Some Cute Photos

After the big party cute cousin Matthew slept over and helped take care of his little cousins. Here are some photos.

A party for 100 - No Problem!

The biggest obstacle to a member of Sarah’s family hooking up with a “life partner” occurred on Sunday – The Armstrong Christmas party. At about 4PM about 100 Armstrongs rocked up for their annual get together. For any prospective partner this is a daunting initiation into the Armstrong family. As you turn up there are these hordes of people interested in finding out about you. Some family members still don’t turn up on occasion – you know who you are Alan B.

When Sarah volunteered to have it she didn’t know there were so many people coming. However it was not that much hassle. It was a good chance to clean some parts of the house (for the first time in seven years). The party was well organised by Pip Murphy – all those years on the MBA and working as a management consultant finally being put to good use. Everyone bought food and drink, we did not need to provide anything.

Justine organised some of the little cousins to do a concert. Simon was all talk but was overcome with nerves before doing his big number.

I am TWOOO!

Hi. My name is Ella Kathleen Harris. I am two. Since I am very advanced for my age my parents are allowing me to write my own birthday blog entry. My Granny kindly baked the cake shown above. She made my father take a picture of it and publish it on the internet for all to see.

Even though I am very irritating I am also very cute, check out the photos below.

The photo on the right is how I started the party. Lizzie my favourite nanny gave me the dress for my birthday. However I like to change my outfit several times a day so halfway through the party I ripped it off and my Mother stuck that shirt on me.

Not a Christmas Letter

This is not a Christmas letter but a list of 2007 Milestones for the Harris-Boyd family:

-Ella turned 2
-Simon survived kindergarten
-Sarah and Michael survived kindergarten
-Ben was toilet training
-Michael survived toilet training just.
-Ella slept past 6:30 -- once!
-Rachel visited Australia and the boys met their little cousin Yaara
-Lizzy, our nanny, got past the halfway mark in her Uni course and she got her first distinction
-Simon learnt to read
-Ben discovered a love of talking just like his older brother
-Ella started to talk but her main words are still Mummy, Daddy and No.
-We got the children's bedrooms painted.
-After realising Ella wasn't going to use the office furniture in her bedroom we replaced it with little girls toys
-we put up our first Christmas tree

Here are some hopeful milestones for 2008:

-all 3 kids sleeping past 6:30 -- once!
-Ben, Sarah and Michael surviving Ben at preschool
-Having just one child to look after when Ben goes to preschool
-Ella being toilet trained -- throw out the nappies!

The Brave Travellers

Having organised a holiday in Jindabyne to show the kids what snow looked like we approached the approximately 6 hour car trip with much trepidation. Our friends Deb and John with their boys Sam and Tom accompanied us down to Bergen Lodge where Sarah's family are members. I don't think we would have contemplated going by ourselves.

The trip was planned around stopping at McDonalds with play places so the kids could use up some energy and get happy with happy meals. For your information, there is one such McDonalds at Sutton Forest and another at Queanbeyan and then a great park at Cooma. We also swapped kids to avoid the not infrequent bickering between siblings Simon and Ben. This plan exceeded our expectations with all children behaving unnaturally well for the other children's parents. Then we still had Ella to contend with. She was dealt with using a tip from another friend Penny who recommmended taking one of those magnetised drawing toys where you can keep drawing and clearing the picture. Ella loved this, along with lots of unhealthy snacks along the way.

Once we finally made it to the destination there was great excitement from the boys to see they were sleeping on bunk beds. For once we were being asked " Can we go to bed now please?" Of course they didn't go to sleep till much later. They also enjoyed playing hide and seek in the empty lodge which has lots of rooms.

We had two day trips into Thredbo. On the first day the weather wasn't good enough to go up the chairlift to see the snow so we went swimming in the pool (also recommended to me). The heated pool felt like there was snow in it but it turned out to be a "training pool". Remember for next time training pool means COLD. Anyway the kids didn't notice. They loved it. Following the swim we all had hot chips for lunch at the pub. This was later identified as the highlight of the holiday for Sam.

