More talking ...

"Clothes? Clothes are good.
Unless they're bad clothes.
Bad clothes are not good."

"It was good, if it was what I thought it was.
But if it wasn't what I thought it was then it could have been crap."


These were pearlers brought out by Will Christas Night after we'd left Mum and Dad's and the kids were asleep and we shared a little hand rolled cigarette type thing.

Talking

13 Nov
Given a choice between 4 colours of icy pole euey looked very thoughtful like he was trying to remember the name of the colour he wanted, then answered
'lots please Mummy'.

14 Nov
Swinging on the hammock chair Euey looked at Aoife and said
'I love her. I love her Mummy'.

26 Nov
G: What's your name?
E: Eueymorrissey
G: How old are you?
E: Eueymorrissey again.

Late Nov
Aoife shook her head and said 'no no'.

1 Dec
Aoife put both hands on her head and said 'hata'. She did it twice!

8 Dec
After climbing into our bed in the morning:
Shhh, Daddy's sleeping.
Daddy's awake now.
Daddy's happy.
I'm happy too.
*big grin*
Let's fight!

Bringing over Bubble's toy:
I got a present you Bubble. Come outside Bubble.

After being at the soccer with Will:
E: Feet hurt Daddy.
W: Why?
E: Maybe standing up
(This was the first time he'd ever answered a 'why' question)

15 Dec
Waking up in our bed with black and white stripey sheets over him - with a suprised look:
'I'm a Zebra, Mummy'

Motograph*

The end product.

* Title courtersy of Daffa!

November

Aoife goes into hospital on Friday to have tubes put in her ears. It should ease the pain she's been in which will be good. Poor thing has had an ear infection for months now. It affects her balance too, which (although it shouldn't be) is hilarious to watch. She just sits there, then all of a sudden falls over backwards. Apart from that she's great. Loving being able to move around and chase Euey wherever he goes. Euey is not loving that so much. They do play together well most of the time though. Their favorite joint pastime is playing cars. Euey gets two or three cars, sits next to Aoife, hands her a car, says 'here Aoife' then they broom along together. They also love chasey (Aoife always does the chasing), and especially love when Daddy gets home. You've never seen such excitment. As soon as Euey hears the beep beep beep of the truck reversing he yells 'Daddy's back' and Aoife looks up. Then when the door opens they launch themselves at him. Euey gets there first of course, and Aoife is left crawling up screaming - not crying, just yelling 'ahhhhh' in excitment! It's an awesome sight.

I may get to witness it from the other side soon. Next Monday I start an internship. Full time work for 4 weeks. The kids will be in care from 8:15am 'til whenever Will finishes work in the arvo. I'm not looking forward to doing that to them. They're too young. But I have to do an internship before I apply for articles and this one was just too perfect to miss out on because it's in Employment law. I've just studied Employment law and loved it. In a way it seems to combine Contract law with elements of Tort law, both of which I enjoyed. I know I'll enjoy the work. I'll also enjoy some time away from the kids. But not that much time. That much time I will hate. I also probably won't have time to take photos, let alone post them, so enjoy ...

Adrian and Aoife (carked it)

Euey loves pretending to be a dog these days - it usually involves licking the floor.

Blowing bubbles.

I set him up with the easel and paint, turned my back to pick up Aoife and heard "painting Mummy". There was nothing at all on the paper, so I put the paper on his tummy to make a painting.

Spaghetti bolognaise super hero.

Never too early to start them on Maccas icecream cones on a 35+ day.

Waiting for the Xmas Parade.

This was the most random collection of things I have ever seen in my life. Between each float (which where toy themed; Thomas, Fifi, Monopoly, Care Bears etc) there were what I guess were community groups doing their thing. And man was their thing weird sometimes. There were people on stilts in weird-arse rubbery costumes that looked like a cross between a transformer and robot. There were amature belly dancers. They were very amature, very old, very fat and wearing traditional belly dancing costumes - if Euey hadn't been so stunned I'm sure he would have said his oft used sentence; 'that's ugly'.

