sight of the week

we have introduced amelia to a wind-down stage before sleeping where she gets to read, or play a little, in her bed before we turn the light off. we check on her every few minutes (as she well knows, because she holds up one hand with fingers outspread as we leave the room, saying 'FIVE minutes'). this is 'her' time - as long as she stays in her room and is reasonably quiet, we don't mind what she does. sometimes she sits at the office desk in her room playing with a little yellow plane and a set of blocks. other times she reads to her bunny rabbit and koala, yet others, the babies are 'put to bed' and 'fed' while she pats them and sings. it makes for a quiet night's sleep anda fairly painless 'lights off' operation.

last night she opted to wind-down in our bed. i went to check on her, saw that she had taken off her pyjamas and was instead wearing something in a dark fabric, which she was busy patting into place around the bulge of her night-time nappy - i walked a little closer to the bed to find that she had knicked a pair of andrew's undies and donned them, hiking them up around her waist. i can't describe the look on her face- priceless.

i sent andrew off to look, and he too snorted and doubled over at the sight, coming out to the sitting room with tears of laughter in his eyes, saying 'this one's not for the blog.' my response was pretty well 'au contraire, but it IS' - although by the time he had pulled himself together and went back for a photo, she had stripped off the offending item and put it back in his drawer.

in which amelia gets back to her roots, and LOVES it

'more pipes, more PIPES dad' . . . amelia's response to the remembrance day commemorations at the menin gate ieper on November 11th . . . 'drums, DRUMS, DRUMS . . .' in fact, the drums left such a vivid impression that last night she lay in bed making the noise that drums make when first starting up a march. we didn't actually film anything ourselves, but look for my red hat and snippets of amelia's pink and grey hat in this . . . the piper was around 7 foot tall and very impressive!

she laughed out loud when the poppies poured through the 3 occuli at the end of the commemoration, and tried catching them as they fell managing to grab a good handful for herself.

you can see her hat again here as she dances to 'it's a long way to tipperary' with the belgian lady standing alongside of us. in fact this video ends on her hat! apparently all she needs is a good bit of drum and pipe action and she is fit to go!!!

throughout the more quiet moments, including the 2 minute silence, she was remarkably restrained - NO DRUGS INVOLVED EITHER! - so our neighbours on either side congratulated me on my delightfully quiet and well-trained daughter - who if they had only known was using her technique for visiting 'bouncy castles' (aka gothic and medieval churches), where she whispers and talks sotto voce with a knowing little finger held gently alongside her turned up harvie honker.

what she didn't notice, as i and most other people did was this; the face of modern warfare, confronting and visible, and sobering if you consider the millions of suchlike young men maimed or killed during WW1, and that sights such as this were all too common all across the Empire and Europe for years afterwards. not to mention the 58,000 without a known grave whose names are engraved on the menin gate (the large marble edifice in which the commemorations take place).

MY bart

amelia has a tendency to claim any new people she befriends as HER people - MY peter and woofie (ruthie), MY Yulia, and so on. hence a few images of amelia walking with HER bart. the bond is usually immediate, and very dramatic, with her conversation over the next few days and weeks including mention of the new person/people. bart she has met once before, when she was 8 months old. these photos were taken after we had eaten lunch with bart, and she was more than happy to wander off hand in had with him over her beloved cobble-STOOOONNNES.

medical misadventures

these happened a wee while ago, but the kid's memory is acute (and cute), so she makes regular and happy mention of both events and the visits to the doctor that ensued, even laughing as she does so (they were BIG ADVENTURES!) and spends a lot of time 'bandaging' andrew's arm (placing yellow plastic coasters on a couple of recent burn scars and asking him tenderly if he's 'awwwight now?')

the first is the result of a tumble down our extremely steep back stairs - on my watch this time, when i was unaware that she could open the damn door to the stairs. i learned pretty fast though, believe you me. we had the paramedics arrive and check her out, and she was of course, totally fine. i needed sedating, as did andrew, but she was unscathed except for surface bruising and scrapes. we know it is only the start of things like this, but its good to have a record.

the second happened about a week before we left aussie, and is a burn that resulted from her reaching up and grabbing a cup of tea on the bench. poor katie was looking after her inside, and didn't realise she could reach to that height. i was outside, and heard a crash and a scream, and belted up the stairs and sort of ran with amelia into the shower while katie rang the local medical centre. she had silvascene (not sure of spelling) applied within 10 minutes of the burn occurring, so has NO SCARS - although the bandage looks a little grim.

we know it is only the start of things like this, but its good to have a record.

a very important little peron in amelia's life

amelia talks about thomas a lot. she misses him not in a melancholy or sad manner, but just in a matter of fact 'i would like to see him now' kind of way. the poor little bugger has been very very ill, literally at death's door, first with a paralysis tick that saw him end up on a respirator, and then ANOTHER one two days after he went home, with more paralysis. he now has a corneal ulcer and it looks like he will possibly lose an eye. we told amelia that he was sick, and that katie had taken him to the hospital, and she was okay with that - having had a little experience with medical treatment herself . . . (post and photos to follow). however, it was not immediately clear that he would recover, and he was on the verge of heart failure - which of course we did not discuss with amelia. however, that night, she got out of bed at 4am and came into our room, something that she never does, and asked for a cuddle and ning. soon after that, she sat up in bed, and patted the duvet heartily, calling 'thomas, THOMAS, come on up here. come on puppy, come here.' all we can figure is that she picked up on my anxiety re thomas, although unspoken in front of her, and it was weighing on her mind. it was a very sweet, and deeply touching moment for us all.

if nothing else, ACCESSORISE!!!

said bag

said shoes

toilet training reached a certain crescendo this week, going from 'tappies' all day and night, to frantic calls of 'my poo, my poo' and a little rear end being clutched as it runs to the toilet, followed by 'YAAAAAAAAAAAAY, my pooooooo' when said deed is done. (this after a brief but misleading period of toilet usage, which turned out to be merely a series of experiments about the places in the house or outside that one could go to 'make' things appear). now though, it is all over bar the shouting, which will continue full tilt and unabated! however, we have discovered that a girl must be porting, as in every situation, the correct and appropriate accessories . . . these, subject to change, include (at this moment in time):

1. your 'poo shoes' - this case purple crocs
2. your dolls pram, pushed up to the pedestal base so you can rest said 'poo shoes' upon it
3. 'poo music' - brahms lullabies played on mum's laptop
4. 'poo photos' - photos of your older sisters as infants and toddlers perched on toilet and potty
5 your green bag shaped just like a frog

it is also appropriate and necessary to go thru one by one, and painstakingly, a litany of names of all the people and animals, that one knows, saying of each one that they too perform certain ablutional acts . . . (sorry folks, you are ALL implicated, no-one gets excluded), and for the parents (present at every performance, although sometimes being banished into the hallway with a preemptory and stentorian 'go away, shut door, light off!, so that the tiddler is left alone, and in the dark, perched atop the large white porcelain object) to repeat the litany (actually, it is more in the line of a rosary now i come to think of it), and agree vigorously both by word and action, and to applaud when it is all over.

when truth is stranger than fiction

funnily enough, a word that many belgians use to describe amelia when seeing her nut-bar personality in full flight sounds VERY similar to one that andrew and i often use when we are reaching the end of our ( short and not nearly flexible enough, given the circumstances) tethers.

the flemish phrase, usually uttered by older women who seem entirely enchanted, . . . is schatje - and i am sure i don't need to spell out the one that WE mutter sotto voce!