On the second day in Thredbo we managed to make it safely to the top of Crackenback chairlift although there were some hairy moments where Ella decided she didn't want to be held and wanted to sit by herself on the chairlift and Ben kept wanting to lean forward! We found a patch of snow not too far from the top of the chairlift --- necessary as the little ones were too lazy to walk very far. There John made us a little toboggan track and we slid down it on the cardboard poster of Joe Hockey Deb had kindly brought along. We also made a little snowman and good time was had by all. However, this was not enough excitement for some and once down the mountain the boys all had a turn on the bobsled ride. Tom and Sam being more experienced had two rides each. On the way home all 3 Harris children slept and Sarah and Michael had a well deserved rest that afternoon.







The next day bike riding was planned for all but the weather prevented this and we ended up playing at the park and making an early exit home. The trip home was pretty good as well except for the last hour and a half where we got our own children back and they pretty much went back to bickering again. Oh well as they say it gets easier all the time......

around the bend rather than driving us potty

yes, Ben has finally "turned the corner", embraced the s-bend and is toilet ready for preschool next year. The pressure of having him toilet-trained by next February was really getting to certain members of the family. But he is now happily wearing "big boy undies" despite much resistance.

How did we do it? In the end it was down to simple bribery and positivity. And although Ben has forgotten about the rewards and stars he used to receive for every no 1. and 2, Simon helpfully reminded us today that Ben wasn't getting anymore stars. We haven't had the courage to remove the star chart yet but it will be going very soon....

Meanwhile Ella is already telling us when she has done a poo and trying to remove her nappy. She is happiest without any clothes at all and we have to make sure she always has pants on so she doesn't take her nappy off. We can't face toilet training her yet. We are leaving that to be an achievement for next year.

Where does he get it from?

Simon at playgroup: I am not a messer, I am an artist

The shopping instinct has kicked in.

The other day without prompting Ella went to the cupboard and got two handbags. She then came and started tugging on Sarah to come and follow her in the toy room. A few hours later they emerged with the bags full. Mother and daughter had shared their first shopping experience. At least this one did not cost us anything. We probably wont be so lucky the next time.

The Christmas Child

As you know Ella was born around Christmas time a little less than two years ago but thats not why her nickname is the Christmas Child, or more specifically Noella. Rather its because of the frequency with which we have to say to her "No Ella !".

Maybe she should become a hairdresser

A few weeks ago we decided Ella needed a haircut since we couldn't see her eyes anymore due to the out of control fringe. Well five minutes and twenty dollars later here are the results.

I work that out as an hourly rate of $240. Not a bad career option.

Father's Day report

Just like any recent day in the Harris household, Father's Day got off to an early start. Ella woke up at 5AM to wish me a happy Father's day. As part of the special treats of the day I got to go back to bed from 6 till 8:30. Then I got a wonderful breakfast of fresh cheese pikelets.

The morning just got better with a trip to every dad's favourite store: Bunnings or as Simon calls it the "hard work shop". The highlight of Bunnings is the toy set for the kids which Mum usually heads straight for with the kids while Dad gets some quality shopping time. The main purchase for Father's Day was some vegetables to grow in the family vegetable patch.

In the afternoon we hosted some of the male cousins and their dads for a small afternoon tea.

Spring has sprung

We have emerged from blogging hibernation - it has been too cold to expose the fingers to typing up blog entries.

Here is the winter roundup on the three characters of most interest:

• Ben: Remains as stubborn as ever. i.e. still not toilet trained. He is confirmed for three days of preschool next year. We think this may be a bit of a shock to someone who has a few hours in total in the gym creche as his only exposure to group care. His speech is improving every day. The most used expression at the moment is "XXXX is annoying me". You can substitute a persons name (primarily Ella) or any object for the XXXX.
• Ella: Still waking up at 5AM. Bring on daylight saving! Starting to make more noise. Still as irritating as ever. She is also known as the Christmas child. See previous post.
  
