In case you missed it…

I’ve been uploading lots of photos over at Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/essellgee/sets/72157626817280876/
Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures!

Hong Kong

I’ve uploaded some new photos of our time in Hong Kong to Flickr (click on the thumbnails for a bigger view). As you can see we’re having an amazing time. Sure, we’ve had some stressful times, but the good has most definitely outweighed the bad and I’m absolutely sure that this trip was the right thing to do. The girls are having some amazing new experiences and we’re having a really amazing family time. I’m impressed at how well the girls are adapting to a rapid amount of change, and I’ve enjoyed spending lots of time in their company.

We’ve got one more day here – and Chris’s conference has finished so it’ll be spent together. Then we’re off to London very early the next morning.

Day One

It’s amazing how bracing a 120 km/h taxi ride through the streets of Hong Kong can be, especially when there are no fully functioning seat belts in the rear seat. But believe it or not, two of us actually fell asleep.

Not me, of course, I was holding onto the girls like the rapture was upon us. Also, fortunately for us the journey was bookended by the discovery that we’re stayingin THE most amazing hotel, on the 15th floor, harbor views. It is described as a ‘budget’ option in all the guidebooks – makes me wonder what would be called ritzy in this town.

It feels like we’re in heaven, perhaps even more so because of the hellish flight. Withoutgoing in to too many details, I thought at least 52 times, “I’ve had ENOUGH!” and then had to suck it up because it was my turn to walk Tess up and down the aisles. But don’t worry, I’m forgetting it already. Especially because I can hear the snuffles subsiding in the next room, two georgeous girls going to sleep on the pull out couch.

It’s 11pm, we’ll all be wrecks tomorrow, but wow, so glad we’re here.

NOTE: I’m writing this on my iPod, apologies for any spelling issues or typos.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the strong, proud, inspiring mamas I know!

We did a bit of crafting this afternoon to celebrate mother’s day. The girls made up some “crown kits” that Granny Jo had sent.

(Yes, I know. Not the best picture. Sometimes trying to get a good shot of two moving preschoolers is hard!)

Also, this week Tess got glasses and Rose got earplugs (making bathtime a lot easier). We’ve found a similar set of trials with getting Tess to wear glasses as there have been with the patching regimen; some good days, some “oh my god it’s only 9.30am” days. But steady, incremental acceptance over a period. She will now happily wear them for about 30 minutes, which is up from 5 minutes earlier in the week. Onward and upward!

But still, she’s super cute (and she knows it!)

New photos

I’ve added some new photos to my flickr account. They tell the tale of our busy month:

Birthdays!

Rose and Tess both had hospital admissions this month

LOTS of craft

Granny Jo came to visit for a few days

Lots of work (Chris is trying to finish a book)

Fun with friends!

And a fair amount of weariness

Through the eyes of a four-year-old

Rose’s grandad bought Rose a camera for her birthday. This evening I sat down to upload a few pictures for the blog and noticed that she’d taken over 200 photos in 24 hours. The girl is nothing if not enthusiastic!

Her first photo (of my arm)

She took quite a lot of portraits of her family, like this moving one of Tess

Here’s a photo of me, a testimony to a knee-high life

Daddy, which captures his frenetic moving.

There were a serious of photos that were absolutely perplexing. Strange, childlike images of drawings or colours. Until I realised that she was taking photos of the TV.

She took one self-portrait, capturing a knowing look

…and at least 24 photos of her feet, in the car journey on the way to her fourth birthday party

She clearly found the camera too distracting at the party because there was but one, an incredible likeness of J’s grandmother, arriving with a tub full of chocolate crackles

Special Powers

Rose: Mummy, I’m a superhero.

Me: Awesome! What’s your special power?

Rose: Fairygalaba

Me: What does Fairygalaba do?

Rose: I can make other people feel very itchy whenever I want.

On the phone

Rose just spent half an hour talking to her friend Oliver in France. Half an hour! You can usually only get one or two things out of her on the phone, but she was positively garrulous tonight with Oliver. She’s getting to be such a big girl! I wish I could’ve transcribed the conversation, but she was holding on to me with a fierce grip, she was that excited and nervous.

I remember that at one point Oliver asked her about “school” (what we call day care) and she said, “I’m going really well at school at the moment.”

Adorable!

I’ve also added some photos of Rose’s 4th birthday party with our other parents group friends. We hired a play centre. It was a rainy day, so the kids pulled their fancy clothes off and ran around in the rain in the nude. It was adorable!  (I only uploaded internet-safe pictures).

Canberra

Between Christmas and New Years we took our first holiday in a year and a half. I guess were slightly burned by our last holiday to Murramurang Beach. Beach holidays with small kids are not the relaxing panacea that you think they’ll be. The constant vigilance required to keep your kids safe near water, crowded facilities, having to entertain kids without toys, etc. No, sir, going to the beach was not what we wanted to do this year.

We selected Canberra. Lots of people said we were mad: What could you possibly want to do in Canberra over the Christmas break? Isn’t Canberra about as interesting as watching parliamentary question time on TV? Well as it turns out, we’re watching-question-time kinda people. The drive to Canberra is very pleasant, taking about about 3 hours (unless someone has their fingers in your ears the whole way):

In Canberra we stayed in the most amazing serviced 3-bedroom apartment. Not only did we have full laundry facilities and a swimming pool, it was massively spacious, in fact bigger than our house in Sydney, and situated in Kingston which is one of Canberra’s few suburbs with nice cafes and pleasant walking areas. The girls shared a room, in fact Tess slept in a single bed for the first time and that side of things went great. Dad woke up one morning at 8am and everyone was still asleep!

I think it was because they were absolutely worn out by going to museums:

Yes, she’s wearing a tiara. In a science museum. Example #623 of fights I’m not prepared to have. We also visited places of national significance like parliament and the national war memorial:

Miniature park

Did I mention they had a scale replica of machu picchu and stonehenge? And a miniature railway?

We were there for five days and by the end of it I still didn’t want to leave. I was sad for missing out on the Art Gallery and Portrait Gallery and Botanic Gardens and all the other things we could’ve done. We had a blast. Lots more photos over at flickr.

A Christmas update, only two weeks old!

We had a fantastic Christmas this year. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first Christmas in our new house? Perhaps it was due to Rose’s growing understanding of Christmas and the fact that this year we did lots of fun Christmas craft and activities? Take, for example, all the little Christmas houses I made and put on the mantlepiece, opening one every day. Sometimes there was a little sticker for each of the girls, sometimes a jellybean. It was a lot of fun!

Maybe it was the fact that Grandad was here?

Somehow, even, we timed the number of presents right. There seemed like a lot but we opened them all pretty quickly and the girls were not overwhelmed.

If I can say so myself, I even aced the Christmas dinner. I made an italian spread, most of it ahead of time so low-stress, and lots of it came from our garden.

Yes, this year Christmas was ace.