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February 3, 2001
Thursday 1st February, 2001.
Pixie is 14 months old!
Man, it's is so excruciatingly boring when you sit down to write a diary entry and the first thing you have to say is, "I've been very sick." I mean, it kinda suggests it's gonna be an uninspiring read, doesn't it? Well I'll do my best to chase away that little gremlin but boy, oh boy, have I been ONE SICK OLD CHOOK! But indulge me for a brief moment, I need a stint of 'moan-therapy'…
I have been excruciatingly tired for some weeks now. Last week I made Jai take a day off work, a) because I'm a major slacker, and b) because I was so bloody tired I literally HAD to have a sleep-in! At first I figured it was the summer heat, which has been stifling; then I thought the move interstate and all the work and stress involved had finally caught up with me. Then I started adding everything up (yes, yes, I'm petty and anal, I know) and lo and behold, I realised Jai was leaving for work at 8 am and getting home at 5.30 pm and I was putting in 9 ½ hour Pixie-duty days! Well, the mere THOUGHT of a 9 ½ hour day is enough to send THIS ultimate slacker into febrile convulsions. No bloody wonder I was so bloody tired, I mean, wasn't it illegal or something to work more than a 40 hour week? (Ha! I WISH!) And then sometime last week I marched down that weed infested path that had me wondering if there wasn't something majorly wrong with me. Why didn't I have the stamina to make it through an ordinary day in the life of a rampaging toddler? Did I have an undiagnosed heart condition? Had I contracted Ross River fever during our brief crossing of the Murray River? You know, all those debilitating visions of serious illness that linger only millimetres under your subconscious and need only the weakest excuse to sprout all over the place like poisonous fungi. ARGH!
Well, anyway (uh-oh, this is turning into a loooooooong story…oops!), Monday was a great day, the first for ages. I felt energised, capable, and wasn't tripping over my own feet out of sheer exhaustion by the end of the day when Jay arrived home. I was able to channel and control the Pixie-tornado (as much as is humanly possible…tee-hee) and apart from some squealing tantrums in the local library (there's another story), we had a pretty damn fine day together. And then Tuesday dawned. Oh day of hell and torment! I must've swallowed one of those nasty mushrooms on that path I trodded because I woke with a rather huge lump in my throat. Uh-oh, another damn throat-infection, I thought. I begged Jai to take the day off work, but he had a meeting he couldn't miss, so when I put the Pix down for her morning nap I fell asleep on the couch (a first! I usually can't bare to waste my Pixie-free time snoozing; I always rush around doing 74.5 things at once).
Ha! Well I'm forcing myself to cut this loooong convoluted story short, because the basic upshot is I've either got tonsillitis or glandular fever, we hope not the latter. I am currently on day two of penicillin and considering in the last two hours (between writing that convoluted preamble and sitting down at the desk just now to continue) I have made a miraculous recovery…all my symptoms have magically vanished (poof!), and suddenly I feel my old, tired grumpy self again…*big sigh*…but hey, at least I can swallow, eat and talk again…yippee!!!!!!! So open the window and blow out all that stale sickbed air, that's ENOUGH talk of illness, on to other things……
Saturday morning 3rd February 2001…
It's bloody amazing how, with a toddler in your life, you can be interrupted in the middle of something (like writing a diary entry) and then suddenly WHAM! POW! KAZAAM! …you find an entire day and a half zips by before you can get back to it!!!!!!!!!! This has to be one of the most frustrating aspects of being a parent, how everything is hard to finish and most jobs stay on the "to-do" list for three months before you find a SPARE BLOODY MOMENT!!! Sheesh! Anyway, finally I'm back and able to squeeze a few moments out of my busy pixie-schedule. I'm not particularly sick any more, the penicillin seems to have kicked in fine, but we've had Jai's sister to stay for a night on her way to Sydney, so we've been up to the wee hours drinking cheap wine and yabbering!
So, how's the Pix I hear you ask? Pixie, Pixie, Pixie, ha! She's such a busy little bumble-bee these days. This is the age of SERIOUS exploration…nothing, and I mean NOTHING is safe from the Pixster's curiosity; everything in the house must be licked, touched, rocked, opened, yanked, pushed, squished and dragged around in my toddler's efforts to discover how the world works. She's a scientist of sorts, and the entire world is her laboratory. But I tell ya, it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep the house tidy with Pixie dragging bits and pieces off shelves and from room to room, so I've given up trying to keep a tidy house (any excuse huh). I now have one of those houses you dreaded having in your sophisticated wine-swilling twenties, you know, a house with mountains of dirty (or is it clean? I can't remember) washing on every spare chair, washing that Pixie will grab and toss on the ground every time she passes by. Life is full of embarrassing moments as you step in the backdoor and get your legs tangled up in a pair of your holey old undies that Pixie has dragged out of the washing basket and left lying in the doorway for any old passerby to see! Ha! (At least it wasn't one of Jai's workmates coming to pick him up and tripping over my undies…be glad for small mercies I say!)
