We’ve had another storm go through this afternoon. It’s all to do with the hot and humid days we get and the cold air that comes through later in the day. It happens every summer and it’s one of the things that made us stay back in 2004 when we were really home sick for Melbourne.

So we’d just given Jaxon his bath, and he’s all dressed in his PJ’s. I’m looking longingly out the window at the lightening (sometimes all we get is lightening) because I want to go and get some photo’s of it.

So we did.

We threw everything in the car and went. The problem with this is that it was pitch black as well. And Jaxon wanted to get out and play. So one of us has to play with him and keep him happy (lest the locals think we’re trying to kill him out there on that hill) and the other gets to take photo’s.

The problem with this is that Jaxon (and Tim) is happier if it’s me who does the playing and that means that I miss out on the show.

So we decided tonight that we probably should just get a babysitter for storm nights ; )

This first one is Tim’s good catch. If you don’t know how hard it is to get photo’s of lightening that could strike at any time or at any random place in the sky…you should try it. So two in one go is like…wow. This one was out on the hill we went to.  The next three were taken by me (though we’re fighting over who might have got the first of the three) were taken from our front step. It looks like it might be day time, but trust me when I say that when the lightening wasn’t striking…it was black as black.

(our friends Nicole and Duncan)

The video is obviously just a short taste of the fire works, which went for about half an hour. The first bit is with me filming, the second with Tim. At about 40 seconds you can hear Jaxon and I going “Oh Wow” and then he starts yelling at the fire works…go go go go!!

All of these photo’s were taken with no flash.

I wish I had a tripod, because I couldn’t keep the camera still to take the photo’s. I don’t know if this was just Australia or if other parts of the world will get to see it tonight. The moon, Jupiter and Venus all lined up to make a smiley face in the sky. I thought Tim was pulling my leg when he told me it was going to happen but sure enough when we came out of the pool there it was smiling down at us.

Ahh. It is just Australia. Here’s what I found.

THE world may be facing its worst economic turmoil in decades, but the heavens are about to smile on Australia.
A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face – or an emoticon, depending on your generation – high over the country.

I don’t know if it’s worldwide or just Australia wide, but for the last 30 days it’s been “Movember”

The month where men all over the place don’t shave for a full month to raise money for prostate cancer research.

I’ll admit, it’s a good cause. But I hate facial hair on my husband. Not for any other reason than when I kiss him I feel like I might be kissing my Dad. A man whom I have never ever seen without a beard.

So when Tim gave me a peck on the lips it was all good. But when he went in for the kill, and stuck the tongue in and all I saw was my Dad…that’s a mood killer right there.

The real issue is, that I LOVE the mo on Tim. I think it really suits him. For the sake of our sex life, and my sanity…that mo’s gotta go!

The Mug Shot.

Dude wont go out all day. He will go to the door like he wants to go out fifteen times but then cowers away like some huge dog is waiting just outside to eat him up.

But come night time, when I feel obligated to let him out because he’s been cooped up all day, he wont come back for hours at a time.

Last night, we figured out why. There are hundreds of frogs out there!

Say “ahhhhhhhhhhh”

This is me in grade prep. Five years old. Wearing of all things, a sailor suit. I think that might have even been my choice.

My teacher’s name was Ms. Reddin. Can you tell?? She was the best teacher and the one who discovered my dyslexia (hey I spelt it right!). She had the smallest hands in the world.

And of course, Tasha. I think we’d been best friends for two or three years there. She’s not as dorky as me, and it’s the same now. I always was the dorky kind.

This is what our BOM said about our area tonight.

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

For DAMAGING WIND and LARGE HAILSTONES

For people in the Maranoa and Warrego, Darling Downs and Granite Belt and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields, Central West, Channel Country and Southeast Coast Forecast Districts.

Issued at 4:16 PM Wednesday, 19 November 2008

This is what we captured. I would have got some photo’s of some very impressive hail if it hadn’t been so dangerous to go out.

