The New Bike – Part 2.

The flow on effect. One child grows out of a bike and so it is passed down to the next child. We are being extra ambitious with Hamish. We are not putting on any training wheels.

What? Isn’t that a disaster just waiting to happen? I do think it’ll take a bit longer, yes. But Hamish has been on a balance bike since he was two, so he knows how to keep upright and steer. He is so good at it that he looks like one of those circus clowns on a mini bike that splay their legs out the side aeroplane style.

Two year old Hamish on his balance bike.

When we put him on he needs someone to hold him up. And on his first try, because he’s never really pedaled while riding, he needs to build up his leg muscles. He wants to push down instead of forward which always finds the back brake. So he goes forward and then stop, forward, stop. But after a break and a second time round he gets the pedaling right.

So he is not there yet, but by the end of the first practice Fletch could let him go for a seconds. Hamish would take off, guffaw and chuckle at his own success “I’m doing it on my own! Haaawww-haaww-haw,” and then wobbles due to lost concentration. We set him straight, let him go. Same reaction. Patience is the key…

“Concentrate Hamish” he tells himself.

Today brings no words, just a new way to keep fit!

The New Bike – Part 1.

Today marks the end of summer holidays. Tomorrow Dylan goes into second grade. They have changed and grown so much and I know that when I drop him off I’ll have a very different boy to the one I waved good-bye to this time last year. This year he knows who he is going to have in his class (the beauty of Facebook school networks). He has a best friend and many other mates that he seen over a string of holiday birthday parties. He has the right school supplies as the stationery list does not seem nearly as mystifying to his mother as last year (also thanks to the Facebook school network). He has a whole new summer wardrobe as he has grown out of everything. Perfect timing as everything has gone on summer clearance here. The sales are amazing and I buy $20 shorts for $3. I really do mean I bought him a whole new wardrobe! Clothes over here are amazing like that.

He has also out-grown his bike and our very nice landlords gave us one. A really good one. We had just been down to the bike shop looking for sizes and they told us that he was between sizes. The next size up, he would grow out of very quickly and the one after that would be too big for him right now. We were at a crossroads and were still trying to decide which one to get.

It’s a little big but in 6 months time it’ll be perfect size.

So this bike is the grow into size. We’ve put the seat right down and he can touch with the pedals. But I’ve noticed that he needs to learn a little more control with stopping. He almost took out Hamish with the handle bars which are just at Hamish’s head height. Luckily Ham had a helmet on or he would have had a nice bruise on his head.

We let him ride around the two cul de sacs that come off our street. He was so proud of the independence that comes from having those apron strings cut. He doesn’t have to go in circles around the pathway and lawn. We tell him to watch for cars and then anxiously send him out on the road. I imagine we’ll feel this exact same way the day he drives off in a car for the first time on his own too.

Anyway, I was inside pottering around when Dylan walks in. “I scratched a car,” he tells me and my immediate reaction was an audible gasp. He ran to his bedroom crying. I did not have to get mad at him, he was upset at himself enough. One minute later Husband walked in. I asked him what happened. He said he didn’t know, Dylan was carrying on too much.

So we left him in his room to calm down. I wanted to storm in there and tell him to pull himself together but I stayed away and he eventually comes out. “Start from the beginning and tell me what happened,” I say calmly. “Well I was turning around in the cul de sac and my bike hit a car and I scratched it.” I tell him it is good that he came to us, but we have to go down there and talk to the owner. There are lots of other little kids down in the cul de sac and we would hate for them to get blamed.

So Fletch and Dylan set of. I watch from the front porch, trying to get a better view of where exactly this vehicle collision had taken place. His little body language says it all, walking slowly with his head hung low and shoulders hunched. He walked out the door muttering to himself to stop crying because he looked like a moron. (Where did he learn that?). Ten minutes later they are back. Fletch had knocked on the door and a big burly ex-military type answered. He had said that the neighbourhood kids had actually seen the whole thing and told him what had happened and he’d been out assess damage. He comes home and we talk about all the things that can be learnt from this. There actually wasn’t any damage. Just an over-reaction from Dylan.

