Deb-onair

Fun at the beach

2010-01-08T20:25:00.001-08:00

Dom heads out into the ocean.

Splashing your feet around is fun.

Walking back out with Dad after a long time in the waves.

Dom adores getting splashed by foamy waves and doesn't even seem to object to the large amounts of salt water he ends up swallowing. Jumping up and down and squealing with delight in the water as waves approach is tiring though. So is watching and holding him. Matt tried an experimental protective plastic bag for the camera but I'm not sure if we got a good pic of him lunging into an oncoming wave. Maybe next time.

Wrapped up warm to head home.

He didn't even kick the towel off on the way back. Tired legs or glad of the extra warm layer?

He did look rather like Salieri to my eye as though he was prepared to absolve onlookers as he passed by.

More Christchurch Holiday snaps

2010-01-06T15:27:00.001-08:00

Gingerbread

2009-12-29T20:19:00.001-08:00

Before we went down south for our Christmas holiday, I made a batch of gingerbread. It is almost as fun to bake as it is to eat. Dominic is a fan of gingerbread (especially if it has mini M&Ms stuck on it) and so were his cousins as it turns out.

Conclusion: gingerbread is very popular with kids. Good to know if you're a witch wanting to build a house to entice small children, not such good news if you're a gingerbread man or woman, wishing to pursue a career in early childhood education.

Plate of finished cookies. The cars and dinosaurs were done by me with cookie cutters. The Santa head and UFO were sculpted freehand by Matt.

Delicious Christmas trees. Gingerbread + icing + green sugar crystals + mini M&Ms = yummy.

The Santa head before it went into the oven. I like the fact that it reminds me of Captain Caveman (if he ever dressed up as Santa).

Sadly, he was too delicious to survive long out of the oven and did not make it to see Christmas day.

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo!

2009-12-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

We had a beautiful day at the zoo. Matt has put up some of the photos (we took a lot - the animals were cute and frolicksome as was the Dom). Here are some more pics:

Checking out the Canadian Geese with his dad.

One of the giraffes gives itself a head rub.

The Wild African Dogs were interested in us...

...but left disappointed when they discovered it was only an apple that Dom was chewing on.

Lemurs know how to sunbathe with maximum basking.

Dom enjoys the playground area outside 'The Nest'.

Someone was offended when we made too many 'a dingo stole my baby' jokes.

Dom's favourite today was the Serval. While the servals have tended to nap through most of our previous visits, today this one was doing laps around the cage. Dom was giggling away as he watched the awesome serval on the move. It is a very graceful and beautiful big kitty when it is roaming around.

Despite the surprised expression on the Sun bear's face, it didn't actually sit down on a pine cone, just next to one.

The other Sun bear shows of its manicurificent claws.

The Red Panda was attempting to bust out when we arrived.

'Almost there...'

Then the Red Panda realized we were watching and abandoned its escape plan... for now at least.

Dino-muffins!

2009-12-12T16:58:00.000-08:00

Woo-hoo! My new dinosaur muffin tin worked out. We now have dino-shaped muffins (which more than meet Dominic's approval). I can now say Dominic ate a T-Rex for lunch!

Banana Choc Chip Dino-muffins!

Om nom nom. T-Rex. Delicious.

Scrooge vs Grinch vs Grouch

2009-12-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

While I'm probably more at the bouncing around singing jingle bells than the 'bah humbug' end of the attitude towards Christmas spectrum, I do love my anti-Christmas characters. There's nothing more charming than a mean, cynical grump who just can't stand the noise and excitement of all the Merry Christmasing going on around them. Let's face it, we've all had moments in the supermarket or shop when they've played Mariah Carey singing 'All I want for Christmas' one too many times and we're tempted stuff fruitcake into the stereo just for some peace and quiet.

So it's time for a Christmas poll about who is the greatest Christmas-hating character of all time.

The contenders:

Ebenezer 'Even the vegetables don't like him' Scrooge

The 'cuddly as a cactus' Grinch

Oscar 'I hate Christmas' the Grouch

Please comment with your vote!

Birthday vegetables!

2009-12-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Dominic is two years old today! Where has the time gone?

Ah well, rather than descend into a stream of clucky drivel about how my baby is all grown up, I shall get on with posting some birthday pics.

Dominic, like most sophisicated young gentlemen, likes a vegetable or two. What better way to commemorate the day of his birthday than with celebratory veges?

Just what every wee lad dreams of for his birthday, to be sure - a potato to call their own.

The birthday version of Mr Potatohead. You pull the candles in and out of your potato. Hours of fun (well, minutes anyway).

He was overcome with glee at the presentation of his majestic birthday radish (like a good little fraggle).

Alas, the noble carrot did not survive long into the photo shoot.

If only I'd had the forethought to buy a turnip for the occasion. Maybe next year...

Robo-cupcakes

2009-12-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

With Dominic's second birthday coming up, it was time to make some pre-brithday weekend cupcakes. I used the chocolate mud cupcakes recipe out of the Cabury's cookbook and they were delicious. The decorations were mutilated licorce allsorts that were then reassembled to look like Plex the Robot (well, as close as I could get. Modelling out of licorce allsorts were harder than I expected).

Chocolate mudcake, blue frosting and lolly robot goodness.

A lone orange robot surround by yellow Plex robots.

Victory! Dom approves of his sample cupcake.

In fact, they taste so good that he licks his fingers rather than the wiping sticky hands on Mum's jeans and smearing them with blue icing.

'Hmm, I can see more cupcakes on the bench...'

Soon followed by an abrupt end to photo session as I had to flee to save plate of cupcakes. Having a wee one who is tall enough to grab whatever he wants of the bench can be all sorts of trouble.

I should probably find a hiding place for cupcakes to keep them safe from Dom and his parents...

Dom and the Advent Calendar

2009-11-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

Christmas countdown begins today! What better way to prepare than with a Pooh calendar and chocolate.

So now that he knows there chocolate behind the pop-out flaps, how long will the rest of the calendar survive?

Why am I having visions of finding a shredded calendar and a Dominic smeared in chocolate lying next to it on the floor?

The Solace of Ice Cream

2009-11-08T22:32:00.000-08:00

Dom was definitely suffering from a case of the 'Mondays' today. He fell over and bumped his head at gym, his mother served him displeasing foods, then she tried to make him have a nap and played the wrong show on the DVD player. Worst of all, there was another kid on his swing when he arrived at the playground.

There was only one thing that had the power to eliminate the grumps.

An M&M Trumpet Ice Cream.

Mmm. Delicious creamy ice cream, chocolate sauce and mini M&Ms in a yummy waffle cone...

When the ice cream melts, you can use the remaining cone as a cup.

He may have smeared ice cream all over his face and hands but we both considered it worth it.

Grey Hoodie Sunday

2009-10-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

It was a grey, overcast day so the family for almost entirely coincidental reasons* dressed in their grey hoodies and black pants for our Sunday fun.

Matt and Dom walking to the park.

Dom and his mum chillin' out together.

The failed attempt at a cute self-portrait shot of the family walking hand-in-hand. Alas the range in heights was too great for the camera.

Dom isn't embarrassed that his parents copy his outfits at all. Honest.

The Tiger Strike pose is always popular with the Dominator though. We were rewarded with giggles.

In the midst of practising our Tiger Strikes on the sofa at home.

* Dom and Matt were both wearing their outfits and when I noticed they sort of matched, I had to copy them and join in the grey hoodie/black pants fun.

Part Five begins...

2009-10-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

MY part of the final installment of TheEvent is now up here.

More Holiday Snaps

2009-10-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

One of the many places we visted up in Tauranga was Classic Flyers. I definitely recommend this place to plane enthusiasts, especially the smaller ones because they have awesome pedal cars and planes.

Dom tries to find a horn to honk in the steering wheel while his cousins take off in the yellow planes behind.

Dom likes to drive while cousin Ben is a keen aviator.

Can I take this home Dad?

Dom nearly backs up into his mother. Hopefully this was accidental.

The Event - Mitchell & Webb Style

2009-10-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

Stay indoors! The Event is over but you may not be safe!

Note that our Event isn't quite over yet - Part 4 will be concluding soon, followed by the shocking final chapter of Part 5.

Holiday cat!

2009-09-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

Behold the glorious majesty of holiday cat!

I find it comforting that no matter where you go, cats are the same. A local feline will always sniff a cat-friendly family out wherever they are staying and oppress them into opening doors at their meowy insistence, stroke and fuss them, and give them food.

The gorgeous smarm-puss spent a large portion of our holiday snoozing on our bed. It was very affectionate and had a loud rumbly purr. Dom loved it and it tolerated being patted by a toddler quite happily (especially since it also found the toddler frequently dropped delicious bits of chicken for it from his highchair).

It's nearly the holidays!

2009-09-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Last day of term. Hurray!

We're heading up to Tauranga for a few days so hopefully we'll snap lots of lovely Dom photos. Alas many of his recent antics have been too high speed for me to even grab the camera in time. Hence there are no photos of him turning the baby monitor on and pressing it to his crotch in an attempt to broadcast the sounds of his groin to the universe or giggling hysterically as the cat twitched her tail across his face whilst they were sitting together on the couch.

There are, however, these:

Dom loves his new plastic guitar (not quite as much as Dad's real one though).

So cute! Dom takes a brief break from rampaging by having a rest on his Dad's butt.

Product Placement

2009-09-17T12:33:00.001-07:00

Dom has displayed a real affection for stealing empty bottles out of the recycling. There's nothing cuter than a toddler sucking at a bottle of Swine Brew - the offical ale of the Drunken Pig.

New Blog

2009-09-15T17:51:00.001-07:00

I have started a new blog for the purpose of blogging about writing. I shall keep this one for photos and tales of the rampaging adventures of wee Dominic.

Should anything blogworthy occur in my life that relates to neither writing nor family, the walls of my world shall no doubt coming tumbling down in a tirade of angst and confusion. :-)

If you want to read about my writing thoughts, processes and opinions, go here:

Sage Fashion Advice

2009-09-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

Style tip for the day:

Remove the '2 for $35' sticker from the front of your shirt before you go out in it.

Eat Candy Day and other news

2009-09-13T00:05:00.001-07:00

So as Matt has already mentioned on his blog, neither of our cute photos of Dom eating fruit placed anywhere in the World Oral Health Day Photo Competition. Naturally, I was filled with bitter rage and indignation so I decided to declare Monday 'Eat Candy Day' and spent most of the weekend munching on sugary delicousness for practice*. Take that NZ Dental Association.

I am also investigating my new writing theory - haircuts make you more productive. After a sluggish week where my daily averages were dropping below the usual, I went out and got a Dorothy Parker-esque do. Thus far results have been promising. I churned out most of my part of the Event yesterday and got a fair portion of my current novella 'Mother of the Baskervilles' done today. Have not yet noticed an improved quality (was secretly hoping for a boost in the ascerbic wit department with said haircut) but I remain optimistic.

* Losing competitions, it turns out, is not something one becomes better at with more practice.

The Event Update

2009-09-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

My part four is now up here.

Ducks - they know where you live!

2009-09-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Dom and I hadn't been to the park for a few days. It's been windy and he's shown a disinct preference for the joys of the playground over the joys of duck feeding (that is he turns around and runs out of the park as soon as we walk in).

The ducks, however, were not going to stand for this.

A couple of days ago I saw Dom pounding on the window and when I looked out there were a couple of ducks on our deck.

They were only a couple of feet away from our cat door (the cat, a once fierce and enthusiastic hunter, remained asleep on the bed throughout this visit).

Dom thought it was fantastic, I thought they were cute so I fed them. We then went and hung out in the backyard together with the ducks before they waddled off down the driveway.

They returned the next day and made their presence known by loudly tapping their beaks on our glass ranch slider (scaring me half to death - you don't often expect pushy ducks to be rapping on your window).

I gave into their quacky demands and fed them again but instead of loitering around the backyard and waddling off, they started sitting around on the deck.

"Dis is our home now!"

The unfortunate thing about duck squatting on your deck is that they poop everywhere. Duck poop is gross.

I must not feed the ducks again or they will never leave.

Austie would be laughed at by every cat in the neighbourhood if the entrance way to her catdoor was lined with duck poop.

Tea Party!

2009-08-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

Dom got a plastic tea set from his Granny today so that meant afternoon tea party fun. (His morning play with it had been very wet and splashy so I decided to leave out the water and stick with fruit and 'make believe' tea).

Dominic and his pals enjoy their fruit platter.

Dom is a grape fiend. There were eight grapes on the plate and he tried to cram them all into his mouth or hands at once. Impressively he can fit two grapes in his mouth at a time and hold two or three grapes in each hand.

Panda is awesome enough that Dom gave him a grape (although it was only a green one, purple ones are too nomtastic to share, even with pandas).

Dragon had to content himself with a piece of apple.

Cookie monster cares not for fruit. He stared forlornly into his cup, wishing for cookies.

Monday Monkey Awards

2009-08-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

On a fine day, Dom would be happily cavorting around parks and playgrounds outside, however windy and rainy conditions are forcing him to burn up some energy inside. Naturally this has led to a considerable about of chaos and destruction. He continues to impress with his innovative and creative approach to adding a bit of mess into my Monday morning (aw, he just came over to kiss the laptop screen and has left a slobbery drool mark!).

Nominations of Monday Morning Monkey Award:
1.Impressively pushing the weighty dehumidified over when it had a full container of water to spill all over the carpet! (And then gleefully splashing in the water while I attempted to clean it up).

2. Throwing a rubber duck into the cat’s water bowl and then seizing the opportunity to grab a handful of cat biscuits whilst I was distracted with cleaning up the water.

3. Trying to steal a tinfoil wrapped potato from a kids’ cooking display at the library.

4. Posting the DVD remote through the cat door and then sneakily grabbing the TV remote to hide under the couch whilst I was retrieving the other remote.

And the winner is:
- Dehumidifier pushing over! Definitely caused the biggest mess and gets bonus marks for being an entirely new trick.

Writing for Children

2009-08-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

I foolishly forgot to take a notebook and pen along to the ‘Writing for Children’ session I went to this morning at the local library. It was fun and interesting, and triggered a bunch of interesting thoughts and reflections for me. It was weird that I think there were only two or maybe three males in attendance. So I guess I aren’t as many men in Kapiti interested in writing for children or else they were all at home looking after the kids like Matt was :-)

Random points I liked (alas horrendously misquoted and paraphrased):
- It is increasingly difficult to distinguish between children/young adults/adults books. Lots of books blur the boundaries and good books appeal to everyone. However, one great observation that struck a chord with me was that there tends to be a difference in perspective. Adult books have a broad perspective and tend to examine wider, complex sociological issues as well as the personal. Young Adult books are more aimed at teens and have a narrower, more inward focus – emphasis on self-discovery, growing up and learning who you are and your place in the world. Children’s books have a broad focus – looking at the adult world through kids' eyes. Common feature is to show both that children have insight that adults sometimes lack (eg. Emperor’s New Clothes) but also can lack the understanding or ability to fully process everything.

- Writing about growing up is also about the loss of childhood or the Fall from childhood.

- Don’t try to write for a specific gender, age group etc. Write for a reader.

- Notion of children’s books is a relatively recent invention – references to writers reading their parents books as soon as they were able. Uncensored reading. Children pick up what they know and the rest happily goes over their heads.

- Interesting debate about whether books should be marketed at boys and girls. Don’t label books/readers. I liked the reference to the blokey farmer boy who confessed to reading (addictively) his mum’s Jodi Piccoult books.

- Depressing realities of tiny royalty cheques.

- Teen writing – not writing about issues, writing about dilemmas.

- Don’t underestimate young readers – there are patient readers, there are readers who like introspection and deeper issues.

