Month: July 2012

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Says!
Says who?
Says me, that’s who?

My commitments for the afternoon were cancelled, and Joni had a last-minute play-date at someone else’s house, so not only did I manage to make the final adjustments to the hoodie I’ve been knitting for the last couple of months:

but I also managed to make a pair of booties for Danny out of the oddment of wool left over:

 

and he even kept them on for the rest of the day which is more impressive than you realise.  I used this pattern after trawling through many and discarding anything which said “slip one” “increase across the row” “circular needles” or any other vocabulary that I didn’t understand, so believe me these are eeeeasy.  The author reckons it’s for nought to three months, but using chunky wool and 5mm needles they fit Danny’s chubby little pork-pie feet just fine.  I sewed the cuff down and used it to house a cord which I tied up at the back, which might be why he didn’t take them off, although he’s never not managed to extract himself from his trainers within thirty seconds.  He did however toss them into the bath after I took them off for him this evening, so maybe that’s a statement, and now I have to dry them out and the house has gone into freezing mode for the night.  He put his socks into the toilet yesterday too.  I already have the next batch of wool waiting in the wings for Joni who also wants a hoodie, hopefully before spring arrives and the temperature goes through the roof.  I’m thinking I should make it big enough to last next winter too.  Or maybe I should just go the whole hog and knit a marquee to last him into adulthood. 

Looking back at the last several family/minutiae orientated blog entries I probably should state that we are doing some work too, I might even try and write about it at some stage.  Meanwhile if you’re interested in what’s going on around here in a general sort of way, check out this article from the Economist the other day, which sadly seems to be all too accurate; the same information has appeared in the local press here at any rate.  Fears for the economy abound, although looking at what’s going on around the rest of the world we probably might as well be here as anywhere else as far as economic stability is concerned, and despite the gloom and moaning there were still no tables to be had at our local coffee house when we attempted to make our contribution to the local economy on Sunday afternoon. 

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Delores.
Delores who?
Delores my shepherd.

………………………………………..

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Armageddon!
Armageddon who?
Armageddon out of here!

(jokes courtesy of best-knock-knock-jokes.com they don’t make’em like they used to…)

Night night. 

Another couple of dodgy home videos to impress Granny. 

Little brothers playing football; sort of anyway.  Except that the rules are set to ensure that the smallest one never gets the ball!  Danny’s been properly walking for ten days or so, and he’s practising with the dedication of a premier league player.  He’s super-independent; where Joni was “walking” holding hands ages before he actually had any proper balance, Danny doesn’t want anyone to touch him even when he falls flat on his face.  His first words will probably be something like “I can do it all by myself”. 

“a slug on a rug; purple!

an adder on a ladder; red!

a lion with an iron; yellow!

an… “

Mummy, what’s an iron? 

That’s an iron there in the picture

But what’s it for?

Mummy’s moment of realisation; of course, he’s my child, when would he have ever seen an iron, let alone one in use…?

We’re in the first week back after the two-weeks of Winter break here.  The first few days were filled with freezing drizzle, so our plans for picnics were shelved in favour of the cinema, twice; Madagascar 3 and Ice-Age 4 although the plots have rather blurred together for me; Madagiceage.  Joni likes to sit on the front row which has but one  advantage; namely that Danny can crawl around without being thrown out for public disorder.  I’m sure the other parents think we’re unspeakable, particularly when we pretend we haven’t noticed him eating popcorn off the floor.  Anything for a quiet life, I say, and he’s probably developing some great antibodies.

Then we went to Buenos Aires for a week, starting with a trip to the zoo:-

 

and going on to our annual team conference.  From which we drove home (eight hours, that’s record time for us, it helped that the kids were asleep for most of it) on Wednesday evening and I spent the next two days in a no-man’s land of post-conference fog trying to drum up the brain-power to organise a Scout camp for the weekend just gone:-

 

We took over the rural school at Luis Sauce, where we didn’t do quite as much work on the school as I would have hoped beyond a little light painting, but we did have a good time and the camp-fire was electric (not literally, silly).

The upshot for both events is that I’m still on the team exec of our mission and I’m still the cub-section leader of our Scout group, definitely against my better judgement in both cases, and I’m also now the group-Scout leader which I’m still trying to figure out what that actually means before I decide how bad an idea it was.  In my defence, I have not chosen any of these positions, on the contrary, if I have any self-insight at all it is that leadership is my most un-quality of all and I seek to avoid it at all costs.  So I have no idea why other people find it amusing to shoe-horn me into these roles and I can only assume the major motive in all cases to be desperation, and more fool them when they get the leadership they have chosen. 

And now here we are back at the ranch trying to figure out what it was we thought we were doing before the winter holidays got in the way.  Looking forward to spring mostly I think.  I don’t mind wearing seventeen jumpers and never seeing my own skin on Scout camp when no-one else is going to wash anyway, but I’m not sure I could get away with it for the whole of the next two months at home.