• Simon: Simon is as garrulous as ever and now likes telling jokes and making rhymes. The jokes aren't alway funny but he's got the rhymes right. He gets very jealous of Ben but is not threatened by his little sister although he does find her annoying some times. He is very competitive especially with Ben and this can get quite tiring for his parents. He is really enjoying school and so are his parents.
  

All in all they are still as gorgeous as ever, bringing a smile to their parents and grandparents and we love them very much.

A rite of passage

We can now proudly say we have passed another rite of parenthood. Head lice hit the household about a week ago. Simon was furiously scratching his head but I couldn't see any of the critters. I put it down to the fact he was at soccer camp (Yes he occasionally does something sporty) and was wearing his hat all of the time. On Tuesday this week he was scratching his head again. I finally got him to sit still for long enough so I could check out his head. Critters were spotted.

On Wednesday morning (which luckily happened to be a day off for the parents) Sarah dashed off to the chemist and returned with something organic and a fine tooth comb.

We checked everyone out - Lizzy (aka The Craft Nanny), Michael and Ella were nit free. I am very empathetic so I had a few scratches anyway. (I am so empathetic I still have the remains of the belly I grew when Sarah was pregnant with Ella.) Lice were spotted in Simon, Ben and Sarah. The treatment consisted of rubbing the cream onto your head and then sitting with the green shower cap on your head for ten minutes. Simon was treated first. Ben needed some encouragement - 1/2 a packet of jelly beans. Once he was delirious with a sugar high he agreed to sitting for ten minutes with a green shower cap on his head. Okay maybe agreed to is stretching the truth a little bit.

Sarah had doubts about the effectiveness of the organic stuff after she discovered some living creatures still in Simon's hair post treatment, so dashed of to the chemist again for something with more chemicals in it. We had a beautiful moment of bonding as we rubbed head lice moose into each other's hair.

Everyone is clear now.

Wacky Races

The Wacky Races came to the house last weekend

'B' is for BEN

Last Thursday was Simon's news day and the letter of the week was 'B'. Simon went to school with a photo of Ben his blond brother with brown eyes.

Gina for a day

Since Simon was born our dream for our children was to have them sleep from 7 til 7 as Gina (of Contented Little Baby fame) said is quite reasonable. We thought so too. However, none of our children so far have agreed with us. Ella, however, teased us with one night of sleeping from seven til seven. And it was bliss! Alas, a teaser was all it was. Today was back to 4:35.....

what's a record mummy?

Simon, a record (as in world record) is when you do something that's never been done before.

This week Ella showed Simon what a record is when she slept through the night till 6:45am!

Last night she almost repeated this record. Although crying out at 3:40 she slept on till past 7:20!

Simon and Ben were up about 6:20 but anything past 6:00 is civilised in our world.

Looking on the bright side of life

When you have to get up before 6AM everyday there is one benefit:
You get to see the sunrise every day.

Winter has arrived

For those avid readers of this blog some important facts:

• this is post 100 of the the BLOG
  
• which is also just over a year old.

Winter has arrived in Sydney this week. The daily maximum temperature has gone below 20 degrees. The forecast for the next six days is rain and showers. We have had heavy rain and strong winds for the last two days. You would think we were living in England. A guy from work is going to Melbourne for the weekend because the weather is better down there. This is just the sort of forecast you want when the long weekend is starting and you are going to spend the next three days stuck inside with three little terrors.

The reason this post is about the weather is that not much else exciting is happening at the moment. If Sarah was writing the post it would proabably be about sleeping.

We are just settling into the winter routines of chopping wood and foraging for food in the freezer.

In a few weeks we will go to our first parent-teacher night to find out about Simon at sKool. Hopefully his spelling will be better than his Father's. We manage to get occasional bits of information out of him. For example:
Michael: Simon how was school today? What did you do?
Simon: Good, not much.

Ben remains the most stubborn child I know. I would love for him to be able to go to preschool in July. However he steadfastly refuses to use the toilet and remains in nappies. His speech is improving all of the time. Sometimes he is even understandable now. He has quite a few stock expressions:

• Mummy/Daddy you are a bully.
• It wasn't my fault - this gets used quite a lot on some days.
  