- There will always be criticism and sometimes controversy you don’t see. Take bricks with bouquets.

- There were questions about whether kids preferred realism or fantasy. There was a lot of discussion but ultimately the answer seemed to be largely ‘both’, and ‘depends on the reader’.

It was also nice to hear that even experienced and successful writers were saying it takes a lot of time, hard work and commitment to write a novel. It makes me feel better when published authors say they have hard times too.

Less encouraging – tales of two writers who got their first ever submissions published. I am also envious of the days when editors brought in starting out writers and gave them a one-on-one teaching/critiquing session about their writing.

Er, maybe Jenni will mention anything cool I've left out. She, like a proper writer, had a notebook and pen. :-)

Tribes, validation and other random musings about writing

2009-08-09T21:56:00.000-07:00

One of the ideas described in ‘The Element’ that I keep coming back to is the concept of finding what Ken Robinson calls ‘your tribe’. The notion is that the tribe is a group you belong to and through it you gain validation, inspiration and motivation in your chosen field of endeavour. A lot of it seems straight forward - working with a group of people with the same interest (professional or otherwise) is likely to help you to openly discuss ideas, receive support and encouragement from individuals who have or are having similar experiences and gives you a network for providing feedback and motivation.

In some areas of interest, it would be impossible to develop one’s own skills without belonging to a tribe of sort. Musicians, actors and other artists involved in film and theatre would generally be required to work with others for some, if not most, of the time. I have only ever been involved in short films and stage productions at the amateur level but I would say that a large part of the enjoyment of such things is about working with a group of people who are all passionately committed to the same creative project. From these experiences, I fully understand how the validation, inspiration and motivation found within the group are very powerful forces. You push yourself well beyond your usual limits of energy, step outside of comfort zones and strive to do better than your best, and yet, if the group is a good one, you feel safe and supported about the whole experience. The trust built within the group and the shared desire to make the whole product the best it can be means that any potential tensions and jealousies between the individuals tend to be transcended for the group goal. If someone performs amazingly, the others aren’t envious; they are inspired to raise their performance.

However, writers don’t so naturally stumble into their tribes. One of the joys of writing – that it doesn’t require anything more a writer (and I suppose some form of writing implement) is also one of its dangers.

There are a lot of famous authors who seem to have led the most miserable existence; there is almost a kind of glamorous myth associated with the ‘suffering for one’s art’ approach. Sure, writers don’t have to be reclusive alcoholics who bitterly lament the cruelty of the world to write anything worth reading but I do think that writing could definitely exasperate one’s pre-existing melancholy about life because it can be such a solitary and deeply frustrating, angst-ridden process.

For me, writing is a deeply contradictory experience and if it’s the same for others, then I’m not surprised so many writers come across as a bit neurotic. While it is a hugely fun, joyous experience most days, there are days when it can feel immensely difficult and you’re not sure why you push yourself to do it. Writing the first draft is, for the most part, intoxicatingly rewarding and enjoyable. The story springs to life before your eyes as your fingers type as fast as they can and it doesn’t feel so much that you breathe life into the characters, as they are breathing life back into you.

On good days, writing makes the colours around you brighter, and you are imbued with the certainty that life is bursting with joys and rich experiences for you to discover. It is one of the most invigorating and uplifting pleasures in the world. Some days I bounce away from the laptop, convinced of my own brilliance and smugly thrilled that I have just written a good bit in my latest story.

Unfortunately, there are then the days when you go back and reread your genius only to discover that it is not only not as good as you thought it was, it is in fact the worst pile of drivel that any human ever regurgitated on an unsuspecting keyboard and if anyone else were to read it, you would surely be strung up for the heinous offence of atrocious writing.

Nothing can induce such a severe feeling of self-loathing as rereading your own writing. The story in your head is so compelling and the characters so exquisitely formed, that to fail to communicate the wonder they create in you is a gut-wrenching failure of the most miserable kind. You not only feel that you are deluded in whatever hopes you have to become a published author, you’re a complete failure and what’s worse is that you have wasted hundreds of hours of your precious life pursuing an unreachable dream because, you feel convinced with a sickening certainty, you do not have the talent you thought you did.

So you continue on a yo-yo journey with writing. Some days you feel fantastic about it, others you don’t. Amazingly enough you keep on believing in your own ability most days (and writing any way on the days that you don’t), not because you’re given overwhelming reason to, but because if you don’t, you’ll give up writing altogether and never experience the high of the good days.

If you’re lucky you have a Matt (or similar substitute) who supports you and says nice things about your writing because even though there is no quantity of praise that will match your own high opinions of your writing on the good days or completely persuade you that it isn’t terrible on the bad days, it is immeasurably helpful to receive any feedback, praise or even just acknowledgement your writing has been read by at least one other person.

I suppose I’ve only recently realised that feedback about writing isn’t only useful on a constructive criticism level. Providing suggestions for improvement or drawing your attention to bits that need work are helpful but they are not the most important thing.

The most important thing about feedback to aspiring authors is that it gives us validation that is so hard to find anywhere else. While praise is always greedily received and constructive feedback is useful, the most powerful thing, and what I’m really looking for if I’m honest with myself, when I ask for ‘feedback’ isn’t so much feedback as validation.

When you write your first story in the early years of primary school the response you receive is unreserved positive acclaim. You feel an immense pride over your epic masterpiece – which is probably along the lines of ‘This is a pig. His name is Percy.’* You’re so thrilled that you have accomplished this great work of literature that you even accompany it with a scrawling crayon illustration of the protagonist. You show your story to your teacher who praises you for your hard work and masterful weaving of the narrative. You may even earn a gold star sticker for your efforts. So proud of your accomplishment, you take the story home to show Mum and Dad who, if anything, show an even stronger response of delight at your tale and after praising your cleverness the treasured story is given the highest of honours – it is stuck to the family refrigerator.

It’s all downhill from that point on. No matter how long or hard you struggle over future stories they are almost definitely not going to receive such a glowing response from your public. A few authors get published, some receive good reviews and a small minority win literary prizes and awards but for most writers, your fridge door is going to remain a barren and desolate wasteland, unless you choose to start sticking piles of rejection letters up on your kitchen appliances.

The sad truth about most writers is that we are not desperately trying to make huge amounts of money out of our writing, we just want to experience that feeling again of having our story put up on the fridge.

Which is where I get back to the original point about the benefits of a ‘tribe’. Where writers can provide themselves with inspiration (just reading the diverse range of brilliant literature out there from writers both living and dead, published and unpublished is inspiration enough), motivation (the pursuit of dreams and goals, and the joy of writing itself), there isn’t much opportunity to validate oneself as a writer.

It is very difficult to convince yourself on the bad days that you aren’t devoting hours meaninglessly, it is hard to be persuaded that you really are, should and deserve to be a writer if no one is reading what you write. The purpose of writing, however enjoyable the act itself is to the writer, is to be read by others (unless it’s a diary I suppose). When someone gives up their time to read something you’ve written, however short, it is hugely gratifying. It validates the hours you spent writing.

The act of writing itself may be enough to make you a writer, but it’s the knowledge that someone else has bothered to read your writing that makes you feel like one.

I guess what I’m saying is that when a writer** asks someone to read something they’ve written, they don’t necessarily require glowing praise (although they’ll love it if they get it) and/or feedback on how to ‘fix it’ (actually, if they’re anything like me and other writers I live with, they probably don’t want to be told that – feedback is after all a necessary evil that writers seek only out of the desire to improve their writing), what they really want and need is the validation that their writing was read and is indeed worth reading.

*A few years ago I found one of my early stories from primary school, it was called ‘The Big Sisters’ and was two sentences long:

These are the big sisters. They are being mean to the little girl.

This poignant tale was complete with crayon drawing and I think it denotes a truthful insight into the harsh realities of life for a younger sibling. Clearly, I was destined from an early age to make a unique mark on the literary world. :-)

** OK, me. But I find it easier to assume that other writers feel the same way even if it’s not the case. It would be terrible to think that I am alone in all my insecurities.

Hurray for sunny Saturdays!

2009-08-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful afternoon today so naturally Dominic demanded lots of fun in the sun!

Having recently walked to the other park for duck-feeding, Dom travelled in the buggy to Kotuku playground. As you can see from his elegant slouch, he likes to make himself comfy.

Once out of the buggy, it's all full speed running though.

Dom enjoys being up high on the tower in 'King of the Castle' position.

Peekaboo through the spiderweb at the camera.

Dad hugs are always appreciated.

The frantic sprint to the giant rocks...

... a brief slow down to be helped up by Dad.

Then it's off again as at full speed to the stairs.

Desperately seeking comments

2009-08-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

Astute readers of this blog will have noticed my recent blatant attempts to get more comments. Like the desperate, attention-seeking blogger I am, I have resorted to bribery (sadly, few people were tempted by the promise of unicorns though) and even blackmail. Ransoming the final part of the story was the more successful of the two tactics, resulting in the prompt arrival of 5 comments (which may in fact be an all time high for the blog).

I would like to graciously thank all of my wonderful commenters (and my Mum who said that she liked my story over the phone which I'm counting as a sixth comment). You are all lovely people and deserve much praise.

However, a mind such as mine cannot drift along in reflective gratitude for what I have received before I start scheming and hatching plans to seek out more comments.

My latest method: insincere controversy.

A quick survey over various blogs and LJs reveals that an effective strategy to attract comments is to make some shocking statement that your readers will violently disagree with and be forced to argue at length with you in the comment section. (Other strategies seem to involve providing thought-provoking content of interest for your readers but I'm way too lazy for that).

My first attempt. The controversial statement about a current political issue.

Here goes:

I'm voting 'no' in the referendum. As a caring mother, I believe I must smack my child regularly as part of good parenting. How else will I prevent him from growing up to be an atheist, homosexual, drug-addicted criminal who will be joining a gang and tagging my rightful property by the the time he's twelve. No nanny-state, PC gone mad government can tell me how to raise my child etc. etc.

And in case that's not enough, I'll add some insincere controversy about a popular graphic novel.

Watchmen the film was a FLAWLESS masterpiece and was a million times BETTER than the graphic novel...

Hmm, maybe that's not inflammatory enough...

Watchmen the film was a FLAWLESS masterpiece and was a million times BETTER than the graphic novel which SUCKED!

Heh, hopefully that's got some of you thumping your keyboards in mouth-foaming rage.

Part Three

2009-07-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

My Part Three of The Event is up now.

People who leave comments will be bathed in the dazzling joy of rainbows, sunshine and unicorns...

Writing a children's book

2009-07-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Woot! I’ve just completed my first draft for my kids’ book – one day before my self-imposed deadline. More incredibly I only exceeded my planned word count by 3000 words – 23,000 when I had planned 15,000 – 20,000. This is fantastic for me – normally my bloated first drafts turn out way bigger than they were meant to be. Of course, I suspect a good 10-20% of the word count to end up cut out, especially the overly hefty chapter 14 but it shouldn’t be too hard.

It was interesting writing a children’s book. Both harder and more fun than I anticipated. It turns out that I have very little idea of what is appropriate in terms of scary content and language complexity for specific age groups for children. Having taught English at high school, I feel fairly confident about the specific tastes and average reading levels* of each year group. When it comes to primary aged kids though, I’m flying completely blind.

Of course I can try to remember what I read back then, and at least with a lot of my favourite books I can work out what year of school I must have been in when I read it. So in many ways I can write for the 9 year old version of myself which is more or less what I did.

I also raided the children’s section of the library a few times. They have one of those colour-coding sticker systems so a lot of the books are labelled and recommended as being for a two year age bracket.

This was more troubling however. Some of the books were familiar old ones by Judy Blume, Margaret Mahy and Roald Dahl. I still feel now as I did back then that those authors perfectly pitched their material so that the story content was interesting to children and the plot was paced to move quickly. The books they wrote didn’t talk down to kids but they were still easy to read, and often quite conversational and humorous.

However, I found some of the books I picked up to be either dull or patronising. I would have hated a lot of them when I was a kid and even now couldn’t be bothered to finish them.

I suspect that many children who read are, as I was, rather fussy. The children’s books that get it right become popular classics and are frequently taken out of the library no matter how old or battered the book is. Great children’s books don’t date, they sometimes get made into appalling movies but the books will always strike a chord with those who read them.

So after my time in the children’s section of the library, I started thinking about what I had wanted in a book when I was a kid. What made a children’s book a good one.

The problem, I fearfully realised, is that as a kid, I wanted my books to have and be everything that a book could be.

Now as an adult I have limited expectations from books. If I pick up a murder mystery, I don’t expect the detective character to have striking relevance to me as a person or it to be littered with insightful social commentary. If the mystery has some good, intriguing twists and keeps me turning pages, I’m happy.

I don’t expect humorous subplots in all horror books, or touching moments about romance or friendship in action-packed thrillers or SF, and I’ve completely given up hope of finding any epic fantasy that is fast-paced and doesn't require wrist support to hold up the hefty weight of many, many pages.

Back when I was a kid though, my demands and expectations from books were higher.

The main character had to be likeable and believable. I was easily annoyed by characters who were children that came across as annoying brats like the ones in bad Hollywood TV and movies. I wanted my hero or heroine to be someone I could relate to. Relevance is a word that is often chucked about as the Holy Grail in children’s and young adult fiction, and it’s true that if you ask students what they want from a story, personal relevance is often high on the list. However, for me relevance wasn’t ever about the superficial and mundane aspects of a character’s life. It didn’t matter whether they were a boy or a girl, lived in New Zealand or a different country or a different time or world for that that matter.

What made a character relevant to me was that they shared some of the same aspects as me in their lives. If the character was facing similar issues with their friends, parents or family members, growing up or anything else from the multitude of joys, problems, conflicts and passions of a young person’s life, I could relate. Other stuff like age, gender, race, social background or cultural beliefs didn’t matter nearly so much.

Adventure was an important if not essential element as well. While the character had to have some realistic qualities to connect to, I didn’t just want to read about them doing normal everyday stuff. They had to be thrown into some exciting storyline filled with conflicts (the best were usually with some unjust authority figure), struggles to overcome seemingly impossible hurdles, finding out the truth about a mystery or secret or discovering what’s really behind some misunderstood character’s behaviour and finally saving the day against all odds. The scale and scope of the adventure wasn’t really a key factor for me. It didn’t matter if the adventure was in an epic fantasy world, a real life struggle in school with bullies and teachers, or the fight to save a beloved pet. What mattered was that the adventure was fast-paced and exciting, and that whatever the character was fighting for was something that really mattered to them. It had to be difficult for the hero. The stakes had to be high; it had to mean something when they finally came out on top.

I don’t know if it was something that I even noticed let alone cared about as a child, but another thing I’ve come to realise is a common feature in the children’s books I loved is the personal growth of the main character. They had to not only solve the mystery, defeat their enemy or fulfil their quest - they had to learn something about themselves and the world around them through their adventure. I liked books where the main character was wiser, more confident or better in some other way at the end of the book.

I wanted books to cover a range of emotions. I wanted to books to be scary, exciting, heart-warming, funny and ultimately triumphant in the conclusion. Charming or humorous comic relief characters are frequently the ones I loved best but the books that had touches of tragedy, the ones that made me cry at the sad parts, are the ones that stayed with me the most.

The best loved books of my childhood did it all – they made me laugh, cry, get spooked, fear for the life of the protagonist and rejoice at their happy endings.

I doubt I would have been able to express it back then but as a child I always liked books with a social commentary. The books that appealed to me had a strong sense of the injustice that I considered myself to have observed in life. As a kid, like many others I suspect, I had an over-developed awareness of whenever things were not fair. The books I enjoyed reflected the inequity of the world. Adults misjudged children; kids were not listened to or believed when they cried out the truth; authority figures abused their power; the big and strong bullied the small and weak; rules were not enforced consistently or they were unjust in the first place.