These two photo’s don’t show the bolts, just the sky lit up.

Stomping through the puddles in our flooded front yard

And yet we still have this to come.

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

for DAMAGING WIND and FLASH FLOODING

For people in the Capricornia, Wide Bay and Burnett, Southeast Coast and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields and Darling Downs and Granite Belt Forecast Districts.

Issued at 9:27 pm Wednesday, 19 November 2008.

Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds, very heavy rainfall and flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected include insert MY TOWN HERE, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Dalby, Gympie, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Kingaroy.

If they’re predicting floods it’s not for the amount of rain we’ve had (so far about 65 mil in three hours) it will be the rain coming down from the hill’s. Tomorrow is going to be a very sticky and muggy and yukky non washing day for me.

But for now, I’m going to sleep, in my NEW bed!!!

And before you get all up in arms about Jaxon being out in the rain and lightening, it’s HOT and MUGGY and he loved it. I remember being a child. I’m letting him experience it all, despite the 300+ hits of lightening we had in an hour! He also had a nice long hot bath afterwards. I remember loving those too.

Dude, as I have said before…is the best cat ever. But right now, and many times throughout every single day, I want to strangle him. Right now, Dude and I are fighting. It’s a battle of will’s and I just don’t think I’m winning.

Dude is an inside cat. Not because I force him to be an inside cat but because he likes to be inside. The only time he really likes to go outside is if WE go outside. Even then, he wont stray much more than a few meter’s from where we are.

So to set the scene. At the old house, Dude was locked in the bathroom overnight, because if I let him stay out then he sleeps on my face and is in to everything he shouldn’t be. But here the only place to lock him is the laundry. But he doesn’t like that, even though he has always been locked up overnight. In the laundry he has put his paw under the door and scratched and meowed to be let out ALL BLOODY NIGHT!

The problem with that is that the laundry is close to Jaxon’s room. While I couldn’t hear Dude from the other end of the house, Jaxon could and if Jaxon doesn’t sleep, mama don’t sleep either. So for the last three nights I’ve had to suck it up and let Dude run free range overnight.

I’ve left the laundry door open with kitty litter in it for him. Because for some reason Dude has forgotten how to hold it for the night, even though for the last year he did perfectly while locked in the bathroom.

So three nights in a row now Dude has slept out. Three nights in a row now I’ve noticed that he’s not used his kitty litter tray. Until the morning. After I have made him go outside with Mexxi.

This pisses me off. This morning I caught him in the act. I caught him before he went and threw him out the laundry door. He walked around the house, through the back door, in to the laundry and tried to go in his tray. So I threw him out again. He walked around the house, came in and tried again. So this time I threw him out and closed the back door. So he came around and meowed to get back in for 20 minutes. When I ignored him he climbed the security door.

I just know that if I don’t let him in to go in his tray, he’s going to sit at that door ALL day and meow at me and scratch at the glass door to be let in. I know that when I finally say screw it and let him in, he’s going to go right in and use the litter tray.

This is only a little bit of a bigger complaint, but I don’t have time to list the other shit Dude’s been getting up to in the last week or two. Don’t get me started on a cat that will not go outside during the day but spends the night sitting at windows meowing to get out.

Under the Laundry Door

At the old house when Jaxon started crawling, Tim and I took the easy way out. What I now refer to as The Lazy Parent method of putting baby gates up so that he couldn’t go where we didn’t want him to.

Jaxon couldn’t get in the kitchen, so the fridge, microwave, pantry, rubbish bin and sink were all out of bounds for Jaxon. He couldn’t get to the bathroom or the toilet, our bedroom, a spare bedroom or the sun room.

He couldn’t get in to the laundry or “Oscar’s Room” and he couldn’t get outside freely. All he had was his bed room, the lounge room and dining room and the computer room.

Just because he was so short, the dining room table was out of reach and so anything that we didn’t want him to see or touch or have we simply put in the rooms he couldn’t get to, or on the table.

