Easter Weekend

Ok so we don't 'do' Easter. But the photography women that I hang out with on Flickr were all posting their Easter photos, so I felt compelled to do the same, but it was a little different. No Easter bunny ears to be found, just a construction hat and some crazy playroom mess (it got cleaned up straight after this photo was taken!). Have a look here. All of my other Flickr photos are friends and family only, which means that you have to be a member of Flickr and apply to be my friend in order to have them visible to you.

In other news, this evening Harry was being just SO, SO adorable. At one point she was telling us all about how she was doing juggling (read: throwing three balls into the air at the same time) but it was taking her so long to get all of the words out and her very complicated description of who everyone was in the scenario she was setting up that she got herself confused and we both tried very hard not to, but ended up laughing out loud (which she thought was pretty funny as well!).

Then she was standing there at a funny angle. I asked her whether she needed to do a poo. To which Harry replied "I don't need to do a poo, I'm just rubbing this ball on my bottom". HAHA!! It was classic! We all had a wonderful day today and I think Harriet is going to fall over with excitement when she realised that Papa is still home! Yay!

Sayings

Tonight Harry informed James that underneath her arms she has "arm lashes". They are apparently "like eyelashes...actually, more like eyebrows, but you can't see them. What's under the arms called anyway?". I love the way she uses her language as though she is an adult, with her use of words like nearly, always, anyway, kind of, perfectly, etc. It just sounds so adorable coming out of her mouth.

And speaking of speech, boy can this girl talk. She doesn't stop. All. Day. Seriously. NO, SERIOUSLY! Here is a stream of consciousness that she said the other day and I jotted it down as an example of how she just says and explains every little thing that she is thinking:

"I don't like jumping down because I hurt myself and just do crying and crying, that's why I like to be careful with jumping"

Now that's verbatim, but the thing is I hadn't asked her for a reason or talked to her about anything. No, this was purely her soliloquy whilst standing at the small step leading down into our backyard. Just said out into the air for no reason whatsoever. And that's not half by any means. As anyone who sees me in real life can atest, Harriet not only talks all the time, she requires a lot of feedback whilst doing it. This, of course, makes it impossible to have any kind of conversation with anyone else. By the end fo the day I am almost hoarse! She also just doesn't accept any old description or excuse. Things must be explained in excrutiating detail, especially if it is a reason about why she can't do something. I am always very careful to make sure that the reasons I give have been thought out to the last letter, otherwise I am sure to be 'found out' and have the alternative summarily explained back to me about why she therefore can do what she was talking about. God I love her.

One of our favourite oft-repeated discussions is when someone blows their nose. Harriet pipes up with "What are you doing Mama?" to which I reply "Blowing my nose Harry". "Boogers?" "Yep, Harry, boogers". "You know Mama, I just use my finger for boogers".

She Writes!

The other day Harriet worked out how to write the letter 'H'. She was so excited to be able to write that she's rekindled her interest in drawing just so that she can have the paper and markers out to write more. The other big revelation came when she realised that if she left off one of the vertical strokes then she had also written 't'. This was great stuff!

So when we went out with Kristie and Tara yesterday she was very excited to be able to not oly draw a picture of Tara, but to also write the letter 't' next to it. We're thinking that it shouldn't be too much to show her how to write 'A' since 'H' is down pat.

In other news, I have started doing some shoots and am pretty busy with the proofing of those. I promise to come and reply to all the other comments in the previous post, but in true Harriet form last night she was awake from 1am - 3am the night before a really big, busy day. So we are both anxious to try and fit in some sleep tonight when we can. Tomorrow I have two more shoots so I've got my fingers crossed for a peaceful night.

I'll leave you with my latest favourite photo (as always double click on it to see it nice and big):

We're Back!

So finally I bother to get around to writing in the blog you say. In my defence, we have been *crazy* busy since we got back to Sydney. In fact the morning after we arrived in we had a photoshoot with the wonderful Clair Bremner in the Botanic Gardens. For those of you who next contemplate whether to do interstate travel on the back of a photo shoot, I can ssure you not to do it. Harry was not her usual happy self at all, but still, Clair managed to take some wonderful photos (unsurprisingly).

Melbourne was ok. We seemed to have a pretty bad time of it service-wise which was really frustrating. Everywhere we went we had not just annoying service, but actively BAD service. To the point where we were, on a daily basis, having to eat/drink something that we hadn't ordered because we couldn't be bothered fighting it all again. *sigh* For example this photo was taken in a vegetarian restaurant in Fitzroy called 'Vegie Bar'. Sounds great hey? James looked at their website and saw they had a kids menu which was even more awesome. So we get there, get a table and James asks where the children's menu is. Is told by a befuddled looking waitress that they have no such thing and they hesitantly agree after discussion with the chef that they can do a child-sized baked beans. Then I ask for eggs and mushrooms but without the capers that they come with. Of course it came with capers all through it. Just thought I'd use that as just one example, but pretty much stuff like that happened constantly to us. Just kind of puts a dampener on your experience with a city, you know?

But I managed to catch up with a few people from Melbourne that I know from online forums (and *gasp* even ones that don't include anything about children!) which was really cool. We went to the museum about five hundred times which Harry loved - it is a great space, we'd be there all the time if we lived there that's for sure. The oddest thing that Harriet loved from our whole Melbourne trip though? Seriously - she loved the lights hanging over the bench in the kitchen. They were pendant style halogens and she was obssessed with them. She called them her 'swing babies' and would insist on standing on the bench and swinging these damn things (giving all of us heart attacks about her falling off, breaking a light, damaging the wall with a swinging light...the list goes on) as if they were babies on swings. She is one weird child.

But let me have one proud mama moment will you? Just one, gawn. If you don't want to read it then just skip this paragraph but if you've been reading this blog for a while then you're totally used to it anyway. So we're in Degraves St which has a whole pile of cafes stacked in on each other. We were at one end where there is this little organic cafe place and Harry was having her favourite drink - an organic lime and cranberry juice juice with sparkling water. It's her version of a soft drink. Anyway, opposite us was a Centre for Adult Education which had its acronym CAE all over the front of it. Harry was looking at it for a while as she sipped her drink (well, as she sucked it up furiously truth be told) then turned to me and said "That not actually cafe Mama. What that say?". Ok, so luckily I wasn't eating or drinking anything because I would definitely have choked on it. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining it we asked her if she was asking why that wasn't a cafe (as in an actual shop that was a cafe). But no, she pointed to the letters and said "No, those letters not actually cafe. What that say Mama?". So luckily I had a pad of paper and some markers on me and we were able to write down the two different words and discuss how the two 'words' differ because of the 'f'. But wow, that was pretty surprising that's for sure.

Ok, welcome back for those of you who skipped the brag paragraph. This week has seen us hopping around the place seeing people and Harry finally got a chance to go to a toddler yoga class. To say she loved the class would be a supreme understatement! Whilst there she was a little distracted in the middle and then again towards the end when Matilda brought along her doll to join in the proceedings (enough to send Harry into a nosedive of excitement at the best of times).

But when we got home all we did ALL AFTERNOON was have me play Sarah (the instructor) and she played the mama with her baby (Doll). Over and over again. Then first thing when we woke up today...straight out into the playroom and again with the yoga play. Luckily we had to go out of the house again or otherwise I could have forseen a very long afternoon of her playing yoga!

Ok, I have a few things I want to write about that aren't related to Harriet so I will try to get on to those over the weekend. Thanks for hanging around here readers!