Euey's viewing platform.

Aoife's viewing platform.

Cool.

Sponser Will for Movember

As an official Mo Sista I invite you all to click on the widget and sponser my Mo Bro to raise money for Men's depression.

31st Oct

Halloween. Well, kinda. Not much happens here. A lot more than when I was a kid, but still, the Northern influence has only gone so far. We had 3 groups of trick or treaters this year - well, 4 if you include the little fat kid (sorry, but he was!) trying to sell us chocolate bars he'd obviously just been given! We got all excited and bought this lolly bowl that had a hand sticking out of it that was movement activated to grab the kids when they took the lollies. It said 'want some candy?' and 'trick or treat' in an American accent of some spooky variety. Euey pulled it to peices on Halloween arvo. Oh well, we'd forgotten to buy 'candy' to put in it anyway! In the end we gave them some melody pops (old fav's) I had bought for Euey (before deciding against giving them to him) and some drinks out of Wills truck.

Next year we'll build (make, cut? what is the right verb there?) a jack o lantern and put it on the letter box to encourage them!

Monster Trucks

Will took Euey to see the Monster Trucks. Yep. He's 2. A little early you reckon? We didn't think so, he loves the monster truck on 'Herbie: Reloaded'. Not so much in real life though! He was scared. But he loved it. I can understand this, I feel the same in a horror movie. Although I might walk out, I always wish I'd stayed to see the end. You can read Will's blog to find out how they went, but this is the conversation I had with Euey when they got home:

Was it scary? Yep
A little bit scary or a lot scary? Lot scary
Was it fun? Yep
A little bit fun or a lot fun? Lot fun


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On another note, we've just got a new car. A family car! It's big. It's new(ish). It's 'white like Herbie'. Euey loves it and calls it 'our new white big car'. This was one of the conversations Will and Euey had on the way to the trucks in the new car (btw, our old care is blue):

Other car broken Daddy?
What other car Euey?
Blue car.

Is my son not a genius? And a non-materialistic genius at that. Why would one need a new car unless the other one is broken?

The cows!

We went 'home' a couple of weeks ago. Back to my hometown (excuse the Americanism, I learnt it in Korea) of Shepparton. We went for my cousins wedding, but we had a bit of time to kill so we checked out the cows. In an act of god only knows what the Shepparton city council created Moooving Art. A whole heap of life size cows painted by 'local and international artists'. My favourite is the brown one.

Aoife's fetish and Euey's words

When Aoife feeds she puts her fingers in my mouth. Always has, for as long as she has been able to reach. It's kind of odd, but I haven't been able to break her of the habit. That's not the weirdest bit though. For the past 3 nights the only way I have been able to get her to go to sleep is to sit beside her cot and allow her to put her fingers in my mouth. She does the same thing to her carers at childcare. They rock her to sleep with her fingers in their mouth. Odd. Very odd.

In other news, she's crawling now. Fast too. She chases after Euey giggling like a maniac and he loves it. He gets down on all fours and crawls away from her yelling 'Aoife's coming! Aoife get us! (Think he picked the 'us' up from me, I'm trying to teach him about singular and plural). She also says 'Dada'. Will swears it means Daddy, but considering she says it to Adrian (Will's mate staying with us) I sincerely hope it doesn't! In all honesty though, even though she says 'dada dada' all day, along with baba, gaga etc, as soon as Will walks in she always says 'dada' with a huge grin and crawls towards him. She has a much better grip on what Will does than Euey did. He wasn't used to Daddy leaving cause Will was studying and not working as much back then, and he used to cry and be totally confused when Will left. Aoife, on the other hand, just takes it in her stride and starts waving as soon as she hears the words 'bye bye'. She's just started waving to 'hi' or 'hello' in the last few days as well.

Euey is talking in full sentences now. Yesterday morning he woke up and came out to the living room where I was giving Aoife brekkie. He gave me the filthiest look and, considering he'd just gotten out of bed, I had no idea what I'd done. Until he said 'Where my weet-bix Mummy?'.
He got such a good reaction that 'where ...? has become his favourite question. At least it's easier to answer than 'why ...?' - unless of course the question pertains to some dragged-everywhere toy whose location I have no idea about.

