Lego

I've postponed writing this, because I honestly don't need any prompting to blubber like a baby over the loss of my magnificent furry friend - I've shed enough tears over the last few weeks without having to look at pictures and write stirring words.

But she deserves her own special mention - she deserves to be cried over every day. And I need to get back to this space which I didn't feel I could without noting this moment first.

Lego is gone. Her cancer progressed faster than we'd believed it could - but right on schedule for these canine diseases it seems. The vet gave her 6 - 8 weeks from diagnosis, she made it to 7.

She came to us in January 2009, by air from Johannesburg. We'd seen pics of her with the torso and arms of a man in the background, and based on our assumption of her size we picked out a collar and lead, a couple of feeding bowls and some toys and went to the airport to fetch her from cargo.

A big wooden box came trundling out on the conveyor with a teeny-weeny little pup inside. Turns out the arms who had held her in the pictures belonged to a boy and she was much smaller than we'd expected, the collar we had for her much too large!

She and Frieda were firm friends from day one, up to all kinds of mischief.
Lego would nibble Frieda with her sharp puppy teeth until I felt a bit self conscious of all her scratches - Frieda didn't mind - and Frieda used to try and protect Lego from trouble by kindly covering up her illicit puppy poos with whatever was handy - even kitchen cloths and her own clothes!

She was a handful at times, raising her was challenging in places - she was our first dog you see, and firstborns are firstborns really. But she fit with us so well, she was so loyal and so stoically and devotedly there. I trusted her implicitly.

And she trusted us. Which is why, after her diagnosis, I promised her we would never take her to the vet again (she hated trips to the vet) and why, when she was so lumpy you couldn't touch her without her flinching - gently and apologetically 'til the end, we made the decision to call the vet and when he came, we held her in our arms, in her bed, and whispered love and reassurance to her as she slipped away.

The neighbour played violin in the background. I kid you not, that really happened. [Edited for clarity : at her house, next door, completely unaware of how bizarre sad violin was for us at that moment.]

I miss her. I miss her grunts of communication which were as clear (if not clearer) than most of my children's communications with me.
I miss her watchfulness, I always felt safe with her around. I miss her companionship, she slept at my feet for most of her last few weeks. I miss her love.

I've got some people in my life going through some hard shit. Cancer, divorce - massively disruptive and sad life events - and I've felt badly, in the midst of all this, grieving for my dog. But as one of my wisest friends said, 'Family is family, no matter the species'.

Lego was part of our family. She is gone and we miss her.

right now

It's hard to blog when all the big things happening around me at present aren't my stories to tell.

Big things happening to people who are big in my life - filling me with sympathy, sadness, fear and fragile feelings of maternal tenderness.
There's a lot of them - people I love at whom life is throwing some big curve-balls.

WTF life??

The things I can write about are a mixed bag ...

... my Lego is failing fast. When the vet said 6 - 8 weeks, 6 weeks ago, I kind of scoffed. How could he be so sure when we've no idea how long she's had the cancer for? Turns out he knew (being a vet and all I guess). In 10 days time I go to Joburg for a week ...

... Joburg for a week to run logistics on a fab project. It'll be a week of hard work and hard play - my favourite kind. Johannesburg is interesting this time of year - icy cold nights (way colder than CT ever gets) and still, warm days. Good people, some of whom were with me in Durban last year, and interesting work. I'm looking forward to it, were it not for my ailing furbaby.

But in other news - we finished our bath renovation!

Well, besides for a small snag list ...

But it's lovely, very 'executive' as my brother called it (i.e. black and white and sleek), and now of course - totally different to the rest of our house.

It's been about 6 months in the making - the old bathroom was ripped out in November - and we've had the work done slowly as we've had the cash, or inspiration. We're 'hashtag blessed' to have had other loo's to use in this silly big house of ours. It's been fun, and we're hoping to keep up the momentum. We've been reminded that we love doing this, and I think we're quite good at it.
Photographing a bathroom is hard though - thank goodness for that massive reflective shower screen!

