately rather common these days). During the course of a particularly fussy spree, she accidentally dropped the newly completed ship-in-a-bottle on the tile floor, where it promptly shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. Much wailing and screaming and carrying on followed (all Ellie, in case you were curious). Father of the Year soothed her expertly while an exasperated Mama crawled around on hands and knees with a broom.


When the wailing finally ceased, Papa took all the kids to the beach, where they are playing away in the surf.


Happy Birthday, Papa! We love you!

Not to be outdone by her younger sister...

And I know what I know...

And I know what's going to happen!

I'm not sure where this song came from, but I'm very impressed with its duration and all the intense emotions she tries to convey in her performance. The nodding of the head, the large drawing in of breath...diva in the making (oh my).

Must have chocolate cake!

Yesterday, I tried to explain to Ellie the concept of New Year's Eve. It's pretty abstract for a child to understand, but she definitely latched onto the idea of celebrating! Ever since we attended a friend's birthday party where there were sparklers on the cake, she has not stopped asking for some sparkler action of her own! We agreed that New Year's would be a great opportunity to enjoy a cake with sparklers. She immediately elaborated that it must be a double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting decorated with Smarties and butterfly sprinkles. She woke me up at 5:15 this morning, insisting that it was time to make cake! Yow. It was all I could do to hold her off until this afternoon, when we finally got the cake started. She had a blast!




We had to wait ages for it to fully cool so we could decorate it. I tried to time it so it wouldn't be ready until after dinner, though this pushed the girls' patience to the limit. Ellie took responsibility for the Smarties (those are like M&Ms), and Stephanie was designated sprinkle patrol to finish the cake beautifully.





Of course, once the sparklers were lit, the girls had misgivings...




There were absolutely no misgivings about the chance to eat a HUGE piece of chocolate cake for dessert.



HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! The morning started before 6 (as usual), but with this cuteness:



We try to keep a small Christmas. From us, the girls received new fairy dresses (fairies are soooo popular here!) and ukuleles! The ukuleles were a last minute idea, inspired by their newfound love of Elizabeth Mitchell's Sunny Day album, and this video in particular. They have had so much fun randomly plucking and strumming away. Now, we need to get ourselves a book on how to play (and how to tune...).



In the afternoon, they made quick work of the gingerbread house they'd helped decorate earlier in the week.

Then, it was time to go back to the beach! Stephanie skipped her nap but fell asleep on the five minute drive to the beach. She stayed asleep despite the hot temps and searing sun. We tried to make her a little shady spot, and we mostly succeeded in keeping her protected as she dozed. What a gorgeous day!




Today (Boxing Day) was searing hot. The thermometer read just over 40C (that over 100F) and the sun was absolutely brutal. None of us wanted to go out this afternoon. When Stephanie and I wandered across the street to the grocery store just before 6pm, she said we should have put on sunscreen so we didn't get burned. It was still midday brutal even then. And tomorrow is supposed to be just as bad if not worse before the weather reverts back to normal. Yow. Christmas Down Under!

Christmas Eve Down Under

No pictures today, so those of you in the cold winter won't be tempted to throw things at us.

A cyclone in the north has been giving Australia the strangest weather this week! We've had rain in the summer (never happens!) and Melbourne had SNOW (in the summer!). It's been cool-ish, but the forecast was for nasty heat (39C) and humidity once the clouds moved out. We expected to spend Christmas hiding in the air conditioning. Instead...yes, the humidity came, but nothing New Orleans and Dohot veterans can't handle. The heat wasn't bad at all (closer to 30C), and there was a sea breeze. The sea breeze was so cool that there was a fog over the sea, which I've never before seen on a sunny summer day (Markus had many times in Cape Town). We spent a gorgeous afternoon playing in the beautiful Indian Ocean, jumping waves, splashing about and building sandcastles at the edge of the surf. It was heavenly! We were so aware that fortunate people are able to pay out big money to spend their vacations doing just that...and we live here! We feel very blessed.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Terrible Twos

Well, it has finally happened. Stephanie seems to have officially hit the Terrible Twos. It just took us a while to recognize the syndrome, because the symptoms are very atypical. The massive increase in tantrums, the screaming and wailing and crying and shouting and red-in-the-face meltdowns...just don't happen. She's not an angry character. She's a peaceful, easy character...as long as she is allowed to set all terms. And have 110% of your attention. She won't have a fit if you don't pay attention, but you can bet she'll hop on the chance to get up to a mighty amount of mischief in a hurry.