Coming here though we decided that we’d let Jaxon be a free range toddler. He doesn’t have access to everything, but not because we’ve put up gates. Just because we think he needs supervision in those rooms.

So the other day he was in our bedroom playing on the bed. Of course this is a novelty to him. Here he can climb our bed, he can open our bed side tables. He can get to all of our mobile phones.

While Tim and I laid on the bed waiting for him to come up and join us, he explored my bed side table. I knew what was going to happen. Because I have a little vibrating egg sitting in my top drawer. You know, the one with the remote control and the cord to the egg??

Well, Jaxon picked up the remote control and immediately pushed on the button’s. The egg part started jumping about and vibrating (dah) all about making a heck of a noise. The sheer look of terror on his face as he backed away from my top drawer like there was a 15 foot snake in it was absolutely priceless!

There are times in my life when I don’t have the camera, but surely wish that I had. I’ll have to try again next week

In the mean time, here’s one I just took. When I say nothing is safe I’m not sure if I am talking about our belongings or Jaxon’s sanity!?!?

I know I keep talking in the past, but we were without Internet for a week and then I’ve been screwing around with this stupid new site for a couple weeks now and in that time I’ve had things I could have said and haven’t.

Anyway. Moving to this new house was very hard for Jaxon. It was obviously his first move, having been brought home to the other place. The day to day stuff was easy enough, but the night’s, particularly bed time,  were incredibly hard. I’m talking 3 and 4 hour fights for the first couple of nights, and then up to 2 hour fights for about a week.

It was awful for him. Even when he was tired he didn’t want to be left alone and sleep in his new room. I totally understand, in a round about kind of way. But it’s only the first night I want to talk about.

On the first night Jaxon finally went to sleep at about 11pm. But then in the quiet of the night (3am) he woke up screaming the house down. He was terrified and would not settle no matter what I did for him. So at about 4.30am I finally decided that I was cold and needed to sit down. So I walked up to the lounge room, which is across from our bedroom. Up until then, Tim had no idea this was going on, which is generally the way I like it to be. But when he finally clicked on and woke up to the noise he suggested that I bring Jaxon in to the bed with us.

Now I know that other parents do this all the time. But I have never ever ever ever had Jaxon in the bed, except to play. So this was a first. Tim is such a heavy sleeper and often I wake up to find him sprawled out half on top of me. And then me, on the other end of the scales. I’m a light sleeper and I’ve never been able to relax knowing that Jaxon is in the bed and that he could be easily smothered by either of us. But for this one occasion, I was getting pretty desperate to try something that would calm Jaxon down.

Calm him down it did. Put him to sleep, it did not. But he was quiet and that was the main thing. Tim started snoring two minutes later and that made Jaxon laugh. Since Tim needed to work in 1.5 hours after a huge move, I decided that the best thing to do would be to get up and let Jaxon sleep when he was ready to sleep. because having him laying between us was not getting ME any sleep either.

Seeing that he was up all night and the day before had been so big for him, this is was happened at 9am. Another first, because Jaxon has never fallen asleep anywhere but his cot. Not in his pram, rarely in the car seat, never at the table, never while shopping. Sleeping is for babies, or so Jaxon tell’s me.

And then THIS happened. And as I say, this never ever in a million years happens. Jaxon hasn’t slept on the couch with us, in our arms, or anything. So this was a REALLY special first for me!

Just because…

If you can’t see it clearly from the clip…

I don’t think we’ve ever lost so much during a move. But this time we’ve lost plenty. From the car key’s, to where Dude’s brush got packed, to a single pillow case that I really want before our new bed get’s delivered. Oh and Mexxi got out and away on our first day here too, but she got picked up down the road by a council worker.

Of all the things that we’ve lost, our cat would have to be the biggest thing ever. It was 3 coming on 4 weeks ago now that Oscar slipped out the back door in his first 24 hours here.

It’s never happened before. The closest we came was Diva the first night I moved in with Tim, but we managed to catch her.