• I hate everything
  
• I hate [substitute any adult here]
  
• I get [substitue any Thoms character here] for my birthday!
  

Ella is stil trying for the most annoying child award. While being very cute she does cruise around the house looking for trouble and leaving a trail of mess behind her. As normal for a Harris child she is quite advanced for her age: The 2 year old tantrums have already started at 18 months.

The best sort of hand me downs

A few weeks ago Tony Boyd dropped off a collection of video tapes that his sons no longer watched. Madeline and Thomas the Tank Engine just aren't that interesting for teenage boys.

Tony was most impressed that Ben could name all the videos. I would be more worried that a 3 year old has watched so much TV.

Star of the week.

Last week Simon came home with the trophy for star of the week - awarded for "being a positive class member"

Well done Simon.





Ben and Ella thought it was pretty cool as well.

ParentingTip for Mothers - Number 612.

Do not let cute daughter play with expensive mobile phone - They will break it.

The Mother's Day Report

Well it didn't start with breakfast in bed. Sarah's mothers day started with me (Michael) getting up at 3:30AM to look after a sick Ella. Sarah relieved me some time around 5:30AM - (Author's note: There is some conjecture on the actul time 5:30 is a compromise to ensure marital harmony).

Simon gave Sarah a lovely gift that he had purchased at school - after Sarah gave him the money. We had made a feeble attempt to hide it in his cupboard so it could be a surprise but it had been found - Hint: Try the garage next year she doesn't ferret around the tools very often.

At 9AM I went to the gym for some much needed 'me' time.

In the afternoon we had all of the Boyds and Granny and Grandpa after for a big afternoon tea.

Ellas was the star - There is nothing cuter then a little girl with a silly hair style.

Here are some photos:

Simon at 5

inquisitive, garrulous, annoying, delightful, cuddly, sensitive, jealous of his brother, caring big brother, a great constructor.

Simon is a busy boy. He is interested in everything and exhausts his parents with his questions about everything.

Ben at 3

The second child - doesn't always get as much coverage as his brother and sister.

Here's one for you buddy

His Mother's description: twinkle in his eye, dimple in his cheek, stirrer, teaser, jealous of his little sister, polite, talkative, gorgeous

Ella at 17 months

feisty, happy, naughty, cheeky, busy, mischievous, gorgeous, exhausting.

Ella is into everything, constantly annoying her brothers and tiring out her parents. She wanders around the house looking for trouble and usually finds it.

Last week she drank some household disinfectant and prompted a call to the poisons line. It was only a teaspoon luckily.

She is still as smiley as ever and when she is happy is delightful.

Its been too long!

Well we've finally got around to doing another blog post and when I checked the date of the last post I couldn't believe it was 7th February! Time surely flies with 3 kids 5 and under.

So whats been happening?

Well the biggest thing is that Simon started school and he seems to be really enjoying it. He has a lovely teacher who seems to keep them all in line (I've seen her in action) and he has made lots of new friends.

Ben could start at the preschool if we wanted but he is resisting toilet training and we can't send him till he's fully embraced the concept. Seeing how stubborn he is, this could be a while....

Ella is now a definite third presence in the house and exhibiting the impatience of her siblings and unfortunately also their garrulousness.

More details about each child in separate blog entries to come.

Michael has been very busy at work and having to bring some work home but this is the price he pays for working 4 days a week and he doesn't mind. I haven't been as busy at work but I have been studying for a Microsoft certification exam which I just finished and I passed.

Ella still isn't sleeping so well although she started heading for six o'clock for a few mornings just to tease us then she reverted to night-time wakings and averages 4:30 at the moment. This is not conducive to a very exciting life.... Oh well we know it will improve because we've been there before. Twice.

Happy Birthday Mumma

We all love you very much and hope you managed to have a good birthday on Saturday.

Feedback from school

Simon already shows many of the characteristics of a teenager:

• he refuses to tell his parents about school
• he lies on the couch watching tv, ignoring his parents

We did manage to get some feedback from school: he likes little school better because he got to have a rest there!