She is an opportunist. It's like we have to baby-proof the house. She's into everything and using it in a the most devious ways. Although art supplies have been accessible since she was a baby, she is (for the first time) using them to draw on furniture, toys and books. Scissors definitely had to go out of reach, as did paint and glue. Toothpaste has been the #1 target for a few weeks now. We've had to be sure to keep all toothpaste well out of reach. She lets us know when there are weaknesses in our defenses. I thought my medicine cabinet was high enough, but apparently, the bottom shelf was not. One evening, while Markus thought she was with me and I thought she was with him, she was actually redecorating our bedroom with toothpaste.




The scene of the crime. Sigh.
Sugar has also become a major subject of adventurous pursuit now that we have a pantry. We moved the sugar pot to high ground, but she will eat it right out of my teacup before I can pour in the tea. A few nights ago, I was awakened after midnight to a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by Stephanie wailing for "Mama Papa Mama Papa!" I flew down the stairs to find her at the bottom of the pantry (on top of the thankfully unbroken wine bottles; ouch). She had dragged three chairs into the kitchen before finally scaling the shelves unaided. I'm not entirely sure if she was even awake at the time. It's crazy.

Stephanie is happiest when naked, and keeping her clothed in public is a real effort. She has also adopted the Aussie need to be shoeless. When she does wear shoes, they are inevitably on the wrong feet and there will be no correcting them. We have learned to dress her in the only two dresses she owns that zip up the back so she can't strip the moment she gets a chance. Of course, she now recognizes this property of those dresses and lets her extreme aversion to them be known. Fortunately, we are in summertime and it's usually warm enough not to fuss about clothes at home. A recent odd patch of cool weather really pushed us to our limits trying to keep her dressed and healthy, but other than that, we shrug it off and let her enjoy her "nackedei" status.


The only exception to the no-clothing rule is dress up clothes. She has gotten into that phase in a major way! She loves to dress up in princess or ballet clothes. But no underwear is permitted. Ever.


So what makes this abundant cuteness qualify for the "terrible" twos? It's not the behavior. It's the relentlessness. She never lets up, from dawn until well after dark, she craves and requires CONSTANT attention; without it, mayhem ensues and rapidly (Ellie is quick to jump on and increase the speed of the mayhem bandwagon once Stephanie gets it going). Though rarely naughty, she is very mischievous and she does delight in pissing Ellie off when Ellie presents herself as an easy target (her whining and fussing has taken off proportionate to Stephanie's new crazy).

Stephanie's days run from around 5am to 9pm, which is far longer than I like my own days to run. It doesn't leave Markus or myself with any real downtime during the week, and the weekends aren't enough to compensate much of the time. We're exhausted and it's getting harder to keep up. All the things I used to count on doing during her resttime can no longer be counted upon to happen at all. I'm behind on just about everything. The only reason I got this blog post done is that the girls were (mostly) playing together quite well, with the exception of a couple of minutes ago when they used my focus on the computer as an opportunity to try to invade Oma's room during her nap (I had to run at top speed to snatch up Little (naked) Monkeypants and intervene just in time). Oy.

The Terrible Twos are here.

What a week!

It's been nearly two weeks since I've posted, and it's been full! Ellie finished school for the year last Friday. In Australia, the school year follows the calendar year, giving the kids the summer off like everywhere else except summer is over the Christmas holidays here. She'll go back in February and Stephanie won't be far behind her (eek!).

The day before school let out, her school held its annual school concert. It was ridiculously long and poorly planned (yes, the administration is getting a mad mama letter). Someone thought it would be brilliant to combine one song per class with a "graduation" speech night from 2 board members and 5 middle school kids, keeping dozens of 3-5 year olds and their families stuck in an auditorium until well past bedtime. This would have been a recipe for total mayhem anywhere else, but Montessori kids are such troopers. They sat patiently and quietly on the stage floor throughout the whole silly proceeding, from 6pm to 8:30pm (see why I'm unamused?)! Poor Ellie was so exhausted and miserable by the time we got her home, and then she had to go to school again the next day for a half-day. At least she could look forward to it because it was a party day. Otherwise, we would have kept her home. And it's just as well that she wasn't home. Papa had to take the day off to look after me!

