23/04/2009

Asher cuteness

Asher is sick with some kind of virus today. He gets all limp and feverish for a while and then, as is the way of kids with viruses, he perks right up and is fine for an hour or two and I wonder what on earth I'm doing at home with him, then, of course, he gets flat and clingy again. This morning, while he was perky, we went for a train ride to North Sydney (no idea why - we haven't been there together since he was a baby) and while we were sitting in a cafe he fell asleep on my lap. I can't recall any other instance of that happening. Now he's tootling about the kitchen eating a sour Granny Smith apple wanting to type.

As far as a general update: The potty stuff has been driving me crazy - he's been doing wees in his pants when I'm looking after him, but almost never if I'm not there (I think he's only had two or three accidents at Kindy, and he's been out of nappies there all year). But now that seems to be settling a bit and he's even started doing his poos in the potty. I'm really proud of him.

He can pretty much make his own breakfast now - he's not great with restricting the amount of milk he pours on his Weetbix and we still spread butter more evenly when we make his toast, but he's got all the concepts down and all of the basic manoeuvres. His fine motor skills are coming along too - he writes A, H and occasionally something else (like a D). He's sitting next to me now and asking me to help him write his favourite words - Asher, Daddy and Mummy. His letter recognition is close to 100% and he''s getting closer to sight-reading words besides his own name. Freakishly, he also likes to write his own name backwards - both Sanj and I thought the other was helping him when we saw REHSA typed but no. He spells it out like that for fun with his foam bath letters too.

Sleep is getting better. We've ditched the daytime nap most days so unless he's at Kindy or we're going somewhere in the car around the middle of the day, no snooze. I'm also trying to get him into bed a bit earlier which seems to help. For a while there he insisted on sleeping on the little foam fold out kids couch in the baby's room but we discovered he was scared of the 'bats' in his room. Since Sanj explained that bats don't like to be inside houses and went around to all the doors and windows to show they were secure against bats before bedtime it's been fine. We are slowly getting our evenings back - which will of course end when the new baby arrives, in approximately 8-10 weeks.

Although he's still obsessed with trains he's also very snuggly and gives me, and the baby in my tummy, lots of kisses and cuddles. He's very verbal and loves quoting and mis-quoting lines from his story books and regularly quotes bits of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky (we have the Graeme Base illustrated book) which cracks me up completely. While I remember also wanted to write down a few of the funny things he's been saying before I forget them.

Washing hands in the bathroom, Sanjay puts a pump of soap on Asher's hands and he hears "Thank you, SoapMan!"

"Grandma and Grandpa say 'strawberry' but I say 'strawbry'"

"I like your pants, mumbo"

Karen, in the car: which of you kids farted?
Asher: my daddy farts

...I wish I could think of the others right now. Maybe later. Right now he's getting hot and whiny again - it's time to go and snuggle in bed and read some stories in the hope that he falls asleep.

14/04/2009

Digital Dramas

For the first time ever I think I have a really legitimate excuse for not blogging recently - there has been a cascade of electronic dramas in our household over the last few weeks.

First was the car. The Civic stopped working. I discovered this when I went down with my instructor to start my driving lesson. First I thought the central locking wasn't working, then I wondered why the light didn't come on when I opened the door, then when I turned the key in the ignition there was not even a click - luckily my instructor is flexible and Franni was across having breakfast in Naremburn and we walked over and I drove her little green frog car. We didn't call the NRMA immediately because neither of us had the time to drive the car for the hour or so it would need and after that, it got more complicated.

Next discovery was that the backup drive that I got before Christmas doesn't work. At all. I spent ages arsing around changing cables and testing on different computers to work that out. I was trying to back-up because I had (and still have) the feeling that my PC is going to die on me and, at best, will need a complete rebuild.

Then, maybe the next day, when I turned the computer on my fancy new Samsung screen didn't work. I got an error message so I didn't realise it was the screen that was the problem and again wasted several hours of my life trying to narrow down where the problem was. Unfortunately we have to send it back to Samsung rather than taking it into the shop where we got it, which is a huge f***ng pain. The screen took a freaking age to troubleshoot, because we have no spare screen I ended up having to try various cables and hook up the screen that Sanjay broke (in his fit of pique) to work out that it was, in fact, the screen itself (not the cable, graphics card, or whatever else).

Next were the phones - Sanjay's mobile decided it wasn't working, unless it was either in the car or on speakerphone. The keypad keeps falling off my phone. Then the final straw - our home phone stopped working, after a little troubleshooting we worked out that the problem was with the line - neither phone nor internet worked. We were officially incommunicado - we had to wait til Sanjay's phone randomly started working again to call and they said it was a line fault. Living for a week with no internet was horrible, like having a limb removed - we did get a few early nights though. Optus had to send out a technician, who spent about 6 seconds the other morning plugging a cable in the comms board back in. He said it was probably a Telstra technician 'accidentally' bumping it.

So, Sanjay's phone mysteriously fixed itself, we have Anil's screen, we are back online, I got the most vital photos backed up onto Sanjay's laptop while I get the backup drive sorted and Sanj called NRMA and got the car dealt with yesterday. And that is the saga. Hopefully I can now resume my normal, rather sporadic, blog posting schedule. A big thanks to Michael for coming around and helping us get some of the computer stuff a bit more sorted!