That’s not to say that the books I read were all filled with adults as the bad guys or all rules were unfair. It’s just that I think children do have a passionate awareness of the potential for any power to be exploited by those who hold it. They’re always ready to spot unfairness and I think it’s a good thing for fiction to encourage the notion that we should never follow any rules or rulers blindly or without question.

So when you put everything together it makes for an intimidating task. Write a book that covers a wide range of emotions, preferably with enough feeling that the reader empathises completely; write a main character who is completely believable, likeable and relevant to a modern child reader; plot out a thrilling adventure for the hero or heroine that not only provides that book with a variety of conflicts and situations to produce the aforementioned emotional spectrum but also helps the character to grow and develop as a person (but ensure that it is still fast-moving and exciting at the same time); chuck in a couple of loveable humorous characters and some insightful observational commentary about the injustice that today’s children face in the real world.

Phew. I guess that's why only a few authors seem to have measured up to the quality of what I used to consider a good children’s book.

I’m very grateful eight year old Debbie isn’t around to read my book. I fear she would have chucked it away on page 2.

* That is the average reading levels of the students who actually read for pleasure. There are a whole bunch of kids who say they’ve never read a whole book and AssTLe test with the reading ability of very young kid. I figure as a young adult writer you’re either targeting the books that teens are taught in English classes or you’re actually targeting the more select group of teens who actually read books for pleasure and don’t regard reading as a form of torture. The light genre stuff that I write are not the type of books that make their way into studied texts lists, so I figure I can actually pitch the length and writing at the lovely literate bunch. You know, the kind of teens who don’t actually complain if a chapter is longer than six pages and the book hasn’t been made into a movie.

Eventful Monday

2009-07-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

Phew, yesterday was crazy. We had an extra early morning with Dom (who it must be said is not usually one for sleep-ins), and had to take the zombie-like bleary eyed looking after him in two shifts. He ended up waking up from his morning nap about the time he usually goes down for a nap and it kind of left me feeling like the whole day was slightly out of whack.

We were busy though and went for two rompy walks (one to the park to feed ducks, another to Kotuku park and playground). We saw swans, pukeko, a sun-bathing kotuku and a pair of dappled greys being ridden down towards the beach. Of course Dom was most excited by the various dogs that we spotted and an affectionate neighbourhood Siamese cat who sauntered over to the buggy to purr loudly and demand fusses from us.

Then there was an exciting email. It seems that my brilliant hubby is going to have an article he wrote published towards the end of the year. I was super impressed at how speedy their response was and how glowing the acceptance email was. (Man, I want an acceptance letter – not just for the obvious glee at getting published and paid for writing, but to see if they often include praise of your writing as well).

It eerily followed on from a dream I had not long after Matt sent the article off. In my dream, he had it accepted but was then insisting on sending the magazine a picture of a cartoon dragon he had drawn (it didn’t look dissimilar to Trogdor). I tried to tell him not to, that dragons had nothing to do with the article but he was adamanet that the magazine would think it was cool. I was unaccountably really upset and worried by this in the dream.

I now seem to recall that I was the one who told Matt to write the article back in the holidays and suggested the magazine to send it to (and found the correct email address). I vaguely remember him promising to buy his wife a pressie with the money if it was accepted but maybe that was in the dream rather than real life. Such a promise is somewhat wishful thinking but it is at least more plausible than the cartoon dragon incident.

At the end of the busy day, we decided to have an early dinner and it was just as well. For at the exact moment that Matt was taking Dom out of his high chair, there was a power cut. There was just enough light to stumble around and find things but it was still somewhat inconvenient. It turns out baby-proofing your home so that there are no matches anywhere in reach of young hands actually is a bit of a pain in a dark power cut.

Luckily, we located torches and then could find matches as well. I was worried that Dom would be freaked out by the whole situation but he thought it was fantastic. We went out onto the street to check it wasn’t just our house and he loved watching the headlights of the cars driving by. We set up a bright lantern in the lounge and Matt and I performed a cabaret of song and dance for Dom. He thought it was great but I doubt many would share his opinion. We have no plans to start touring with our act at this stage and I think everyone should be grateful of that.

It turns out playing with various toys by torch and lantern light is just as fun for little toddlers.

The power came back on after a while. We breathed a sigh of relief and I went to switch on a heater in the bedroom as it was getting cold. I was just remarking that “I love electricity” when the power went out again. I believe it went out when I was exactly half-way through the word electricity.

Important life lesson. Never say ‘I love electricity’ after a power cut. It angers the gods of all things electric and they take your power away again.

It was now close to Dom’s bedtime. We chose to forego the usual bath and went straight to the bedroom. We let him watch an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba on the laptop while we all snuggled on the bed under the duvet. Even the cat came and joined us.

I was beginning to give up hope of the power coming back on after a while. We had ourselves warmly set up in the bedroom with enough light to read by and started to settle Dom down to sleep. He went to sleep a little later than usual but was wonderfully behaved throughout so that’s a bonus. The power came on a while after he went to sleep so we even got to watch a bit of TV and have nice evening with heaters, lights, clocks, hot drinks and various other benefits of modern living.

It really made me appreciate the many creature comforts that we have these days. While they may not be essential to survival, they sure make winter nights more pleasant.

I love electri… you know what I mean.

The Event Part Two

2009-07-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

My Part Two is up now and so are other people's.

The Event

Ice cream cookie sandwich

2009-07-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ice cream is delicious. Chocolate chip cookies are also full of deliciousness. So naturally I was pretty excited when I saw that you can buy Chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. We bought one for Dom (on the grounds that he would probably only want a couple of bites then we could have the rest - which didn't exactly go to plan.)

Unfortunately, Dom was rather keen on his ice cream sandwich.

There appeared to be little hope of him ever giving it up.

Fortunately, he did at least stop munching for a second so I got to sample a quick bite or two of stolen ice cream goodness.

However, I have to say it did not meet my high expectations. The ice cream was yummy and creamy but the cookie was dry and lack flavour. Obviously many biscuits don't stand up well to being frozen but I still expected it to be moister and more cookie doughish.

It got me thinking as to what would be the perfect cookie to create an ice cream sandwich. The cookie would have to be reasonably soft or else all the ice cream would squish out the sides whenever you bit into it. Entirely chocolate coated biscuits would leave you with melted chocolatey fingers.

I suppose a cookie time cookie would be great but they're huge. Eating two of those with a slab of ice cream between them would probably be more than I could manage.

Maybe it requires freshly baked choc chip cookies? I don't know I'm struggling to think of a packet biscuit you can buy that isn't unsuitable for ice cream sandwich purposes.

Such are deep and complex dilemmas are the things I grieve over on long winter nights...

Top five sentences

2009-07-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

In a recent issue of Empire, Frank Darabont contributed his top ten lists of movies of various genres. He wrote a interesting introduction about how subjective these lists are and how they fill him with anxiety because they depend on the mood you’re in at the time and then someone always comes up and says, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t include _____’.

So with that in mind, this is a very subjective list. It only includes books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries written in English. It's a while since I last read some of these books and there may possibly be better sentences in them, or indeed in other books.

However, these sentences are ones that consistently affect me powerfully when I read the books and have etched themselves into my memory strongly enough that even if I can’t remember them exactly word for word, I can at least find them within a minute of grabbing the book off my shelf.

I suppose these sentences have been included because they’re from books that I love and have read many times. Interestingly, each one is from a book I first read in my teens and then have returned to over the years. These passages are ones that continue to affect me as I have grown up and gone back over them, some times it’s because of the emotional context of the sentences, or the character they involve is one I love but I also like the sentences on their own as effective and beautiful crafting of language.

(Besides, it’s raining outside, the Dom is sleeping peacefully and my brain is trying to sort out exactly what should happen in Chapter 12 of my book. I can’t think of a more pleasant form of reflective meditation (OK, procrastination is probably a more accurate description) than to pull out my old books and mull through them…)

1. I lingered round them, under the benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and the hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Possibly one of the most famous last lines in English literature but stuns me every time I read that book. Not only is the sentence itself beautifully composed and rich in imagery but it shows the incredible skill of Bronte to create a satisfying resolution and a happy ending to a book that seemed impossible to do either for. I’m still to this day gobsmacked that you can close that book with a sense of hope and peace when it predominantly a story focussed on death, abuse, tragically parted lovers, more abuse, more death, betrayals, hatred, alcoholism, iniquitous and unreasonable inter-generational revenge surrounded with more abuse and death, really messed-up unhappy marriages, hauntings, imprisonment, and then finally more death.

The ending is extraordinary in that with Heathcliff’s death, there is a sense that the next generation are free to be happy and peace is restored to Wuthering Heights but also Cathy and Heathcliff can be reunited as ghostly heathen lovers to roam the moors once more. In spite of everything, Heathcliff gets both the ending he wants (to be tormented by Cathy’s ghost until he dies to be with her) and the ending he deserves (weakening so that he can’t completely destroy the prospect of the younger Catherine’s and Hareton’s love and then dying to leave them in peace).

The love between Catherine and Hareton happily reflects the love between Cathy and Heathcliff because she represents her mother and Hareton is more like Heathcliff than his own son was, but they are also a Linton and an Earnshaw so Edgar and Cathy are connected through them again also.

When Lockwood sees the three tombstones of Cathy, Edgar and Heathcliff it is in some sense validating both of Cathy’s loves. One the socially acceptable, polite but still caring marriage with Edgar, and also the deeper, intense, primal connection she had with Heathcliff.

Lockwood’s assertion that he couldn’t imagine ghosts lying in the quiet earth is again neatly tying up his limited perspective on the things around him. He can no more believe the notion of unquiet slumbers than he could understand the love Cathy felt for Heathcliff being as necessary as the ‘eternal rocks beneath’.

With the wild and untamed heaths themselves being such powerful symbols throughout the book, it’s hard not to feel serene at the closing description of them in such a quiet and peaceful state.

2. I was aghast to realise that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died, and felt as a husband might feel, who, in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew that he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife; no pleasure in her company, no wish to please, no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think; no hope of setting things right, no self-reproach for the disaster.
-Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

It’s surprising for me that when I look back on this book, the bleak opening is often more powerful for me than the seductive and charming descriptions of Oxford, Venice and indeed Brideshead itself, not to mention the equally seductive and charming characters he encounters. (‘Aloysius wouldn’t approve of that at all, would you, you pompous old bear?’ – nearly beat out this sentence because it’s such a great Sebastian line and everyone loves pompous teddy bears.)

I was about 16 or 17 when I first read this book and became obsessed with it from the first page. Something about the description of how Charles Ryder ‘at the age of thirty-nine, began to be old’ really struck a chord with me. This book had me hooked before it launched its powerful charm offensive and I’m always impressed with any book that can make me care deeply for depressed or apathetic characters when I’m normally drawn to lively, funny or passionate ones who would never acquiesce or give up.

Charles describing how his ‘last love’ – his love for the army – died does really get to me though, every time I read it. The metaphor is extended throughout the opening of the book and it remains most of the most compelling prologues of any book I’ve ever read. I probably could have picked just about any sentence from it to be in the top five actually.
(Other faves include : ‘I would go on with my job, but I could bring to it nothing more than acquiescence.’ and of course, ‘Here my last love died.’)

What I love about the sentence however is how acutely it gets across the pain not of a love dying but the worse moment of realisation that it has already died and you didn’t notice its death until now. I also like the list of what Waugh refers to as ‘the whole drab compass of marital disillusion’. It’s not merely the end of affection and desire, but the complete and utter end of any connection or wish to be connected to the other person. For me, the most powerful and bleak element is ‘no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think’ – curiosity is often an unrecognised aspect of any relationship but it’s an important one. If you ever got to that point with another person, I suspect that there really would be no hope of setting things right.

The final phrase ‘no self-reproach for the disaster’ is really effective at driving a final nail in the coffin.

3. He found her agitated and low – Frank Churchill was a villain; - He heard her declare that she had never loved him – Frank Churchill’s character was not so desperate; - She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.
- Emma by Jane Austen

I love how this comically shows how jealousy can somewhat impair our judgement of others, and also rather typically of Austen, it’s a rather sweet but also realistic portrayal of how people in love behave.

However, what I really like about this sentence though is it’s the first time Austen mocks Knightley at all, and I feel he deserves a bit of authorial hassling. As romantic heroes go, Knightley’s not my favourite. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with him and he seems like an honourable, kind and decent guy with his heart in the right place and he’s certainly not a snob like Emma. I just worry that ending up with him might be a bit like being married to Jimminy Cricket. I fear for Emma and worry that her marriage might end up being a series of lengthy lectures on propriety and being nice as Knightley continues on his mission to mould her into the perfect woman.

I like to imagine that this sentence is dear old Aunty Jane reassuring me that Knightley is as susceptible to having his good judgement clouded by affections as anyone else and Emma will be able to manipulate him as easily as she does her father. I take comfort in the hope that Emma might never be entirely reformed. She might have learnt to be more considerate of other’s feelings and lost some of her snobbish attitudes but I like to think that she’ll be back to scheming and match-making before long. After all, she and Knightley already have nieces and nephews who’ll be grown up in a few years. As an affectionate Aunt, I’m sure Emma would be unable to resist a bit of romantic interference on their behalf and then if she and Knightley had children, I doubt they’d be safe from her plotting.

4. To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men.
- Leave it to Smith by PG Wodehouse

There are a lot of fantastic sentences in any Wodehouse books but this was one of the first I read and has remained a favourite. (I also like Psmith’s explanation of why he was avoiding going into the family business of fish: I like to be surrounded by joy and life, and I know nothing more joyless and lifeless than a dead fish. Multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only Dante could contemplate with equanimity.)

Baxter is an excellent character in this book. While normally it is left to Aunts to fill the role of nemesis and villain, in this book the efficient Baxter makes for a terrific Malovolio-like antagonist. He is Emworth’s secretary and organises him with ruthless efficiency but to the dismay of his employer. Baxter soon becomes suspicious of Psmith when he arrives, and sets out to expose him which of course leads to much chaos and eventually Emsworth becomes convinced of Baxter’s ‘pottiness’ much to the relief of everyone except his sister.

I love the artful understatement of this line. I always enjoy Wodehouse’s ability to describe even the mundane in colourful and humourously poetic terms. (He once described a character with a hangover as looking like the poet Shelly after he’d had a night out on the town with Lord Byron.)

5. Having been through the Total Perspective Vortex, Zaphod Beeblebrox now knows himself to be the most important being in the entire universe – something he had hitherto only suspected.
- The Restaurant at the end of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Adams is another one of those authors with whom I could easily find dozens of sentences to be included in a favourites list. I still really like the anti-simile (is there a term for such a thing?) ‘…hung in the air the same way that bricks don’t’. This line makes it in though because it’s about Zaphod who is my favourite Hitchhikers character and this sentence pretty much encapsulates everything that makes him awesome. I particularly enjoy Peter Jones’ delivery of the line in the radio series and always hear his voice when I read the books now.

Why do I like this line so much? I love the set up of the extreme superlative of Zaphod’s importance and then comic undercutting of the final phrase. His suspicion of his own greatness being tacked on as a throwaway aside is brilliant. Who wants a modest and humble hero to become the most important being in the universe when you can have Zaphod?

The Event Part One

2009-07-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of The Event is up on its blog now.

www.theeventwellington.blogspot.com/

It's a collaborative writing project where five writers follow five different characters through a strange event that unfolds in Wellington.

The contributors are all awesome folk and I was impressed and humbled by how cool their work was.

You should go and read it.

Part Two to follow soon...

Here endth the plug.

