The Heathenz's blog

5 Weeks to Christmas

The weather is almost getting reliably warm now in Melbourne, but it's still not time to put the heaters away. Today Shaeleigh and I arrived a little early to pick William up from school so I let her play on the big kids' play equipment and took a little video of it. Here it is below. To make it play all you have to do is click on the image.

 

I am sorry the sound stops after the first few seconds. Sometimes my camera phone just does that.

Here is a photo of Shaeleigh just as we were about to leave. I gave her her first hair cut the other day. It's not at all professional and there are still long straggley bits left on it because I can't get her to sit still long enough to snip them off. It is at a very cute length though.

 

I found about two dozen blogs by anthropologists on my new area of interest today.

Good-bye Vox

Well this is sad, and a bit of a surprise. Vox is closing down, and very quickly too. So we will have to move to another blogging service. The options I am considering are Wordpress, Typepad,  or Dreamwidth. It seems most Vox people are going to Typepad so that will probably be it. Unfortunately I don't think it has an emailing facility to notify people of when I have made a new post. I have found that to be a very handy feature here.

At least when this url is no longer valid it will redirect to the new Typepad blog.

Thank you Vox for a premium blogging experience. I'm sure I will miss it.
 

Birthdays Loom

William got a new haircut during the holidays. He was very specific about how it would look. He designed it himself and I haven't seen any other boy with exactly the same cut.

Back view fail

He wanted a photo of the back of his hair too but he couldn't stop turning around to look. It made for a good photo in the end though.

It might be a while before we see a perfect smile like that again. One of William's two big front teeth is very wobbly. He loves to wobble it in front of me and make me squirm.

And here are some new pics of Shaeleigh looking less like a baby and a lot more like a little girl now. (She's still a baby though.)

William is getting quite excited about his birthday. He is counting down the days. While he was at school today the rest of us went to the shopping centre to do some birthday shopping for him. He saw the first Harry Potter movie on the weekend and is very taken by it. He's keen to have an all-Harry Potter birthday party. Unfortunately though, we couldn't find anything to do with Harry Potter at Toys R Us at all! I was very surprised but apparently there won't be any new HP merchandise until the new movie comes out later this year. So that was very disappointing. We also looked in another shop for the video game that came out, but it only works on the Playstation 3 (we have a Playstation 2).

At least we could get him DVDs of the next two movies. Hopefully they won't be too grown up and scary for him and I suppose we could always get him the book and read it to him at bedtime, but I'm not sure he'll be into it if it doesn't have pictures. I think he may be still just a little too young.

Prior to the HP obsession William has been asking for a remote control plane. We couldn't find any of those today either. We'll probably have to get it at a hobby shop. I hope it doesn't mean it will be expensive.

He still likes Spiderman so we got Spiderman invitations. We also picked up "walkie-talkie watches" which we know he will love.

We've never held a birthday party for either of our kids before so I am very, very nervous about it. We were thinking of making it a costume party, mostly so William could dress up as Harry Potter. I'm looking into how to make him a costume because there were none to buy. It should be fairly simple. We have only invited one kid to his birthday so far and that is Catherine, a little girl he went to pre-school with.

If anybody's thinking about what to get him, he would probably appreciate a light for his bike since it gets quite dark by the time he comes home from after school care on Tuesdays. He's also been to Joeys which is the first year of Cub Scouts but at this time of year it gets a bit too scary for him to walk there and back in the cold and the dark. His school backpack's straps melted away from leaning against the heater too long so he could use a cool new schoolbag. Oh yeah, and he likes the new Doctor Who too but he finds the Daleks way too scary.

And once that's all over, we'll be going through all this again with Shaeleigh's birthday 3 weeks later.

Kids' Stuff

This morning I rediscovered a foam sticker of Blue from the show Blue's Clues. I bought it for William when he was a baby and now, since Shaeleigh loves Blue's Clues too, I've pulled it out for her too. When I showed her she was amazed and kept turning it over and over looking at it. She really loves Blue's Clues. You can't tear her away from it when it's on and she will even ask for it by name, "Boo Coos". So I've been thinking she would really really love to have a soft toy Blue to cuddle. The problem is I've never seen one except on the US Amazon.com site. That's probably because it's not the newest fad for kids. The show came out in the 1990s.

She has also recently become enamored of Dora the Explorer which we thoroughly approve of because it is a positive adventurous problem-solving female role model and bilingual to boot! She teaches a few words of Spanish in each show. Likewise though I can only find Dora dolls at the US Amazon so far. Dora is more popular than Blue so I can find other merchandise like towels and PJs even at $2 stores, but not the dolls.

Dora's a great show because William's also happy to watch it with Shaeleigh. He likes Dora's cousin's show Go Diago Go too.

The question is, how to get the dolls and if we do should we give them to her straight away or wait for her second birthday in August?

And we mustn't forget William. He's been asking for the OctoBattle Playset for weeks now. At least we don't have to get it from the US.

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Shaeleigh's first day at day care - photos

Shaeleigh's first day at the uni's day care centre (same one William went to) went well enough. Apparently she cried quite a lot after I left but eventually got distracted by playing outside. Then she fell asleep on top of her "Lamby" for two hours. She was still asleep when I went to pick her up at 3pm. After letting her show me some toys and wander around for a bit, I took her down to the mature age students lounge (PEMSO). She toddled about making new friends while I had a coffee. Then it was off to the doctor to get her overdue vaccinations. All in all it was a very long and eventful day for a little 20 month old girl.

Shaeleigh @ Day Care

It is so hard to get a photo of her that isn't at least a little blurred as she's always moving. She has become very good at walking around just over the last few weeks and is keen to show off any new moves.

Shaeleigh @ PEMSO

She's on the move...

I think it's time for her first haircut. Her hair's starting to look like a mullet!

Shaeleigh's first day at day care - Videos

Shaeleigh's showing off how much she can walk around like a biggie now!

Click on the image to make the videos load.
Then click on the little arrow that appears in the bottom left hand corner to make it play.

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Unfortunately the sound cuts out about one third into the second video which is a pity because she does make the sweetest baby sounds.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

Easter Baby

Just some recent photos

Double click on the images to get to the larger images with descriptions.

Crazy Hair Day

William's mid term break just finished and I realised I hadn't put these photos up for you to see yet. They had a Crazy Hair Day to raise money for charity and William won first place for the craziest hair! It is a blue mowhawk just like Sonic the Hedgehog, his newest favourite cartoon character.

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William wanted to keep his hair for as long as he could but in the morning the blue had got all over his pillow and his face. So he had to have a bath and wash it out of his hair. His scalp stayed blue for a few more days though.

Bubble bath time