Life is hard, life is beautiful, life is relentless. What would we do without it?

the hard stuff

A friend who is battling cancer did such a good Facebook post this week.
Couched in a wry, humourous story about her kids, she subtly updated her broader friends as to where she's at in her treatment.
For those who hadn't known she created a light space in which to reach out with their love and concern, for those that did, some light relief from the heartache of watching a good friend go through this.
There was no pity party, no drama, no big announcement - just a gentle 'this is my life now and it's hard but still full of love and laughs and we carry on'.

It's hard to tell other people when you're having a shit time. You feel self-conscious about ruining their day or happy mood, you feel like you're trying to illicit sympathy, but it's more about needing people to know - this is what's up with me, it's not that great.
Be gentle.

What's up with me is that my doggie is dying.
Lego has lymphoma and the prognosis, 4 weeks ago, was 6 - 8 weeks.
She will be 9 this year. She hates going to the vet. Her liver is affected, her lungs and possibly her heart. For these reasons, and others, we're not going to attempt chemo.
We're going to keep her comfortable for as long as we can and then one day, soon I fear, we're going to phone our lovely vet and ask him to come here and put her to sleep in her bed, in our arms.

She knows. She's slowing down for sure, still eating and being herself, but slowing down. Yesterday she didn't come outside when I was throwing bits of wood for Orca, usually a game she'd get involved in, just watched from the door with a waggy tail and a sad eye. She's always been good at the sad eye my Lego, there's a reason we sometimes call her Eeyore.

She sticks close, wandering in with her 'don't mind about me' demeanour, to plonk herself down with a grunt and a nudge, and sleep at my feet. In the evenings she comes to tell me it's couch time - time for TV and a cuddle. In the night she wakes me with an apologetic nose, to let her out or fill the water bowl which is no longer lasting 'til morning.

She knows and she's saying goodbye.
I know and every chance I get I'm saying, in the ways in which she understands, 'I love you Lego'.
This is what's up with me, it's not that great.

lately

Our new (to us) Flying Dutchman sail boat is moored off the lawn, all the shiny bells and whistles clapping in the wind. Well done, well done.
Husband spent the WHOLE of Sunday rigging it and at 18:30, as the evening drew in, we set off on our maiden voyage - a fast clip around the lake. And this in just a light breeze! We LOVED it!
Nearly 5 yrs on and life at the lake still has adventures in store.

I could do without the tinkling though, we're going to have to do something about that ...

Our little dog Lego is in tatters ... she went under the knife yesterday to have two cancerous growths removed and she looks like she's been in a dog fight with a hatchet :-(
We've not had the pathology results yet but we're hoping the vet got it all and that we still have much more time with this sweet furkid.
She really looks like Frankenweenie now ...

Recovery includes treats with her meds, grated apple served to her in bed and lots and lots of snuggle time on the couch (which means I've been watching a lot of TV!).

There's another new baby!

He's not a blood relation this one, but as close as ... first son to some of our dearest friends.

We're coming to the end of the first school term of the year. It's been a long one and the girls are tired. So am I. Not that there's a holiday in the works for me, I'm got an event on in Joburg in two weeks time, but ... just the not having to wake early on these ever-darkening mornings will bring some relief.

But we did get out of town a couple of weekends back - a short mums and kids camping trip to one of our favourite places. It was hellishly hot and the time flew by in a haze of endlessly refilling juice bottles and reapplying sunscreen but we spent a lot of time in the softest, most delectably gentle and soothing mountain river water I've ever known, which made it all worthwhile.
I took no photos.
We've done this a few times before, no-husband camping trips, and I must say we love it. Not that we don't love camping with our partners, but there is something simpler about girl-camping - feed the kids, eat crackers and cheese, go to bed early with our books. OR feed the kids, eat crackers and cheese, sit up late 'round the fire drinking wine and cackling.
My favourite thing about it is showing my kids that we can. Pitch tents, light a fire, handle a massive thunderstorm and unexpected rain (that happened). That we can drive off-road and jump start a car and you know, be ballsy. Except is it not the most unfeminist thing ever to think you have to prove that you can? I'm so tempted always to tell the girls: Look, look what we're doing, aren't your mum's awesome? But I don't.
Far better to just do it right? To just let this be a normal thing for them.
I do hope they remember though, I hope taking their kids on road trips and camping without waiting for a man to be available to accompany them, I hope this will just be a normal thing for them too.