Te Papa

2009-07-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday we went to Te Papa and meet up with Angelo and his parents for a fun (and action packed) visit. Two busy little chaps equals a fast and active romp around but we snapped a few pictures that weren't a complete blur of toddler zooming past.

Climbing up stairs is fun.

So is climbing up the ramp.

Looking out the glass overbridge at the water.

Dom with his Dad at Te Papa.

Huge white light circle on the ground. Very cool.

The boys chill with their dads in the Discovery centre.

Playing with giant lego. Far more interesting that the ice cream in the bottom left corner.

Chompy-chomp on giant lego.

Dom is not one to be intimidated by large birds.

Dom has to be held back from crawling all over the giant squid.

Dom next to a big rock...

... inevitably leads to Dom trying to chomp the big rock.

A rare photo in which Dom is in focus and the background is blurry.

Last day of the Holidays

2009-07-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

Well, the holidays are nearly over but they have been wonderful. Amazingly neither Matt or myself got sick as usually happens on any winter holiday so we've been able to pack in a lot of fun into every day. The weather has also been fantastic (well, cold but not raining most days) so we've been able to go out for lots of walks which is great.

I've think these holidays can chiefly be remembered for the plentiful walks to parks and playgrounds, and that fact that I have been baking (and of course eating) muffins obsessively throughout the two weeks.

Matt and I have both managed to squeeze a productive amount of writing into everyday except the middle Sunday so that's good too, and the whole family got haircuts.

Photo Highlights:

Dom helpfully modelled a stylish Tutu that Giffy had made.

Dom enjoyed his visits to Kotuku park and playground. Lots of stones and bark to grab as souvenirs...

... or to throw into the water.

Climbing up the slide is always fun.

Dom and his dad walk around Kotuku park towards the playground.

The ducks at the park got so used to our daily visits that they started spotting across from the other side of the park and race over to meet us. Dom enjoys their rowdy quacky greetings.

Another daily ritual is stump walking. Dom steps up and down over every tree stump. Lots of fun.

Randomness

2009-07-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

I got back from the hairdressers to discover that Matt and Dom have gone out on an adventure. It's very strange to be in an empty house and not running around after a rampaging little dude so I figured I'd cease the opportunity to blog.

Items of random:

1. I got some 'Yummy yummy yummy' wash from Lush yesterday. I had heard it was good as a shampoo/body wash. Dom was starting to get a dry scalp so I shampooed him with the Yummy yesterday and it was brillant and seems to have cleaned up his scalp as well. The dangerous side effect though is that it left him smelling like a strawberry and cream flavoured chuppa chup so I keep obsessively sniffing his head.

2. I have decided to do a rough Word Count of everything I've written this year. Matt has been impressive meeting his word count goals and Morgue has inspiring updates on his writing this year.

I fear that my 2009 word count may not be as impressive as I feel it should be. I've been writing or editing for an hour or two every day but possibly the overall output may not reflect that.

2009 Writing
Poxbridge - young adult novel (technically started after Christmas 2008 but the majority of it was 2009) approx WC 66 000. Status - needs editing.
Living with Iris - short story. WC 2104. Status - two for two rejections. Need to find a new place to send.
Savage Crimes - children's story. WC 1195. Status - one rejection, waiting to hear back.
The dragon in the library - kids' book. WC 800. Status - one rejection, waiting to hear back.
The Changeling's mother - 2000 words written but still incomplete.
The Mission - 450 word short story for local newspaper competition. Waiting to hear result of competition (next month).
Taking back the night - WC 3516. Status - completed edit. Need to find somewhere to send it. Could be difficult. No obvious markets for wannabe Vampire slayer bromance.
Baldren the Mighty's son - 4000 words or so written but still incomplete.
Edited 'How to be a Teenage Fairy Godmother' down to 60,000 from 94,000. WC -34000
Status - sent off to readers for comments before I do next edit.
The Land beneath the Shadows - children's book (aiming for 15 000 - 20 000 word length). Status - 8000 words and the first 6 chapters done so far.

Writing for 2009 - just over 88 000. Not bad but not that impressive when I wrote 94, 000 in four or five months last year. I blame editing - it's a huge time suck but not all progress can be measured by word counts I suppose.

I think I'll definitely be over 100 000 words written in 2009 but I may not manage 150 000. It would be a good goal to aim for though.

Yay, Matt and Dom are back. I shall leave him to blog about his ideas for guber-dad stand up.

Holiday Excursion Number 1

2009-07-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

This morning Dom had a super short nap and Matt had to go into school to help a bunch of students with their SADD filming, so we decided on a short afternoon trip.

It was a particularly ambitious adventure. Catch the bus from round the corner, go to the Paraparaumu beach shops, and come back home again. Still it was a lot of fun.

Waiting for the bus.

The bus is here! Dom got very excited and clapped its arrival.

Dom was impressed that the bus came fully equipped with cool yellow poles to hang onto.

Hanging out on the bus with Dad. (Even if Dad is somewhat obscured in this photo).

At the shops, walking up the slope in the courtyard.

Dom attempts to lean in for some splashing in the fountain.

Looking down on the fountain. Just as fun and slightly less risk of him jumping in.

Ambience cafe. A nice cafe across the road from the bus stop. After picking up some DVDs from the video store we headed in for a snack. They have an excellent corner fro people with younguns - couches, a basket of toys and a nearby table that doubles as a road block if you want to safely trap in roaming toddler.

Who enjoys the toys more? Dom or his dad?

Dom plays with wind-up lion. Roar.

Delicous chocolate and caramel cake and mochaccino arrives complete with chocolate fish.

The couches are comfy and easy to clamber onto, just ask Dom.

Dom rejected the cake in favour of a Chocolate fish - om nom nom.

Parents sit down while they stuff their faces while Dom prefers to combine chomping his chocy fish with his playtime.

Back on the bus and it's home we go!

The Event

2009-07-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

After the fun I had with the Exquisite Corpse, I'm keen to do more collaborative writing stuff.

I like the idea of writing a shared world story where each writer takes up the viewpoint of one character.

The stories would be set in modern day Wellington. Characters can be of any description, from any walk of life but their lives will all become linked eventually by The Event. Only rule is that you have to write in past tense, restricted third person (you follow your main character) and you can't kill off or seriously mess with someone's else character without their permission.

The Event is some catastrophic occurance for these characters. It may be apocalypctic or it may be smaller and more personal to them. It could be supernatural or mundane. Whatever The Event is, it affects them all and changes their life forever.

What is The Event?
That is what the writers will decide after they have all written and read the first scenes.

Each writer would be responsible for writing 5 scenes from their character's point of view. The only rule is that you must read everyone's scene from a section before you start writing the next section scene.

Sequence of The Event

Section 1: Before the event
Everyone writes a scene from their character's point of view on the day of but before the event has occured.

Section 2: During the event
What happens to the character as the event unfolds.

Section 3: Aftermath
What the character does immediately after the event finishes

Section 4: Survival
How does the character cope with the days that follow?

Section 5: Brought together
One by one the characters come together to face what happens next.

Comment if you're keen.

Exquisite corpse

2009-06-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

This entry is part of an on-line exquisite corpse - a short story told in 10 installments by 10 different authors. My 250 word installment is below; if you're interested in writing the next part, scroll down to the bottom of this post for details on how this all works...

--- --- ---

3.

make everything worse, if that was actually possible.

“It won’t be the same as last time,” she promised. “We know what we have to do now.”

Peter looked across at her; the doubt in his eyes was obvious despite the heavy mist that permeated through the dense bush.

Dianne looked back down at her feet. She told herself she had to concentrate if she was going to avoid slipping down the steep path and breaking her neck. That was easier than admitting she couldn’t stand to hold Peter’s gaze for more than a few seconds. Not anymore. Not out here anyway.

“They’ve set up a perimeter around the cemetery,” Dianne repeated the words she’d heard but they sounded less promising now that they were here. Still, there was always comfort in organization and procedure. “There are only two possible ways they could have gone – back down on the main road, or…”

“Up here. Somewhere,” Peter finished.

They continued the hike through the mud without talking for a while, their eyes hunting for even the smallest sign, whether good or bad. The others seemed to have moved away as the search fanned out, leaving Peter and Dianne more alone than they were prepared for.

“What will we do if we don’t find them?” Dianne wondered aloud.

“You should be more worried about what will happen if we do,” Peter replied.

It was starting to get dark; the search was going to be forced to end soon. After nightfall, it wouldn’t be

--- --- ---

This is part 3 of 10. You can find the other installments here (but DON'T DO THIS YET if you want to join in):

1. www.sleep-dep.blogspot.com (26 June 2009)
2. www.multi-dimensional.blogspot.com (27 June 2009)
3. www.deb-onair.blogspot.com (29 June 2009)
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

WANT TO READ IT? Jump back to the previous entries using the links above.

WANT TO JOIN IN? This exquisite corpse operates on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want to write the next installment, FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS:

1.IMPORTANT - Don't read any of the previous entries! Read only the one you see here.

2.ALSO IMPORTANT - Post a comment here, saying “I claim the next entry”, followed by the URL/web address of your blog. If you don't do this, we'll never know where to find you.

3.Copy the text of this blog entry into a new post on your blog, but DELETE THE CHAPTER and write your own as the next installment. Start with the chapter number as I've done here, and start exactly where the last chapter left off (in mid-sentence if necessary).

4.Your entry should be EXACTLY 250 words long, unless you are writing chapter 10, in which case you must bring the story to a conclusion in 250 words or less.

5.At the end of the chapter, where the text reads: “This is part X of 10”, change this to the number of your chapter.

6.Add the URL/web address of your blog and today's date onto the list below that, so people reading later entries can jump back to your chapter.

7.Finish your chapter and post it within 24 hours of claiming your place. There – it's freaking easy! You can go back and read the rest of the story now.

8.IF YOU'VE JUST FINISHED ENTRY #10 and finished the story, DELETE THESE INSTRUCTIONS from the bottom of your post – they'll just confuse people. ALSO, let CG know by posting a comment on the first entry (on www.sleep-dep.blogspot.com), or sending him an email on squid.mohawk@gmail.com. CG will assemble a full version and send it round to all of the contributors.

The sad truth about what really happened to Cookie Monster

2009-06-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

I have suspected for some time that today's 'cookies are a sometime food' Cookie Monster is an imposter. After all, Cookie Monster's defining characteristics were that he had an insatiable appetite for cookies and that when he 'nom, nom, nommed' a cookie, crumbs flew everywhere.

However, I have now discovered the sad truth about what happened to the real Cookie Monster.

They turned him a kid's jacket.

As you can see from the above photo, the warm winter coat and matching pants are clearly lines and trimmed with Cookie Monster fur.

This is becoming a sadly increasing trend in children's clothing. Sometimes manufacturers even go to the extreme of leaving the muppet ears on the fur clothing to increase the 'cuteness' factor.

Yes, muppet fur is warm and soft, and yes it does look cute. As parents, we want our children to be warm and snug, and we like dressing them up in cute clothes, but at what cost?

Walk into any playgroup and you'll see dozens of little kids running around in their muppet clothing and it seems harmless enough. However, the reality is that the muppet fur clothing industry has nearly brought muppets to extinction. When was the last time you saw recent footage of a muppet on your TV screen?

The devastating consequnces of these cute clothes is covered up and sadly animal rights groups such as PETA have done little to bring attention to this issue, claiming that muppets aren't really animals. Personally, I think we need a poster campaign of nude celebrities posing with the slogan 'I'd rather go naked than wear muppet'.

Next time you see a cute brown fuzzy jacket with ears on the hood, ask yourself was it really worth the life of an innocent ewok?

Creativity and Thinking

2009-06-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

I've been reading 'The Element' by Ken Robinson after being lucky enough to receive it as a birthday pressie and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I don't read much non fiction but it is a very entertaining read filled with lots of interesting anecdotes and even more interesting ideas about intelligence and creativity and the thought processes around them.

I first was introduced to Ken Robinson's ideas when I saw a clip of one of his presentations during New Curriculum professional development a few years ago and it's good to know he's just as entertaining and funny in written form.

I'd recommend the book to anyone who in interested in teaching and learning or just creative thinking in general, which, in my opinion and one that would be shared by Robinson, is everyone. We are all teaching and learning, and being creative everyday. Or at least we should be.

One of the interesting sideffects of reading a book like this is that I'm now finding weird connections and wisdom in everyday activities, such as watching children's cartoons and reading kids' books with Dom.

One example is Dominic's favourite cartoon from Fantasia - the yoyo Flamingo.

If you watch this enough times, which is a scaringly high number if you let the Dominator have his way, you end up strongly identifying with the goofy flamingo who loves to yo-yo and find the journey to find a way to do what you love in spite of the pressure to conform really moving.

But the 'The Element' point for me that this cartoon really illustrated is the idea that doing what you love is the most important thing. Your creative endeavours may not be considered 'art' by others, they may not appreciate what you are doing or may actively discourage you but you should persist in doing it anyway.

To use the Robinson phrase, when the flamingo plays with their yoyo, they're in their 'element'. They're being highly creative and loving every second of it. It doesn't matter that others don't think playing with a yoyo is art or even a worthwhile activity and try press them to join in the synchronised dance.

You don't have to be a dancing flamingo. Stick with your yoyo. If others, throw your yoyo in a tree, get another yoyo.

The important thing is to keep yoyoing if that is what you love to do.

As Matt has mentioned, Dom is also very fond of the show 'Yo Gabba Gabba'. Normally, the sogs often only the very young useful advice. I already knew that I shouldn't bite my friends or eat too much candy.

However, frequent listening to one of the songs lead me to further analysis of the lyrics. The song is 'What is fun?' Plex the robot doesn't know what fun is and asks the others to explain it to him. (the exact line is 'What, what, what is fun, fun, fun?')

They answer, 'It's something that makes you happy.'

Plex then questions further, 'But what, what, what does it mean, mean, mean?'

Wisdom then follows, 'It's doing something that you really like.'

Then the other characters give Plex examples such as picking flowers, running in circles and eating noodles.

On the face of it, the idea of fun is a straightforward concept and only a robot on a kids' TV show would require a whole song to understand what fun is.

However, I finding that fun is a concept I need to redefine with age for myself.

When I was a child, fun was the ultimate goal of everything. I was able to find fun is almost eveything I did. School was for the most part fun, playing with friends was always fun and almost anything could be turned into a game. I was unburdened with any responsibilities and even doing a chore like washing the dishing was kind of like playing grown ups and often involved playing the bubbles or flicking tea towels, and more often than not, probably making more of a mess than I was actually cleaning up. If I was stuck inside on a wet day, I roamed about looking for some way to make fun and always manage to concoct some sort of game or mischief of some kind or another.

Everything was, and had to be, fun.

When I was an adolescent, fun was more about the places I was and the people I was with than what I was actually doing. I spent a lot of time feeling awkward and uncomfortable or so any time I was with people I felt comfortable around or in a place were I felt safe to be 'myself' became fun.

At this point in my life I realised it was possible to find things that other people thought were fun, distinctly not fun. Parties could be unfun if you felt uncomfortable around the people there and felt like everything you said or did was being judged in a bad way.

As an adult, the idea of fun largely became associated with relaxation. Responsibilities of work and money and owning cars and paying mortages are stressful. In my twenties, it came as a bit of a shock to me that now that I had the 'freedom' of being an adult, I had far less time than ever before in my life to do the things that I wanted to do. Fun became associated with free time and holidays. I was having fun doing the things that I chose to do in that time. I might enjoy large amounts time at work and like my job but they were also tainted by the aspects of teaching I didn't enjoy, like writing reports, taking home hours of marking or admin.

Fun was what I had in my evenings, weekends and holidays. Fun was about having control what I wanted to do and generally based around indulging my various hobbies and interests and/or spending time with friends.