Yes, the house is continually messy. Pixie's toys are always sprawled from one end of the rooms to the other. The floor is always littered with the remnants of Pixie's interest: clothes, shoes, pegs, old phones, calculators, blocks, toys, books, dolls, teddies, kitchen containers, you name it, if Pixie can get hold of it, she'll drag it around the house and dump it in some unceremonious place. This does lead to some funny moments though: like bursting for a pee and lifting the toilet lid only to find a plastic floating fish in the tank. Ha! Or cleaning the dust from the low window ledges and finding a stash of old half chewed bits of toast…eugh! And Pixie is one of those kids that likes her dolls and teddies to be NAKED! Ha! All the clothes MUST come off as soon as possible, and if you DARE try and dress them again when you think she's not looking, she'll march right over and yank those clothes off in a flurry. So a midnight dash in the dark, down the hallway to the loo, invariably ends up in a string of swear-words when you stub your toe against a nude baby along the way.
One of Pixie's latest charming tricks is to hug her dollies. If you say, "give the dolly a big hug" she'll grab it to her chest and rock with it, and let out a big, "ahhhhhhhhhh." It's bloody cute. And everytime we sing, 'rock a bye-baby' she'll search for her baby dolly and hug it and rock it. She's even been known to give ME a 'big hug' (it's a Tele-tubbies thing) when I ask for one…whacko! Apart from that she's her usual rough, boisterous and noisy self.
We went to a playgroup the week before last for the first time. Pixie was pretty funny with the other kids. Pixie is…well, basically, a stealer! The other kiddies were enjoying pushing their dollies around in some miniature strollers…that is UNTIL the dreaded doll-stealer arrived on the scene. Ha! Pixie would get herself hold of one of these doll strollers and go around stealing all the dollies out of the other children's prams and puting them ALL in her pram. The other kids would be happily pushing their dolls around and would remain motionless and dumbfounded once Pixie had taken their dollies away, right under their noses! Ha! These kids were a little older and didn't know quite what to do. Being scared we'd be banned forever from playgroup for 'antisocial behaviour' I rushed around like a madwoman restoring all the stolen dollies to their rightful prams but Pixie would follow behind me and steal them right back again. This seemed to occupy us for a good half hour and I must say, playgroup was as good as any exercise class for old mummy-o! I was run ragged trying to quietly restore the disequilibrium Pixie was slowly spreading through the group. Ha! At another moment she stole a blue glitter pen from one of the older girls and ran right outside and all the way to the top corner of the playground trying to protect her treasure. This little girl followed gently after her, without trying to grab or snatch it back, but oh boy, Pixie was NOT going to give up anything that another kid wanted badly enough to follow her for.
So I guess we have some 'socialisation' issues we'll be forced to confront if we continue playgroup. *Snigger, snigger* Pixie also insisted on climbing on all the preschool furniture. All the older grannies kept saying, "No Pixie, we don't climb the furniture." Ha, I'd given up trying to stop the Pixster from climbing weeks ago. I let her go for it now, it's obviously a toddler compulsion and she's actually pretty damn good at it. She can climb up AND down stairs, climb over the couch, on and off the bed, whatever…she's a good climber. But I guess they didn't want Pixie climbing on the little tables and leading all the other kids into a chaotic furniture-climbing frenzy! And well, during fruit time….HA! All the kids sit down around the table and quietly eat their fruit at morning tea time. Pixie? She sat down for 20 seconds, stuffed a hunk of banana in her mouth, tossed all the other fruit out of her bowl and onto the table, and then proceeded to stand on her chair and climb onto the table. When this little ambition was thwarted she galloped off and started playing while all the other kids had to sit dutifully and eat their fruit. My girl is gonna be a bad influence, don't cha reckon? She a wild one, no doubt about it!
Next week the Pix and I are also going to start tiny-tots gym classes. Now THIS should be more my ever-active girl's cup of tea. We're looking forward to it! Climbing, tumbling, singing, dancing….bring on the clowns!
And after our "fussy-eater" refused her bowl of mashed potato two nights running, we realised we were going to have to look for 'answers' to her fussy food-refusing eating habits. I rushed to the library, perused a few books, and stumbled across something that said that one-year-old's often have gourmet tastes and hanker for gerkins and pates, olives and pickled onions. I thought back a few weeks to a food-hall meal we'd shared and how Pixie had eaten a whole curry puff and two pappadums with great relish and thought, "MY GOD! Maybe she hates the plain, boring food we're feeding her?" DA-DA-DA-DUM!!!! And so our little gourmet now eats a tray of olives, cheese, cherry tomatoes, gerkins and crackers for lunch every day and boy does she make a mess! But she enjoys having a tray of foods to sample and pick and choose from, strong flavours to test and discard and then return to and test again. And so we think we might have to crack out the old curry recipes and give the girl leave to try "complicated" foods…suits us fine and even thought she still doesn't eat much, at leats she's trying a wider variety of "nibbles" and she's completely feeding herself.
And now I'd better finish this entry and post it, before you all decide I've fallen off the face of the planet! Oh-ee there's a big dog scampering around our front yard so I'd better get the Pix and let her see…she loves watching the neighbourhood dogs and cats out the windows.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy, and watch out for some photos to accompany this entry. They'll be posting them in a couple of working days so come back and take a peek at my curly headed-toddler. These photos are from last December, and she's probably changed a bit but I've yet to get any recent pics developed, SLACKER that I am!!!
Best ~
Eloise, of the battered tonsils variety.
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