Now that my blogger blog has a nice fancy header & stuff, I won't be posting to this blog any more.

Long live the Blog!

Or perhaps the end of the beginning...

I will start to switch over to my Blogger blog soon, mainly because it has many more funky features and is full of Googly goodness.  I'll transfer all the old posts over as well, but that will take a while!

The new blog lives here...

At dinner last night, Freya said "There's a spot in my juice!". Reb looked & said "It's a sesame seed."  Freya drank the juice & Reb said "The sesame seed will grow in your tummy!"  "No!  It won't grow in my tummy!".  Smart chickie.

We had fun playing with her toy animals... they were dappelling (galloping) wildly around the place.  After a few minutes Freya said "I'm a bit frightened!", but when I offered to stop playing she said no.

Now Freya has some great spider pyjamas... will have to post a photo.

Cold & miserable weather at the moment...

Never one to be on the bleeding edge, it took several years before I read Harry Potter, & now I am getting into Heroes just as the first season comes to an end.  I blame Lost to some extent, watching the beginning of season 2 was like a nightmarish groundhog day, with about 5 minutes of actual new storyline per episode.  Altho some folks think season three is the bees' knees, I just can't waste that many hours of my life.

Another couple of shows which aren't quite delivering are the new Dr Who & Torchwood.  While Dr Who was often cheesier than a double cheese cheeseburger with extra cheese, the new ones have no excuse not to be top-notch.  Really good Sci-Fi on Telly (such as B5 at its best, Star Trek occasionally, BSG quite often) is excellent, thoughtful drama with good SF elements. Dr W. & Torchwood deliver on the drama front but just don't do great SF. And even the drama is a bit weak - the villains in Dr W. are pretty awful ("Bwu ha ha ha I will drink your blood! And take over the world! Bwu ha ha ha!!!").

Spent the day tidying up my study / computer room AKA the dungeon, looking for a receipt for my jacket which I have to take back (again).  Turned out that the receipt was on the floor of the car!  Now I just need to get on with some skool work...

Freya had a nice time at creche, and then we went to the Death Star to drop the jacket off.  We had a nice walk around, and stopped in at the pet shop.  Freya loves to look at the animals, & is quite fond of the fish.  She told Reb about how we saw a walking fish - "It eat me!".

Which has nothing to do with what has happened today.

Kept Freya home from creche today, as she was a bit too snotty & cough-y in the morning.  We started off with an epic book reading session, followed by some Maisy DVD watching (they are good for what ails you, really) before we had to get ready to go to the doctor (or as Freya says, "the DOC-tor!  Baboom!").  A couple of minor tanties later and we set off.  She was absolutely brilliant at the Drs, doing everything he asked (open mouth - poke out tongue etc) and the only bad bit was when no jellybean was forthcoming at the end, and she gave him the baby evols and probably put a gypsy curse on him too.  When we mentioned the Dr yesterday, Freya said "I get a red jellybean!".

Home again via the local tool shop which sometimes has a lovely labrador in residence, but it wasn't there (Freya said "I want to see the puppy") so home for lunch (falafels - eagerly devoured) and bed.  Freya wanted extra toys in bed: Mr Todd, aka Foxy Fox, and Jeremy Fisher, otherwise known as Froggy.  She chatted to them for ages...

Freya comes home with some great stories from creche, at least some of which are true.  At breakfast the other day she said "I saw a big cockroach", so I was looking for one, when she explained that it had been inside at creche!  She also talks about the bunny they have there, & how the kids are biting each other, and who cried because they were sad.

She often quotes expressions the other kids & the carers use..."No!  I don't like it!  Move away! You're not listening to my words!" and many more...

Hooray, I have survived term 2.  After a nervous start & a few weeks in the middle where it felt a bit grim, I think I ended up feeling a lot more relaxed and confident.  Still a LOOOONG way to go of course, but I'm looking forward to getting back into it next term.

It's wet & windy & fairly horrible winter weather at the moment.  Poor Freya is a snot fountain, but she's getting good at blowing her nose.  When she sneezes she says "I done a plash!", or "I done a zontite!" (from when we say "gesundheit!").

She has gone through a phase of wanting Rebecca to do everything, particularly at bath time.  The other day I had filled the bath, and as Rebecca was lowering Freya into the water, she looked at me, her little brows furrowed, and sternly said "Go make dinner!".

Freya has great chats with the cats, which go something like this: "Hello Gromit!  She's a weiner.  Hello Freida!  She's a big boofer."

We went to have a look at Auxilliary Blackie, who is still going strong & was out mending her web.  "She's got legs!", said Freya.  I said "She's a big boofer!", and Freya said "No she's not!  Freida's a big boofer."

In the last couple of weeks Freya has been coming out with all sorts of rhyming gibberish, like "pink-ponk!  Dum-bum!  Scum-pump!".  Quite amusing.

More hilarity to come when I think of it.

After passing wind: "my bottom's cranky!".  Funny girl.