Now, since becoming a parent, my views on fun and happiness have changed significantly again. A lot of it has to do with the scarcity of free time. I can't view fun as solely being the couple of hours when Dom naps during the day or the small part of the evening between him falling asleep and Matt and I conking out. If I did that, I would be viewing my life as diminishing in fun because I have far less 'me' time than ever before.

Also my attitude towards happiness, or at least my awareness of being happy has changed. Not long after we had the 20 week ultrasound, I got the gut-wrenching phone call saying that they detected some abnormality with the Dom's heart and lungs. The following days while we waited for further tests and did some disturbing research on the internet were not good. The worst case scenarios were too awful to contemplate, which meant our minds did little other than contemplate them. I vowed that if everything turned out OK and the baby was born happy and healthy, I would never take the good stuff in life for granted again. I would always appreciate how happy and lucky I was.

It's been surprisingly easy since then to reflect at the end of every day that I am indeed happy. Dom and parenthood have well exceeded my expectations and it doesn't take any self-brainwashing or force of will to be aware of my own happiness on a conscious level every day. Of course there are stresses in every day life and there are hard days or days where you're so tired that your fingernails ache from exhaustion but for me, happiness is a more permanent state than a fleeting period of relaxation or enjoyment.

Happiness for me comes from two things. Firstly, knowing that you did something worthwhile and fulfilling everyday. Secondly, acknowledging that you are lucky to have or had people in your life that you both care about and that care(or cared) about you.

Skipping back to the first point, to me it has become essential that every day feels like I have achieved something worthwhile. Not earning money caused me a surprising amount of alarm when I left my job. I had worked some sort of job for virtually all of my adult life and I realised that in many ways I had been conditioned into equating earning money with doing something of value. Obviously, looking after children is neither easy nor unimportant yet it feels rather undervalued when one becomes (ugh, I hate the term but for want of another I shall have to use it) a 'stay at home mum'. As a society I think we tend to equate the value of work with the size of salary. Certainly, as a teacher and in many other jobs, your pay increases as your perceived competence does. As your pay increases, you feel more valued, so it's not surprisingly that when you then move to doing something without pay, you can question the value the society holds on what you're doing. This feeling is not helped by bumping into childless colleagues who ask 'what do you actually do all day?'

It's become vital to me that I remained ardently convinced of the value and worth of looking a child. In many ways, it's easy. On the whole it is a challenging, enjoyable and immensely rewarding occupation. However, while it is fulfilling, there are no extrinsic rewards. No remuneration, no appraisals or performance bonuses, not even a colleague, boss or pupil that can say 'thank you' or 'well done'.

I have also found that I to do something productive in Dom's nap time as a valued part of my daily 'me' time. For me, this doesn't mean housework or anything domestic, or indeed practically useful. It means writing or, sometimes, editing.

And there is where I finally get back to the point about fun.

In my current lifestyle, I have often to forgo my previous adulthood notion of fun. I can't go off to watch a movie or slip out to a cafe to catch up with a friend while Dom is asleep, and more importantly, I don't want to as much as I want to write.

By the time Dom falls asleep, and more often somewhat earlier, I can't wait to get out the laptop and start typing away. At times in the mornings when I'm out with Dom in the park or I'm dancing around with him to music, my mind sneaks off to think about what I'm about to write or how to fix up something I did the day before. I now get excited about writing and crave the approaching times when I'll get to do some the way I used look forward to heading off for a glass of wine after work on Friday.

I'm amazed that even when I'm exhausted or have had a hard night or long morning, I can still get excited about my two hours of fun.

There was a line in the book about this. 'Activities we love fill us with extra energy even when we are physically exhausted.'

Parenthood has meant, at times, huge deficits in sleep and relaxation time, and yet I wouldn't say that it's made may less happy or less productive in writing terms, in fact it's the reverse.

Rather unexpectedly I'd say that making myself consciously aware of my own happiness and gratitude has made me more productive, and doing more of what makes me feel fulfilled each day makes me less tired.

Fun for me now is about being active and proactive towards achieving my goals, not passively enjoying relaxing activities (although I do still enjoy these when I get the chance).

Or as 'Yo Gabba Gabba' puts it:

It's something that makes you happy.
It's doing something that you really like.

Random questions Friday

2009-06-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

Why does Dominic enjoy wearing cowboy hats and pith helmets but pull off any warm hat that is actually his size as soon as I put it on him?

- Dom content in adult-size hat

What do the lyrics 'chips, chips' mean in the song 'Via con me'? I've had the song stuck in my head all day and cannot fathom it. 'It's wonderful, it's wonderful, it's wonderful, good luck my baby... chips, chips'. Is it scorn at English language speakers? Is it suggesting that we cannot consider the mysteries of love without bringing fried potato snacks into the matter?

How many hot chocolate drinks can you consume in a day before you suffer serious health consequences?

Wintery Week

2009-05-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ugh, it's too cold and rainy. Unlike Dom, I don't find splashing about and throwing stones in puddles to be great fun so I find little appealing about the current weather.

Personally, I think it's time to hibernate and we should only venture out into the cold to go on foraging missions to hunt/gather dunkable biscuits and warm comfort foods. I'm trying to convince the outdoorsy Dominic that staying inside in the warm is fun. I even got him a comfy foam armchair to encourage couch potatoness.

While he does enjoy sitting on it for brief photo sessions, reading books and watching Kungfu Panda, it is sadly more often used as a portable step-ladder to help him reach mischief-making opportunities on couches, bookcases and benchtops.

The Dominator has also been quite insistant on getting outside for a decent walk and/or splashing session at least once a day. He has discovered that beating on doors and attempting dangerous manoeuvres in daring attempts to reach the door handles will eventually lead to outside activities.

Our usual park has become a bit of a boggy mess with the rain, so we've tended to go to Kotuku Park swathed in wet weather gear between bouts of stormy weather. The playground stays reasonably dry and Dom loves it so much, he'd probably insist on a visit during a blizard.

The Park also has lots of lovely birds to stop off and feed on the way back. Pukeko, ducks and swans all hang together in a nice interracial flock.

As you can see from the secure arm around Dominic, he really just wants to jump in with the birds. While others dream of swimming with dolphins, Dom wants to splash about with ducks and swans.

Swans know they are good looking. They happily pose for the camera.

There is also a ridiculously cute baby swan (signet?). I have been meaning to take photos of it for ages but fear of Dom diving in have prevented earlier pics. (Matt took this one). It's now going through the gangly adolescent half fluff, half adult feathers but it was so cute that I began to question the whole ugly duckling idea. I think baby swans hold up pretty well against cute ducklings, even if they're not as cute, they certainly don't look ugly. I think they're easily cuter than adult ducks anyway.

So what is public opinion? Baby Swans - hot or not?

Farm Walk Photos

2009-05-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post the photos of Dominic at Lindale's farm walk for a while. They're a couple of weeks old now (hence the sunny weather).

Farm walk photo 1. Dominic walks... on a farm. No animals nearby yet.

Cute pony! Luckily for the pony, it didn't fit in my pocket so I didn't steal it and take it home.

Feeding ponies is a good way to get them to come closer to small children.

And stick their tongues out for the camera.

Pigs are cute but really slobbery. And muddy.

Heh. This goat was on guard and ready to stick its head out for food the moment we arrived. I like the cheeky, pushy attitude of goats.

Deer are so cute. I think they were Dominic's favourite. He was so enthralled just staring at them.

Cows rock. In a perfect world, cows would taste yucky so no one would eat them and ugly animals like spiders would taste like beef steak.

This bunny (and the baby guinea pigs) also nearly got smuggled out to come home with us. So cute!

Failure

2009-05-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

Given my tendency to become something of a neurotic and angst-ridden Artiste when reflecting back on projects, it’s not surprising that I’m finding the middle of this week tough.

Matt, Dom and I had a fairly hectic weekend with the 48 film shoot at Matt’s school. Dom loved romping around the nice students’ centre with his lion walker, hanging out with teenagers (especially getting crumpled up bits of paper out of the wastepaper basket and handing them to the boys to take shots at the bin with) and exploring the college grounds while scenes were being shot. I ended up being more involved than I had expected. I got to write a couple of scenes when Matt got back from the school on the Friday night after the alarms had gone off, forcing the writing team to leave the base of operations. I then also helped with the panicked rewrite of briefer versions of some scenes late on Saturday night when Matt realised the film was way too long. I had a cameo role which was awesome fun, and I got to edit the 30 second breakout sequence which was heaps of fun. All in all I should be thrilled. It didn’t seem possible going into it that there would be any way I would get to write, act or edit whilst looking after the wee one but I actually got to do a bit of all three.

Knowing what a mammoth task the 48 is, Matt and I had set our expectations reasonably low. The standards of the Wellington films tend to be really high, and as a couple of enthusiastic amateurs with a bunch of teens, many of whom hadn’t been involved in film-making before, just completing a film in time was going to be a challenge. As Matt said, as long as there wasn’t an outputting disaster and there was some sort of film on the tape we handed in, it would be a success.

I think there are two possible approaches to the 48. One is to work as hard as you can to produce the best possible film with your resources. The other is to focus on the experience itself – make sure everyone who wants to be involved is in it as much as possible and give everyone a go. Unfortunately, I think we were a little caught between the two approaches, possibly to our detriment. On the one hand, we let students write (with Matt supervising), direct, operate the camera and do some basic editing stuff and every student who wanted to act got some screen time, even if some were non-talking roles. However, when things started to get in trouble (not enough coverage to edit the film, running out of time etc), Matt and I stepped in. On Sunday morning pickups, Matt took over the camera and the student directors kind of left the technical side of things to him and just focused on giving the actors feedback and direction.

The end result feels a bit of a mish-mash that half feels like a student film and half doesn’t. Elements of the original longer script are there but they aren’t fully explored. Some of the best lines and great character moments have been cut out but on the plus side, the film is probably faster paced for it.

By the standards we set for ourselves in advance, it should feel like a success. Did we and the students have fun? Yes. Did the students involved learn a lot about film-making? Yes. Did we make a film that they like and feel proud of? Yes. (From the comments we’ve heard from them about the screening).

However, I can’t shake feeling a bit of a failure.

Firstly, I am annoyed with myself that I think I made really obvious amateur mistakes in the script writing bits I was involved with. I had thought a lot in advance about the lessons I’ve learnt and the things to avoid, and yet I still did some of them. I guess when it comes to actually doing anything in the 48, the excitement and stress (and later on, sleep deprivation) can make you do dumb things. I hate that during the following days my mind seems to continually work out what I should have done when it’s too late.

I have the briefest appearance in the film but I’m still not entirely happy with it. I was told ages ago that I exaggerate my facial expressions too much for film, and I still do it. There’s nothing like film to highlight all your mannerisms that you don’t like. Head wobbling - cringe. Tense neck with chicken throat syndrome – double cringe. And I was only in it for 3 seconds!

But the real blow came from reading the harsh, but not surprisingly so, review from Steel Potato this morning. 2/5. Below average, therefore, in my mind, a failure.

The really upsetting thing is that he slams one of the kids for being annoying. Now I’m worried that one of the students will find the review. Nothing sucks more than having nice, bouncy, enthusiastic teens being hurt by harsh personal criticism.

I don’t know why the idea of the film ‘failing’ gets to me so much. I think I have a personal issue with the concept of failing. I remember in my first year of teaching when I had to hand back marks from moderation for sixth form research projects. One really nice girl had done an elaborate and beautifully presented research project on The Globe theatre. Due to some technical problems with the research log and source sheets, she got a ‘Not Achieved’. When I handed it back to her, she started crying and said ‘I may as well have not bothered doing it’. She had spent hours on this project and because the grade was Not Achieved and she would have 0 credits on her transcript, she thought her efforts had been pointless.

This upset me then and it upsets me now. It goes against everything I believe in both in terms of education and life in general. The project wasn’t pointless. She must have learnt something from doing it. Heck, I learnt stuff I didn’t know about The Globe just from reading it. Even if all that experience taught her was some general knowledge about Shakespeare that might help her answer a question in a pub quiz 10 years from now (and the importance of a well-referenced bibliography), it wasn’t pointless.

Yet the idea of failure is a powerful one. It can make you cripplingly afraid. I remember turning up to an audition as a teenager and wimping out from actually auditioning because I was afraid I wouldn’t get the part. It was ridiculous because the only way you can ensure you won’t succeed is to not try but back then it was easier for me to reconcile the idea of not getting a part I wanted because I didn’t try than to try and not be good enough. I didn’t want to fail. Not failing was more important than succeeding.

Now that I’m older I try to force myself to try to do everything I want to be good at. I make films for competitions and I actually send the things I write off to publishers as opposed to keeping them hidden away where they are safe from rejection. Of course, this leads to a gut-wrenching amount of disappointment. Of the many competitions I’ve entered, the Rolling Thunder film is the only one that has ever won and I suspect that is in no small part due to the fact that noone else entered the contest.

However, I am trying to re-programme my brain to view not winning as ‘learning and developing’ rather than ‘failing’. There is no audition that doesn’t help make you a better actor. Every film I’ve ever made has taught me something about making films, no matter how big or small my involvement. Everything I write helps me become a better, more disciplined writer.

My goal should never be to win but to get better at what I do.

However, that is easier said than done. I still want success on some level, I’m pretty greedy for praise too.

I have to try to listen to my own inner Mr Miyagi. If my life can be likened to The Karate Kid film, and nearly everybody’s can, I may not be at the triumphant tournament scene yet. I’m probably still at the ‘wax on, wax off’ stage, cleaning a car or something. I may have to write 20 more novels and help make dozens more films before I can do the crane with a broken ankle.

Licensed to Drool

2009-05-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dom has completed another short (well, very short) film to add to his portfolio - My First Casino Royale.

We don't really have any expectations of getting anywhere in the 48 seconds competition but it was a lot of fun to make and it provided another excuse to get Dom dressed up in a tux.

As you can see by the following pictures, Dom is pretty much a young Daniel Craig.

Of course now after starring in a couple of films, what Dom really wants to do is direct. :-)

Snapped in the car

2009-05-03T22:04:00.001-07:00

Dominic's Kung Fu Panda obsession led him to claim the toy panda for his own when he was last down at his Granny's. The new BFFs were then caught by the paparazzi as they left together in a car headed up the coast.

Help with questions for a 48 hour script

2009-05-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

Matt has been enlisted to help supervise a group of enthusiastic teens with the 48 hour film competition. This is his school's first year entering the comp so I imagine the adult input and advice may be quite considerable.

One thing Matt and I wanted to do before hand was make a list of questions that the writers team should go through between writing the first and second draft of the script.

Any suggestions for additions or adjustments to the questions would be appreciated! (They're pretty rough at the moment).

Questions for writers about their script:

1. What is the film about? (50 or fewer words)
2. What is the film really about? (15 or fewer words)
3. What is it really about? (5 or fewer words) *
4. Have all the ingredients been used? (I know it seems obvious but still, it's important)
5.What is the main character like?
6. How should the audience react to this character?
7. How do you show what this character is like to the audience?
8. What does the main character want?
9. What obstacles or difficulties do they face?
10. What has the character learnt at the end of the film? (Nothing is fine as an answer)
11. What should they have learnt?
12. What is the most important relationship in the film?
13. In what way(s) is this a ___________ genre film?
14. How does your audience know what kind of film they should expect from the opening?
15.What's the hook or entry point into the story of the film?
16. What reaction do you want from your audience with this film?
17. This film should be shot in the style of ....
18. What's the climax of the film?
19. Whose Point of View are we following?
20. Can your script be simpler? Shorter? Clearer? Make it so!

* I thought this should be three or fewer but Matt insisted on 5. These few questions are a common English teacher technique to get students from a plot synopsis to a theme when studying a text but I think they work well for analysis of your own script as well.

