Just a few Little Peter pictures...

Peter will climb into anything that opens itself up to the possibility.

He loves using Eliot's stool to play at the bathroom sink.  If I am sitting on the stool to help Eliot with something Peter will come in and push me off.

Just messing about while Mama prepares the shower.

Our apartment doesn't have a bathtub so we improvise with a plastic tub.  Peter has a great time climbing in and out. 

 The magical time between shower and bed when he gets a little more playtime with Eliot (aka hiding from Mama and the inevitable pyjamas) 

A big bed for Eliot

Moving Eliot into a bed hadn't really been on my radar.  He hasn't tried to climb out of his crib or shown any other sign that he was done with it.  But the other day Ikea had a big bed and mattress sale, so the time was right.  I took the boys to Ikea and we checked them out.  Eliot was very excited about the prospect of getting a 'big boy bed' and was delighted to climb up and test out the beds they had on display.  We chose our bed and then went home to make our arrangements.  Most of you know that Spencer has been in Paris since just before Easter and won't be home until the first week of June.  The sale would have been over before his return so there was no waiting.  A friend was willing to stay with the boys so I could dash over and buy the bed.

My original plan was to assemble it that evening with Eliot's 'help' after Peter had gone to bed.  He enjoys helping out with those types of projects and I thought it would help him feel more ownership of the bed.  Opening the instruction booklet, however, I discovered that Ikea recommended that two adults assemble it.  When it comes to assembling furniture Eliot probably counts as -0.25 people, so that probably wasn't going to work.  After I put him to bed in his crib (for the last time--*sniff*--hopefully) I got to work and put the bed together by using the couch as my 'second person' to hold the pieces steady.

The next morning Eliot and Peter were delighted to discover the bed in the living room and spent the morning playing on it.  We moved it into the boys' bedroom and that night Eliot went to sleep in his big bed like a champ.  He still takes his afternoon nap in the crib (while Peter sleeps in the Pack n Play that's set up in our room) but at night it's all about the big bed.  And of course Peter has had no problem adjusting to the crib.

In these next two pictures the room was actually quite dark so I had to overexpose the shots to be able to see them.  Little sweethearts.

P.S. Happy Mother's Day!

This year for Mother's Day I thought I'd write a little letter to my past self:

Dear Self (circa 2008),

Right now you are the Perfect Parent.  You know exactly what to do in every situation.  There is no problem that you are not equal to.  No puzzle to which you do not hold the key.  Be kind but firm!  You say.  Be consistent! You say.  Be careful which battles you pick, but once you've picked it WIN IT!  You say.  You sympathize knowingly with the struggles you see young parents facing.  Ah yes, you say, if they would simply...

Little do you suspect that in a few short years you will be sitting outside a church house in Australia (far, far from your family) puzzling with your son's nursery teacher about how to help him settle in.  You will cry on the shoulders of empathetic new friends while your theories and intentions lie in shambles at your feet.  You will need the reassurance of those same friends to gather those theories about you to cover the vulnerability and inadequacy you feel in the face of the task before you.  You'll pray, you'll plead, you'll read, you'll worry, you'll think you've succeeded just in time to see yourself fail and feel you're a failure just in time to see yourself succeed.

In short, you will come to discover that mothering is at once the most wonderful, horrifying, joyful, infuriating, simple, mysterious, energizing, and exhausting venture that you have ever taken on.  You will see yourself in every mother you have ever looked upon with a critical eye, and you will feel ashamed.  But you will also see in yourself the mothers that you have looked up to and admired.  And that will sustain you more than you can imagine.  You will thank Heaven above for your own mother and for all of the mothers in your life.  You will look up to them more than ever before.  You will want to be like them.  Be easy on your children, they're learning.  Be easy on yourself, you're learning too.

