Chicken's crying "wolf"

I was playing with Wren in his room in the comforting gloom of 7am when we heard a godawful shrieking and "bocking" from the hens. I rushed out to the coop barefoot (scene: dark, wet, grass covered in hen poop) expecting to surprise a raccoon or possum or fox or ... well, anything.

It was pitch black with only the faintest hadean blue to the sky and I couldn't see anything in the coop but they kept going BOK BAAAARK BOK BAAAARK in a most alarming way. I rushed inside, grabbed a flashlight. My mind was now going "boa? monkey?" I was losing the geographic plot. I remembered my garden boots.

I looked all around. The chickens were walking around in the run but I couldn't see any cause for alarm.

I am guessing Chippie (the third hen) is about to start laying and is making a fuss about it.

We are going to have breakfast now. Yawn. Frost is catching up on homework - on glaciers.

Wren is 3

Wren turned three on Sunday. He had a small party with a volcano cake on Saturday. On Sunday we were lazy and made a large pile of wrapping paper and plastic bits from the toys we unwrapped.

Wren blows out the erupting volcano.

Wren cannot resist tasting the lava.

Close up of the volcano cake with the D&D figures being inundated.

Kellie had the idea of filling the sensory table with blue jello as an ocean for some sea animals. The jello is still there - we used 10 packets. Unfortunately we forgot to open it at the party but Wren and Frost find it fascinating.

Kellie and I also found it fascinating. Particularly the way the jello looked like splashing water.

Small facts about Wren at 3:

His favorite movie is BOLT. He loves the pigeons but hates "the scary part."

He can count to 10 and a bit higher on an ad hoc basis. He can count 1, 2, 3 and 4 objects correctly.

He loves to sleep with his soft shirt, bunnies and various other soft animals.

He still naps 2 hours every day but wakes at 6ish.

He says "OHMYGOD" when things are exciting.

Upcoming dates:

Jan 5th - my brother turns 40!

Jan 11th - Cardiology checkup.

Jan 7th - Annual ped visit.

Don't you EVER EVER EVER do that to my brother

More drama in the House that Wren Built. The bathroom remodel has made it more difficult to bathe. Last night I realized I had lost count of the days since Frost showered and was certain he had not washed his hair since he last went swimming with Alex weeks ago. I told him he had to shower before bed.

"No way" he said. "It took too long doing my homework."

"Well, then you shower in the morning."

"OOOOKKaaaay."

This morning I told Frost it was time to shower. He denied it. He asked me if I wanted him to miss his bus.

"Its an hour before the bus leaves. You have time to shower and wash your hair and eat breakfast."

"I don't."

"You do."

"Arrgh."

I follow Frost down into the basement. It is all dark because Kellie is staying with us and sleeping down there. Frost shivers melodramatically in his black footed pajamas. Wren follows, with concern. I turn on the shower in the laundry and leave a big towel on the pile of wood offcuts. Then I squeeze a dollop of my shampoo and try and put it on Frost's hair.

"NOOOOO, YOU IDIOT" he yells. "That's grownup shampoo!"

"Don't do that to my brother!!!" yells Wren from the doorway. He is afraid of the shower - scared that I might plop him in it but Frost's screaming is doing nothing to allay his concerns.

"Oh, just wash your hair quickly." I command.

Frost has shut his eyes and is now flailing around in the shower darkness in fear of the foam.

"Aaaah. That will sting me. Aaaah aaaah"

"JUST WASH IT QUCKLY!"

"Damn it, damn it." he curses, washing.

"Okay, you can get out now. You're done."

"No, its nice. I am not getting out."

I sigh and leave him to it, scooping up Wren at the doorway.

"You must never ever ever ever do that to my brother again!" he tells me. "NEVER NEVER"

"He is just showering."

"No, you must never ever ever ever do that to my brother. You put him IN THE CAR WASH!"

I am laughing but trying to be serious. Wren is now Frost's defender against me: the ogre of hairwash torture. This is a familiar figure in Wren mythology.

"If he baths I won't."

"No, never ever do that to my brother."

"Ok Wren."

The sharp bite of cold

Seattle seldom gets very cold - many degrees below freezing. Fewer still are the days that it remains sub-freezing all day. This week records have been falling as we stray from 16 (-9C) to 28F (-2) as daily lows and highs. We've been feeling the cold on our morning walks to the school bus and nightly drafts of cold air through the uninsulated bathroom.

Frost and Wren wait for the bus

Its still that bright early light. Its been so clear I could see constellations.

Frost, who normally "likes cold" has worn a hat almost every day.

We've been having a remodel of the bathroom which has us down to a single toilet downstairs and a makeshift shower in the laundry. Its stressful to be without a soaking tub and to have no place to pee at night. I let the kids pee in a bucket during the night and they find this exciting but I just avoid peeing. To add to complications the downstairs toilet has broken and now needs a bucket to slosh water into the cistern to flush. I hope I will have repaired it by early evening.