Back in the North Island

2009-04-22T21:08:00.001-07:00

Hurrah for holidays. We are now back at home after a busy fun-filled trip to Christchurch. It was lovely to see family, especially my two extremely cute nephews, and Christchurch is very pretty in Autumn. Lots of stunning trees with leaves in various shades of red, yellow or brown. There were way too many cool things for me to go into detailed descriptions so I'll go for bullet-point highlights.

-Dominic was awesome on the plane both ways. It's a little daunting taking a little one on a flight (especially remebering one nightmare flight we had on the way to Japan with a toddler in front of us crying for the _whole_ flight. Fortunately, we had Pooh and Grover movies on the iPod touch with portable speakers so Dom was either happily eating or watching these for the flight. On the way back, we had a wndow seat and he loved looking out the window after take off. He even started flapping his arms around, so I think he grasped the concept that we were in the air although he later realised he didn't actually need to 'fly' himself :-)

- Seeing Dom hanging out with his two cousins was awesome, and his other relatives too. He was always super excited to see everyone and had no hesitation in fully taking over his uncle's home (especially the Darth Tater potato head).

- Going through Christchurch Muesum was very cool - lots of romping room and interesting things to look at. Dom particularly liked the Discovery area with drawers full of shells, insects and other things.

- Dom loved the massive play area at McDonalds and I discovered that McCafe actually do a quite reasonable muffin.

- The Christchurch Aquarium is awesome. Sharks, sting rays, pretty fish, turtles and an obliging show-off octopus. Dom really liked the swing bridge over the waterfall and the touch pool (or splash pool for him really).

- Cathedral Square - Dominic dragged me in and around several shops.

- Taking the Tram.

- Romping around the Arts centre in the sun. Lots of live music, markets, delicious hazelnut lattes and heaps of dried autumn leaves for Dom to play in.

- I got to squeeze in some shopping but the highlight of that day's excursion for Dom was riding in the Wriggles ride with his cousins.

- On the last day we went for breakfast with the whole tribe to Denny's which is an excellent place for little ones. Dom liked the food but exploring was even more fun.

Denny's photos

Dom becomes aquainted with the penguin using the traditional hand-to-beak greeting.

The boys gather around the jukebox.

Waving to Daddy (who is outside with a camera as the reflection shows).

Off on holiday!

2009-04-16T22:37:00.001-07:00

We're off to Christchurch early tomorrow morning. Dominic has been very interested and helpful in the packing process.

He enjoyed climbing into the suitcase. We had to convince him that he was actually allowed to ride with us in the plane and didn't need to stowaway in the case.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-11T23:01:00.000-07:00

Dominic seems to be enjoying the Easter holidays so far. There was a giant bunny (OK, man wearing a rabbit suit but Dom's brain melted with joy and excitement when he met the talking adult-sized bunny so I don't think he realised it was fake) outside the supermarket yesterday handing out free Easter eggs so that was a good start to the chocolate-filled holidays.

We then gave him an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Given that he's small and only just learning that tin-foil wrapped ovals tend to be chocolate (although he has caught onto this fact very quickly), we decided to have plush bunnies to act as guides to where the eggs were.

The intrepid Easter hunter spots the first sign of Easter goodies in the distance.

With a tremendous amount of glee, Dom sees that Peter Rabbit has some Easter eggs waiting for him.

Instinctively, the Easter egg hunter knows to strike quickly and grab the egg before the bunny changes its mind.

Dom enjoys the rewards of a successful hunt before moving onto the next clue.

Oh joy! Dom spots another chocolate-bearing bunny!

Hmm, a bunny in a basket? The now-expert hunter knows to examine this carefully.

His suspicions were correct. The bunny had the chocolate goods!

Dominic then zaps off to the final and biggest bunny of them all!

"I've got him!" Dom holds the big bunny in place by the ears while the camera crew catches up.

Dominic succssfully seizes the last egg.

Although he soon discovers that this particular egg was not up to his chocy standards and decides to give it back to the bunny.

The hunter leaves the backyard triumphantly!

Pegs

2009-04-10T17:25:00.001-07:00

At the last gym class of the term last week, they added some new 'delux manual dexterity building' equipment. A bunch of old wooden pegs and an empty tin can with a small hole to post the pegs through.

Dom loved this game.

It didn't take much encouragement from Mum at all before he was into the peg posting groove.

His intense concentration on posting every single peg wasn't even broken when a girl came over and started staring at him. (I've cropped the photo because a little girl staring at your young son while she has her hand down the front of her pants doesn't not make for a cute Kodak moment in my books).

At the end of the class when they were supposed to be getting certificates and stamps and so forth, a bunch of the kids wandered back to the tin to form an obsessive group peg posting session.

If you want to start a freaky little blonde 'Midwich cuckoos' style kids cult, obviously all you need is a tin can and a bunch of wooden pegs.

Park photos

2009-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Alas poor Dominic is not feeling too great at the moment. He has the wretched teething plus blocked/runny nose combo which led to a rough night's sleep last night. He's never really has a cold before so I'm finding it quite stressful as he seemed to think it's my fault for not fixing his leaky nose problem.

I have learnt a few things about toddlers with blocked noses.

1. Small children do not like having their noses wiped no matter how gentle you are or how soft the tissue. Dom now runs away if he sees me coming towards him with a tissue so I have to hide it and sneakily pounce on him to get any wiping done. He also decided to try to sabotage the tissue supply by grabbing the box and shredding as many tissues as possible when I foolishly left the box lying around in the lounge.

2. The Plunket recommended solution of using nose drops to clearout their nostrils is about as easily executed as giving a tablet to a stroppy cat. You don't realise how strong something relatively small can be until you try holding them went they really want to break free.

3. The preferred position to fall asleep in when a a young boy has a snuffly nose is slightly upright lying in the arms of Mum or Dad. This becomes very uncomfortable the parent after a while because a toddler is substanially heavier than a little baby.

4. There is a range of tastes and flavours in Pamol medicine. The last bottle we had was tasty, the current one, not so much.

5. Dom can quite effectively cover his mother in a sticky mess by spitting out yucky tasting medicine.

On a happier note, here are some photos of Dom at the nearby Kotuku Park playground:

Dominic enjoys a turn on the spinner.

Cruising in the driver's seat.

Poop! Poop! Forget about Toad. It's Dom, the terror of the highway!

A suspicious game of peekaboo.

Swings are a lot of fun.

Wheeee! Down the slide.

Of course, climbing back up the slide is even more fun.

Dom makes his way up onto the tower.

'I bet I could climb up this ladder...'

'Hmm, I wonder if Mum would approve of my climbing attempts. I have this strange feeling she might not somehow...'

All the leaves are brown... well, mostly

2009-03-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

We took Dominic to the park yesterday for some fun romping amongst the crunchy dried leaves. Thanks to Matt's continual snapping away with the digital camera, we now have some nice autumn photos.

I want to get one printed out on the large photo blocks they have at Harvey Norman's but I can't decide which one. Any suggestions?

You'll notice that Dom is doing his strange invisible glove puppet in the last photo. It seems that after spending so much time walking around holding his parents' hands he now keeps his hand up even when there's no one there to hold on to.

Happy St Pat's Day

2009-03-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

In celebration of St Patrick's Day, I made Dom a little leprechaun costume. A pretty budget affair really with a decorated $2 hat, a homemade bow tie and a waistcoat made from an old reuseable shopping bag. He got to wear it to the St Pat's Little Wrigglers group today and also enjoyed playing with green balloons, eating a green easter egg and a cupcake with green icing.

Here are a couple of photos that were taken in the brief moments between him pulling his hat off. He seems obsessed with pulling hats off at the moment, especially any on his or his mother's head.

The Leprechaun in training races around the house at frantic pace. You can't afford to waste time when there is so much mischief to be had.

Ever wonder how a green sock or handkerchief sneaks into your white wash? It's the laundry leprechaun at work!

Who's hiding between that innocent green hat? It's Dom!

Laundry baskets are the perfect spot for plotting your next St Patrick's Day trick.

Posing with his hat at a rakish tilt.

More table mischief

2009-03-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

At first I thought climbing up onto the top of tables was a dangerous use of furniture.

Once again, Dominic has outdone himself in inventing a more reckless way to enjoy his Tigger chair.

I call this method the 'rocking Tigger chair'.

It starts out innocently enough. He turns around as if he has just realised there is a friendly Tigger face behind him.

Next thing you know he's starting to pull himself up on the chair.

Then he's standing up facing the back of the chair. This lulls the parental unit into thinking that his plan is complete. He can't climb any higher or reach the table from here after all.

Then it's time for the real action. He starts rocking the chair vigorously with all his considerable might. Oh, the bouncing! Oh, the surpised and worried look on Mum's face! Oh, what joy!

Then when it looks like your mum is going to grab you and take you away from your Tigger chair, you duck down and peek out innocently from behind the chair.

Tables and chairs

2009-03-15T21:14:00.001-07:00

I've been wanting to get a kid-size table and chairs for Dominic for a while. I have delightful maternal fancies of having tea parties (possibly with teddy bears) and sitting with Dom to do arts and crafts. However, the main obstacle seemed to be Dominic's complete reluctance to ever sit still on a chair. Even at other kids' birthday parties when the other kids would sit up nicely at small plastic tables to eat their food, Dom would grab the food and then clamber down and make a break for it at full-speed.

My hopes of a getting Dom to sit on a chair for longer than five seconds without being tied to it were rekindled this weekend at Baby City. Whilst we were perusing for a replacement cup (his cow cup is starting to look worse for wear these days as he has nibbled extra holes in the nozzle), Dom took himself over to a shiny Winnie-the-Pooh wooden table and chairs. With gleeful blubrling he climbed up and sat nicely in the Tigger-backed chair and slapped his hands on the table with delight, pointing at his favourite characters. Disney has already got their evil merchandising hooks into my young boy it seems. Not content with reading Pooh books and watching the Pooh DVD, he now wants his furniture plastered with the characters.

I was thrilled and insisted on getting the table and chairs there and then. The sales assistant claimed it was the last one in stock.

We got the furniture home and Dom was eager to play with it further. I sat down with him and we shared a bit of brownie and apple.

Yummy brownie mess.

To my joy and rapture, Dom would sit in the chair even later when there wasn't food present.

He was happy to sit and point to the pictures of Pooh and friends.

We could read him books and still he remained seated in the chair.

Another happy storytime at the table.

However, in less than twenty four hours, Dominic showed us that there is nothing he cannot turn into a dangerous extreme sport. To him, tables and chairs were not merely items of furniture on which you had docile storytimes and indulged your mother's desires for playing tea party games.

No, tables and chairs were like mountains, they needed to be scaled.

Dominic makes his way up the perilous Mt Pooh table.

Once at the summit, the intrepid climber enjoys a quick story or two.

Gym photos

2009-03-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from Dom's gymnastics class. Matt popped along during interval a couple of Fridays ago to play photographer and get a bit of a workout in the pit o' foam.

An overview of the whole gym circuit. It's kind of like Tux Wonderdogs but for toddlers.

The infamous pit o' foam. It's deeper than it looks and surprisingly hard work to move around in and clamber out of.

Dom in the pit.

Upright again and ready for more romping through foam action.

Dom lowers himself down into the donut centre.

Then he crawls out of the donut and it's down the slope.

Dom makes his way through a tunnel.

Then through another smaller tunnel. Dom didn't fancy going through the tunnels on his first week but now he enjoys a good tunnel or two.

The trampoline is hugely long and it's good for a bouncy race-track.

Then he has a good old bounce on the mini-trampoline or rebounders as I believe they are sometimes called.

There were lots of other pics but alas most of them came out blurry. Hopefully Dom's photographer will make it to another session in the future.

The importance of being Billy Crudup

2009-03-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's the excitement of his beloved Watchmen finally coming out on film, or the result of a brain-frying working week but I don't recommend attempting to have any kind of coherent discussion with Matt this evening.

Over dinner, I was remarking upon the Empire article I had read and my thoughts on the casting. At first, I thought lovely Jeffery Dean Morgan was a weird choice for The Comedian but then it grew on me. By the time I saw pics and the trailer I had him firmly fixed in my mind as being perfect for the part. Hopefully he is.

I only recently realised that it is Billy Crudup playing Dr Manhattan which I can not so easily imagine. Unfortunately, while trying to express to Matt that while I liked him as an actor I was uncertain as to how he would pull off the part, I forgot Billy Crudup's name.

Me: I still think he's a weird choice for Doc Manhattan.
Matt: Who?
Me: The guy playing him, whathisname?
Matt: Dunno.
Me: You know the British actor. He was in Big Fish and Stage Beauty and a bunch of stuff...
Matt: British actor guy?
Me: Arrgg, I've forgotten his name. Maybe I'll go look it up...
Matt: Let me guess. Ralph Machio?
Me: No. British
Matt: Handsome von Hunky Face? Actor McStarsinfilms? Lord Guy Whoactsin films?
Me: No (gets up to grab magazine)
Matt: Wait, is he like a younger British Hugh Grant, only British?
Me: What the?
Matt: (Spiels off more stupid names...)
Me: (Finding the page) Aha, Billy Crudup.
Matt: Uh.
Me: You don't know who Billy Crudup is, do you?
Matt: Yes, I do. Mr Crudup. Billy. The Crudster to his close and personal friends.
Me: It doesn't matter...
Matt: He's that actor who stars in that movie "Billy Crudup in huhhmmm".
Me: You can stop now.
Matt: He's the one who uncannily has the face of Billy Crudup.
Me: Forget it.
Matt: Billy Crudup. Lord Billy Crudup von Cruddinson. Cruddie. (Starts singing to tune of Rock me, Amadeus) Billy Crudup, Billy Crudup, Billy Crudup...
Me: If you don't stop, I'm going to write this up on my blog.
Matt: No, wait. What movies was he in?

Advice on being sick

2009-03-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

1. Don't get sick. It isn't any fun at all and it is always much worse than you remember it being.

2. If you have a small, energetic child who expects you to run around after them all day, then really, DO NOT GET SICK. There is no calling in sick and spending the day in bed for parents.

3. If you do have the misfortunate to become ill whilst looking after aforementioned busy toddler, make sure your partner does not also get sick at the same time as you.

Guess who failed to follow the above for the last couple of days?

Extreme Sports

2009-02-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

Dom likes to live on the wild side. Today when I had nicely set him up with some safe blocks to play with while I checked my email, he took matters into his own hands. Dominic now has a new, fun way to get the adrenaline rush. He has his own indoor extreme sport to play.

Kitty-baiting.

It seems like a harmless enough way to play with your beloved feline. You find something dangly and wave it around for the cat to pounce at. However, playing this with Austen is fraught with danger. She loves pouncing and scratching too much. After a while she gives up on chasing the dangly thing and goes straight for the hand holding it.

I had barely switched the computer on before I heard giggling. Any Mum knows that a child's happy laughter is always cause to check what they're up to immediately so I spun round only to see that Dom was kneeling in front of the cat while she napped on the bean bag.

Not content to let sleeping cats lie, Dom had grabbed a cable from nearby and was chucking it out to her like a lasso. I was impressed that he had such good dangling skills, and so, it seems, was the cat. She woke up immediately interested in the cable but just batted it half-heartedly with her claws retracted.

"Ah, good," I thought. "She's being gentle and isn't too keen. I'll grab the camera and take some cute photos."

The game continued innocently enough. Austie was purring, Dom was laughing his face off, and gently swishing and draping the cable near the cat. A couple of times she lost interest, so he leant forward and touched her with his fingers. I was amazed - normally it is highly inadvisable to attempt to pat or put your hand anywhere near the cat when she is in 'chase the dangly thing' mode, but she remained placid and obligingly caught the cable.