Love,
Your 2012 Been-through-a-few-in-the-school-of-hard-knocks-they-call-Motherhood Self

Peter 'Warrior' Young

Before our Little Peter was born I worried about nicknames.  I suppose I'd used up all the other worries when I was expecting Eliot, so I had to have something.  I was worried that he wouldn't have any that were his very own.  Nicknames for Eliot just sort of sprang up organically and I was afraid that we would just end up using those same nicknames for Peter.

As usual, it wasn't worth worrying about.  There's always a little overlap, but Peter certainly has his very own.  Spencer has taken to calling him Mr Boo.  I call him BoBo (BoBos, Little BoBo, Mr BoBos, etc.) and anything involving the word 'man', such as Little Peter Man, Baby Man, Little Man, etc.  I'm pleased with them, mainly because we didn't come up with them.  Like the nicknames for Eliot they just sort of happened.

Eliot follows our lead and has taken to calling him by some of these nicknames.  He also uses Peter's real name, which sometimes comes out sounding like a nickname.  He has never really struggled saying 'Peter', but 'Royer' has proved a little more tricky.  Right now Eliot's R's often sound like W's when they're at the beginning of the word.  He also mixes up the sounds of some words--like brefiskt instead of breakfast--so Peter's middle name comes out sounding like 'worrier'.

No matter the name used, our little Peter is finding his own place in the family and it's fun to watch his personality starting to come through.

Peter loves eating raisins.  He also likes putting them on his seat.

See, there they are.

He has figured out how to open the cupboard with the canned goods.

The thrill of discovery.

Peter enjoys putting things on his head, especially the tambourine.

Picking around the 'mountain' of toys that Eliot likes to assemble in the bedroom.

We love you Little Peter Man!!

Cooling Down

I think summer is at an end here in Perth.  The temperatures have shifted from the high 30s/low 40s to the low to mid 20s.  I hadn't really thought about it until the other day when I realized that I'd gone the whole day without having a drink of water.  A month ago one of the top five things on my mind was where my next cold drink was coming from.

 Some of you will smile and roll your eyes to hear me say that it feels chilly when it's 23 outside.  But compared to the heat of summer, it is chilly.  Especially in the early morning and evening.  And it has started to rain.  After months of cloudless skies we were hit with a deluge the other night.  It's really kind of refreshing.  I love chilly weather.  I love eating oatmeal for breakfast, I love seeing Peter bundled up in his footy pyjamas and sleeping with his knees pulled up under himself, I love snuggling with Eliot on the couch under a pile of blankets reading books, I love wearing scarves.  I could go on.  Summer was a lot of fun, but I'm looking forward now to our first Australian winter.

PS  Just in case you thought that we had perhaps gotten over the washing machine machine. ;)

This is not what I had in mind when I said this would be an Adventure.

The other day I had quite a scare.  For a while now we’ve been hanging our trash bag from the ironing board—which is tucked along side our fridge—to keep it out of the reach of Little Ones.  Anyway, I was dashing about the kitchen getting supper prepared for Eliot and myself, while feeding Peter his supper, when I turned around and saw a black spider just inside the trash bag, just below eye level.  It gave me quite a start.  I took a closer look, however, and discovered that this wasn’t just any black spider, but a redback black spider.  The redback spider is Australia’s version of the black widow, and it is lethal (though no deaths have been reported since an anti venom was introduced in the late 50's).  My initial surprise turned into alarm and I quickly turned to my spider removal weapon of choice (the vacuum) and sucked that baby right up.  They say that spiders are more afraid of us than we are of them.  Well fine, but I’m not the one packing neurotoxin.  I’m just saying.

With shaking hands I finished feeding Peter, got him showered and to bed.  Then I called Merlene, my friend from church who is also my mom-away-from-mom, as well as a Perth native.  I was distressed.  I had been reassured, albeit by my fellow ex-pat friends, that the redback was pretty reclusive.  That it much preferred the quiet of dusty corners in abandoned shacks to the lights and noise of a human residence.  I also knew that, like the black widow, it was a slow, unaggressive spider that is happy to live and let live if left alone.  I was also kind of annoyed.  I knew for a fact that the exterior of our building had been sprayed for pests such as these, so why was there one hanging out in my trash!?  Anyway, Merlene was very reassuring and agreed to come over a day or two later to help me with the boys so that I could fumigate the apartment.  I hung up, put Eliot to bed, and got on with my evening.