Some recent pics ...

Ready to go to my cousins wedding.

At the wedding, waiting for the bride.

A little late

Hi. I'm back. For now, until I fall off my chair asleep. I know it's been ages, and I'm sure you all know the reason for that is Aoife being sick all the time (and then a silly essay that took me weeks to write). So, I just have a couple of Euey conversations to note for you, then I'm off to bed ...

E: Ant Mummy
G: Actually, it's an earwig
E: Bite you
G: Yep, it might bite you, so just look at it
E: (**Almighty crash**) Squash it!
G: Oh no, don't squash it, you'll hurt it. Is it okay?
E: (pause) Little bit walking ... **another almighty crash***

E: (giving me a bit of train track) Mummy, sword.
G: Thanks. Are we fighting?
E: (starts sawing the floor) Nope. Swording.

Night night. Will post more soon. Btw, Aoife is crawling - it's hilarious. She chases Euey all over the house and he runs away shouting 'Aoife's coming. Aoife monster!'

One for the Morrisseys

Will's Throne.

Yaayyy Aoife & Our Day Trip

YAY Aoife
Aoife can clap! She copied Euey the first time and now she won't stop. She claps now when she wants attention (as well as the usual yells) and when you say 'Yayyyy Aoife' she looks up and claps!

Day Trip
Willy had to do GST (that's VAT for the Brits) last weekend, so the kids and I went out for the day. A little trip to the park while we waited for the Bundoora Children's Farm to open, then we visited some animals ('amilodes').

Father's Day

We took a trip to see the last remaining snow at the closest resort to Melbourne. It was a km walk from the car park to the snowline and the snow was hard as a rock. Snowball throwing was deadly cause you had to break bits of ice off rather than make a ball. Euey ran around like a maniac shouting 'snow ... throw it ... slippery'. He loved the snow so much he held a bit of it all the way back to the car park, without gloves, despite my constant offerings to hold it for him or sit it on his lap. Then he had a complete meltdown 'cause his hand were so cold and sore. We stopped and had an awesome pub lunch on the way home, then went to check out the local disused train station. All in all it was as much a Euey day as a Father's day, but I think Will and Dad had a good time too.

Before we headed off. Will wearing his Dad's Day pressie from Euey - his first ever drawing, signed and printed on a t-shirt.

Heading for Daddy.

Gotchya!

Hiding.

Aoife was awake briefly.

Ice stack instead of a Snowman 'cause the snow was too hard!

Trains!! 'Citing' according to Euey.

Please Daddy

About a week ago, when Euey was going through a particularly whiny period (which he is slowly coming out of thank god) Will started teaching him to ask for things in a cute, nice little voice. He learnt very quickly that to get what he wants he needs to say a cute little, non-whiny 'please Daddy'. I too have been working on the 'nice voice', but apparently I'm not quite as convincing as Daddy, because more often than not when I say 'ask nicely' I get 'please Daddy'.

Aoife

Aoife shuffles. Not fast, but she moves. She will be crawling soon. Poor Euey. She's already all over him, you can't sit her next to him without her pawing at his face with a love-sick grin on her face. Once she can crawl I'm sure she'll follow him all around the house, just as little sisters are prone to do.
She is a little trouper my Aoife. She has been sick for 6 weeks now. Not sick on and off, just sick. She is never quite over one thing before she gets the next one. Right now she has one day left of her antibiotics for an ear infection and she is two days into a bout of conjunctivitis. But she just keeps on smiling. Even when her laughs turn into coughs and she can hardly see out of her bunged up eyes, she still keeps smiling. She is sleeping so badly at night that she looks like Wednesday Adams, but she still wakes up in the morning with a little 'ba ba ba' and a huge grin.

Eulish.

