Today's post is about yesterday and today....

For those of you who are not attachment parents (or something like it) the following image of Monika may disturb you, just ignore it. But for everyone else here is a picture of Monika snuggling a pillow in our family bed (well, Andrew's, Monika's and mine) as if she would be snuggling into me. I saw her and thought how gorgeous and took a photo, to me this is a natural photo, unlike the flyer they push onto new mother's at the hospital - propoganda!

Above: A poem I shared as part of our Poem a Day with the children, one I wrote for an internet project some time ago. The boys! Here as quick shots taken when I was sick in bed... and the first and last shots of the Jasmine (part of our Paludarium) which is flowering.. argh more trouble with the layout. Don't like the html option either!

Back to the family bed idea: Just my thoughts on it. I have had 5 very happy children, all of them as babies co-slept with Andrew and I, and to me it felt much more natural and both less worrisome and stressful in the sense of just being able to roll over breastfeed while I'm basically still asleep. The baby actually matches their breathing to yours and there has been some moments I've been there when a couple of them have been very young I've reminded them to breathe. The research that suggests co-sleeping is a contributing factor to SIDS was paid for by crib and nursery furniture companies in the US. I've never and neither has my husband rolled on them, as a mother you have an odd thing in you that makes you aware of your baby and you never quite fully asleep (light sleeping), you know the kind - it's that kind of sleep you get as you near labour when you're pregnant, well I've found with co-sleeping its present much much longer. So, in my opinion, I'm doing the right thing by me and my children.

Being so sick, I haven't updated the blog as much as I'd like, but rest assured, the children are still learning. Yesterday we read poetry and books to each other, did a little maths, a mad lib and some writing. Dante read more oh say can you say dinosaur? Kai read Cat in The Hat Labyrinth read More Riddles. This took some time, but believe me Kai is up to task, and Dante just wasn't as into it as he could be.

Today they are spending the day with their Nanny and Poppy so that Andrew and I might recover. Hope you aren't suffering the 'flu too... Q.

Our little bit of paradise

Today I have worked all day on doing the last of this semester's assignments. The children more or less had the day off to run around and play outside, and I took a short break to play with them outside too... and observe how our garden grows and to get them to play nicely with each other, which they did and really had good time doing.

I then put on a music DVD for children for them to sing and dance to. That's it, that is all we officially did today. Andrew finished off the paludarium though, so I am happy to say I've got the pictures of them to finally post!

Above: Apistogramma McMasteri and Nannacara Anomola

Below: Snake Skin Discus

Above: SS Discus again

Below: Paludarium full shot favouring the Jasmine, small pot of 'erbs, Maiden's Tears

Further Below: Favouring the right side showing ferns, more Jasmine and the Spider Plant

Below: Showing a closer look at the front of the aquarium and the plants growing in the planter pot, ferns, venus fly trap and over the back there is the Aloe Vera
Below: The Aquarium

Above: Full shot of Paludarium

Below: Apistogramma McMasteri

Far Below: Nannacara Anomola (Golden Dwarf Cichlid)




Below: The Blue Acara girl that I've raised from hatching
Far Below: The Salvinni





Above: Schools are for fishes! The Neon Tetra School of Indiscriminate Grappling *)
Below (all 3 shots): of our wonderful living science experiment of the dreadful Sea Monkeys TM, modelled by our wonderful Dante.




That's All Folks... Q.

Digi-Scrappin', Comics and Things....

Here we have young master Raven, first time I've digi-scrapped him. Slowly moving up the line. Nearly finished the off the page project of Monika, and posting shortly. This week though is going to be buzzzy.... I've got two assignments due Friday, naturally this means I've got to do some actual real thinking and work hard. Of course, I would rather be playing and making and doing, but I do actually have to make myself do these things.