The key’s bother me, because they had the remote key for the car on it and they’re expensive to replace. The cat’s brush, I can buy another one of those and never even know the other is missing. And the pillow case I did just find while looking for the keys in the shed.

I just wonder, at what point do I stop wondering? Get what I mean? I wonder if he’s even alive. I wonder if someone has taken him in. I wonder if he’s just still travelling back to the old house.

I wonder. When do you move on??

These are two of the last photo’s I have of Oscar. One was the first night here. He hid in the bottom drawer of my clothes dresser. Then he migrated up the cupboard the next day where he had a birds eye view of the bedroom. The other one I sort of have of him is saved for another post.

We bought this for Jaxon the other day. It could have been wrapped up all ready for Christmas but someone couldn’t wait. It took Tim two hours to pump it up, I gave up after one tyre!

See that hat? No, we don’t make him wear it inside. That is Jaxon’s very first fashion statement!

There is 192 ball’s in that truck. Yes, we’re anal, we counted!

Road Kill??? We’re yet to find out what will happen if Dude get’s in or decide’s it might make a good scratching post!

Coming across to this domain has been nothing but trouble. This is in fact about 3 weeks in the making. Many long and late hours were spent here by both Tim and myself figuring out some of the simple things. That weren’t so simple. Finally, a few days ago it all started coming together. Enough for me to start thinking about announcing my new site to everyone.

But one of the problems that I’ve had is that when I exported my Kicking and Screaming posts over here to discoverboo, the video’s I had embedded over at blogger didn’t come across. So I’ve not only had to find those video’s again, but edit them again, upload them again and find where to put them AGAIN!!

That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two days. Searching my computer archives and CD file’s looking for the clips and then redoing it all again. In between spending time with Jaxon, unpacking a new house and settling in, and eating or sleeping, I’ve been running back and forth setting video’s up to download.

This wasn’t really a problem, since most of the video’s I’ve done right up until now have remained on my computer. I could locate the file depending on the time stamp back at K&S and then look for it in my folders (I”m very well organized about months and dates)

It’s this video clip that has just caused quite a bit of pain.

I have no way of putting it here because I haven’t found it. This is the ONLY video clip that will be stored on a disk. I also can’t just go to a specific month or day because it’s a falshback. As I looked through all of my disks, having major flashbacks I found a special clip.

Let me just describe it to you, since you may not think it’s as funny as I thought when I first took the clip. Jaxon is sitting in his rocking chair being all cute and cuddly and making funny little sounds. He’s oooo’ing and ahhhh’ing and babbling away. Just as I was about to say “awwwwwwww, how sweet” he started grunting. That’s right. I was video taping Jaxon doing a grunting poo!

But then, I noticed his arm in it. The clip was taken a few weeks before we knew there was an issue. I was saying to Tim “Hey look, it’s so obvious” just as the camera begins to scan the room and there, laying peacefully at his side, is Maddy. It was very unexpected and it hurt. I regret every day what happened to Maddy. I regret that we gave out on her because other things were happening with Jaxon that needed more attention than we could give her.

It hurts me every time I think of her to think that if we had just slugged it out those two weeks that I was going to be away, we just might have had all the time in the world for her. Hindsight is a bitch, because we just didn’t know going in to Riverton ragged and broken that when we returned Jaxon would be 95% better, sleeping and eating well.

I miss Maddy. It hurts all the more because I know we gave up on her. I know that we took the easier way out under the circumstances. And even though I  know I still did the right thing for Jaxon and the family, I know I did the wrong thing by her. And by my heart.

I’ve had people tell me she was just a dog. But people who know me know that I have never owned any old dog. My dogs have always been a strong part of my family, even before I met Tim. For three years before we had Jaxon, Maddy was our only child. I’d give anything to have her back.

I’ve known Tim for 6 and a bit years now. That means I’ve had a computer for 6 and a bit years now too. That also means that for 6 and a bit years I’ve wanted to know how to use Photoshop to play around with our photo’s.

