It was so kind of you to address your first blog post in two years to me personally. I’ve been smiling all morning since I read it. And feeling a bit old. Feel free to take responsibility for the smiles and I’ll take full responsibility for the old thing.
Anyway, it was great to read about your travel plans, and I thought, well, if Gareth can get his act together to blog after two years I can update the world on the goings on here. I’ve been letting the blog go a bit. It needs weeding and watering. And content.
Ahem. We celebrated the kid’s birthday a bit early to make sure he got his moment in the sun before everyone started talking about Christmas.
He requested an Old Macdonald Had A Farm cake. My oldest friends spent their Saturday night making marzipan animals and a tractor. I slathered the green food colouring around.
Having realised that his knees were hitting the handlebars on the trike he was given last year we decided to get him a two wheeler bike. He unwrapped the helmet first and said “it’s a helmet for riding a two wheeler, you could go to the shop and borrow a bike for me to ride”. So it turns out we overspent, because he would have been ok with just borrowing a bike every now and then. He was speechless when he unwrapped the bike, and now i understand why my grandpa enjoyed Christmas so much. Being able to give your kids something they didn’t even dare dream about is so cool.
We’ve been getting ready for Christmas. The Bloke’s family will be here Christmas Day, we’re looking forward to it and trying to work out how many extra glasses and chairs we have to borrow. I found a bunch of new plates and bowls in the local oppies and they’ve all had a run in the new (to us) dishwasher. We inherited a dishwasher. Let’s not talk about how exciting that is because it’s one of those things that contributes to feeling old. The kid has enjoyed Christmasses past, but this one is the first he’s able to anticipate and get excited about before the actual day. He’s figuring out who Santa is, and that there’ll be presents and a party and “all my friends will be there”.* The Bloke and I, atheist and apathetic about Christmas for so many years, find ourselves enjoying the making of decorations, the purchasing of presents (and getting competitive about which of us has found the Best Present) and we even bought a tree.
Our excitement hasn’t made us completely loopy, when I say “bought a tree” I mean “went to Diggers and purchased a small olive tree”. Dammit I’m not spending money on a tree that doesn’t produce edibles. Our olive tree is still very small, the kid helped pot it up and made lots of appropriate oo-ing and ah-ing noises about the decorations. The tree itself isn’t sturdy enough yet to hold up all those decorations by itself so we’ve enlisted the help of the Macquarie Dictionary.
The kid has also learned to pose for photos. The elbow on the heater cracks me up. How does he even know to reference all those Gentleman leaning on fireplaces in grand houses?
* Which is to say “my grandparents, my cousins, any aunty who brings treats (all of them) and Uncle D who has a boat and is therefore the coolest of cool”
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December 5, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Stomper Girl
Happy Birthday to the kid. The look on his face when he saw the bike is fabulous. I wonder what he thought that great heap of wrapping paper in the middle of the room was?
December 5, 2009 at 4:23 pm
librarygirl
Little faces – like your boy – are making me very teary at the moment!
Great cake.
This is only the second year we haven’t had any True Believers in the house and while it is a tremendous relief in one way it’s also a bit sad for the parents.
December 6, 2009 at 8:27 am
kelly
wow. he got bigger quickly! else Ive been reading ya blog longer than i thought! the fencing…what is that? looks wicked! and stumped as to the actual role of the dic…looking for hidden wires n stuff…wrong track? gotta love watching that look of joy, sometimes it overwhelms them totally! looks like he enjoyed it.
December 6, 2009 at 8:51 am
innercitygarden
The fences are curly wurlies and flake cut into four for posts. The first company to make fair trade chocolate bars in attractive kid formats will win my ever lovin’ affection because these aren’t it. I haven’t been able to find fair trade chocolates that stood up to melting and moulding, otherwise I might have tried to make the fences.
Child is currently re-doing Christmas tree, sort of a morning ritual.
December 6, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Kate
Wow, he looks so grown up!
You need to get him a tweed suit or maybe a cravat for all that fireplace leaning.
December 7, 2009 at 9:29 am
frog
I think the gentlemen and fireplaces thing is racial memory. Let’s just hope other things don’t get passed down (like attacks of ‘dysentry’ after the party from the night before).
And I hope you realise that the marzipan animals have compromised my children’s shining impression of me as birthday cake-make extraordinaire. Which may be a good thing, if it means they lower their standards. It may mean I have lower stress levels.
December 7, 2009 at 9:35 am
innercitygarden
I was hoping the racial memory of posh Scot would be well and truly outweighed by the poor Irish, but you might be right.
Aunties J & B the marzipan animal makers assure me that you just buy marzipan, stick food colouring in it and have a play. Zoology degrees are apparently not essential. Personally, I would have been happy to keep making choccie cakes and whacking lollies on top for many years to come.
Getting someone else to make the animals was also a good way to reduce the stress levels, for future reference.
December 11, 2009 at 3:39 am
Lucid
Spectacular cake. Nice work.
December 17, 2009 at 9:21 pm
di
Fantastic story about the bike. So wonderful to be able to truly surprise and thrill someone so special.