Thankfully, having plumbers on site during the cold snap has its perks. Last winter Joshua was under the deck with a blowtorch during the freeze as he tried to repair our outside hose piping. It had cracked and sprung a leak in the cold. This year, we asked the plumber to "fix it" and he installed a new style of tap without exposed pipe. This reduces our risk of burst pipes considerably. Neighbors have not been so lucky. On our morning bus walk we noticed an upstreet neighbor had lost a pipe and the spill had frozen overnight.

Wren enjoyed throwing pebbles along it "see if they slide" and tentatively walking on the slippery surface.

Into the maelstrom of icy weather and remodeling comes Kellie, my good friend from Australia. She's been performing with a circus / burlesque troupe around Holland and so has come from their winter to ours. She's lovely to have around - very easy going and self-sustaining but also helping out around the place. Our major problem is that she and I have the same laptop so I am constantly muddling one with the other.

Still, she has Josh and I out of the house more than usual. Last night we went to his company Christmas party (well, we would have gone anyway but it was fun to have company) and tonight Josh and Kellie went to a gallery opening at Roq la Rue gallery (they do a lot of pop surrealism). This weekend we will be going out for dinner on Sunday and next week we're planning on seeing Avatar which will be out in cinemas just before Kellie leaves.

Before all that we have Wren's 3rd birthday. That is this Sunday and will get its own post. His cake is tomorrow with a few friends and his presents are Sunday.

Advance notice: Wren's next cardiology appointment (first in 6 months) is on January 5th. We hope he still looks stable. He is always so good on the outside that we can only hope...

Wren having a puddle bath during bathroom remodeling.

Finally got my H1N1 Shot

I was driving through Maple Leaf yesterday when I saw a sign that the Maple Leaf Pharmacy is offering H1N1 shot appointments. I called this morning expecting them to be gone but they were open for the next hour and offering shots for the high risk groups. I popped up there and received a shot. As of today they said they have a good supply left and should be getting more next week. If you are still looking for either flu shot you can call them and make one for next week (they do not do shots on the weekend). They cost $20.

Maple Leaf Compounding Pharmacy
8830 Roosevelt Way Northeast
Seattle, WA 98115-3042
(206) 729-7514

I read a news release that King County will be offering some free vaccination clinics this weekend for high risk groups so it seems that supply is finally catching up.

Remodel news
The new window is IN!!

Return from the mists

There was a small break in transmission while Mum was visiting. Sorry 'bout that. Now that we have bundled Mum back to the antipodes and wiped our eyes and explained to Wren that Granny is not down in the basement on her own, we can return to our normal programming. Everyone is a bit shattered by Mum being gone. I am horrified by the amount of mess that is accumulating (while I nagged Mum about her inability to sit down, she was apparently doing cleaning because its absurd how much stuff is on the floor, door, chair, table). Wren wants to play "guys" all the time. This was a favorite game of Mum's visit. Mum and Wren set up little D&D & Heroscape miniatures and then shoot them down with a Playmobil cannon. Wren has an interesting vocabulary - "This is not an Oni, this is an ogre." he corrects me (wrongly) "Do you want the gargoyle or Subak-na bone dragon?"

Magma guy at the bus stop

I am being a good sport and playing it many times a day but I wish we could have a bit more variety in our play. He is so obsessed with the game and the guys that he carried the box all the way to the corner to wait for Frost's school bus this morning. I think this photo is funny because whenever Wren is holding a guy he puts it straight in front of his face. He is showing you the guy and in front of his face is center stage.

Despite Mum's departure, things at home are not that quiet either. Our bathroom remodel began on Tuesday (after we returned from Great Wolf Lodge). Current status is: old bathroom removed but no new bathroom begun yet. There have been various wiring debates as well as some issues with the window placement. We are still not firm on the final layout and have not ordered the door or the tiles which can have a 2-3 week lead time. Does this mean we will be showering in the laundry for more than a month? We have yet to see. Watch for Updates!

The bathroom a few days ago. It is now gutted.

The kids are doing ok with using the basement toilet but its a bit hard for Frost at night as he usually wakes at least once to pee and staggers around half asleep. Its hard to walk down to the basement without waking up so we gave him a bucket which he finds a lot of fun. Wren missed his nap yesterday but woke at 6.15am regardless. At bedtime he drank two small cups of hot chocolate and a glass of water. I was concerned he would wet his bed but this morning I was surprised to find Wren asking me if he "had a good sleep?" without any mention of an accident.

"Where did all the water you drank go?" I asked him.

"It went into this leg." he explained, tapping one with his hand. "It has all swished in. Lollipops go in this leg." he tapped the other.

This explanation of his body is a new theme for Wren. Yesterday he ran the whole way home from preschool while I pushed the empty stroller beside him. When he became tired he paused and opened his mouth to pant. Noticing this he told me that he stopped because he was "almost out of battery." or "emptying out from fuel." After a pause he set off running again because he got some left. If he opened his mouth he could get more fuel because "I points at it and the sunlight comes in my mouth!" He could run on sunlight. Don't we all wish?

Here's another of Wren's corporeal explanations. Before breakfast he was smacking his lips.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I am tasting my air," he said.