There are some things that can only be explained by a verbatim conversation:

A few weeks ago.
E: Ow! Cuddle?
G: Kiss it better? *kiss* Better?
E: Three
G: *gives 3 kisses*
E: Four
G: *kiss* Better?
E: Better!


Wednesday morning.
The doggie washing man came at 7:30 to cut Bubble's hair. Bubble was a very shaggy Cocker and I asked the dude to shave it all off. He had been and gone, leaving Bubble hairless, before Euey woke up (this was NOT a normal morning!).

E: (wakes up) Wake!
G: Hey little man.
E: (spots Bubble) Doggie!
G: Yeah, it's Bubble, he's had a haircut.
E: (runs out to Bubble in the living room) Doggie!
G: Yes, it's Bubble Euey.
E: Bubble? (Runs into our room and looks under the bed where Bubble sleeps). Bubble? Gone!
G: Bubble's out here Euey, he's had a haircut.
E: (runs back out, very confused look on his face, looks quizzically at Bubble) Bubble? (laughs) Bubble! Haircut. (more laughter and launches himslef at Bubble).


Friday morning in the car.

G: Euey, we're going to see Gus.
E: (HUGE grin) Gussyyyy! ... Man.
G: What man?
E: Gussy, man.

Drive for awhile. Euey is looking a bit down.
G: Euey, are you okay?
E: Just stares at me in the rear-view mirror.
G: Euey, are you happy or sad?
E: Stares more intently.
G: Are you tired?
E: Tries to stare really hard and half cracks a smile.
G: (realising what's going on) Euey, are you tricking me?
E: (Maniacal laughter) Gotchya!!


7:30 Friday evening.
W: (Attempting to put Euey's pajamas on) Come here, I've got a surprise for you (holding out empty hand closed in a fist).
E: Runs over and sits with me.
W: He knows I'm tricking.
G: Stay and have a cuddle with me Euey (cheeky grin)
E: Get you.
G: What will get you Euey?
E: Jarmies!

A few he says all the time ...

When I go in to kiss him goodnight: Glasses, off. Lie down!
When he wakes up in the morning: Wake! (grabbing mine or Will's hand) Up!
When I ask him if he's hungry (at any time of the day): Lunch!

A week in the life of us

As I was discussing on Thoughts and Wonderings, I love the nitty gritty. The day-to-day news. The stuff that never gets mentioned more than a couple of days after it happened. I love understanding what my friends and family's lives consist of. It's often what we do that defines us. Not our job necessarily, although that plays a big role, but how we choose to spend our time. So here's how we choose to spend ours.

Weekday mornings - Will leaves early. He picks up Euey and puts him in bed with me, giving him a little cuddle and telling him he's going to work but he'll be back later to play. At the moment Aoife is usually already in bed with me cause she's sick and not sleeping well. The three of us go back to sleep for a few hours and get up around 7.

Weekday evenings - Will tries to get home by 5:30 but sometimes it's more like 6:30. He rings me about 5 mins before he gets home and I get the kids organised and into the pram so we can go for a little walk to the park or shops as soon as he gets home. Then we come home, Euey watches the Simpsons (his absolute favourite show), Will gets his work stuff organised and I cook dinner. After dinner it's bath or shower time, then Will reads Euey a story, I feed Aoife and they both go happily off to sleep (most nights). Will and I have a little time together then he starts his ordering and paperwork and I either study, do more damn cleaning, help Will with admin stuff or bludge in front of the tv.

Monday
We usually potter around the house on Monday mornings because Will loads one truck then comes back around 9 or 10 to drop it off for the driver and pick up his truck for the day. Both kids go crazy when he gets home. Euey jumps on him and Aoife calls out 'ahhh ahhh' 'til he picks her up. Euey goes and plays in the truck with him while he gets organised, then we say goodbye again.
I often try to gt some errands done between Will leaving and Euey's nap time (12:30ish). Euey loves 'going shops' and is happy to sit in the pram usually. More often than not he has a ride on one of those little carousels and we share a cake or donut!
Monday afternoons we go to playgroup. It used to be Mum's group but the kids got too big so we moved to a church hall, registered with Playgroup Australia, picked up a few new members and became a playgroup. There are 9 of us. 6 originals with 2 year olds and 3 newbies with kids around 18-20 months. I was the first to have 'the second child' and they all thought I was mad to go through it all again so soon. But now the second generation has really taken off. There is a 3 week old, Aoife and two more in-utero.

