Tropically Twisted

Dear Mum,

Snuggles decided that throughout the middle of last night was a good time to a) dig noisily in his litter tray, b) scratch at the furniture, and finally, but most noisily c) stand at the laundry room glass door and yowl in a terrifying manner at a big fluffy white cat standing outside the door.

This meant that none of us got a good nights rest, especially Deanne who had trouble getting back to sleep afterwards. So this morning we were all a little on the grumpy side – with The Snugs! However we managed to make it out of bed and got dressed, etc. Just a little on the late side compared to normal.

After Dee had gone to work Josh and I read for a while, then played for a bit before having a snack. After he had finished he decided it was a good time to play with the table mats in the dining room, first of all turning them into a bus shelter, with three small ones for the walls and a big one for the roof and floor, then he realised that the two big ones looked a bit like a laptop and so he did some typing. When I asked him what he was writing he told me that he was “sending some pictures to Grandma”, so I thought I’d take a photo.

Once shoes were on we went to the Tropical Twist play centre again, as Joshua really wanted to, we ran around a lot! On the way home we stopped into Nana’s house to pick up their mail, went to the shops after that and I bought some Diabetes stuff, after which is was home for lunch, then a nap for the boy.

Almost two hours later he got up again. We went outside and played with the balls for a while but then I had to come in and make tea, but Josh stayed outside for a bit and kept throwing and kicking.

Deanne got home at about half five and we ate slice, mash and veg for tea. When we’d finished Deanne called her Mum so Joshua could thank her for the t-shirt she sent him, then Joshua called Donna to say thank you for a hologramatic dinosaur table mat she sent him the other day. He’s not brilliant on the phone but getting better, he does however still finish what he’s saying (quickly) then just hands the phone back to whoever is nearest to him. Deanne is shopping at the moment but shouldn’t be too much longer.

Tomorrow he’s at daycare, I received my contract from the probable new boss today so I need to check that out and decide what to do. I’ll probably also (finally) start on Rich’s next bit of work.

Love

Dan

Joshua, Sending A Picture To Grandma

Joshy/Mummy/Daddy Day

Dear Mum,

While Julie is away Deanne has booked Wednesdays off, for the days that Josh is at home rather than at school. It therefore felt a bit like a Saturday today because until I get a contract through and/or hear back from the University I’m still at home.

We headed out to the Tropical Twist play centre this morning and had an hour or two there, while Josh got out a bit of his pent up energy. He enjoyed himself and Dee and I chatted about various stuff, it was really nice. At one point Joshua was playing with one of the balls which they leave laying about there, he decided to shoot some hoops with it. I was more than a little surprised when he scored, twice. The picture is of him just about to get the ball through the basket for the second time!!!

Josh and I had Julie’s homemade pasties at lunch time, Dee had cheese on bread machine produced toast. In the afternoon Deanne and Josh watched a movie while I did some work on the school uniform shop accounts, to try and make sense and see any patterns in the data. The main reason I did this was because the P&C meeting was on tonight so I went along to that after tea, which was a cheesy tomato pasta that Dee made and was very nice.

It was a good meeting and I actually had to talk a bit about the school website that I’ve been doing some work on. I’ll show you it when it’s finished and published. It’s nice to be part of the meetings and to feel like I’m adding something with the odd comment or two I make. I’m also learning a lot more about Australia by taking part in them.

Tomorrow it’s just Joshy and me again, he has made me aware that he’d like to go back to the same play centre we were at today, which is okay because Julie bought a three month pass a while back and we can use it while she’s away.

Love

Dan

Hoop-la

What A Day

Dear Mum,

It really is like buses! Got up this morning and fed and watered Joshua, Deanne went off to work and Joshy got dressed while I was showering. When I finished i came back to find him in the sitting room as per the picture. I was very impressed.

I dropped Josh off, got home and finished a job application to work for the government, not sure if I’m suitable but there’s no harm in trying. I had lunch and then got dressed up and headed out for another job interview. This one went very well, it’s for one of the Universities and is as a Service Improvement Coordinator. I did most of the talking and I felt pretty good afterwards, all I can do now is wait to hear back.

So in a couple of days I have gone from having no job to having one definite offer and one very positive interview. I also got a call just before I was leaving from another recruiter looking to fill a couple of positions for a resources (mining) company, which also sounds pretty similar to what I’ve done before.

Meanwhile Deanne also had an interview today, I’ll let her tell you about that next time we speak. I think it went okay, but as with mine you never really know until they call you up and offer you a job!?