Big disappointment, if I do a radio play it has to be non-fiction (I had a screen play sooo ready to be adapted - might still anyway for hope it may get taken up by a local or net based radio, who knows. Synopsis is: (true story) A man kills his wife because she gosses too much on the phone. I kid you not.) Anyways, screw doing a current affair type thing, I'm going to review something... something fresh in my mind would be Watchmen by Alan Moore. Now that was a fine piece. I really, really like his full spectrum use of the medium. Not a huge fan of the super hero genre per say, but this isn't quite straight forward in that way. Much more about the death and rebirth of the super hero entity. Moving from the fight the good but small crime to global change with a view a little bad is justified if a whole lot of good stuff comes from it. I liked that, I just didn't like the characters as much as I did some of the characters in say Sandman or even X-Men. I like X-Men over Spidey and I despise Super. I like a Super Hero with a darkness to him/her... I like depth to a character. Spider Man and Super Man reek too much of sterile goodness for me, and the other Justice Leaguers excepting Bat Man of course. He's nearly insane. I like a spectrum of sanity too...

The Paludarium is being completed as I speak, and pictures will be taken and posted in the next day or so. My neck and shoulders are sore due to my bursa being overfull of fluid and sadly enough I still haven't managed to get the letter from my GP to the physio yet, which was given to me weeks ago. I'm starting to notice again, so I really have to do something about it, at least it isn't what a friend of mine is suffering from - Rhuematoid Arthritus. Nasty, nasty stuff that. I feel for her, but its all looking up I think.

I'm going to do another post now, on the birthday party we went to yesterday... Cheers, Q.

Spiders, sea monkeys and stuff...

Dante and Daddy caught the first bug to go into the bug catcher today, a baby huntsman, its still a decent size though! He is a bit of a strange boy, observing it and saying his good nights to it before bed.

The sea monkeys are growing so they are easily visable now, so I'll grab another pic of them for the blog tommorrow. I'll also get a pic of Labyrinth's new boots. They are hardy little buggers, as well as being ugly! Raven is constantly colouring in, mostly right in door ways laying down, cute! We did some archery yesterday, and it was nice to see I haven't lost anything for the somewhat large break and my little finger! We also did a walk around the fore shore and collected rocks for fishtanks and enjoyed the scenery as much as the glare would allow, and it FELT GOOD! I wanted to do more walking but Rave wasn't up to it, he's only little!

My finger has only my stitches on now (butterfly), which means it's a little more flexible. Andrew has been quite depressed too...

I've got some more plants for the paludarium! A Maidenhair plant which will hang in a basket and kind of flow around, and another Jasmine plant, which we discovered was actually an offcut (our original one for the paludarium was most definately a juvenile plant.

And today (19th) is my birthday. I'm going to bed now, while Andrew is still doing water changes and other things to fish tanks (cultivation, aquascaping more and water changes).

More tommorrow! Q.

Garden of Earthly Delights...er, I wish, part 4

So, here we have our garden in foam boxes at the moment, there are spring onions, salad mustard, rocket and herbs:





Above is a little herb garden meant for the paludarium! Basil, thyme and coriander.

Tch! Tch! Excuses! Excuses!

Yes, because I've been working on a uni related assignment (and education one actually - Creative Arts in the Classroom) my pinky has been hurting a bit, so I'll put some pics up, then I'll do another dedicated to our gardening!Labyrinth has been doing some photography on her digital camera, here's three:







Note: Above and Below are two pics of Andrew, Monika and my bedroom. What you can see here is literally how big it is, no room to swing a cat honestly, but the kids new bedroom is roomy and spatious and room to play. We have a little sanctuary with our paludarium on one side, my heirloom antique dresser and bookshelf with our personal favourite books on the other, and the bed in between, and other than that a narrow passage around. That is all we need really, but we must love the kids as they now have a decent sized bedroom at last!Andrew took the above photo of the paludarium, you can make out the Jasmine blossoming next to the wall, and yes that is the door. We are putting in a small indoor herb garden right next to the tank where that white bucket happens to be, and we will be putting more ferny type plants around as well. That's Aloe Vera on the left in the wall basket above the tank. A spider plant at the other side. Above but sitting on the tank are several plants, including a venus fly trap!

We've been taking a bit of time over...

...sorting out our house, as I injured myself on Mother's Day cutting the taties. Why was I cooking on Mother's Day? Everything was taking so long getting done with the moving of rooms and the paludarium.

