sy park playground piccies 2

sydney park adventure playground

about a fortnite ago the new playground in sydney park opened. (the official opening is next weekend.) we've had some super fun times on the swings, the roundy-round (for lack of a better name), the musical bridge- wooden bridge with silver knobs to stomp on that then chime different notes, the mirrors that change your appearance as you move in front of them from tall and thin to fat and short, the lovely wooden wombats, the range of slides, and most particularly the sand pits that have water sprinklers built into them! percy has soaked herself and giggled and covered herself in sand quite a few times now.

quite cutely she's also dubbed the set of three wombats as "pappa", "mamma" and "percy."

i finally remembered to take the camera on thursday...

shelling peas

to make a delicious paella last week percy and paul had to shell the peas. percy really got into this old fashioned task...

tonsilitis

so that explains why she's been very miserable the last three days! after two days of not sleeping, eating barely anything and feeling warm to the touch i took percy to her doctor yesterday afternoon. we left with a diagnosis of tonsilitis; the infectious kind and a script for a run of antibiotics. i didn't even know there was more than one kind of tonsilitis, or that it could be infectious. live and learn.

it's a good thing chooken takes her medicine happily. the antibiotics are three times a day, three 1ml droppers each time, plus we've given her panadol three times now to help ease the headache that she is likely to have from the blocked ears and nose. on top of that we've given her twice now a dose of 'incremin' which is a product that is supposed to supply extra nutrients and vitamins to non-eaters. well, it actually says on the packet, poor or fussy eaters, but i figure that's what they mean.
she evens says "medicine" and tips her head back with an open mouth for the dropper. i remember trying to give her panadol months and months ago when she'd thrash and scream and wail. thank god those days seem past.

we've had a interesting development with pi too. he's actually coming to percy for a pat. perhaps he knows she's ill and wants to comfort her. it's sweet. the last three nites he has come into her bedroom while we've been reading her good nite story. she hops off my lap and as we repeat "gentle", "quiet", " softly", "sshhhh", "slowly", "gentle", "sshhh", "pi doesn't like loud noises", she will kneel next to where he has lain down and stroke him and lay her head on his side. all that stuff about animals knowing that children are different and lovely, that animals are more patient, tolerant and forgiving is true! pi won't let us touch his feet, percy gets to poke at them nearly all she likes!
oopy still moves like greased lightening when percy is in his vicinity.

the antibiotics seem to be working well. percy was very chippier today with me staying home from work to look after her.

eating adventures

i thnk percy is probably eating a sufficient quantity of food now. the variety is what gives me headaches. i think she's aiming to survive on custard and cookies. not the most nutritious of choices.
however we do convince her to try other things occasionally- roast chicken last week and garlic prawns for lunch today...

how much do you need?

really, how much is actually necessary? my conclusion is a lot less than i previously thought.
i'm talking about sleep of course. (what else, hey?)

despite all our efforts, ideas and changes percy is persisting in waking two to three times a nite. seemingly most often between 11:30pm and 3am. she doesn't need a lot of help to go back to sleep; a drink of water from her sippy cup, the blankets pulled up and some minutes of quiet 'shooshing' gets her back to sleep in around fifteen minutes. despite the shortness of these actions they fact that they occur in the middle of our sleeping time is really disruptive. our regime is largely unchanged, meaning we go to sleep no later than 10pm, often and hour or two earlier and get up when percy does- anywhere from 5:30am onwards.

i think i can function on four hours of unbroken sleep with two to four hours of crap sleep thrown in the same nite. thankfully the last few nites i've been getting the unbroken four hours from around 2am to 6am so feel relatively rested when percy decides she's keen to get on with the day.

so, 4 hours! i used to think it was 9!

conjugating and counting

percy conjugated her first verb today! she has known the word 'pat', as in 'pat the dog' for months. she likes to pat toys to sleep while playing "sleepy" on the lounge in the evening or if in the morning she comes into our bed for a fifteen minute cuddle before we can bear to crack our eyelids open she'll often give us a pat too. this morning she was seated between us, patting us both simultaneously and said 'patting.' wow!

percy also seems to be counting in binary. she'll repeat to herself while picking items up or pulling her magnets off the fridge - "two, four, six, eight." what's with that? sometimes she'll forget "four", but what happened to one, two, three, four, five, etc...?

observations in ashfield

1.
while walking about ashfield i'm given to making assumptions about the demographics of the area. i have noticed there are two very large discount chemists, at least three other chemists, a discount vitamin store and a priceline (something of a discount chemist) and about six doctors/general practitioners offices/surgeries within two blocks. me thinks the population is rather ill, or at least concerned about fending off illness.
on the other hand there are five small to large fresh fruit and vegetable stores in the same proximity. surely with all that fresh produce illness is not so prevalent?

2.
an over-heard conversation in the office today centred on the age and ability of women to bear and raise children. i'm feeling very gen x now. i believe the women whose conversation i could hear are between 7 and 12 years younger than me, childless and very gen y.
i could not help but smile when they flatly said they would not give up their lifestyle to accommodate a child. they despaired over friends or acquaintances that were no longer '48 hour party people' and that had children that were monsters. oh dear... i did hold my tongue. i considered asking them what they would do if in the situation of having no family within two hours reach, no money for bought care and a child that screamed to the point of vomiting if separated from their mother? hmmmm...