Oh and one last thing, a Pixies concert.

A throwback to our wild youth on a magnificent summers evening in the most beautiful garden in the world, surrounded by many friends - from then and now - listening to a bunch of aged rockers as tight and magnificent as they were then.

There was magnificent merch too.

the grit

A friend told me my blog has been looking a little squeaky-clean of late. Enviable family holidays away, gorgeous sunny birthday parties in the middle of winter, daughters who read all day and stay out of my hair, birthday lunches with lovely ladies ... yeah, it's been a wonderful few months ... but we all know life ain't like that all the time right?

I just don't really like to moan, don't like to come into this space with the blaah. Not that I haven't in the past, but the thing is, what do I want a record of?
The warm 'n fuzzy moments of my life - the big events, the everyday love, the heart-stopping moments of ordinary awe and immense gratitude?

Or, do I want to remember how in the last few weeks I've also ...
... had two jobs canceled (turns out they couldn't afford the full ass) and all the related financial stresses
.... been back and forth to the vet 5 times with my beloved Lego. She's had a big skin sarcoma biopsied, then removed, then re-stiched, then re-bandaged and re-medicated. Her little brother was responsible for the second round of stitches and bandages. Resulting eventually in this:

... managed The Cone: rearranged furniture, placated a seriously unhappy pup, had my shins smashed into over and over, kept the food bowl filled just so so he could use it and any number of times been called on to extricate him from some cone/bush/chair jam, once involving dog shit
... tackled our first case of head-lice in the family (not bad for 8 years of parenting huh?), which involved copious research, laundry, tumble-drying EVERYTHING, quarantining 2 black bags of soft toys, spray, comb, shampoo, check and repeat. Over and over and over and over and over.
... managed my annual seasonal asthma issues, lots of wheezing and discomfort and fretting at 1am about dying of emphysema until I get myself to the doc and hand over a lot of money in exchange for the welcome news that it's really not that bad, and the right (expensive) meds to manage it. Boring.

So ja, I could've blogged about all that for some perspective right? Life is not all hoorahs and polished apples.
But we know that, you know that, and I know that despite there being some challenges and tedious days of soul-destroying adulthood, my life is pretty damn fine.

It's more than fine, it's mine - and it's the best life I could be living right now.

easter past and present

I quite like Easter.

It's not as frantic as Christmas, but there's still a big focus on family, food and indulgence. What's not to love right?
You can't really go wrong with a 4 day weekend and a free pass to eat as much chocolate as you like.

I have very fond childhood memories of Easter. We didn't get a lot of sweet treats so a pile of chocolate was a big deal, and hunting for eggs in our big fynbos garden with lots of nooks and crannies was an adventure.
We often went away over Easter, or had friends from the city come to us, and I remember dying eggs with tea and drinking hot chocolate in rainy cabins in the woods.
One year we had pink and white cut-out cardboard bunny ears and paws from some far off exotic place (like London!) - in ye olde early 80's this kind of thing was not as commonly available as it is now.
I cringe to recall an Easter morning as I entered adolescence when, thinking I was being droll, I asked if 'anything exciting was going to happen or can I go and shave my legs?'. My mothers face was hurt and her voice sharp when she retorted that my (younger) brothers were going to hunt for Easter eggs but if I thought I was too old for such things I was free to do something else.
I felt awful, and obviously I was not too old for such things. I felt like an Easter ass.

