Jaxon is off on his own. Spreading his wings, if you will. He’s just been loaded on to a plane ALL BY HIMSELF!

He’s on his way to spend a week with Grandma in Darwin. He’s going to have such a good time.

He’ll be visiting his Great Grandma, going to see some crocs, he’s one lucky boy because he’ll be there for Territory Day. Tim is so jealous!!

Grandma will be coming back with him and visiting for a week. Can’t wait!

Tim was teasing me because he knew I’d cry. But I didn’t. he still teased me though. I will be nervous until he lands.

So, it’s happening. Jaxon is finally going to have his surgery. We’re not nervous yet.

Just the thought of him going through this is terrifying. But we don’t have a set date yet so we’re trying not to think about that part yet.

Even so, he’s had to have all the pre-surgery tests today and for the most part he was OK. UNTIL…he had to have blood drawn for the first time.

I don’t know why but whenever something tough like this has to happen, it’s Mum who has to hold the child down! Vaccinations, dentists, holding the gas mask over his face as he screams. All. On. Mum.

At any rate, we left the blood thing for the end of an entire day of testing. I’d like to say that the promise of Macca’s can cure any lack of willingness to be poked and prodded and drained of “all my blood” but unfortunately it wasn’t the case.

Here is my handsome little man ready to go for his first school disco!

Apparently he spent the entire time in a horizontal position. Break dancing. He’s apparently very good at it too! I think I have a video!

It just so happened that my birthday fell on the day our Victorian Groodles decided to have a meet up. So the kids got to go to the dog beach at Ocean grove.

Jaxon’s never seen the ocean like this. He has seen a tide out, and he has seen tiny little lap waves. He’s played on muddy beaches.  But he has never seen the ocean alive like this.

I think he may have loved it!

It would seem that the tongue of concentration is hereditary. I know I tend to stick my tongue out while I am painting and I have seen it in other member’s of Tim’s family as well as a few of my own while concentrating on the task at hand.

A visit to Grandpa’s seems to have become the tradition for January. We went last year too, though I think we missed the year before because Dexter was still too little to go on the ground down there.

This time, the tide was out. Which meant lot’s and LOT’s of MUD!!

Dad’s beautiful beach. You’ll just have to trust me on that! When the water’s in, it’s a great beach for swimming at! Jaxon is learning that you can dig to China here. Dookie is helping him. Sinking!The Isle Of JaxonThis is a cropped picture. Dougie is a LONG way out in the mud! We thought we’d have to wade out there to get him back!Look at that mud! This was half way through the mudification process. Yep. it got worse! (Look at his freaky foot!)If I have learned anything at Dad’s beach it is this.
My kids are NOTHING LIKE ME!! I have to teach them everything. They wont be talked or bribed in to learning anything (like say, MUD IS COOL!) without being shown. “What?”Teaching them, once again, that if you wiggle in the mud you can sink. Not one of them would 1) Believe me and 2) Give it a try!! I kind of got a little worried that I might be stuck here!Dad walked them home so we didn’t have muddy dog in the car. Yup. This dog, the muddy dog, is telling me “Oh hell no! I ain’t getting wet!” Dexter LOVES to play with water. Dad’s beautiful garden. I LOVE sitting in his garden and having the birds come in to feed. This little gnome has been sitting in Dad’s (my) back yard for so long now that if I was a little kid still I might think they actually just grew in every back yard. I painted him back up when I was about 10. I did a fairly bad job of it. but Dad kept him that way. As with the gnome. This kangaroo has been sitting in our back yard for longer than I’ve been alive. He started out life with my grandparents on Mum’s side. I believe anyway. Which means he must be pre-1980. I also painted him when I was 10, but he’s since had another artist take to him. That’s a wasp nest on his hands. Poor lil fella. Dougie all clean. Jaxon with his birthday cake. I adore this photo. I wish Dexter and I were in it too!!Dookie checking out his old master. Mexxie is an old lady now. She’s nearly seven. Jaxon with his birthday present. He and Dexter love this thing, even though we hate it for it’s NOISE!

For Jaxon’s Birthday we always try to take him to the Australia Day Fireworks. This year was no different. The venue changed. But we had live bands instead of the beach. We still had fun!!