Some people will do anything to get on the internet

On Saturday our friends Cristian and Megan came for lunch. Sarah mentioned we had the blog and took some photos - (none of Megan though).

Shortly afterwards we received the following e-mail:

Oh now, how disappointing. No news of your exciting visitors?? No
photos?? Tsk tsk.

Thanks for a lovely Saturday. Very relaxing time and lovely food to
boot. Seb especially enjoyed a bite-free play.

X Megan
ps are you sorry you showed us your blog yet?

Advanced for his age

Last week, we sent our first off for the big world of kindergarten. So far he has been for 3 days.

We chickened out

We take our australia day celebrations seriously in this household. We were hoping to have a BBQ for 3 days running over the Australia Day weekend. On Friday we were kindly invited next door to Megan and Brett. A great BBQ, very traditional - total segregation of men and woman. The men even ate separately from the women. I had a great time as did the boys. I don't know how much Ella and Sarah enjoyed it since we only saw them when we were going home. The only radical thing the whole afternoon was the noodle salad - cooked by a man.

On Saturday we caught up with our friend Pam from uni and her lovely quiet family of James, Emily and Thomas. The boys could learn a few things from Emily and Thomas about how to communicate without talking so loudly.

Prior to the weekend, on Wednesday we had Andrew, Louise and the girls from across the road over for warm up BBQ.


However after BBQs on Wednesday Friday and Saturday I couldn't face another steak or sausage. I had had steak and sauasage at six meals in total since I was also eating the left overs for lunch. So when Chris, Margie, Matthew and Thomas came over for dinner I caved in and we had chicken for dinner. We also had cous cous (aka North Shore rice)

Chris and Matthew checked out the latest blog entries and commented on how well written they were. We all sat down outside for a lovely dinner. The boys had a great time with their cousins. Simon remembered that the cousins liked the playstation so we had that instead of the usual computer games for the pre "goto bed activity"

Return of the lost soldier

Sarah took the boys to visit their cousins Timothy, David and Edward this morning. The boys always love going over to play with their cousins' toys especially the fantastic train set.

Anyway Simon returned with on old suitcase that looked familiar. It was mine and it contained a collection of my old toy soldiers and some old ones of theirs. Sarah said she had given it to the cousins when we were cleaning up a few years ago.

Happy Australia Day and other ramblings

Happy Australia Day to everyone out there from the Harris Family

This post was written by Michael even though the photo is of Sarah.






It is just past the middle of summer and while I was sitting outside on the new ($50) banana lounge I was think about my vital stats for a good summer.

• Number of beach visits - going pretty well this year - a lot more than we have ever done since we had kids
  
• Number of pool swims - everyone loves the pool and it is getting a lot of use. However I wouldn't mind a bit more pool time sans my pink limpet aka Ella
  
• Amount of cricket watched - not quite enough - had to watch too much "Thomas the tank engine" and the movie "cars" when we should have had the cricket on.
  
• Hammock time - not nearly enough - I am going to hang out in the hammock as soon as this post is finished
• BBQs - how much red meat can you eat over summer? We started off slowly but with the new gas BBQ this stat is going up. Stay tuned for further BBQ reports.
  

What a threat

Simon: Mumma and Daddy I am going to stay with you forever.

If only it was true

Simon has reecently developed a bit of a competitive instinct and has quite a lot of confidence in his own ability.

Some reecent quotes form his lordship:

"I think I might be quite good at soccer"

"I know a lot about dinosaurs" Dinosaurs could be swapped for a number of other topics. A good summary quote would be "I know a lot about everything"

"I am stronger than Grandpa"

The 747 has landed

After seven (amost eight) years it was time to say goodbye to the Vectra. The airconditioning had given up, there were numerous rattles and the feeling was that its time had come.

The Vectra has been replaced with a nice silver Honda Odyssey. Pa has named it the 747 based on its roomy interior, size, sleek appearance and fancy dashboard.






While the cars were being swapped over all of the child seats were taken out and were sitting in the living room. The kids decided to check out various seating options for the new car.