I’ve always tried to use the instruction’s that come within the program. The “help” topics never helped though. They didn’t start at the start, they didn’t explain what each feature could do. So I’d get all of an hour in to it and give up.

Recently Tim got me a program that is THE BOMB! I love it. It’s a video lesson, not a writen tutorial. I watch, I copy…I learn.

So anyway, here is what I have learnt so far.

I took this photo of Katie’s Jordan….

and then gave her wings…

And then I got even more adventurous with a photo of MB’s Meredith.

I put her in this photo.

To make this…

Do you like it???

I don’t know what I am going to do with all of this knowledge now. I have order’s already to add people in to other photo’s, people who didn’t get photo’s with loved ones and what not. Maybe I could make a living out of this sort of thing???

Just four weeks in to Spring here in Australia and we already have the air conditioner on.

Jaxon is wearing nothing but a nappy all day, and sleeping in nothing but a singlet.(I’d like to say that this has NOTHING to do with the fact that our retarded town hasn’t released it’s summer range of clothes for kids yet, even though they probably have all of their christmas stock ready to go next week…but I’d be lying. Get with the program Big W!)

It is getting HOT here, and we haven’t even reached summer.

This is a little scary, because if this is how hot it is when it’s not summer, I dread to think what this summer is going to be like.

I only hope that we will be rewarded for going through scorching heat with massive storms and impressive lightening shows!

So the other day I told you all that my “trusty” vacuum cleaner died. Well, it turned out to be ok. I called the people I bought it from and we fiddled with it for a while and all of a sudden it sparks up again. Yay, I thought. It’s not dead, I thought. I wont need to spend money on it.

I thought.

Well Jaxon is terrified of the vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t just cry that it’s on and making noise, he actually chases after it like it’s going to gobble me up and kill me. He is a horror to have around if I need to clean up. I either have to put him in his cot to cry it out while I do the house, or Tim need’s to travel from room to room and keep him occupied while I do it.

The other day when I finally got it working and finished up cleaning I thought I would place it in a spot where Jaxon could actually play with it. Instead of locking it away in the cats room where he couldn’t see it. I thought maybe if he could play with it and see it was quite harmless, he might warm up to it.

This follows on a bit from last night’s post. I would call i a Mummy Moment but it’s not REALLY a mummy moment.

So I’ve said how the health nurses and doctors and blah blah blah, have stressed me out by making me feel like I am doing something wrong. Well, when Jaxon was 11 months old his teacher went through a list with me. A list of thing’s that Jaxon should be doing at that age or very shortly.

She asked me if he plays patty cake. And all I could think when she asked that was “Is he MEANT to be playing patty cake” at this age? Hell…I don’t even know how to play patty cake…am I meant to teach him this? Is he going to be behind in school because I didn’t teach him patty cake? Do OTHER babies know how to play patty cake? Where do I get lesson’s about playing patty cake?

Seriously, I cam home all stressed out and in a panic that Jaxon did not know how to play patty cake. Bad, BAD mummy! Shame on me right?

Well. This past weekend my Dad and his girlfriend and my uncle and Auntie dropped in on us on their way further up north. I haven’t seen my uncle and auntie for a very long time and it was really nice to see them. They have five kids and 7 grand kids, so they KNOW their stuff.

I was telling them how stressed out these check lists make me. How I look at it and get asked these stupid question’s about Jaxon when some time’s it doesn’t even COUNT. Like when they asked me if Jaxon was chewing with his teeth and he didn’t even HAVE teeth, but they sent me home with a booklet on how to TEACH him to chew with HIS TEETH.

I said to them “I didn’t even KNOW I was meant to be teaching Jaxon to play patty cake!” and my uncle came out with a line that will forever be with me. I’m sure other’s have said it in one form or another but the way he said it so bluntly and with so much understanding about what I am going through, really made it stick.

He said “There ARE NO rule’s” and “You do what YOU want to do with your child”

So considering this for a day or two I decided to relax a bit on “the rules” and this is the result.

Remember, there ARE NO RULES!