I was sitting there, watching TV and obsessing about the spider trying to forget the whole thing, and I was puzzled as to why, and how, that spider had crawled up into our trash of all places.  I mean, trash isn’t really what spiders go for after all.  Then it dawned on me in one blood-chilling moment.  It hadn’t crawled up there.

I had put it there!

You see, our mailboxes are located some distance from the building along the road to allow the postman easy access.  These mailboxes have always creeped me out.  They have these little metal doors that swing shut and they keep out the rain, but not much else.  They’re dark and dirty and cobwebby.  In other words, just the sort of place you might expect to find a redback spider.  We had gone out to get the mail that day, all three of us.  I took tongs from the kitchen because I never put my bare hand in there, because of the aforementioned dark, dirty, cobwebs.  I remember thinking that it seemed particularly webby.  Freshly webby.  There was a lot of junk mail.  I pulled it all carefully out with the tongs and went back upstairs.  The junk mail went straight into the trash, evidently along with the redback spider (omg!), and we went merrily on with our day until my discovery at supper time.

So, the take home messages:

1    Fumigation is still continuing as planned.  You can never be too safe after all.

2    Spider spray is to be purchased and sprayed directly into our mailbox on a regular basis.

3    Mail is to be retrieved sans children and never with bare hands.

4    Mail is to be examined and brushed off before coming into the apartment.

Am I in danger of forgetting any of these things?  With the image of that spider branded on my frontal cortex?  Not likely.

I will say this:  as eyes-rolling-up-in-your-head creepy as the idea of me carrying that spider into the apartment is, it actually comes as quite a relief to know that it isn’t a case of redback spiders just waltzing into our home of their own volition.  After all, that spider was probably as unhappy to be there as I was to have it there.  At least now I feel like I’m in control of the situation moving forward, and that is a great comfort.  Though I can’t imagine I’ll be getting a great night’s sleep for a little while yet.

Happy Easter!

This year we celebrated Easter a little early.  Spencer flew out for Paris on Friday afternoon, so we had our Easter Dinner on Thursday night and then Friday morning we held the festivities.

When I was a child, the Easter egg hunt tradition always involved a scavenger hunt.  This year Eliot was old enough to really get into it so I had prepared some plastic eggs around the apartment.  When he came out to breakfast he was given the first egg.  Inside was a clue that led him to the next egg, which held the clue to the next, and so on and so forth, until at last he was led to a cache of Easter treats hidden behind the couch.  He really enjoyed it, and the search took him to all sorts of interesting places; inside the fridge, under Mama's pillow, inside the washing machine, etc.

Peter didn't participate in the hunt, partly because he isn't old enough to appreciate it and partly because he is old enough to appreciate a little alone time with the toys while Big Brother was distracted with a scavenger hunt.  He did enjoy pulling his toys out of his Easter Bowl (I'd forgotten until the night before that we'd had to leave all of our wicker behind due to Australian quarantine rules) and though he didn't get a taste of Eliot's Easter Bilby, he did gobble up his fair share of hot cross buns.

As for the Easter Bilby, I had heard of it briefly before we moved here and leading up to Easter I started to see them in the store.  I bought one for Eliot and then asked a friend at church what the story was.  Evidently rabbits are not native to Australia and their introduction into the Australian ecosystem has seriously jeopardized some native species (a big issue for Australians as you can imagine).  So the native bilby was brought forward to provide an alternative to the pesky and environmentally dangerous Easter Bunny.  Whatever the issues behind it, Eliot sure enjoyed his Easter Bilby.  Part of the fun, of course, was saying 'Easter Bilby.'