It's also such a good break, after the madness of the first quarter, we're all in need of lazy days come April. And it's traditionally the weekend we get the first real winter rain. This year did not disappoint and Saturday dawned grey and chill.
There is still novelty in that.
Especially when it clears right up again and the weather returned with a beauty unsurpassed by any other time of year.

In April 2011 I wrote:

This time of year, my god it is sublime. It's ... subtle. Subtle in a way that February in Cape Town is utterly not. Clarity, cut, colour - it's like the seemingly endless days of late summer/autumn are each perfect diamonds, most definitely gems, each one handcrafted for perfection.

The temperature is perfect, subtle. The breezes are soothing, subtle. The light is clear and gentle, subtle.

It's marvelous.

 I could've written that about today.

Easter has not always been so idyllic. Most notably Easter 2010.

And I had fun recalling some failed Easter crafts from 2011, and the time Frieda made my heart explode with love, also 2011.

And of course how could we ever top the excitement last Easter brought?

That teeny-weeny little guy is now double the size of his older sister and a great big lovable stinky brute of a thing, adored by all.

This Easter weekend was low-key and lovely. Friday afternoon with friends, Saturday walks and movies and cuddles ...

Sunday chocolate and colouring and Peter and the Wolf on audio ...

... rounded off with a massively indulgent evening meal - roast lamb etc and a pudding so good (and so not present on the internet I discover while trying to find a link) that I'm going to have to make it again just to blog and photograph. As an act of public service you understand.
All four of us rolled away from the table and out the door, for a necessary wild and windy night walk, laughing together in the moonlight as we walked off our food babies and tumbled home to bed.

This morning we could barely contemplate anymore sweetness but we had a family get-together planned, and we'd promised to bring the cake, so we pulled ourselves together and just managed to produce one.

It was a happy weekend. Here's to Easter!

25 things about right now.

1. I spend all my days logged into the Other Google Account.
2. The one with The Work and The Questions and The People who need me all the time.
3. My life could not be more different to this time last year.
4. As the conference I'm working on draws near (9-13 Feb), I'm feeling The Thrill. It's a good feeling.
5. I'm working with such a diverse group of people.
6. And seriously have to watch my foul potty mouth - probably not a bad thing ...
7. Also, I was in a meeting this week with 5 other people who were all 5 - 10 years younger than me.
8. Just, wow.
9. RETRACTED
10. Unrelated: if I want to send a Glitter Bomb I need only sweep my study (aka the Art Room) floor.

11. A Glitter & Dog Hair Bomb that is.
12. Seriously, our dogs have the worst life.

13. And on the subject of Lego, there's been a bit of building around here - it's a great work distraction.

(I only noticed the cat/eye thing when I downloaded this.)

14. LEGO building is also fun by lamplight, during load-shedding, which is back.

15. I'm extremely lucky to have a LEGO Fairy Godmother. She's been keeping us in steady supply.
16. Oh wait, there's more LEGO...
17. Somebody has started meticulously planning her birthday party in March.

18. These are all the items which will appear on her cake .... apparently.
19. Not pictured: a fluffy leopard (which I said would have to stand alongside because icing) and a ninja (because invisible).
20. I sense I'm going to have to relinquish control over this one. And that's okay.
21. There's nothing wrong with a LEGO-Leopard-Dinosaur-Ninja 5th Birthday Party at all. We welcome diversity in this house.
22. My brother and sister-in-law are moving into their new house (much closer to us - yay!) RIGHT NOW. We're standing by with supper ...
23. My other brother is getting married NEXT MONTH!
24. Family for the win.
25. Now what the hell am I going to wear for 5 days of formal conferencing??

hu-hooooo

As Husband pulled into the garage I was waiting, dog leads in my hand.

'The girls have eaten, they need to get in the bath and I need to take the dogs for a walk.'

It had been a long day at home - Frieda has tonsillitis and I have SO MUCH work.

My multi-tasking skills are pretty damn hot, but trying to code HTML while mediating sibling squabbles and work through the rider for South Africa's most famous drag queen proved just a little too diverse for me yesterday ....