So, my pinky now has a severed nerve, the top of my finger is comfortably numb (I now know what that means). So typing etc is proving not as easy as I am used to... but for good news, I've got something to share! I've did my first digiscrap with all free stuff from around the web (thank you for sharing!), and here it is:



Hopefully we will be back to normal soon. We have some stuff to catch up on and rearrange still, as I have had a disability (Joke!), just a small injury, bad enough though to mean I can't get it wet for a week or take the bandage off. So no more taties or washing up or washing!!! But I have to sort my scrapping space so as I can do some scrapping, and I've promised some one on one time with each of the children tommorrow for various activities so I will post that. If you are at all interested you can see the Paludarium (and its various stages, including the latest) right here. Well, I will do my best to blog over the next few days much more regularly, loving this so much, Q.

Just words about Today...

...Today is a bit of a telling day.
Today we swap bedrooms with the children, and make a very large fish tank stand for our paludarium for our new bedroom, get a lot of other housework done and generally will be busy all day.
Today is the day before Mother's Day.
Today is likely to spill over into Mother's Day, but really it doesn't matter, but I hope we can get it all done today anyway.
Today will be hard work but well worth it.
Today I hope it will be all over quickly so we can get on with our lives!
If all goes well, later Today, I'll be posting pictures of our Paludarium all set up, the children's room will be spacious and have a play space, will be clean and easy to keep tidy.

Friday and Saturday Shopping

Nothing exciting really. The children now have another series of Ben Ten, which has a little something for each of the big 3 and nothing for the youngest two. Dante just likes it (most likely because one of the 10 thingys is like an amphibious creature, Labyrinth loves the witch and wants to be one (score!), and its got lots of fighting in it for Kai.

Young Raven is our resident muso. He can sing very beautifully, he loves to tinker around on the keyboard, and he likes the guitar (if only he could get at it more often, thinks he). Monika is too young to tell yet, but she is smart. 7 months and shes mastered crawling for a couple of weeks now she is moving on to pulling herself up on furniture.

Just in case anyone is thinking was Monika named after a wonderful friend I once had, the answer is no. Andrew named her, I gave her middle name to her, Belatrix. Its a compound name that one, without all the American compound yuckies about it like, dare I say it my neice is called Kristie-Lee. Nah, Belatrix is Beatrix and Bella combined. I had to make it a single L because that means "Beautiful White Warrioress". Thing is, she was named to contrast Raven. Raven is albino, category 2, which means he has some of the characteristics of a cat 1 albino, excepting he has a splash of colour in eyes and hair, but he carries some of the inherent risks, such as those beautiful blue eyes could become cancerous or he could become blind if he is exposed to too much sunlight. So here is Raven (obviously a black bird), contrasting with a white warrioress in Monika who is our only dark haired child, and the only child who has brown eyes, but they are so dark they are nearly black. So, it is a paradox, really.

Well anyways... shopping. Its just been boring excepting for adding to our Paludarium, which I'll take a pic of and post tommorrow. We brought a casket for our albino budgie who broke his neck in his enthusiastic carryings on. We also brought a white rose, no flowers, that we will put above his grave in memorium of him. We might not have had him long, but we had all grown attached. It was Labyrinth's idea to bury him in a casket, and they all wrote a message to be buried in with him. (God, I don't know how I would have managed the last couple of days if it wasn't for my anti-depressants). Other than that, we brought a trio of Apistogramma Cacatoid (Cockatoo Cichlid), as per requirements for the breed, one male to two females. And a Firemouth cichlid. Lots of potting mix for our garden, and a few other things for the garden like Rose food. Remarkably cheap really. The lighting today stung. The lighting is for the Paludariums aquatic and semi-aquatic plants. $70! That is four lamps and the correct spectrum globe to create "daylight", an optimum enviroment for the plants to grow and have great viewing of the tank's inhabitants.

Scarily enough, we've inspired my neice Kayla, to get a fish tank for her birthday. In a 1 foot by 1 1/2 footer tank she's squeezed in (by the recommendations of some unscrupulous pet shop assistant) 18 fish. Two goldfish and a half dozen guppies is all I know so far. Either way, by now I reckon she's lost half the fish anyway. It should be criminally punished. They all went into an uncycled tank. They do this for newbies at fish keeping who don't bother researching stuff so they HAVE to return to BUY MORE! Even Dante, who is 7, knows better than that! (And has done since he was 4). He knows how to maintain a fish tank at optimum levels (so fish wouldn't die or have ammonia spikes) but he lacks the strength to carry large buckets of water around otherwise he'd be doing all the maintenance to the tanks, if he wanted to anyway (which he does).
Happy Birthday Kayla!

