When Rose wants to tell you something she prefers to do it in the context of a question and answer. She’s developed this complicated way of asking you a question that she actually wants you to ask her. It goes something like this:

Rose: Is it yummy?

Me: Is it yummy?

Rose: Yes!

She also uses it to indicate what she wants to do. Such as:

Rose, obviously bored: What park do you want to go to Rosie?

[Pause]

Rose: ROSE! What park do you want to go to!

Me, sighing: Rose, what park do you want to go to?

Rose, grabbing her things: Camperdown Park!

It’s kinda cute. Very smart. And a little odd.

And speaking of cute, smart and odd, I got her all dressed up for her day care photo today. Here she is wearing the party dress I made her. Damn it if you don’t just want to reach out and grab her little cheeks.

The last thing I feel like doing is uploading pictures from Tess’s party right now. Not that it wasn’t a fun party, or a really happy day for our little family, or a nice time with our friends, because it was all of those things. It’s just that my Nana is not well right now and I’m feeling very sad about it. However, I know that she’d also love to see some pictures, so I’m really doing this for her.

Tess blowing out the candle on her cupcake!

Rose had a ball at the party. Every time I looked for her she was dancing in the middle of the room. Or opening one of Tess's presents.

Party food! I also made cupcakes for the birthday cake.

How many family portraits of us are there? Hardly any. Still couldn't get the kids to look at the camera, though!

Cleaning up after Tess's party was like cleaning up after a keg party. Toddler's can party like teenagers!

I just uploaded some new photos to our online album. Here’s a few of my favourites:

Rose in her bumblebee costume for Halloween (I made the tutu). How funny that her friend Percy came dressed as the same thing!

We visited our friends Paul and Petra the other week in their new house. Rose found her way in to Percy's bed. You can see from their expressions what fun they were having!

Isn't she the most adorable baby EVER?

Beau, Julia and I working our way through an incredible spread in the Megalong Valley tea rooms

We just got back from a delicious meal of fish and chips down at Glebe Point, watching the boats go by and the sun set over the Anzac Bridge. On the way back Chris and I fell into a trans-fat related stupor but both revived when we both heard Rose say, “I make the car better!” We turned around at exactly the same time and saw Rose pulling a huge chunk out of the car. She appeared to be pulling some large plastic moulding holding the door in the door frame. Chris said firmly, “Rose, NO! Don’t pull bits off the car. We need the car to go places.” (What is it about Toddlers that make you strangely specific in the way you talk about things.)

Further on down the road we heard Rose saying to herself, “I put it away for later.”

Little Rose doesn’t want it to be Tess’s birthday. Well, she does and she doesn’t. She wants the chocolate crackles I’ve been promising. And the cupcakes, and the chips, and the balloons. But she doesn’t like the small mound of gifts that we’ve been describing as “Tess’s presents”. She’s finding it hard to understand that it was Mama’s birthday a few weeks ago, and now it’s Tess’s and when the heck is hers? Last night she even went as far as saying that she was turning one soon, when she knows full well that she’s two.

Truth be told she’s been going through a lot. She moved up to the giraffe room last week (the mostly 2-3 year old room). There are some things she loves about the new room, such as being able to help herself to water from a water cooler (my thoughts: are they insane?), and having free access to her school bag all day so that she can get her beloved rabbit Patch out whenever she wants it. But there are also some new things about the giraffe room to adjust to, such as the fact that they don’t have a dedicated sleeping room, they just pull the toddler beds out when it’s nap time. And she no longer has Ryoko her favorite carer with her. Also, one big change is that they’re toilet training her. After months of toilet refusal at home when Chris picked her up from day care last week she was actually sitting on the toilet peeing by herself. Woah. All this change has made her pretty temperamental and clingy at home. It probably hasn’t helped that we’ve had a lot of visitors lately. While we’ve had a lot of fun it must seem somewhat like a revolving door to her.

And of course there’s another big change next week: I go back to work. Yikes!

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!

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.

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.

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

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!