The dogs and I set off at a fast trot. It was an unusually still evening and I enjoyed the neighbourhood sounds floating past us - ice tinkling in sundowners, baths running, dinners cooking - I enjoyed not being part of any of that (even the drinks!), moving quickly through the cool air.

Not being encumbered with small people we walked faster and further than usual, finding ourselves in streets and cul-de-sacs I'd not walked through before, and being later than the usual dog-walking set, we were alone.

Or so I thought.

Hu-hoooo.

An owl, somewhere close.

I slowed and scanned around the growing dusk, the trees and bushes strangely in sharper relief as the light faded.

Hu - hoooo.

Of course he'd spotted us before we saw him. A-perch a branch only just above my head we stared at each other for a long while, totally motionless and relaxed, then I left him to his evening hunting and walked on.

It was getting darker as we headed home. The shady pathways we'd come on felt closer and more mysterious now, the dogs stayed close, all of us breathing hard.
Those with some sense kept their mouths closed as the clouds of spring midges gathered. The dogs sneezed and coughed.

Approaching home I could see darkness in the upstairs windows, the girls weren't in the bath yet. Half an hour before that would have infuriated me, now it was totally fine.

We burst in the door in a gust of crisp air and renewed good humour, and smothered them in hugs and laughter.

A necessary walk. Thank you owl. Thank you dogs.

*African Eagle Owl pic from flickr*

list of 5: 5 things I'm really good at that no one will pay me for

1. Finding ridiculously small things in ludicrous places.
Two nights ago Husband, up a ladder, dropped a tiny screw into the rose bush. In the dark.
I found it within a minute.

2. Remembering the most inane detail about completely arbitrary and inconsequential crap.
A ridiculous example is buried deep in this post.
(Which, can I just say, I knew exactly where to find because I remembered  the year I originally posted it ... it's a gift right?)

3. Sticking my foot in my mouth.
Like this afternoon when I said (to a group of people I'd never met before) something about someone else I'd met clearly being a massive Christian and started loudly imitating an alarm siren going off (with hand gestures and everything), while the friend I was with used her baby as a shield to frantically gesture to me to SHUT UP THEY ARE ALL MASSIVE CHRISTIANS.
Ack.

4. Apparently, ruining people's fun.

As in, 'Get out of the ball pit NOW, we're going home.'
(Because Mummy just embarrassed herself socially.)

5. Taking dogs to the vet.
FIVE trips last month and tomorrow I take one back to get his stitches removed and the other to a canine orthopod to get checked out for possible leg surgery.

I'm sure this all adds up to a good resume for something right? Anyone?

artist of the uncool

Last night was The Exhibition opening.

I fear I was desperately uncool.

I waited until most people had left (and my 3rd glass of wine) before asking my brother to take some photos of me and my Lego.

And was completely incapable of not being a total dork.

I fear I gushed, and garbled, and talked too fast. I know I told someone I did 'NGO work for the film industry' - wtf? - and I distinctly remember calling two people by the wrong name.
I laughed too loudly and clearly over-used my eyes.

But WHAT FUN!!!

I'm totally hooked, and wonderfully inspired for my next piece(s). Solo exhibition within a year? Only if someone promises to give me a sedative and ensure I'm far more coolly laconic at the opening!

how puppies are like babies, and also not

It's going to be puppy-heavy around here for a while. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

How puppies are just like babies:
~ they cry for no reason, have no control over their bodies, can't sleep through the night, get crayzeeee when they're hungry
and also not ...
~ you can ignore their crying (well I can, for a bit), they don't wear nappies (why? why not?), you don't need to nurse them at 3am, the hunger thing is just the same.

But they are in that ...
~ you can swaddle them (and it really works, especially at 3am!), if you don't shower during their morning nap you're screwed, you forget from one puppy to the next how much work they are ...
but also not because ..
~ you can put them in the bathtub to scrabble around while you shower, and then hose it down afterwards (puppy and bath), related: you don't have to sterilise everything they touch ...