Reminds me of my wacky friend Sophie years ago who went off on retreat to learn to be a breatharian. She was very hard on herself because she couldn't live on air for the required 5 days. Later, we saw an article in the paper that the couple running the retreat was charged because a guest failed to live on breath, and died. I am hoping to eat banana bread this morning. And breathe.

PS: Wren peeling bark from a local tree. I just loved the depth of field on this picture. I haven't figured out how to control it on my point-n-shoot Canon but this worked.

Great Wolf Lodge

We were away at Great Wolf Lodge last night and now I am going to take the next 24 hours to recover. Recover from what?

1) Going backwards down the River Canyon Ride.

2) Going backwards into the Tornado [is there a theme here? Does the fattest person go first?]

3) Getting very little sleep with Wren waking in the lower bunk. Including waking up at 2am and saying "Mummy drew TWO TRUNKS!" It was true, I tried to fix the trunk on a drawing he was unhappy with and then the elephant had 2 trunks. He has not forgotten or forgiven.

4) Running up and down 5 flights of stairs collecting items for Magiquest QUESTS and ADVENTURES. It got to the point where Wren was stopping strangers to say "we are doing MAGIQUEST and the DRAGON IS DEAD!" My butt is dead -honestly - and my thighs.

5) From eating too many odds and ends on the breakfast buffet and then stopping at Jack -in - Box on the way home.

6) From coming home with suitcases to unpack and a bathroom to declutter for a remodel starting tomorrow.

Mum says "I think it was a very successful weekend for everyone, really." Mum has nerves of steel but Wren did not like The Big Dump.

Mum at U-village Zoka

After birding this morning we went to the U-village Zoka and got a table which is a miracle with all the laptops and netbooks around coffee thesedays. I took a few pictures for Mervyn in Adelaide. Here we are with coffee (and Mum's almond croissant is all gone). I am cut off because we were using the autotimer on my tiny camera and it was balanced on an upturned cup.

Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday. In the morning Tara, Fred, Alex and Phoebe came over for a rather lavish brunch of smoked salmon, pancakes and roasted vegetables with a few rounds of coffee. We lounged around the house and then headed over to Laurie's in the early evening for a delicious dinner.

Wren and Frost sat at the kids table and we shared a most scrummy turkey cooked in a big turkey pot with a lid which made it most unusually moist. Here is Eric at the "ta-daaa" moment and next a picture of Laurie, Eric and I admiring it after it came out of the oven.

Frost would not eat turkey (he told me this evening that he is not a vegetarian but he only finds a few kinds of meat tasty and then only when there are few options WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND AND LEAVE ME ALONE!) This was because I served him some baked salmon for dinner and he was upset. I remain confused because he will eat a burger from time to time and teriyaki chicken because it has soy sauce on it. Hrmm. Here is Frost eating fluffy breadrolls - he wanted two. Wren eats everything including cranberry sauce and gravy.

This is the grownups table before we put it to use and made a bit of a mess of it.

I was utterly exhausted when we came home but still managed to watch the Best in Show of the dog show. Josh and I are considering buying a minature dachshund (because they are cute and it would fit through the cat door).

Update

Wren was not asleep at 9.20pm. I went in and he said he had a sickness and it was sore "here" (his left chest). Nothing makes the parent of a heart kid more neurotic than a kid saying they have pain around their heart. After some prodding he said it was under his ribs and then was OK - he certainly shows no sign of weakness or misery so Josh says he should be fine. I have checked on him a number of times with maudlin fears and have googled chest pain. I think he is ok but between echos, how do you really know? Its enough to drive you to read detective novels.

Wrenisms

This evening, while getting naked for the bath Wren took the bath spout off and put it over his hand. "Does my robot hand look terrifying?" he asked. "Yes," I said. He took it off.

"Why did you take it off?"

"It was too terrifying" he explained. "Now I am putting it back on."

"What kind of robot are you?" I wondered.

"No robot, just Wren." He said, looking at me as if I was stupid. "But I am a ROBONIX robot and I need a robot gun and clothes on. " He went off and put some dimes and pennies in the hand.

"Here comes a bullet, pshhshshshkkkkt shooooooting. Braaaghahgahaha."

Frost is not home so this is all his enactment of the art of war, age 2 coming on 8.

"They are breaking things up. When I was your age I said to the robot please could you spare a little bit of toast and he did and I branged it home."

"Sounds like he's a good robot."

"Yes, he is. Brrrrrgggghthth."

"What's that bgggght noise?"

"Its my robot shooting some bullets. Hear the bullets?" He shakes the hand and dimes rattle around and fall out. "PFFFFFT PFFFT." THey hit the Guinness Book of World Records which crashes end over end to the floor.

"What's happening now?" I get no response as some newspapers fly off the couch. "Robot, robot? What's your name?"

"My name is ROBONIC. I am a nice robot. I tend to play fight."

"Do you bath?"

"Uh huh!"

"Let's go bath then."

I was planning to end the post there but from the corridor, on the way to the bath I hear:

"He is a bionic fluck robot."

Uh oh. Does that mean something or is it a chance creative mispeaking? Should I find someone to blame or confess - this is my 2nd child and sometimes I say "fluck."