3.
contining my eavesdropping (hardly my responsibility in an open plan office) i wondered at the selfishness or maybe it's the self control of these gen y'ers. one was explaining that her and her partner have been together four years, during which they were friends first and trialled living together for six months before they committed to their relationship. perhaps it's just me but i found this odd. when i fell in love with paul it was instantaneous, it brooked no argument or dissent, it was uncontrollable, there was not any necessary logic to it and it is endless. thinking of a trial living together or wondering whether this is the match for me, for life, is causing me to giggle now- it's just untenable and unreal. maybe this is a mark against me, and that i should be more dispassionate about love. what a ridiculous statement! that's the whole point of love; it is passionate and consuming and fearless.

nothing really about percy in these observations... oh well.

times two

this morning i was lucky to look after rose for a couple of hours. she came to music class with percy and i and then down to the playground for parents group. at music it was a bit new for rose so she was content to sit on my lap and listen for most of the time. she was happy to join in with the big circle of parents and kids towards the end for singing, stomping, waddling, wing flapping and waving. percy has now settled in enough that she was fine to get along with my complete attention. we had a little issue when rose got a stamp on her hand at the beginning of class (because she was a special visitor) while percy had to wait 'til the end of class for hers. percy was not impressed as she covets those little stamps and wanted hers up front too. she came around eventually.
two activities that both girls enjoyed together was first pretending soft scarves were wings and flapping them up and down, particularly when the scarves ran over their faces. rose giggled and percy smiled, both with shining eyes during this, and second rolling and passing blow up balls back and forth.

walking down to our usual playground for parents group was slow going. i put percy in the stroller because rose is the better walker. meaing rose will stay by your side and hold your hand while percy thinks it is hilarious to dash off in the opposite direction. rose probably walked three quarters of the way, carried the rest.
it was just us at the park because everyone else was sick or otherwise unable to make it. but that was ok. there were plenty of other children, mostly girls (must be girly day out, today) at the playground. we had a fab time on all the equipment. percy even "learnt" how to push rose on the swing. i held her across my hips so that she could reach rose's back and give her a little shove. i'm not sure who liked it more- percy laughed the whole time.

heading home was slow going too. rose walked some of the way, then i swapped her into the stroller, trying to convince percy to either stay with us or help push. helping push the stroller was the best trick. she did do a few dashes back the way we had come. and then chris and sarah were waiting when we arrived. not bad timing.

i think i could do this times two gig. there's absolutely no time to stop but so long as they're both on the same sleep/ nap regime... let's not get too cocky!!

melbourne cup

percy watched the melbourne cup horse race on the teev last week. she loves horsies now. she even had her own "horse" to ride... no bets made or lost.

tessa

i know i am seriously stealing their thunder... but i had to say that our friends sarah and chris now have baby tessa, making rose a big sister! wowee.
tessa was born 3 and 1/2 weeks early, last nite at 7pm.
which means our mothers group is on to it's second round! three other mums are pregnant too.

we've elected to stay home instead of going on the blue mountains trip, and help out sarah and chris. we're only a few blocks from their home and their family is in new zealand. other friends- emma and david, are going to use the cottage we'd rented. better that someone gets to enjoy it than it sits empty.

new in november

percy keeps growing and amazing us. her comprehension and word use is continuing to gallop along. i'm convinced she understands 90% of what we say to her. she's also able to repeat every single word she hears, whether she knows what it means or the context, or not. for instance a part of one of her books that moves the tail of an animal has been repaired so many times it's just not going to work again. i told her this morning it was 'busted-arse', it's cute to hear her babbling on her way to day care saying "bus-sed-ass" over and over. or should i be appalled? (at me.)

we've also had success with a mini 'time out' behaviour modification experiment. percy still occasionally likes to put her feet on the table at meal times. paul told her firmly at dinner a few nites ago that if she did not keep her feet down then she would be put away from the table and not be able to eat. (perhaps not much of a threat for a kid that doesn't eat much in the first place.) up go the feet again, accompanied by a sly grin. paul pulled her chair away from the table while explaining why. she yelled and cried but upon returning to the table 60 seconds later kept her feet nicely under it for the remainder of a pleasant dinner. we've yet to repeat this experiment for other undesirable behaviours, maybe it was a fluke?

i think the separation anxiety is lessening. after that one horrible week of leech clamping onto my leg at day care in the mornings percy has happily waved me away with kisses this week. sleeping has been a mixed bag. she's put herself to sleep with no action from us the last two nites, but she needed some rubbing and company previous nites. thru the nite we think she is largely waking up do to feeling cold. which is saying something for sticking with sleeping bags. whenever we go in to see her she has kicked off/ squirmed out of her blankets. hard to get out of a sleeping bag. but since we took her out of the sleeping bags she's also out grown them. buying new ones the next size up is about $70 a pop. the idea of getting her out of sleeping bags was also to help with toilet training in the future. once she transfers to a bed the plan is she'll learn to take herself to the toilet thru the nite. anyways, all the pros and cons added up mean we'll stick with blankets.

sometimes percy shares beautifully, other times the world is made entirely for her benefit thank-you-very-much-i'll-have-that-now! (rising crescendo) she will offer toys to us or other kids but not very often yet. she also doesn't get waiting for a turn on the swing. tho waiting for a turn on the slide doesn't seem to be so agitating. go figure, hey? she's possessive about balls and her bike. well, the bike is kinda special, i'd probably be possessive about it too. who am i kidding, i am possessive about my bike!
she shares her meals with us too. or psyches us. meaning she holds some food out in her hand to us and says ''mamma eat" or "pappa food", then as we reach for it or lean in to have her put it in our mouths she snatches her hand back and gobbles it up herself, with a laugh! i'm sure we shouldn't encourage this but it is hilarious.

we're off to the blue mountains tomorrow with all the other parents and toddlers from parents group for two nites. staying at a family holiday place called 'federation gardens.' every one seems very keen. i'm being a bit grouchy and just seeing the long drive, the expense and the inconvenience of being away from the ready accessibility of home. i think i'll come 'round...
let you know next week.