We normally have a chair sitting at the trampoline for Jaxon to climb up with.

But recently that became a problem. Because Dexter started trying to climb using the chair. And that wasn’t going so well for him.

Jaxon very quickly figured out a way of getting up with out the chair but this one day he missed a step and ended up like this.

I couldn’t help him, being that I can’t lift anything over a kilo for a few more weeks. But   I knew he could do it himself.

This here was his victory “I did it!” lapAnd this is Dougie running over to congratulate him.

The latest craze for all of our kids is sleepover’s!

Jaxon had two friends, James and Riley over on Wednesday night last week.

Here’s some pics. I also recorded a half hour conversation without them knowing and will need to figure out how to get it off my phone. Oh the stories that were told!!

Then, the next morning we got all crazy and made pancakes for 8 kids!!

Dougie was a little too late for pancakes. He made a slow and uncoordinated escape after being busted!

Jaxon doesn’t know it yet but we’re going to get him a new bike for his birthday. He’s outgrown this one.

This time we’re going to let him choose his own bike. We chose Toy Story for him last time because that’s all he liked.

Now he could go for any number of fantasy super hero’s so we’d better leave it to him.

…means doing all the things you don’t really ever want to do with your kids.

Like, making MESS!!

I’m well set up for this kind of mess. But it’s so tiring doing this sort of thing with kids.

Child 1: I didn’t get a paint brush!
Me: I’m getting it for you right now, just give me a minute.
Child 2: I don’t have a paint brush either!
Me: I’m getting you one too. Just give me a minute.
Child 3: We don’t have water to wash our paint brushes with!
Me: I’ll do that when I’ve found your paint brushes.
Child 2: Hey she got the red paint brush. I want the red paint brush.
Me: Well I only have one red paint brush.
Child 3: I got the red paint brush. Nur Nur
Child 1: I want a red paint brush too.
Me: Sigh.

I don’t know how Miss J handles those kids all year around without just throwing her hands up in the air and yelling “I only have two hands now sit down, shut up and leave me alone!!!!”

Miss J is my new hero.

Tim and I don’t know if we’re proud or ashamed of this award from school??

On one hand, he came first, out of one hundred and twenty odd other prep children racing Mario Kart.

On the other, how did he get so good?

But then, he also got a post card in the mail sent from his teacher Miss J rewarding him for always showing respect to her and his fellow class mates.

And an award for good thinking. Miss J tells me that when she asks him if he’s thinking he always pauses, put’s his hand up to scratch his chin and says “Hmmmm”

Yeah. We’re proud!

To celebrate literacy week at Jaxon’s school they had a dress up parade. Each child got to choose a character from a book and dress up for the day.

In true Jaxon fashion, he told me he wanted to be an airplane.

A Qantas one at that.

At five in the afternoon.

The day before the parade.

Thank you Jaxon. I don’t need sleep anyway.

Before that he was simply going to wear his Bumblebee costume. His Library teacher Miss N said she was sure there was a Transformers book in the Library but, nope. There wasn’t. So he couldn’t go as Bumblebee.

Believe it or not these are the only two photo’s I got of Jaxon in his Dr Seuss plane. It couldn’t be a Qantas plane since it had to be a character from a book. He wasn’t all that happy about not being Qantas. He wouldn’t even look at me for a photo.
Here are some photo’s of some of the teachers. It was such a fun day. Even for me. The buzz in the school grounds as all of the kids came in dressed in their costumes was awesome. Seeing the teachers having so much fun was great too. They put on a show for everyone at the end.

I’ll be better prepared next year…I hope!

A few weeks ago while I was getting Jaxon ready for school he said to me, “Mum, I want to marry you when I grow up”

I answered that he couldn’t. Marrying me is illegal and besides that point, Daddy got here first. He asked me what he was going to do then (actually, he told me he wanted to marry his penis. Typical man!) and I told him he would need to find himself a nice little lady and ask her to marry him. When he grows up.

So this afternoon on the way home from school he said “Mum, I’ve decided who I’m going to marry” He’s going to marry Daytona” Daytona is a little girl from his class. She’s very sweet. And very pretty. Qualities which Jaxon has pointed out since telling me his little secret.

