Mum can I have a drum kit?

My boys are musical. There is no disputing that fact. They both play CD's all day long (often a CD player each at the same time) which does not make for a happy mum............ Oliver loves to dance and creates moves that I have never seen. He moves as his imagination guides him. William is the technician. He has a passion for CD players and speakers. He wants to know how everything works. He also wants to play the drums. My ongoing sanity has the upper hand at this point. He makes do with saucepans and plastic tubs for now.

And one year later................

Yesterday was the last day of school holidays. I was trying to think of something fun for the boys and I to do when I settled upon a train ride. We rarely catch trains as there are so few suburban routes here in Adelaide and it is just easier to take the car. However as this adventure was to be more about the trip than the actual destination we set off for the grand old Adelaide Railway Station ready for anything. The business and noise of the station set the boys' excitement high to start with. We had no time to waste in finding and boarding our train. I was able to spend a fairly leisurely time looking out the windows at an Adelaide I rarely see while Oliver and William validated their tickets many times, and explored the carriage in the greatest detail.

After a 25 minute journey west we were at the end of our journey and the end of the track at Grange Beach. We wandered along the boardwalk looking at the 19th century architecture and then found a table at the Grange jetty kiosk overlooking the sand dunes. The boys had ice creams and I had a bottle of water. All was right with the world on that cool sunny afternoon.


Ice creams finished we wandered back to the station and made our way back home again.

An Autumn Morning

The last few days we have started to see true autumn weather. The skies have been grey, the winds have been cold and biting and we have had sudden downpours of much welcome rain. We all took it as a great excuse to rug up in our winter gear. The boys are peering in through the letterbox of a Japanese restaurant in our street. We were on our way off to breakfast at Mama Carmella's.

His nose pressed up against the window, William needed a closer look.

William looking very much the young man about town. You will notice that he is carrying his 'paperwork' which he never leaves home without these days!

The Wacky Warehouse

Today the boys were invited to the 4th birthday party of Nikolas, a friend from kindy. The party was held at the Wacky Warehouse, a big indoor playground. The place was teeming with very excited children, all running around, climbing and squealing very loudly! There was a fantastic facepainter at the party. William asked to be a tiger which I think matches his personality perfectly!

Here is a short video of Oliver playing with the ball machine which shoots soft balls out on a press of a button on the handles. Oliver loves playing with this and heads for it every time we visit.

Nikolas' mum had put great deal of effort into the party. She had made some beautiful treat bags topped by helium bags for each child to take home. Of course the boys couldn't wait to get into their lollies as you can see here!

Adelaide Fringe Festival

It is that time of year again. The Adelaide Fringe Festival has started so the streets are alive with musicians and street performers. The boys and I went into town earlier this week to get some more craft materials from Spotlight. They stood for ages watching this guy juggle fire sticks.

Back at home we all got stuck into making a collage about dinosaurs. I had found a bag of foam dinosaurs, some black card and pieces of gold paper which we stuck on with the glue pens. There was still plenty of scope for squeezing the life out of the pen until there were big globs of glue across the page but it was way less messy than the glue pots of clag that we have used before. We filled in the black background with chalk drawings of dinosaur habitat.

A Picture Paints A Thousand Words

This is pretty much what things have been like here lately! Some things seem to have gone bottoms up and we have all been left reeling. Just when life felt like it was getting into some type of routine everything changed. I guess the biggest thing of all was that the boys' nanny left just over a week ago. This was unexpected and has left us all feeling very confused and sad. She had her own reasons which don't need to be reiterated here. She had been part of all of our lives for the past five months and her loss is greatly felt. Today William asked if she had gone to yoga class and I had to explain to my dear little boys that she wasn't coming back. I saw the confusion and pain flicker across William's face but he tried to pretend that it didn't matter. Since when does a three year old have to hide his feelings? His hurt was mine in that moment. I don't know what the boys understand about what has happened but I wish that they didn't have to go through it.

The next thing that happened was that Oliver woke at 3am last Sunday and was struggling to breathe. I rushed him to the Women's and Children's Hospital where he was diagnosed as having an asthma attack. We were there for nine hours while Oliver was treated with oxygen and ventolin. He was not at all happy about the oximeter taped to his toe or the oxygen mask over his nose so for a very long and somewhat delirious nine hours I struggled to keep both in place while he did his best to remove them! He responded well to the ventolin and continued to have it for the rest of the week at home. A nurse stopped in each day to check him over.