They're just the same in that you can put them to sleep anywhere ...

... but mainly they're the same in that when you spend time with them you remember what a privilege it is to spend time with a young creature.

Puppies, like babies, don't come along all that often, and despite the work involved it's very special to watch a small thing grow.

Thank god puppies grow faster than babies though!

an abominable procrastination cake

Remember back when Red Velvet Cake was a wild novelty? Something to fuss over and perfect. The first recipe I ever used required some fancy chem-class-type fizzing of baking soda and red food colouring at just the right moment to acquire the correct texture, never mind colour, for an authentic Red Velvet experience.

These days we have this...

An abomination right? An overly-sweet abomination at that. AND the rose petals are not included! Pah.

But ... I happened to have this in the cupboard, and some leftover butter-cream icing in the freezer ... and it was Nonki's 40th birthday ... and I just couldn't get in to working today.

Naturally I blame this.

I mean ... really how ridiculously cute?

So! I baked.

And surprised Nonki with it when she brought the girls home from swimming. We all had tea and cake and sent the rest home with her for her kids.

Yes, I employ someone to look after my children while I bake her cake. Today I may have been the world's best boss.

But I sure wasn't the world's best employee!

PUPPY!!

Look what the Easter Bunny brought us ...

Orca. 5 weeks old.

'Cos every little girl deserves a puppy right?

With sharp, sharp little puppy teef.

And if you're going to get another one they may as well match!

got air

We're just back from our annual family retreat - the 7th year we've been back to the same house out near Hermanus for a birthday celebration weekend in March.

My Grandad passed away last week. My sister-in-law's been really ill with glandular fever. Our baby turned 2 last weekend. It's been a busy, emotional time.
But despite all that, the weekend was light. Easy. Fun and relaxing.
'Cos that's what family should (mostly) be.

walkies!

Colour me Katie did it first. And did it very nicely at that.



But the Balloon Dog is becoming a bit of an annual tradition for us too. Last year's puppy hung around for weeks, slowly deflating in weird and irregular ways until one day Frieda came to me with a small piece of shrunken brown plastic and declared it Time to Throw Balloon Dog Away.
An important milestone for a then 3 year old I thought.



Our new friend is however in his first flush of youth. Filled with exuberance and adventurous spirit he had his first walk around the neighbourhood this afternoon, checking out the sights and sounds of Observatory.
And the smells, oh boy the smells!
Much better than bobbing around the Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) stand at the Baba Indaba, that's for sure.

annoying on so many levels

So last night, in a freakish replay of last week's events, I heard a distinctively ominous BANG at about 9pm. Calling husband I threw open the front door in time to see a hooded figure run across our front yard and jump the wall, taking off down the road.

Seems he'd tried to force our front security gate, hoping to gain access to the enclosed porch in which we keep our bikes - admittedly irresistible bait to the small-time criminal - in the process rendering the lock useless, and us captive in our own house.
Cunt.

Security company was duly called, more for procedure than any hope of pursuing the perp, and then our home insurers to book a locksmith for the morning. At which point we discovered that obviously in order to claim for the damages we would need a police case number, which of course meant having to formally report the incident.
And so, in what felt like a massive waste of the already massively-strapped SA Police Force's time and resources, we had two officers in our lounge last evening, taking my statement about nothing, and a visiting detective and a finger-print guy here today, practically doing nothing, all so we wouldn't have to spend R500+ of our own money on repairing our gate.
And they were all so nice and helpful and sympathetic, which almost made me feel worse. And even more annoyed with the would-be burglar.

I'm annoyed that this pathetic little junkie/opportunist/desperately hungry individual (I added the last one to create the illusion of lefty-liberalism, sneaky hey?) got within metres of my sleeping daughters.

I'm annoyed that my feelings of security in my own home have been shaken a little.

