Autumn

 
Baby Bear testing out his new shoes.
Little Princess, Shmoo's tamed feral.

The veggie patch is growing well. Rocket, parsley, chives, onion, kale, beetroot, lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage and silverbeet. The OH has surrounded the boxes with seaweed to help keep the snails and slugs away. The boys help to water and weed. They've also planted some garlic.

  
Grasshopper.
Big brother, baby brother. 

Sulphur Creek, Tasmania

ANZAC Park, Ulverstone

  

Stopped by a HeartKids get together... A gorgeous, sunny autumn afternoon, perfect for a spot of climbing and seagull chasing. Baby Bear was so excited to see the gulls, pointing and saying "Duh, duh," thinking they were ducks.

Seeing him running around so confidently did make me realise that he's been walking for about 2.5 months now. Definitely time for his first pair of shoes!

Grading

Shmoo had a grading recently... 2nd stripe on his yellow belt!

Happy Easter

Snuggled up in bed with Baby Bear, listening to the excitement of the three big boys as they hunt down all the choccies the Easter Bunny left for them. Love hearing the wonder and joy in their voices.

And I hope they clean up the little piles of jelly beans that the Easter Bunny deposited too...

Trees

In between project excavate-the-dino-tooth-from-the-driveway and swinging from the clothes line, the boys decided to make 'trees' to prop up in front of the kitchen window. While they were out at their preforming arts lessons, I snuck out and tied glow sticks to their decorations to surprise them when they returned in the dark.

Catch Up - Pigs, a Birthday, Teeth and More

  

 

We've visited Mount Gnomon Farm for their Rare Day Out. In between the rain, wind and hail we enjoyed some delish food and took a tour of the farm, seeing the Wessex Saddleback pigs and Belted Galloway cattle.

We celebrated Loo Bear's 7th birthday with our traditional jelly cups and bubble bath. This year Loo requested a chocolate cheesecake with berries on top so I had fun making and decorating a simple but very yummy Toblerone cheesecake.

The Burnie Arts & Function Centre hosted the Da Vinci Machines exhibition. We all thoroughly enjoyed the fascinating and hands-on displays, as well as the more in-depth explanations that one of the workers gave us. We also took the opportunity to turn it into as mini study on Leonardo Da Vinci.

Last year, when Baby Bear and I were at the hospital in Melbourne, the OH took the other 3 boys to the Devonport community gardens. He discovered that we were eligible for the Youth & Family Focus Inc.'s Veggie Patch Project, so he signed us up. Recently the team came out and installed 2 awesome raised garden beds as well as a compost bin.

We've discovered samphire at a local beach, so have gone foraging while collecting seaweed for the garden. Samphire has the saltiness of olives with a nice freshness and crunch. We ate it after blanching and it would go well in salads.

Meeting lovely new people while out and about...

 

After years of watching our tooth fairy visit his older brother, Loo Bear finally got his first wobbly teeth. One fell out recently and we popped it and a note into a 'Tooth Jar'. Bramble Ravenwing, our boy-tooth-fairy, exchanged the tooth for a letter and a dinosaur candle (he doesn't do money).

And speaking of teeth, we've started using xylitol. I dissolve it in water (about 1.5g of xylitol per 20ml dose) to make a mouth rinse that we use after eating. I chose a mouth rinse over substituting it into our diets so that we don't have to worry about how much we're consuming and possible side effects. We also have some Epic gum and mints that we use, mostly for when we're out and about. The kids love the fresh fruit 'mints' as they're not actually minty - they have a cool, tangy, fruity flavour. The OH and I like the spearmint gum. We are occasionally using the xylitol toothpaste too but I'm currently researching making my own toothpaste with a betonite clay, bicarb soda, coconut oil and xylitol base.

Scott Ludlam's Speech to Tony Abbott

"...For anyone listening in from outside this almost empty Senate chamber, the truth is that Prime Minister Tony Abbott and this benighted attempt at a government are a temporary phenomenon. They will pass, and we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture. 

Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin, greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century...

Prime Minister, you are welcome to take your heartless racist exploitation of people's fears and ram it as far from Western Australia as your taxpayer funded travel entitlements can take you..."

=D>  Well said, Senator Ludlam.

Scott Morrison's Operation Sovereign Murders

That's quite some Freudian slip.

Life is a Blur

These tiny feet are hardly ever still anymore. Baby Bear started walking 3 weeks ago, a week after his first birthday... my earliest walker.

There's no stopping him now. He's still tiny (on the 3rd percentile line of the growth charts) but he's happy, healthy, growing, climbing higher every day, learning new things all the time, and just as gorgeous as ever.