If that wasn't enough the chooks went on a marauding rampage through my vegetable patch this week and made a very neat meal of all of the emerging seedlings!

We have all had a nasty respiratory virus for the best part of two weeks and one of the main symptoms is a relentless dry cough which is worst at night. Inger had a shocking time of it last night and coughed until 4am. In desperation I suggested that he take some ventolin as well and it seems to have had some effect.

This morning so as to give Inger a sleep in I took the boys out. We had our usual Sunday morning at Mama Carmella's and then visited some local playgrounds for lots of running and climbing. A couple of times recently we have come across boys playing cricket. I have no love of cricket, finding it extremely boring, but on both of these occasions the boys loaned us a spare bat and ball and we have made a passable effort at playing. William hit his first ball which we all thought was terrific.

Here is William sitting holding his 'paperwork'. He likes to place a pen over one ear and carry around a wad of papers which he refers to from time to time.
Oliver relaxing after a busy play in the third playground for the morning. We had just returned from a careful inspection of the stormwater drain to see if there were any monsters.

Oliver is becoming very independent and was keen to show me how he could make this roundabout spin very quickly.

William on the slide at Unley Oval


William on top of the pirate ship. With a very hoarse voice it was my job to sing the whole of 'I Am A Pirate King' from Gilbert and Sullivan whilst the boys steered the ship and looked through the binoculars.

What a Week!

Well this has been a week I would never want to go through again! The scenes of devastation from the Victorian bushfires have left everyone speechless. How will those families involved ever recover?

It has been a busy week for us. The boys have started back at all of their usual activities and the days seem to fly past. I attended my second and last felt-making class and made a handbag. It is still drying and I haven't yet attached the straps so I will photograph it when it is finished. I learned so much in the classes and am full of enthusiasm about making some slippers for the boys and some more bags for myself. I'll have to see if Inger would like a pair of felt slippers as well! Felt is so forgiving and fairly unpredictable in terms of what type of pattern emerges.

Next Sunday I am doing a course on Oriental Bookbinding. OK, I admit it..........I am a craftaholic. I just so love making things with my hands. Oh, for more time................

This morning we went out for our usual breakfast at Mama Carmela's. We seem to have become regulars. It was such a surprise when we arrived there this morning. The chef came out and asked the boys if they would like to come and help him in the kitchen. He showed them how to poach eggs. Now that is a skill I have only just perfected through a lot of trial and error so I will be very happy if they would like to take over from me. Not only that but as we were leaving he came out with a bag of home-made meringues for each of the boys. Oliver the sweet tooth was overjoyed! I hadn't tasted meringues like these since my childhood. They were large, golden and smooth. They had a crisp, brittle exterior and just the right degree of chewiness in the centre. The mass produced meringues you get in bakeries these days don't even come close.

After arriving home Inger started to re-stain our wooden driveway gate. The boys were mad-keen to help but I was concerned about them running out on the road. I had to find an activity to amuse them long enough for Inger to paint the gate and for me to water Seasol into the front garden with my watering can. Water play was what we decided on. They had such a lot of fun pretending to have their own cafe.

There were the usual disputes over who owned what but they managed to sort it out themselves.

Here is Oliver carefully pouring the water back and forth from the jug to the teapot.

At some point everyone always seems to end up in Mummy's office. My office seems to hold an air of mystique for the boys who see people come and go up the hallway. The boys come in and want to play Dr Brownlee and the ladies or otherwise they want to search through all of my belongings, use the fax machine or computer.

I have photographed them in this shot not because it is a great photo but to show them both wearing some shorts I made for them lately. They are very simple but cool and comfortable. William who is a Superman fan loves his shorts which are made from some groovy fabric I found in a quilting shop.

This afternoon we went off to a very child-friendly cafe in Prospect called Cafe Komodo. The cafe has been designed with a decidely retro feel and is decked out with second hand furniture and fixtures. This gives it a 1970's living room disaster look which is totally comfortable. I have no worries at all about the boys spilling or breaking anything there because it is all so lived in. We sat in what must have once been someone's converted garage and watched this duo called The Minstrels.
The boys played cafes and had fun playing with this aged cash register with a couple of other children. Oliver who has a penchant for china cups was very pleased to have his babycino served in a tiny floral cup on a matching ceramic tray.

You can see what I mean about the decor! It was a fun and relaxing afternoon. The little boys could hardly keep their eyes open as we drove home.