I'm annoyed that we now need to find alternative storage for our bikes when the porch was just perfect for them.

I'm annoyed that the key for the new lock is ugly.

And mostly I'm annoyed that my BULL TERRIER slept soundly on her chair throughout the entire event. So much for that!

language

We have new neighbours. A German couple with two young children. They live on a farm outside Cape Town but are here for 6 weeks fixing up the place to rent it out.
They're clearing gutters and painting and gardening and what have you. This morning, over the wall, I heard a conversation which has played out many a time in our house.

KID: 'What's this? Can I help you?'
DAD: 'Don't touch that!'
KID: 'But I want to help.'
CRASH
DAD: '%!#@!'
KID: 'Waaaaaaa...'
MUM: 'What happened?'
DAD: 'Just get him/her away from here.'
MUM: 'But s/he was just trying to help.'
KID: 'Waaaaaa...'

The whole dialogue was in German. I don't speak German but that's absolutely what was said.

***

Frieda had a play date this afternoon with two little girls down the road. Their Dad is Angolan and speaks to them in Portuguese. Their Mum is from Holland and speaks to them in Dutch. 

Frieda and the girls spent the afternoon in their garden 'talking Chicken' and clucking Away in a Manger.

***

Bull terriers are known for being very vocal. There's lots of vids online of them 'talking'. Ours doesn't really do that, but backchat? Oh, she's a queen.

Shut her out, reprimand her or neglect to put the pot you just finished using down on the floor for her to lick and she'll give you a snort that's so full of disdain, so cutting, so ... bitchy that you can't help but laugh.

Then she snorts at you again.

***

It's a known fact that second-borns often take longer to start talking. Various theories abound, the most popular being that often their elder sibling will start talking for them, thereby relieving the need for the younger sib to express him/herself.

My theory is that parents get better at interpreting non-verbal communication the second time round.

True or not, Stella, while at 14 months is under no pressure to be talking yet, is becoming alarmingly good at relaying her needs, and wants. Or am I becoming alarmingly good at interpreting them?

'Gnh gnh gnh' - points at shampoo bottle. I hand it to her. She holds it upside down over her head. 

'Gnh gnh gnh' -hands bottle back. I put shampoo on her hair. She grins and starts lathering.

She's watching me chop potatoes. Crawls off towards the veggie rack.

'Gnh gnh gnh' - she's holding up the one potato I'd left in the rack, rejected for being too green. I smile, take it and put it to one side.

'GNH GNH GNH!'. 

I retrieve green potato and pretend to chop it to.

She grins, but with faint suspiscion.

She crawls towards me with one sock on, the other in her hand.

'Oh did your sock come off? Give me your foot and I'll put it back.'

'Gnh gnh gnh' - she holds out the foot which is still socked.

'You've got a sock on that one, give me the other foot.'

'GNG GNH GNH' - she sticks the same foot out at me more pointedly. I acquiesce and put the second sock on over the first.

She grins and crawls away.

Language hey? It's over-rated. There's a myriad ways of expressing oneself, as many ways of understanding others. 

Maybe sometimes it just requires listening in a different way.

8 dec 2010

First day of school holidays, traditionally the day we put up the Christmas tree. Well, it's a tradition now, circa December 2010. It's great that Frieda's old enough for us to create rituals around family events, holidays and birthdays.

This is a work in progress.

As with everything we had a bull terrier assisting us.

Also,
~ I may have lived in Africa all my life, and only once experienced a real European Christmas, but I still find it weird putting up Christmas decorations in 30 degree heat, drinking lemonade instead of egg-nog.
~ I'm slowly learning to let go and give Frieda free reign on things like putting up decorations, icing cakes, wrapping presents. I resist the urge to tweak, improve, correct.
~ I still love love love this Tin Town tree. A dear gift from a dear friend.

3 butt dawg

so-so stephanie, posted this yesterday which reminded me of this picture:

We call it her 'police badge' stance.

Too much birthday/school holidays/soccer - this is all I got in me for now!