Alex's Busy Afternoon

Yesterday this magically turned into a container full of salty salty dough.

(Water not pictured - it was still in the tap)

We showed it to Alex after it had cooled a bit and she poked at it once, screwed up her face, then grabbed Nev's hand and demanded he take her walking around the lounge.  FINE.  I only slaved over a (not-so) hot stove.  No biggy.  Hrmph.

We tried again today, and she had much the same reaction.  I documented it for everyone's amusement.

...Ew.

I made a snail.  It got smushed.

As did the next snail I made.

THEN we discovered you can THROW playdough! 

I don't even...

I'm pretty sure I used to make cooler stuff than this out of playdough.

After she determined that playdough was in fact NOT delicious and sufficient mess had been made all over the kitchen floor, we went to wash her hands.  When I put her down after drying them, something amazing happened:  she took a step!  So Nev (handily home sick today) grabbed the camera (handily still out after documenting playdough mess) and took some photos of a somewhat determined looking Alex as she teetered down the hallway all by herself.  

When Nev switched to video she clung to the wall and refused to let go, so, um, that'll have to wait...

18 Months..

Here is three-week-old Alex on her sheepskin:

Here is 18-month-old Alex (mostly) on her sheepskin:

She got big.  And long.

Over the last couple of weeks her vocabulary has expanded greatly, though she does have a couple of multi-purpose words.  Duck being one of them (duh) - it can mean ducks, any other bird she sees, and the colour yellow.  The other is aap'n - which can mean apple, any other round fruit (peaches, nectarines, pears etc), the colour purple AND iPad!  Ha!  All yesterday afternoon she kept pointing to the kitchen and saying "aap'n!!" - so I cut up a pear and offered it to her.  She refused to eat it so I assumed she was just practising her words.  Then this morning I gave her the iPad so I could have a shower in peace (yes, yes, terrible mother) and she pointed at it and said "this!  aap'n!"...  I wonder how frustrated she was getting at me yesterday?  The iPad was clearly sitting on the kitchen bench next to the fruit bowl while it charged..!

Oh, there's another multi-purpose word:  nanan.  It used to mean Nana, now it means banana.  Sorry Nana, you've been replaced!

BORED

Despite my newfound super awesome domestic goddessness, driving lessons (yes, finally) and multiple hospital appointments for either me or Alex (just routine/checkups) keeping me busy, I find myself wanting to do something crafty.  Or something.  

When we put the house on the market we cleared out the spare room and put what was worth keeping in storage, donated some bookcases to Nev's sister, then took a load of stuff to the dump.  The latter included my sewing desk.  It was about eight years old, and one of those super cheap mulched rainforest pieces from The House of Ware.  It wobbled terribly when the sewing machine was running so I decided it wasn't worth keeping.  Must say, Nev took GREAT delight in smashing it to pieces with a hammer - which wasn't hard.  Most of my fabric went to storage, as did all of my patterns, so it seems I'm not going to be sewing anything in the near future.  

Then there's photography, which observant readers of my blog will have noticed I've kind of... stopped.  I don't know why.  It could be that Nev showed Alex how the camera works so whenever she sees it she zooms over to demand that we show her the photos we've just taken.  It could be the lack of easy transport to new places put me off bothering.  It's probably mostly that I still haven't read my photography book properly and feel like I should before I try new things...

Anyway.  This week I am going to do something creative.  And then I shall blog about it.  And you shall be amazed.  Oh yes.

 

Selling a House is Not Fun

I bet you thought it was.  It really isn't.

It's taken over our entire lives.  All I think about is keeping the house tidy and how very very annoying daily  pregnancy-induced heartburn is.  I've learned some things so far, so thought I'd share...

Our house is super dusty, and as a result the shiny black glass entertainment unit was not a smart purchase.  Also, anti-dust surface cleaners are just spray bottles full of lies.  Dusty dusty lies.

Cats are horrible animals and will do anything they can to mess up your pristine house.  They were also not a smart purchase.  Special Cat managed to get his very own photo on our house listing, while Zari vomited all over the cat room floor the very morning the photographer was coming to take said photos.  I swear they're leaving cat hair clumps all over the place just to annoy me - usually within an hour of me vacuuming.  The cats now spend their nights locked in the bathroom so any further furball incidents are easily cleaned up.

Toddlers love gardening.  And by gardening I mean throwing bark around the courtyard, eating dirt, putting the weeds back into the garden and trying to destroy the actual plants.  Oh, they also enjoy digging paving sand (that you just spent hours re-doing) out from between the pavers.

Inside the house, toddlers continue to be great helpers.  Cupboards and bookshelves are emptied daily, just to make sure there's no dust lurking anywhere.  Alex seems to have some kind of sixth sense about when I've just polished the front of the dishwasher too - she'll zoom straight over there and check for handprints all over the front.  I always seem to miss them!  Similarly, she'll check the edges of our (glass) desktops for tiny finger prints..

Cats are (despite appearances) quite smart, so they get a second paragraph.  When there's an open home or viewing we have to hunt down the cats (who now realise exactly what is going on and have become very good at slithering out of our grip - even Basil!  ...Though he probably oozes more than slithers) and bundle them into the carrier.  Then we pack up the litter trays and various cat beds so as to not appear entirely crazy-cat-people to potential buyers, thus ending up with a car load of excess cat and baby clutter, valuables, two Very Sad Cats and a usually pretty cheerful baby.  

So there you go.  Just in case you have pets and a toddler and are thinking about selling your house, my recommendation is not to.  Cleaning and tidying gets undone almost as quickly as you do it.  And then once you've spent hours cleaning and re-cleaning the place for a 20 minute viewing, the buyer decides that since there's no second bathroom downstairs the house just isn't right for them.  How many 1970s townhouses have two bathrooms???  

*cough*

Anyway.  Tenders closed today and I was hopeful that someone had decided they loved the place so much we'd get some kind of crazy awesome offer.  We did not, so off to PBN we go...

Perhaps I could take away a silver lining here?  By the time we do sell I'll be so very used to keeping the house spotless that I'll just carry on being an awesome domestic goddess even after Baby 2.0 arrives.