Over half-way through the lengthy concert, I felt my leg falling asleep. Stephanie had been in my lap (exhausted too) the whole time, and her weight was getting to me. I thought I'd get up to stretch, not realizing my foot had already fallen asleep. Thank goodness I passed her to Markus before I stood up, because I went down HARD. I'd gotten dressed up for the Christmas theme, so I fell off my heels and torqued my foot between our row and the row of seats in front of us. The pain was searing, but for the sake of all eyes (especially Stephanie's), I just sat down and breathed hard for a long while. I managed to hobble, shoeless, to the car when the concert was over, supporting my weight on Markus's shoulder. He was on his motorcycle, so I drove us home using one big toe on the pedals (thank goodness no emergency braking was required!). Within an hour of that, I couldn't put any weight on it at all. Markus went out to the late-night pharmacy to rent me some crutches, and he had to stay home on Friday to drive Ellie to and from school and me to and from the doctor and the radiology clinic. Woo-hoo!

Fortunately, the x-ray showed nothing interesting. The doctor said it was probably a ligament, but if the damage didn't self-heal within a week, it might be a hairline fracture and I should come back. It's been a week now, but I've been off crutches since Monday. Markus had to be at work this week, so it's good that I could get back to mobility. I overdid it and my foot still hurts (worse today than other days, alas), but it's a lot better. Thank goodness.

This has been Ellie's first week home, and she's been adjusting to the big change in her routine. There has been a lot of whining, crying, and even hitting (hooray for learning from the other kids at school, sigh), and the tantrums have flown a bit too freely for my preference...but we think this will settle down as she does too. Mostly, we can tell she is thrilled to be home! She and Stephanie are great playmates, and Ellie is getting on quite well with Oma too.


Stephanie's sleep may be very slowly returning to normal. The newest development is that she is at the age when dreams become more vivid, and she's been sleeping fitfully. She might even be a sleep-walker. We had a strange episode in the middle of the night last night that makes me wonder, but time will tell. So far, Stephanie and Oma aren't sure of each other. Oma definitely prefers Ellie's orderliness and predictability to Stephanie's bohemian nudity and surprising resolve.


We'll continue to watch their relationship unfold, though I've got a separate blog post ready to go about a particularly funny encounter.

Markus will have a half-day at work today, and then he will only work two days next week before having a good bit of holiday at home himself. We're so happy!

Tenacious

Yesterday morning, I took Ellie to a birthday party. Skipping a shower, I wore my hair in a ponytail, which did not meet Stephanie's approval upon my return home. She insisted I take it out. She stomped. She sulked. She grumped. She wanted that ponytail gone. I, however, refused to cave, seeing it as no major affront to her health and well-being and therefore not a priority issue. Eventually, she stopped mentioning it and I figured we had moved on. I, of course, forgot who I was dealing with.

From Merriam-Webster.com
per·se·ver·ance noun \ˌpər-sə-ˈvir-ən(t)s\
Definition of PERSEVERANCE
: continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition : the action or condition or an instance of persevering : steadfastness

Hours later, as I was cooking dinner, Stephanie started dragging a chair across the floor. We asked what she was doing, and she stated matter-of-factly that she wanted to "get the ponytail." We didn't understand what she meant. Here's what she had in mind:



If you look up "tenacious", you may find this pictorial sequence:



The last photo in the series might also be found under the definition for "stinker."

Nikolastag

Today was Nikolastag. In the German tradition, Saint Nikolas visits in the night and leaves treats in the children's shoes. Despite lingering wariness of Santa Claus, Ellie was well-familiar with this tradition via her current adoration of the Conni books and she's been looking forward to Nikolastag for weeks! She was thrilled when she woke up this morning to discover Nikolas had left her and Stephanie matching necklaces and chocolates!

Of course, later Oma arrived and brought with her an extra treat each from Nikolas. What an exciting day!

Oma is here!

Oma arrived today for a 3 month stay. I have to say, the initial introduction could not have gone better! Stephanie is quite shy around strangers, so we weren't sure how it would go. She hasn't seen Oma since she was 6 months old, and Oma doesn't have internet for skype. That effectively makes Oma a stranger, but that's not how it played out at all! Thank goodness Mary and Mimi already visited us this year! Their visits prepped the girls for Oma, and the girls were ready to welcome her with open arms and minds. We all enjoyed a fun, happy dinnertime together before Oma headed to bed. Stephanie is wired and still up, but that's pretty typical these days (alas). Everyone is happy. Hooray!