Oh yeah, it’s a secret. Daddy isn’t even allowed to know. Lucky Jaxon doesn’t read the blog then huh??

I asked him if Daytoina knew he was going to marry him so he said to me “I don’t know yet. I didn’t ask. Hold on. I’ll just send a text” (insert imaginary phone in to Jaxon’s hands) A few minutes later he told me that she had said yes. And then laughed.

Following this very entertaining conversation he also advised me that he’d been in a very important meeting today with Optimus Prime. I asked what it was all about and he said that OP had come to transform him so that they could go to the top of the Earth and play in the snow. Cool!

We had bacon and eggs for dinner tonight. Do you think he’d eat it?? No. He ate the toast, the bacon and the white parts of the egg. But he refused to eat the yolks. The yellow stuff as he calls it. So, since he had been told the previous night that we would make milkshakes after dinner he got told tonight that if he didn’t eat every single little bit of food on his plate he wouldn’t get his milkshake. Surprisingly, he didn’t get a milkshake tonight. I guess I’ll have to wait until he’s REALLY asleep to make one for Tim and I

I’m always thinking ahead. Ahead to a time when I can use these photo’s to bribe and/or black mail Jaxon. If the time never comes..you’ll be able to buy coffee table books with these kinds of images in them

Jaxon got to go to his first fancy dress party. A Pirate Party. I had to take a photo before we went to the party because I knew he would take it all off within the first few minutes. I was right!!

These holidays have been all about sleep over’s for Jaxon and his friends. First, Jaxon stayed with his friend James (top photo) for his fifth birthday party. Then James got to stay with us for a night and his sister Haliegh (bottom) got to stay a night after that. Then Jaxon once again stayed with James and Haliegh.

They had a BALL.

A typical night here for dinner would mean having conversations with Jaxon that would go like this from the moment I told him what we were having for dinner.

Jaxon: What are we having for dinner??
Mum: We’re having…
… steak and three veg…
… fettuccini carbonara…
… steamed chicken and vegitables…
… insert any number of meals here…

Jaxon: I don’t like…
… steak and three veg…
… fettuccini carbonara…
… steamed chicken and vegitables…
… insert any number of meals here…

Every single night we have to battle him at the kitchen table. Every night we have to fight with him to eat his dinner. Regardless of the fact if he has had it before and loved it, never tried it or only had it once. Its so repetitive and by far our biggest challenge when it comes to raising Jaxon.

We have tried various methods to try and get him to eat more (I am so so so so so so so sorry for doing this to you Mum!) or try something new (including cakes and sweets!) We have sent him to bed hungry on various occasions. We have sat and tried to reason with him. We have yelled at him. We’ve tried negotiating number of mouthful’s before he can leave the table and stop being begged to eat his dinner. We have tried it all and he just does not repsond to those things.

Mid way through our first discussion about all of the reasons he couldn’t eat dinner I decided I would try something different. I forced him to sit at the table until he finshed his dinner.

We all ate our dinner and then moved away from the table. I did the dishes, played with Dexter and gave him a bottle. For one and a half hours Jaxon sat at the table with his cold spaghetti.

He tried every single trick in the book! He dug really deep this time!

… Muuum, I’m not hungry…
… Mum I’ve got a sore throat…
… Maaaaarrrrmeeee, I have a sore tummy…
… Mum, I just don’t want it…
… Mum I’m very very sad…
… Mummeeeeeeeee, I’m going to cry!…

He really did cry! He’s never cried at the kitchen table like that. But he refused to eat all night before finally getting told to go to bed hungry ten minutes before bedtime!

So I’m hoping I won this battle of will’s with him tonight. Since starting school he’s really been one up on me behaviour and additude wise and I am hoping this will be my one up on him for a breath of fresh air!

Jaxon’s body clock is set to 5.45am these days. It doesn’t matter how often I tell him to go back to bed because it’s still dark (“But I’m hungry”) or go and watch TV until my alarm goes off at 7am (“But I’m cold”) he will insist that I wake up with him.

This one morning, he asked me what was wrong with the sky. Apparently it was his first sunrise. So we got ourselves a big blanket and we went and watched it rise together. It was a beautiful morning spent together.

“Being a very special helper”