Dom was thoroughly enjoying the game and dangling the cable increasingly higher in an attempt to get the cat to move up and out of her comfy spot in the bean bag.

Unfortunately, it worked.

For some reason, something snapped and Austie transformed into...

CRAZY POUNCING CAT!

As soon as I caught sight of those frenzied eyes and sharp claws, I swooped in and pulled Dominic out of there. However, this meant I did move my arms in front of Austie when she was in attack mode.

I now have a cat scratch on my arm. Dom also got a little nick on the back of his hand but he didn't even seem to notice - he was too busy giggling hysterically at the sight of the pouncing attack cat.

Of course I must in fact give the cat credit for the extreme and rather uncharacteristic tolerance she shows towards Dominic. Given that he shrieks loudly everytime he sees her, frequently ends up waking her up from naps by stroking her or making noise, and tries to rub his face on her, she is incredibly gracious and good with him. She is great at visiting him when we read books or play in the lounge and she purrs when he strokes her even though it's really somewhat uncoordinated and vigourous patting.

But then I have to say nice things about the cat now. She just jumped up on the keyboard and started smarming me.

Cross Grazing

2009-02-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

Matt and I have a new blog for writing reviews of books, TV shows and movies.

crossgrazing.blogspot.com

Please leave a comment on one or both of posts so that I know someone out there is actually reading them. :-)

Here's the obligatory cute Dom photo:

Grandparent poaching

2009-02-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

Dominic is a pretty outgoing wee chap and enjoys going out meeting new people however sometimes you can be too charming and get yourself into trouble.

I have become accustomed to Dominic using the gym as an infant-mum swingers session and heading off to clamber over other women in search of cuddles whenever they are sprawled out doing stretches or ab exercises. At his music and movement classes he tends to seek out older gals (that is girls about 2-4 years of age), and somehow they always end up feeding him their food and patting him affectionately on the head like a puppy.

However, today at his Mainly Music group his overly social ways ran him into a bit of a conflict. I recall that as a child I had rather strong views against 'Mummy stealing' as I called it. The mother russling was generally perpetrated by a cousin or friend and was defined as any instance when your mother paid too much attention to another person's kid (where too much attention basically equally any). I saw it as a heinous and inexcusable crime for other kids to get hugged by my mother or given ice blocks that were mine by any just and reasonable thinking.

Apparently for many kids this territorial approach to parents also extends to grandparents.

Today for some reason Dom took it into his head that he was out to capture the heart of anyone in the room over the age of fifty. He could not be detered from his mission. The toys and playtime before the session started proved no distraction, the music held no interest for him and his mum's repeated attempts to carry him back to join the other kids and have fun with the songs like he was supposed to were fruitless.

Any chance Dom got to break free he was off to approach one of the doting grandparents who sat on chairs back against the edges of the room. He would pull himself up on their legs, smile, flap his arms and babble away until they took the hint and picked him up. Rather embarrassingly I was left like a crazy childless woman who had just come along to join in a bunch of kids' action songs. I could only smile on pathetically as I watched Dom get bounced on the knee or held and cooed at my various older folks. After the session ended Dom immediately zoomed off after one of his new substitute grans. I was bombarded with questions and praise for the wee rascal and he was lapping up the attention with a mile-wide grin on his face.

After a while he was put back down and immediately headed off for another lady. Unfortunately this lady's real grandson was around and saw Dominic approaching. Alas the little boy clearly had suspicions and kicked Dom as he came past. Dom burst into tears which surprised me as the kick hadn't actually looked that hard, more of a tap really, but I freaked that maybe it had been the spot where he had his lung surgery scar and he might still be sensitive there. I ran up to comfort Dom but before I reached him, the kid's gran swooped up the crying Dominic. The tears stopped immediately and Dom was soon all smiles again and trying to grab at the lady's glasses.

'He's such a lovely, happy little chap, isn't he?' cooed the lady to me.

I agreed but silently suspected that he may have gone a little Hollywood on the crying. Maybe he should be attending drama rather than music classes?

Would you trust this boy with your Gran?

Sunday afternoon fun

2009-02-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Well, it wasn't the sunniest day of the summer but Dom still enjoyed romping around outside while his parents took shifts hanging up the washing.

A bit of strolling with the lion.

The budding (yes, the lame pun is intended) botanist examines the flowers.

Riding in a laundry basket is the best way to celebrate the completion of hanging out the washing...

...you just need an obliging Dad-mule to pull you around.

Still not convinced that riding in laundry baskets is awesome? Watch the video evidence.

Weekend fun

2009-02-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Matt has blogged some of the photos from Dom's fun ride on the tram but he also got to meet a lovely clydesdale on Saturday. It was a very chilled-out horse and was just roaming about free in Queen Elizabeth's park near the Tram muesum. It didn't even stop chomping grass when a tram went right past it. So cute.

We tempted the horse away from the grass with some yummy carrots and it was happy tro become acquainted with young Dom. It pays to have some carrots in your picnic supplies in case you encounter friendly equines.

"It looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard."

2009-01-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

It seems it is important to ensure that you keep your camera in your carry-on luggage when you go on holiday in case you need photographic evidence of your airline dinner...

Complaint Letter

This has to be one of my favourite food reviews ever.

Edit to include Dom photo. At least he is eating in this pic, so it's kind of appropriate.

Dominic gets swished up for a wedding!

2009-01-24T12:40:00.001-08:00

Dominic got all dressed up yesterday in his stylish new tux to attend a delightful CU ceremony at the Old Museum building in Wellington.

Kids in fancy clothes are cute. I have to think of more reasons to get him dressed up in his tux.

Stepping out in style.

Ready to par-tay.

Dad had to readjust adjust the outfit after a brief wardrobe malfunction exposed baby-belly.

After quickly getting hot, Dom when for a more relaxed look by having his assistants remove the jacket and cumerbund.

Dominic especially enjoyed the bits of the ceremony where he could join in the enthusiastic applause.

Partied out. After a quick stop to get dinner, the party boy crashed out in the back of the limo with his bow tie off and collar unbuttoned in true dishevelled playboy fashion.

Dominic in new T-shirts

2009-01-22T11:59:00.001-08:00

Since his Granny sent him a bunch of new T-shirts, we decided to have a bit of a photo shoot this morning. This of course meant running around after him with a camera and having to either hold him or wait for the cat to distract him for long enough to stay still for a photo.

Dom wears his neat shark T-shirt. It will go well with his shark bike helmet.

Posing with Dad. Observe the broad, muscular shoulders that have developed from lots of family exercise recently. His dad doesn't look too bad either :-)

Dom opted for a lying down picture here. Not good for showing off the T-shirt but still cute.

Wearing the cool Rhino T-shirt.

Modelling is thirsty work.

Haircut

2009-01-16T14:57:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we gave Dominic his first haircut :-)

Before:

After:

Bike seat for Dominic!

2009-01-10T18:18:00.000-08:00

We have now have a cool wee baby seat on the back of my bike for Dominic! Yay!

Matt took Dom for a short test ride today but hopefully the sunny weather will return and we can go for lots of longer bike rides as a family.

It was hard to get photos where Dominic wasn't looking down staring at the back wheel in fascination.

His bike helmet has cool sharks on it. I wish I could get one like it in adult size.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T20:05:00.000-08:00

One of Dom's Xmas pressies was a swing. He loves it and giggles almost continually when he's in it.

January 1 has been a lovely sunny, lazy day. We have played with Dom, went for a walk to the park and fed the ducks, and Matt and I both did further exercise as well (which led to us being so hungry that we had a very early dinner). A good day to start the year with on the whole.

We watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night. It is a good romantic comedy - manages to be both funny and sweet at times, and I tend to find most most romantic comedies I've watched recently fail on either the 'romantic' or the 'comedy' bit or sometimes both. I largely wanted to see it because it had Veronica Mars in it but I would really recommend it for Russel Brand's character and the awesome (but way too brief in my opinion) scene of the Muppet Dracula musical. I wish they had made the whole musical - Muppets + Dracula + Musical (or 'Song play') = awesome.

Summer holidays!

2008-12-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

Hurrah for warm weather and holiday fun. Thankfully Dom seems to be back to his full exceedingly cute, bouncy, mischief-making self after a couple of grisly days on Xmas and Boxing day.

Here are some photos of him playing with some of his Xmas toys yesterday.

Everyone wants a foam morning star to bash their enemies.

Dom's activity table was one of his presents that didn't even get to the wrapping paper stage. We wanted to put it together to check it out in advance and then he liked it too much to take it off him.

Today he managed to nick a near empty bottle of Matt's after-shaving aloe vera balm and gleefully carried it around before undoing the lid and squirting some of it on his chest. He now has a nice manly smell. I guess he considered that at one year old he is too sophisicated to go around smelling of baby lotion.

Here are some photos of him today wearing one of his birthday pressie tops.

He was a bit surprised when his reading was rudely interrupted by photo taking, but I really like the strange lean and slightly startled expression. This may lead to more surprise ambush photography from his mum...

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

Alas I got some horrible vomiting bug on Christmas eve so yesterday was a bit rough and Dominic is starting the noble tradition of waking up nice and early (5.30am!) on Christmas morning.

Only one thing can renew my weary Xmas spirit in these circumstances...

Awesome Christmas Video

Using his lion walker

2008-12-21T22:28:00.000-08:00

The chubby diet

2008-12-18T21:45:00.001-08:00

Dominic lost a bit of weight during his stay in hospital so we have now embarked on operation fattening up baby. This largely consists of giving him high-calorie snacks between meals. We have to stick a 'Zip and Mac' or Grover DVD on to get him to stay still long enough for a quick snack on the couch.

Chippies... om nom nom...

Chippies help to put the 'potato' in 'couch potato'.

Ice cream always tastes best from a cone...

...and it makes it easier to smear the ice cream all over your face.

Home again... again.

2008-12-16T19:13:00.001-08:00

I'm still too traumatised by our harrowing week of Dom's operation and the panicked rush back into hospital yesterday to really go into any description of events. I'm sure Matt will cover it on his blog if he hasn't already.

The important thing is that Dom is now back home and is decidely more perky than he has been for some time. Seeing him miserable and unable to smile or laugh was truly heartbreaking. It is impossible to express adequately how good it is to have a baby that is crawling around again and back to his playful ways.

He has been romping around most of the afternoon reading, playing hide and seek, dropping random objects in the bathtub and watching his Grover DVD. He has even guzzled some toast as well. Hurrah!

As you can see from the photos, he doesn't look like a baby that was only discharged from hospital this morning.

Hanging out with Dad and a remote control.

After reading lots of picture books, he decided to steal Mum's book and give it a go.

One year old today!

2008-12-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it! Dominic is 1 year year old already! It has definitely been the fastest, busiest, most exhausting, and best year of my life.

Celebrations are a little dampened by the rain (we had been planning for romping around down at the beach today) and going into hospital for his operation tomorrow. He has had three days in a row of birthday parties - although yesterday afternoon was Grace's birthday party not his, he didn't seem to realise that. He now gets all excited any time he sees a cake and people start singing happy birthday.

I should finish packing today but Dom is keen for more fun. It's not hard to guess what I'll end up doing given a choice between chores and playing with the baby...

What birthday fun can we get up to on a rainy day I wonder?

When there's a party at the end of it, even car rides are fun!

Ice cream birthday cake! So delicious he had to try to grab it straight away.

Monkey cake! Monkey cupcakes as well!

2008-12-05T21:44:00.001-08:00

Om nom nom!

Birthday Preparations

2008-11-18T20:48:00.000-08:00

Dominic has already begun the most important part of preparing for any birthday - making the difficult decision of what cake you want.

Fortunately, birthday cake recipe books have many colourful pictures of delicious and tempting cakes so the time spent carefully selecting a cake is enjoyable.

For some time the cat cake looked like it was the favourite but now I'm not sure. He really likes monkeys but alas there is no monkey cake in either book I have. I may have to try to find a monkey cake on the internet to copy...

Overdue 11 month photos

2008-11-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted some Dom pics, so here goes:

On Dom's 11 month birthday, he got to go to Whitcoulls and select some good pressies. (OK, his dad chose the book* but he grabbed the mushabelly monkey). He is very attached to his soft mushabelly monkey and giggles excitedly when it ooks at him.

I attempted to take several size comparison photos but Dom took off. I thought that I could at least get a sitting one if I let him pose with his monkey pal...

... but one blurry photo later, he abandoned the photo shoot and took off with the monkey.

He made a speedy getaway upstairs to the kitchen, but like a true action hero he made sure his pal went with him all the way. "No monkeys left behind."

* The book is the excellent 'the monster at the end of the book' story which is narrated by Grover and Matt says it was one of his favourite books as a kid. It is a truly awesome book and has a cool animated DVD of Grover reading the story as well. Sigh, I love Grover.

Dominic's botany lesson 1: Roses

2008-10-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

Matt brought me home a red rose today at lunchtime so naturally Dominic had to investigate this strange new plant that came into his surroundings.

Hence today's blog post is a lesson on botany proudly brought to you by Dominic.

Dominic's Botany Investigation: Rose

Aim: To discover what, if any, uses a rose has.

Hypothesis: Roses can be used for food or as a rudimentary toy. Why else would Dad bring anything else home for Mum?

Methodology: I shall perform a series of tests in which I attempt to play the rose in a number of increasingly destructive ways.

Results:

Chew test - Rose lacked sufficent firmness to be a successful chew toy. Also not particularly tasty.

Bash test: Waved rose around and performed some impressive fencing manoeuvres. Rose lacked weight to be used as an effective weapon.

Flute test: Tried blowing on the rose but no sound resulted.

Durability test: Hit rose with small yellow plastic block. Some leaves and petals became detached during process.

Conclusion: Roses are not useful as either food or toys. Obviously worthless.

Luckily I discovered for Mum that the rose was not a useful toy or a delicious snack.

Oh wait, you don't mean you wanted the rose left intact, do you?

Apparently the gym is a good place to go to meet ladies...

2008-10-19T19:42:00.001-07:00

So Dominic made some new friends at the gym today. From the second I let him out of the stroller for a crawl around, he sped over to a couple of girls about 3 or 4 years old who were colouring in. Before I even got over there, he was in the middle of everything and they were giving him his own felts and a picture to draw on. Having visions of a felt covered baby or Dom chomping on potentially toxic ink, I said that I'd move Dominic away because I didn't want him to ruin their drawings.

Of course Dominic was pretty determined and went straight back to them first chance he got. I chased after him and then I got the preschool equivalent of the Spanish inquistion. What was my baby's name? How old was he? How old was I? (and when they heard the answer, they gasped and exclaimed that 'that's old!') Did Dominic have any brothers and sisters? How old was he when got his teeth etc?

They then fussed over Dominic while he grinned and shouted excitedly waving his arms with all the attention.

About ten minutes later when I was about to leave, one of the girls ran over with a drawing to give to Dominic as a 'valentine'? Valentine's drawings? In November? Should I be worried about Dom getting embroiled in pre-school romances already?

As you can see from the photos, Dominic is pretty chuffed with his Valentine's drawing.

End of the holidays

2008-10-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

The holidays were much fun but alas have come to an end again. Dominic did get to bask in the sunshine in the backyard yesterday. Hopefully there will be more good weather days coming. It feels like it should be summer already.

Crawling around on the grass is fun.

But then he spots the paparazzi...

...and tries to grab the camera. (At least he doesn't smash cameras or assault the photographers like other celebrities).

Hurricane Dominic Strikes!

2008-10-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

Dominic's appliation to join the Evil League of Evil is now online :-)

The Hurricane

2008-10-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Dominic has now had his first starring role in his short film 'The Hurricane' - an Evil League of Evil application. Here are a few pictures of him in his costume:

Who knows what terrible things will happen when one of most sinister super-villains is sprayed with the Fountain of Youth and transformed into a seemingly cute and innocent baby?

