Victory is sweet

I’d told the 4yo to go and rest up prior to a planned outing as he’d power chucked from the dining table to the back door at lunch time and we wanted to make sure he was okay for the trip (which didn’t eventuate as he was still coughing in a manner that had us paranoid that he might do it again).

I heard screaming matches between him and the 8yo and walked in, found the 4yo lying on the bed looking sleepy and upset and the 8yo playing his DS. Told off the 8yo for antagonising the 4yo (he protested, but he has been antagoising his siblings for the past couple of days). After giving the 8yo a serve I again told the 4yo to lie there and rest up and as I was walking out he smiled and said “Ahhh nothing is sweeter than victory.”

Christmas Island: nature trail and Albert the robber crab and friends

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

It’s been mostly overcast with bouts of rain so the last week has been kind of slack and kind of relaxed. We’ve been three times to two different beaches (though I didn’t take photos of the second beach partially because it was late when we went and I wasn’t sure how good the photos would turn out in that light, and mostly because I was going to be swimming as well, could have given it to my dad though), one loopy nature trail (which was slightly longer than I thought but a decent walk nonetheless, and we didn’t go to the lookout because it was probably too long a hike for the kids) and a few epic Minecraft sessions. I haven’t got as much art done as I was hoping but bits and pieces are getting done. The kids have been watching a LOT of Pokemon, a couple of other movies and reading books borrowed from the library (independently during the day in the case of the bigs; they each have a book on dinosaurs and 8yo has one on space and 6yo has a cookbook in addition to books selected for bedtime stories) as well as playing outside on the play equipment Nanny and Granddad are spoiling them rotten with, and looking at the fish in the pond.

Christmas Island: first day at the beach

It was slightly overcast and we almost didn’t go thanks to a (relatively) minor allergic reaction I had to lunch, but we got there and it was good.

0C

This is what my weather widget claimed the temperature was when I woke up my computer (and after all the bits and bobs had caught up) at 7:30something in the morning.

Get stuffed this is Perth >_<

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

On Cars 2

[first scene - spy movie sendup]
8yo: how do they get all that stuff on the car? It’s not big enough.
[at some point during sweeping cinematographic scenes]
8yo: how do cars grow? How do cars make stuff anyway?
Husband: …you’re thinking too much into a movie that has talking cars.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

The Quest for an Approximation of a Primer pt1: base system

[pretty much all the images I had in here were hotlinked and they’ve all vanished because they’re extremely outdated models by this point]

The “Primer”: a fictional computer (“book”) in a work of fiction called “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson. It is carted about by the child and absorbs information from its surroundings and uses that information to construct appropriate learning experiences for the child in a narrative fashion.

There's a problem with your Google+ profile

Dear Google

bek is part of my real name. I am currently running under the assumption that it was either my initials (of my real surname) or my handle (ryivhnn, which I use on Youtube, Artician, deviantART and as a username on the Diaspora pod I’m on, though the display name there is bek) that triggered WASPobot as I hope your code isn’t so defective that you would ping me for a string that was entirely your construction (all I did was choose that particular display).

Schooling 0000d25c e01n apr 8 12

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Last week and a bit have been slack and uncoordinated partially due to Easter and mostly due to the sleeping pattern going seriously out of whack resulting in myself and the kids going to bed way too late (me because I was staying up late to finish stuff off and also to make sure the bigs were asleep before turning out their light, and them because I have no idea).

Four

I have this gorgeous little boy. This one right here. Recently, he turned 4.

The day he turned 4, I teased JJ about feeling old. We missed kung fu training so I could cook a sausage stew for his birthday dinner (JJ is perfectly capable of making sausage stew I think, but the kids seem to think he doesn’t do it right). He wanted to go to the zoo on his birthday but because it was on an adults at kids’ prices day, we put off to the weekend so JJ could come too.

Resumption of the tracking training

It’s been a while but we’re slowly getting back into it.

A few days ago I took an old sock (tucked into the waistband of my shorts to help with scenting) and Tali’s giant rope bone to the footy oval and we did a couple of easy tracks to see if he remembered how to do it. He had exactly no trouble remembering how to do it, and the fact it was a black and grey sock on green grass probably didn’t hurt. He can at least use both his eyes and nose at the same time and even managed to find it when I draped it over the fence above his head.