And as for Hamish, he had his eye on Dylan’s old bike and that in itself is a story worthy of its own post!

Today brings no words, and hopefully no more crashes into parked cars.

I Heart Books

Our Little Bookworm.

A friend recently asked me if I read ebooks and until our trip away, I never had. I had every intention of taking my Game of Thrones graphic novel and I had it waiting with my iPad on my night stand ready to put in my bag the morning we were starting our trip. Fletch in the morning pack-up-and-dash, picked up my iPad and charger. But no book. Actually I was just grateful he picked up the iPad which is my third child. Cannot go without!

I figured that I did not need the extra weight anyway and I had the great idea to have a look at what the public library had to offer. I also had some overdue library books. I love that I can be on the other side of the country and still login and renew books, borrow some ebooks and even magazines. So how on earth do you borrow an e-book? Well, the Library has an app that you download, you login and then you can see what ebooks the library has on offer. Sometimes, just like a normal library collection, they will only have a few copies of the e-book, so you place yourself on a waiting list and get an email when its ready to down load. You have 21 days to read it and then poof! It disappears, or you return it early if you finish it or do not like it.

I also go to the iTunes store and download samples of books. I have a short attention span and there’s nothing worse than buying a book and deciding after a few chapters that it’s not my cup if tea. Ebooks are a great way of seeing if I want to really read the book. Magazines are another American fascination of mine. We have a few subscriptions and as I’ve explained before, they are cheap – it can cost the same amount to sign up to a year subscription as it does to buy one issue on the stand. The downside is they have LOADS of advertising and are not of a particularly high standard. I flick through them when I have an hour or so to spare (that’s without children nagging at me for food or other said child emergency) and then they are ready for the recycling pile. Disposable entertainment, trashy trash. Why not.

And the library also has magazine subscriptions to these so I can download the latest ‘People‘ (Who Weekly in Australia), look through the fancy cooking magazines and marvel at all the things I’ll never be bothered to cook. (I should have known better when the title is called Southern Living. ) And then, delete – no wastage, saved a tree, brilliant.

Back to the story, I found an e-book, I downloaded it and it was good. The Dinner by Herman Koch. It starts with two couples meeting to discuss an issue about their children and as the dinner progresses chapter by chapter, course by course, you find out more about them and the incident they came to discuss. It is so good. As I was saying to my friend, it is like you could be sitting there at the table with them as another party guest. Finding out who these people are, about their lives and issues. Very clever writing and sets a quick pace. Every chapter is like a small bite, settling in your mouth, then stomach and waiting to see what morsel will be delivered next.

And as much as I love reading this on the iPad, which I always have with me, I still came home  from holidays and borrowed it from the library in hard copy. Why is this I wonder? I like flipping pages, and looking at my ornate, cute magnetic bookmarks that clasp onto the page. I discovered these when Dylan was a toddler. (No more lost places due to inquisitive child wondering what is sticking out of book!). I love looking at how many pages I’ve gotten through reading, that sense of accomplishment for getting through 5 pages without being disturbed by child emergency! Quick, can I get in one more. And I like being able to flip through to see how far till the next chapter ends and the space between the unread pages and cover get thinner and thinner.

So what can I say, Would i be considered ‘old school’ Librarian? I love my technology, but there’s just something about the good old book. Ok. Bun down, glasses off, cardigan neatly pressed and folded.

Today brings no words, just some nerdy Librarian confessions.

The Swim.

Today I went around to the local pool here. It’s a lovely beautiful pool, befiting the also lovely beautiful weather. My kids love using the pool. But because we are renting we cannot just go there when we feel like it and pay to get in. And people in the community wait up to three years before they are offered a membership. So when my friend calls out of the blue to go with her, we jump at the chance.