Will he still manage to carry out his plans for world domination over the internet?

Watch out! The Hurricane may be a baby, but he's still ready for action. Evil action, that is.

Hey, even evil super-villains need to snack, OK?

When writing goes bad...

2008-09-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

“So here we are at the mall. Again. I have been having a lot of feelings lately,” the main character remarked in an artlessly unsubtle way to make her appear sympathetic so the target readers would be compelled to relate to her.

She strolled through the thick glass sliding doors of the mall with her friends as they embarked on what seemed to be yet another shopping excursion that was probably slowing down the dramatic tension and should have been omitted or dealt with far more quickly this late on in the book.

“Gee, I have feelings too. It’s so tough to be a teenage girl. We have a lot of feelings and the adults in our lives don’t seem to understand us,” her good-looking and athletic friend agreed as good-looking and athletic people have problems too.

“But feelings are an essential part of life. It would be worse if we didn’t have feelings at all, even if that did mean we wouldn’t have just spent over three chapters angsting about a boy,” said the quirky third friend who only showed up in scenes to say amusing things or to uncharacteristically speak words of wisdom and comfort.

“AAAAARRRGGGHHHHHH,” screamed the author unable to take anymore of her depraved creations’ drivel. “Shut up or I’ll send in a psychopath with a machine gun to spray bullets throughout the whole stupid mall so that you finally stop your ceaseless whinging!”

“You can’t do that,” the main character pointed out placing one hand on her hip in a cocky show of defiance. “This is meant to be a light teen romantic comedy aimed at young adults. A random act of violence like that would be completely unbelievable in the sugary world we live in.”

“Besides, you still have to get us to the ball,” her best friend piped up. “That’s the climax of the book, right? Without that, there can be no resolution and then ultimately the book would be unsatisfying and without any developed themes.”

“But I’m just so sick of your constant blabbing,” the author lamented wondering if this novel was just turning against her as a punishment for reading too many Sweet Valley High books in her youth. “Why don’t you ever just stop talking. I mean I only expected this scene to go for about six hundred words or so but it’s already over that and you haven’t even bought any of your stupid ball dresses yet. Arrgh, and I bet I’m going to have to describe what they look like. That will bloat this chapter out even further!”

“Hey, it’s not our fault you can’t control your own dialogue,” the quirky third friend observed. “I mean, we just wanted to go shopping. No one said you had to come along and describe everything we do and say.”

“Yeah,” agreed the main character. “I have had a pretty hard week thanks to the constant melodramatic and hackneyed action sequences you’ve put me through. Why can’t I just have some fun with my friends without it having to show some insight into my feelings? Why does everything I do have to lead to further character development? Just because you want to write a crummy coming-of-age story?”

“All right, all right,” the author gave in. “You can all totter around being vapid and having fun for a while. I’m off to eat lunch any way. Just don’t leave the mall or realise anything too significant while I’m gone.”

“Excellent!” the main character yelled and smiled at her friends. “Now we can swear and talk about non age-appropriate stuff like real teenagers rather than the goody-two-shoes imagining of a dried up English teacher.”

Im not even going to bother punctuating my speech anymore and you cant stop me you lame literary hack said her best friend

“Yeah, enjoy it while it lasts,” retorted the author. “Tomorrow morning it’s back to correct punctuation, proper speech and no expletives. I’ll have you all speaking concisely and showing insight beyond your years, and I’ll move the plot forward as well, just you wait.”

“Who kares wot she finks anywayz?” said the quirky friend deliberately misspelling her speech out of spite. “2day we is goin 2 hav fun.”

“OK, that’s it. I’m out of here,” the author sighed realising that for today the repugnant teenagers that had spawned from her lazy imagination had won the battle.

“Yay!” chorused the three friends as they pulled out their cell phones and began texting each other so they didn’t have to contribute to any further dialogue.

Pulling-up power

2008-09-21T23:48:00.001-07:00

Dominic is now preferring to spend as much of his days as possible on two legs rather than four. He likes to pull up on furniture and be read his books whilst standing up (well, leaning really, he doesn't have the balance to stand on his own).

Of course this also means he can get himself into lots more mischievous fun. Placing cameras or other breakable objects out of reach is now a lot more difficult.

Unfortunately I stupidly left my laptop on the lazyboy chair this morning. He now has a new favourite toy...

And when Mum puts his laptop away, he has to then help himself to some more conventional baby toys from his toy box. My dreams of a tidy floor where only a couple of toys are out at a time are pretty much over now.

The joys of blowdrying

2008-09-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

Dominic demonstrates his cool punk hairdo that can only be achieved with a good blast from a hairdryer. Of course there is nothing Dominic likes better than a good hairdrying after his shower or bath.

A profile to show off the mohawk.

With a rebel yell, he cried more, more, more.

Some 9 month photos

2008-09-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

I took some photos of Dominic on his 9 month birthday as I was unaware that Matt had already taken the traditional monster/Dom line-up for size comparison photo. It turns out the process is slightly more tricky than it used to be.

Phase 1 - Dominic lies next to monster where you placed him and figures out what you're trying to do. Duration: approx. 3 seconds.

Phase 2 - Dominic rolls onto his side to grab monster. Duration: 5-6 seconds.

Phase 3 - Photo shoot is turned into a game of monster peekaboo. Duration: many minutes of peekaboo giggly fun.

So then I decided to try to get a picture of him reading his 'That's not my monkey' book. He likes it when you make the loud 'ook, ook' noise for the ticklish monkey. However, cameras are distracting and I only got one shot before he grabbed the camera.

Also we got a cool new baby backpack for carrying him around in as he has outgrown his frontpack. Dominic really seemed to like it if you bounce around or run with hm in the backpack, and he is learning to kick his heels around to encourage you to go faster like a good little horserider. As long as we don't get him any spurs, it should be fine.

Dom's new robe

2008-09-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

Dominic has a nice new warm robe with a cute hood. It's hard to say whether it makes him most resemble Hugh Hefner, a little green Jawa or a member of a cult of some weird dinosaur worshippers. You decide...

Dominic Photos

2008-09-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Dominic now likes pulling up on all sorts of things. He seems particularly fascinated with the laundry basket. How long until I can train him to hang out the washing for me?

His top three teeth are getting bigger every day. They are still quite spaced out though as they aren't all the way down yet. It gives him quite a Gollum look when he grins or opens in mouth widely.

(Gollum not Dominic demonstrates the 'Ouch, we hates teething' look.)

I tried to take a photo of Dominic with his mouth open but he saw the camera and lunged at it to have a chomp. Here is the resulting picture:

Yowsers!

2008-08-23T23:07:00.000-07:00

It has been a difficult weekend for Dominic and his concerned parents. He has been the grumpiest I think I have ever seen him and it has been wreaking havoc with his sleeps (and ours by extension).

We figured it was teething as his top gums have been swollen and sore for a little while now but when the baby starts crying suddenly for no apparent reason, you start to get worried. Does he have a temperature? Why is he wriggling so much whe we try to take his temperature? Is he in some sort of horrendous pain? Is something dreadfully wrong with him?

However, before we had him carried off in the ambulance, we discovered the culprit. The corners of three teeth, all top ones, had all pushed their way through his gums today. Ouch! The triple teething pain of doom.

Interestingly enough we discovered one treatment more soothing than having teething gel and probably about as effective as pamol. Chomping a frozen pear ice cube and watching Magnum PI.

So for one contented hour he sat on me watching the imfamous moustache-toting, hawaiian-shirt wearing hero track down a transvestite* MI6 agent turned rogue assassin disguised as a nun trying to take out a head of state. Man, that show really is as awesome as I remember it. I loved the subplot about Magnum trying to beat Higgin's security system in the wine cellar to pinch an expensive bottle of wine or two. Higgins has alarms and tear gas in his wine cellar - awesome.

* Apparently being a British intelligence field agent who is really skilled at female impersonation can lead to you becoming too into wearing dresses and ensuing sex scandals. Once you're fired, what else are you going to do but become a hired killer?

Photo time!

A close up of Dominic's gums to show the terrifying top chompers of doom.

One of these photos is of Dominic, the other is of Tom Selleck. But which is which?

When your daddy dresses you funny...

2008-08-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

OK, so Matt has been pretty sick but still I felt compelled to record what happens when a tired father is tasked with dressing his child.

As you can see in the photo above a warm romper was put on top of the PJs Dom had been snoozing in. This would be fine except that the dino PJ pants are clearly sticking out from the legs of the romper. To add further insult to this fashion injury, his socks were mismatching.

Of course, Dom wasn't exactly upset about this. He happily posed for some photos and assured me it was fine.

As he promptly demonstrated he could easily remove his socks for a chew any way. A fashion choice or just an excuse to chomp on clothing?

A trip to the library

2008-08-06T11:26:00.001-07:00

On Saturday morning (yes, it has taken me a long time to blog about it :-)) we went to the local library and Dominic joined up. He found the process quite exciting and enjoyed the shouting at the books*. We had a long meander around around the childrens/young adult section and I found more books that I wanted to read there than I had in the adult section.

It was pleasant how many former students (and current ones in Matt's case) we bumped into at the library on a Saturday morning, and there was a really cute boy who was probably about 6 or 7 in front of us at the issues desk who was really eager and enthusiastic about his books. It gives an English teacher hope for the future. :-)

As well as returning home with a bundle of books and kids CDs, Dominic also got to play with his new beloved library card.

He happily discovered that his library card was very chewable.

And he was pretty impressed with having it on a cool lanyard to wear round his neck.

* Well, maybe it was the people around as well but he got really hyper wriggly and shouty. Amazingly enough no librarians from the 1950s appeared from around bookshelves wearing stern expressions, buns and cardigans to 'shhhh' him.

It's literally a metaphor!

2008-08-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

First off language rant. What is it with NZ TV presenters and their appalling use of language? I can see that unscripted, improvised speech is not always going to be perfect but when it comes to smug, pre-recorded voice-overs you expect a bit better. Surely a bit of flair with language, or at the very least technical accuracy, would not to be too much to ask for.

Case in point. The Big Stuff. Now I haven't really watched anything more than the beginning or final 5 minutes of this show but the gist of it seems to be sorting out the junk that people have in their homes and trying to make them be tidy. The hosts appear to be very pleased with themselves and of the belief that their victims, I mean the lucky recipents of the help, aren't merely messy, but that this is symptomatic of larger deep-seated relationship or personal issues. If you have too much junk in your house you must have trust issues or insecurities. A scene with people crying in a garage confessing some fear or inner self-loathing is usually cut to at some point.

But what really bugged me was the all too common oxymoron of using literally as in intensifier in a metaphor.

"Their house is now literally buried under a mountain of toys, books and furniture."

This voiceover was over the top of an exterior shot of said house with no mountain on top of it. In fact there were no toys or books covering even an inch of the roof, no sofas hanging off the guttering. The house looked decidedly unburied. Literally.

Figuratively, I can understand what she was trying to say. The house was so cluttered that it was difficult to live in. Buried is commonly used as a metaphor for hidden beneath; mountain is a common hyperbole for 'lots of'. The use of the two together is a standard cliche. Buried under a mountain of homework/laundry/bad reality TV etc.

I guess what really jabs its jagged fingernail at me is that the annoying incorrect insertion of 'literally' into a cliched metaphor is somehow meant to add intensity to the expression. It really is a bad and messy house. See, I used a metaphor *and literally* to convey just how bad it is.

This is really just laziness. If you want to convey intensity in figurative language, be creative. Metaphors or similes are most powerful when they create a vivid or lasting image in one's mind. They also have a rich ability to be strongly emotive based on the feeling associated with the image you use for comparison.

Consider:
"She literally ate like a pig." This insertion of literally into a fairly cliched simile is not only technically inaccurate (unless the person in question had a pig's mouth, snout and was eating slops from a trough), it is also boring and vague about which particular pig-like quality it is describing.

"She ate with the ravenous hunger of a pack of starved wolves who had unexpectedly stumbled upon an all-you-can-eat sheep smorgasboard." This would convey that the person was greedy and ate a large quantity of food in a short amount of time.

"She snorted up her food like a toothless camel sucking on its own cud." This would convey a sense that the eater was particularly noisy.

NZ used to have a history of using colourful and colloquial imagery. But recently, if TV can be used as a gauge of language we seem to have fallen into the depressed era of the cliche and the incomplete simile.

I actually have mixed feelings towards the incomplete similes. Partly I think it is a cute kiwi expression and in some contexts 'sweet as', 'beached as' etc can convey more than the completed similes might be able to. However, I do also worry that it could be symptomatic that youngsters are now lacking enough language resources to be able to think of an appropriate object of comparison to allow them to complete the simile. I guess that is also my main issue with too much swearing. People can become too reliant on using expletives to mean anything and everything, and they fail to allow many other words to enter their speech.

I was going to finish my rant with praise for The Lost Room, an excellent and compelling TV show, and the rather charming Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang but Matt bet me to it.

Ah well, here are some photos of Dominic instead. Sit back, relax and enjoy the following series of photos in which Dominic considers a piece of bread and then eats it. He eats like a baby. Literally.

Dinner with Dom

2008-07-25T23:00:00.001-07:00

The following is an insightful and thorough commentary on important social issues. Nah, of course not. It's a bunch of photos of Dominic! Today's theme is Dominic in the high chair during dinnertime.

First Dominic demonstrates his mastery of the cow cup. The boy loves to drink... water that is.

After consuming a portion of vege mash, a refined gentleman always uses his napkin delicately. Or sometimes he just chews and sucks his bib.

Term 3 starts...

2008-07-21T00:19:00.000-07:00

Holidays are now over and Matt went back to work today. I have tentatively made a bunch of daily rules for myself for this term - largely they consist of making myself exercise and write everyday as well as not eating any post-dinner snacks* and so far so good. It seems the no post-dinner snacking is going to be the hard bit because it's not that long after dinner and imaginary foods are already calling to me.

Dom and I also invented a new game today. It is an action movie inspired (as was the Mission Impossible game) rather unimaginatively called 'Indiana Jones game'. It requires a swiss ball, an enthusiastic baby and more arm strength than I have if you want to play it as often as Dominic does. It involves holding the baby just above the floor infront of the swiss ball and pushing the ball so that it rolls after him. You have to rush the baby along as he giggles hysterically about being chased by a giant ball. When you reach the other side of the room, you spin the baby around to face the swiss ball and he kicks out excitedly trying to kick the ball**.

This game soon developed into another version where I sat on the couch holding Dominic letting him kick or push the swiss ball and then laugh excitedly as it rolled away and then back to him. Who knew swiss balls are basically boomerangs and always roll back in the direction they were pushed?

* Fruit doesn't count because it is not real food in the naughty delicious way that chocolate/cookie are food. It's food that you can feel virtuous about eating so it doesn't count.

** A little known deleted scene from the movie is when Indy turns around to confront the rolling big rock in the tunnel, giggles like an infant and kicks his wriggly legs at the ball. Honest.

I shall have to get Matt to take a photo of Dominic playing with the swiss ball. In the meantime, here's a random Dom photo:

Lots of photos

2008-07-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

So on our anniversary Matt took a bunch of family portraits as we realised that we don't have many photos of all three of us. We tried using the timer function but actually got some nicer closer picture with Matt just holding the camera out pointed at us and clicking away. I like this one because Dom is actually facing the camera.

Here's another photo of Dominic chomping away on one of his toys. We suspect more teeth are on the way as he spends a lot of time chewing these days and gets really wriggly and excited with he sees us holding the tube of Bonjela.

Whilst we were wrapping up a pressie Dom spotted the long brown cardboard tube from inside the wrapping paper. Guess what happened next?