Daddy: (Holding nappy out, which he has just written a F on) "What's this?"
Freya: "it's an 'F' "
Daddy: "What's 'F' for"
Freya: "For me!"

Roll on the skool holidays!

Just booked our tix to go to Auckland for Xmas...

Freya was just admonishing Frieda for going under the couch downstairs, saying "No!  Don't go under the couch", and then when that was unsuccessful, she said "I'll eat you up!"

Freya, while  being carried to the  bedroom for a nappy change, called out:
"Grandma!  I dunna poo!"

A completely unrelated story from today... Freya was saying "we saw dee big black cockroach on dee hot-cross bun"... what a nice sentence.

Freya ran up to me at creche this afternoon and gave me a hug, with the words: "I really dunna poo!"

Freya is in her bedroom:
"I dunna poo!  Big poo poo!  It stinks!  It brown!  Big firm poo!  Stinky!"

Earlier in the day we were chatting and she said "Who says good gracious me? - Paul."  She was referring to a character in one of her books which we hadn't read for weeks (because I had mistakenly dropped it into the library... d'oh.  Picked it up today).

Tonight Freya was walking around the house with one of her toy bags saying "going work!".  When Reb got home they were playing and the bag fell on the floor.  Grom came past and Reb said "pick that up, Grom".  When she didn't (on account of being a cat) Reb said "she didn't pick that up", and Freya replied "she's got no hands!".  Very smart chick!

Another thing she does which is quite smart, is describe one of the branches on the nectarine tree as a kangaroo - it looks a bit like one!  She did say it had too many ears (or something like that).

Back, alive, from Camp Crystal Lake.  Only a few counselors were slaughtered this year, along with a few of our students who drove one instructor insane during an orienteering session.  She was taken away by the police, chanting "put the red in the shed and follow Fred!  Axe in your head and you're bled and you're dead!"  I've often felt inclined to run amok with a log splitter, so I completely sympathize.

Apart from the massacre it was quite an enjoyable trip.  Got on fairly well with the kids, did some fun activities (wiener-level mt biking, some archery (I got the high score - w00t!!!)) and some not so fun ones like sleeping outdoors in the rain with some fairly obnoxious adolescents.  The first night had a fantastically clear sky, but I really need to organize a good astronomy presentation for next year to make the best of it.

Home again, good to see Freya & Reb (& I suppose the cats too...) and have a nice bed to sleep in.

Freya was great today... she was patting Frieda on the bed, calling her a "soft wiener."  Brilliant!

I'm off to Camp Crystal Lake next week for skool... have packed my ice hockey mask & a wide variety of garden tools and dangerous sporting equipment.  And that's just to protect me from the kids.

If I don't post again in the next week or so, then I am probably buried in a shallow grave, or more likely roasting over a fire after the camp has gone all Lord of the Flies due to a lack of ipods and celphone coverage causing a Generation Y psychic meltdown.

Just kidding, I think it should be a good few days.

Freya is oscillating wildly between being a delightful, funny little girl, and a whiny, cranky & miserable little hellhound.  This morning was pretty foul, with an unpleasant trip to Wastelands, followed by about 40 minutes of Freya crying before she went to sleep in the afternoon.  This afternoon & evening she has been MUCH better... and even though she only got up from her nap at about 4.15, she happily went to sleep by about 8 pm!  Strange.

I forgot to mention our new, fun, bath-time game.  Freya has a box of small plastic frogs, and we put them in our mouths and spit them across the bath!  Great fun.  The first night I did it Freya laughed hysterically and said "funny Daddy!".  She is now an accomplished frog-spitter too!

Winter is on its way, with the associated colds & other vile poxes.  Freya now says "I've got boogers" at creche!

School is going OK... taking one of my year 8 classes is a lot like being mauled by a pack of squirrels.  On their own they are cute enough, but get a whole ravening mob of them and you are likely to lose your nuts.  No sooner to you shake a few off your arm than another three are embedded tooth-first in your shin... nasty.

The highlight of the day was the big huntsman spider that I rescued from one of the classrooms.  It was as big as any I've seen around here, shame I didn't have the camera with me.

Freya's new found assertiveness progresses at a pace... along with "mine!" and "Stop!  Go way!  I don't like it!" (often used on errant parents), we now have "it was my turn!", which was swiftly joined by "I had it first!"

Tonight we also heard "No biting!", which prompted Reb to aks who was biting whom, and Freya said "Taylor was biting Asha!".

At about 2 am this morning Freya cried a bit, so I went in to check on her and hey... this baby has no clothes!  "My nappy!" said she, holding up her (fortunately empty) nappy.  So I helped her to put everything back on and tucked her back into bed...

In between being a total hellhound, Freya is really heaps of fun to be around at the moment.  She chats all the time, sings songs, even making up nonsense songs to tunes she knows.  Her counting is coming along, but for some reason she often misses out on saying "two" and just goes "one three four", including when there are just two objects.  She likes the word "many", just the other day she went "many doggies!" when a woman walked three poodly things past the house.