It will make the day go quicker I think to myself as I’d already taken the boys grocery shopping and told them I wasn’t planning to do much else and they would need to play at home. We’d spent yesterday driving to three different sets of shops to get school supplies (school starts next week) and Hamish has summer school tomorrow so I wanted to have a quiet day. But an unplanned pool date sounds like fun and when we get up there, laden with water squirters and pistols it does not take long for them to get in and splashing. And that should be the end of it right?

I tell Hamish that he needs to stay where he can touch and not to go too deep. But in his quest to keep up with his big brother this request is as painful as pulling teeth. For the most part if he wants to get the big kids attention, he runs around the side of the pool, getting them with his squirter.

I chat away with my friend, we talk about holidays, school, books, children (of course) and she is looking at her two in the water and one toddling around by our feet and I am looking at my two. But I am not really looking. Even though the whole time I am facing Hamish I am not seeing what he is doing. He has decided to sit on the bench in the deep end of the pool. Now by deep end I am only talking 3 and half feet of water. But it does not register. The hyper alert me would have scolded him to get back where he can touch but because his head is above the water and he is sitting there in the water calmly with two seven year olds the alarm did not trigger. Being a child that doesn’t stay still for long, he is fidgeting and comes off the little bench. The next 3 – 5 seconds is a blur.

I see his head under the water and I am yelling at the life guard, pointing over to the area and simultaneously running about 10 meters. I get there even before the life guard who is only about 5 meters away. Dylan who was standing right there had gone the first step to yell “Mum, Hamish can’t touch”. I think in the panic he did not even think what the next step was, and that’s OK. It was enough that he had called out and recognised the situation for what it was. And by the time he had yelled out I was already in there picking him up.

Once I’d calmed down I talked to the boys about what happened. Hamish instantly knew he had done the wrong thing, that he’d gone in where he wasn’t allowed. As I carry him up the shallow end he appologises softly “Sorry, sorry Mummy”. And although I am shaken, I am calm with him and tell him that it was an accident and its ok. Later on I explained to the boys, “when you can’t breathe underwater it is called drowning and it is really important to make sure you can always breath in water”. I tell Dylan that he had done the right thing getting my attention and that the next thing he could have done was help try get Hamish’s head out of the water. Hamish said he was also trying to kick back to the edge and I am really grateful that the waterskills he’s learnt from being in the water since he was 6 months old had instinctively kicked in. Could he have managed to kicked back to the edge on his own? I’ll never know as I had already scooped him out. But it is a timely reminder and wakeup call to really watch kids around water. It’s a scary lesson but the alternative is much scarier.

And for me its a reminder to really watch them. If my head had been turned the other way while I was chatting and I had not seen the whole thing I shudder to think what the outcome would have been. I think it scared the crap out of the lifeguard and so it should have. They sit there and eat snow cones and show off their tanned muscled physiques and flirt with young girls in an attempt to win them over on their summer holiday job. They slump over the chair like they are absent-mindedly watching tv at home with a leg over the side handle, I have even seen lifeguards look at phones. Yes, I was young once too but I also did not have a job, purposefully did not take a summer job, where the responsibility was so high. If you want a job that’s about socializing, go work at McDonalds or Walmart (Big W in Australia).

Am I put off returning to the pool. Not at all. I had never counted on anyone but myself to watch the kids in the first place and so I berate myself harder than anyone else could. In fact we are off tomorrow again with another little mate of Dylan’s. Will the message have sunken in? I hope so.

Today brings no words, just a message about the importance of water safety, getting kids swimming lessons, water awareness and above all keeping an eye one them!

Seattle Games.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you would have heard of a show, or read a book called  Game of Thrones. There is even a graphic novel version. When we were in Seattle I got a chance to sit on the Iron Throne! Super cool if not a little nerdy. So I just thought I’d share the pics. It was from a Museum called EMP, which has lots of pop culture exhibitions, displays and movie props. It is broken up into genres of fantasy, Scifi, horror and music.

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There are lots of things to see in Seattle. Looking back at all our pics it makes me realise we did a lot. So here is a selection of Seattle snaps. If you are considering a trip over here, it’s definitely one place I can recommend.

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Today brings no words and props to Hamish who pulls off a good Joffrey photo.