Today we had an interesting talk in the van, the children and I. Dante tells me he is filling out an application to work at Bunnings! I say, "what?" and he repeats it. He tells me they all want to start working, stupidly asking why, he tells me "because I want to earn money." Of course he does! Kai and Labyrinth both heartily agree they want to do the same. He brings me up a form he has so dilegently been walking on entitled "customer feedback". Oh, so cute. So I tell them, I'm sorry but you aren't old enough to work there. "Oh, why not?" is chorused throught the car. And I explain about children and working laws, and I tell them but there isn't a reason in the world that you can't start up your own business. Lots of home edding students come to this conclusion pretty early, around 12, but noth 8, 7, and 5! By this time Andrew's arrived back at the car and he is included in the conversation. He tells them they are allowed to busk at Salamanca and the city for money for free! They just have to practice their instruments and get really good at it so people will want to pay to listen. They've noticed lots of buskers and are now very keyed up to learn their guitars and drums and keyboards! Then Kai asked me, "what if I just wanted to draw pictures, could I make money from that?" I tell him, of course, lots of people are artists and get paid to sell thier art. He wasn't sure he wanted to give them up though! CUTE!

That is a big step for children really, but not for our children (or possibly other homeschooled kids) because since the introduction of pocket money and such for housework and school work (they get a bonus $10 for every level they complete or something amazing is achieved that takes time and effort) they have been seeking out new ways of making money. Even Raven works his butt off so he can have extra treats and money (but secretly I think he does it because he likes doing stuff to help - the toddler age).

Still looking for decent music tutors for Rave and Dante. Just looking for an organic approach to teaching an instrument really... and flexible to work with young children. I didn't think that would be a huge ask.

Labyrinth is not settled really. Fashion designer, rock star, nurse, vet, all of these and more she is interested in. I think she'll settle on something when she really attaches herself to something and goes in deep. Hell, she is only 8! Dante is keen to work with fish/scuba diving and has done since he was what? 2! Kai is mad keen on being a soldier, but he really is too smart for it, and too lazy, lets be honest. He shirks whenever he can get away with it. However, he really is coming along with his drawing. To direct this army obsession, we are putting him into a martial arts class (and Labyrinth and Dante too). Raven is most definately a smart young man, but he's learning things in a strange order. When he was 1 and 1 1/2 he could sing his alphabet, numbers up to twenty, but here he is at 2 3/4 and he's only learning shape and colour. He knows what a lot of animals are, and what noises they make, and whether they live in the water, farm or jungle. He loves making music, he is very dextrous but only very recently has he been interested in making marks on paper (unlike Dante who was drawing fish and humanoid images by then.) Monika of course, can win anybodies heart with her smiles and chatter. She can say Dad Dad, Dande, but no Mama or mum mums yet! :( At least she's talking though. She has tried but it hasn't worked yet. Andrew had to have at least one to say Daddee first, all the rest of them have been Mumma. 4 out of 5 isnt a bad score, if only a bit unusual.

Oh, we also visited my brother's new home. Its got enough bedrooms for each of his 5 kids. He seems happy enough in his new job, I guess. He's flat out and exhausted, and same with his wife. I hope this house brings them a happier environment.

Well, loving life, but sad too. This has been a great learning time for the children. I am also glad to report Dante needs no glasses, just need to catch him when he can be bothered learning before I bother trying him at reading lessons. A bit like Labyrinth really, except he hates disappointing me, she doesn't give a rats.

Well, enough blabbering. My leg is aching because it does sometimes, and if I don't do something about it soon I'll be in agony and won't even be able to think good enough to find some drugs. OK somewhat of an exaggeration.

Sweet dreams, Quasior.

Guilty Pleasures and Paludarium nearly finished!

This is what is known as a "PicNic" in our family. It is an almost naughty tea when we have been flat out and not at home, but we need to get a meal ready for the children in the least amount of time possible. They then enjoy watching a movie or TV while eating it, so its a picnic like that.

Our Paludarium! It isn't quite finished here... I'll post that later!