Tuesday
Tuesdays I have classes for Employment law, so the morning is spent making lunches and cleaning the house a bit so I don't have to do it when I get home. The kids go into care from 11:15 to 4:15. I usually try to take them to feed the ducks at Uni before I drop them off. They are both getting used to it now which makes it much easier for me to leave them (although still not easy at all!).

Wednesday
Wednesdays I have no classes but the kids go into care for a few hours so I can do some reading for my classes. Wednesdays are pretty similar to Tuesdays but there is no deadline so they sometimes get dropped off a little later.

Thursday
This is our play day. We have all day together. I love Thursdays. There's no deadlines, no rush and usually nothing that 'has to' be done. We do whatever Euey wants to do. That usually entails a walk in the pram and a trip to the park. Aoife loves being in the pram too and is now old enough to go down a slide with me, laugh at all Euey's antics and go on a baby swing by herself.
Today Euey chose to watch movies. Herbie 2 was first, then we got 1/2 way through Monster's Inc before bed. Now that Aoife is sitting up she is quite happy playing on the floor for awhile so I can get some washing etc done while they're occupied. If I'm lucky Aoife will go down for 40 winks (literally, she never sleeps longer than 40 mins during the day) while Euey is still asleep and I get a little time to play on the net - like I am right now.

Friday
Another study day. Kids in care for a few hours in the middle of the day. Very similar to Wednesdays except that I grab every moment I can to clean, do washing and otherwise get the house in shape so we can all play on the weekend. (I use the term 'in shape' very loosly by the way!).
Will usually brings home take-away cause neither of us can be bothered cooking.

Saturday
Will has a sleep in and gets up with us (sometimes if I'm really feeling nice I get the kids up and let him have a real sleep in). Euey goes to gym from 9 til 10. It's pandemonium! He's not so good on the following of instructions, so most of the hour is spent chasing him and trying to get him to do the right activity at the right time. He really enjoys it despite the constant redirection of his attention and has learnt to do somersaults, swing from the rings and balance along the beam.
Saturdays and Sundays Mum and I go for a long walk around one of Melbourne's many parks. Sounds like an advertisement I know, but you should have a look at a map of Melbourne compared to other cities, there are so many parks and they've all been interconnected so you can pretty much walk or ride all over the city without going on a road.

Sunday
Big fun play day. Not just normal fun, but BIG fun like the miniature railway or the Werribee Plains Zoo, or, hopefully in the near future, a trip to the snow.

So there you have it guys, a week in the life of us. It turned out a lot longer and more detailed than I planned, hope you made it too the end, cause this is the most important part. I want to hear about your week now. All of you. I want to go to your blog and read about your nitty-gritties. And if you don't have a blog feel free to leave your weekly diary in my comments section.

Glamour Girl

I decided to take a few professional style photos seeing as our poor little second child isn't even up on our wall yet!

Euey's B'day Party

Have finally gotten around to posting some photos of Euey's b'day party at the play centre. Georgia (friend from Mum's group) gave them to me ages ago, I'm just slack. It was an awesome day, the kids had a ball.

Megan, Spencer, Euey

Luken, Nathan, Maya.

Megan, Paddy, Euey, Maya, Luken, Nathan.

Xavier, Brock, Josh.

Good Cake!

Paddy, Euey, Xavier and The Bart Simpson Cake (that took Charlie and I about 4 hrs to decorate!)

Euey spent ages on this swing, every time Will tried to get him off he said 'fish, fish' (now he would know it's a dolphin, and would say 'no, stop it' if you tried to get him out. Amazing the difference a few months makes!

Megan

Double Trouble.

Nathan

Paddy (but no, he's not one).