Hiatus

We’ve been super busy lately. A few weeks ago my mum came to stay for a week, and then at the tail end of that visit Chris’s parents were here. They left a few days ago. Tonight my Canadian friends Beau and Julia arrive for 10 days. Rose is moving up a room at her day care tomorrow. Then there’s a Halloween party I’m making costumes for, Tess’s first birthday party on the 7th and my return to work on the 9th. We’re all exhausted. Happily exhausted.

So yeah, don’t expect any blog updates soon. I haven’t even been taking any photos lately. It’s actually been really nice to take a break from the chronicaling.

One thing to share is the invite I made for Tess’s birthday party. Super cute, eh!

Locomotion

Leaving Tess for five days was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Every night we were in Melbourne I would go to sleep with her face in my thoughts. Her big beautiful smile, her fluffly [sic] hair, her soft clean smell. My hip ached where she should be.  My face felt less smiley because I didn’t have her beautiful smile to return. Her small rosebud lips were burned into my retina so that when I closed my eyes they were all I could see. Tess belongs with me.

Anyway, seeing her again at the airport was one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever experienced. Even though she had her patch on she could see it was me (or maybe she could also hear is was me!), her face cracked open like the sun coming out from behind a rain cloud, and all was right.

But she’d also changed. How could she change while I was gone? It was only 5 days! She had changed in the best possible way: she was moving. Tess started “commando” crawling while I was away. She uses her elbows and knees to push herself along. It’s not the classic crawling that Rose did, but it’s definitely locomotion. She can get across the room pretty quickly now, especially if she spies some white paper. (White paper is her most desired object of affection! Mmmm, yummy, white paper.) But I’ve been around enough babies to know that not all kids do classic crawling. Bum shuffling, crab calling, babies do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Lessons in politeness #481

This morning Rose and I were in the back yard cleaning the stroller. For some reason Rose really got into the task, insisting on having her own cloth and being very methodical about dipping the cloth into the soapy water and wiping it on the stroller.

At one point she put the cloth down and looked around, and then leaned over and wiped her hands in my hair. Yes, her dirty hands in my hair. I then found myself in the strangest position of having to explain to her that it was impolite to wipe your hands in other people’s hair. Definitely a no-no.

Chicken casserole

This just in from our house:

Chris: That chicken casserole that you made the girls smells delicious!

Me: I know! But it’s so weird making food that you aren’t going to taste.

Chris: If I was a toothless meat-eater I’d be scoffing it.

We both look at Tess.

Tess: pfffffssssssssslllllllllllggggggg

Down the back of the chair

Me: Rose, look what I just found down the back of the chair! Your soft toy echidna*!

Rose: Yay!

Me: What do you think he was doing back there? Taking a nap?

Rose: No, he was having a time out.

(*I know what you’re thinking. Who has a toy echidna? We got it when we signed up for a yearly pass to the Australian Museum and you know what it’s like – hard to throw stuff away, even free stuff. But now that I reflect on it we also have a soft toy skunk, soft toy turtle, a soft toy Jeremy Fisher, and a soft toy duck. So I guess we are actually soft toy echidna people.)

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I know you’re all dying to know about the Melbourne visit, but life will have to become a little less hectic in order for me to get some time at the computer. So yeah, maybe 2010? In the meantime, I’ve uploaded some photos. You can see how much fun we had!