Dee picked the boy up this afternoon and I made tea when I got back from my interview, just slice and mash. While he was finishing tea I was making up some poems about food and animals but I couldn’t find an animal to rhyme with corn. Joshua, without a pause said “prawn”. Both Deanne and I were very impressed. Sadly I can’t actually remember the rhyme, but his speed of thought was quite amazing.

Gotta go to bed now, we’re all a bit tired.

Love

Dan

Joshua Reading

 

Nearly Two Jobs Ladle

Dear Mum,

What a day! It started off like a normal Monday, we got up, got breakfasted, got showered and dressed and then I took Joshua to school. However then it started to diverge a bit from the run of the mill. I set my sat nav for “work”, got in the car and started the drive.

It took about 25 minutes to get there and was a fairly easy drive, although I’d have had a job without Google’s help. My boss to be, Jason was sitting in his office, which is built on to the side of his house. We chatted for a couple of minutes then he showed me round the office, the store room and the rest of the house. Rather ridiculously the thing which impressed me the most was not the four monitor PC setup, nor the store room full of computer paraphernalia, but the two posters on the laundry wall as we walked through the rest of the house. One was of Audioslave, the other was of the Foo Fighters! Upon questioning he also mentioned Alice in Chains, who are one of my favourite bands.

So, not only does this man also have Type 1 Diabetes, a Hyundai i30 station wagon, a four year old child and is a bit of a computer geek, he also listens to the same music that I do. Apart from his rather more luxurious head of hair we could be twins!

Anyway, we spent the morning chatting about what he does and what he wants to do and what I can do for him and how things work, then finally about money and hours, etc. So the next stage is for him to get a contract of some sort together and send it to me to agree to and sign. Quite exciting.

I left at about half twelve, however I still had an appointment to go see Ian, the recruitment consultant in the city who has been doing such a good job for me. I still have my interview on tomorrow at the University and may as well go and have a go to see what happens, although to be fair I think the job I’ve already been offered is the more interesting and convenient one. But I went along anyway and we had a good chat. It’ll be interesting to see if this other job is anything like I expect, unlike the last one I tried out for at the same Uni’.

After the meeting I had a bit of a walk around the city centre. I found a bookshop which I thought Deanne would be interested in, a music shop selling amazingly cheap CDs and finally a Dymock’s, which is another bookshop. I thought the display on the Terry Pratchett shelf was particularly apt so took a photo, as below.

Bob and Joshua both survived the school pickup and Deanne was home and making tea before I got back. spaghetti with a nice tomato sauce that she made.

Tomorrow is another kindy day, I’m finishing off a job application and hopefully doing something useful with the school uniform shop data that I got hold of last month. I also need to start on the next bit of Rich’s data processing. These jobs appear to be like buses!!!

Love

Dan

The Last Continent

Fairies

Dear Mum,
This morning we got ready early, for a Sunday, and headed to Hoyt’s which is one of the cinema chains over here. Deanne had four tickets to see Tinkerbell and the Pirates, or some such, so we asked Emma if Penny would like to come with us. She said that Lillian (with two Ls) would like to see it too, so the three of them would come.
Penny and Josh ran to get seats first, followed by Dee, me, Lillian then Emma. The film was okay, if you like fairys, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. Probably the best bit was when the pirates appeared and Penny turned to Josh and said “if you get scared of the pirates you can hold my hand.” Aw!
When we got home afterwards Bob came over to get his mower, which he forgot to take last time he came over to get his mower!
Other than those things we didn’t do much more today. Obviously tomorrow is a big day for me, but I’ll let you know how the new job goes when I have a clue myself. I’m heading to work (sounds weird to say that) after dropping the boy off at kindy. Bob is picking him up in the afternoon, then bringing him home. Deanne will get back about half an hour afterwards, hopefully Josh will behave for Bob, and vice versa.
I took the picture while making lunch, not entirely certain what he was doing but he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Love
Dan

My Pledidge!

Dear Mum,

We had a relatively late start this morning, as Deanne is still recovering from her inner ear thing, Joshua is recovering from his first week back at school and I am recovering from…well mainly from a really hectic week with lots of things happening in it.

After we had all breakfasted and got ready we went to the shops. we got out the money you sent us from Xmas, which we are going to keep safe until we’ve decided what to buy and then wrap them and keep whatever we get until December. We also got a present for Alice’s party next week and a few other bits and pieces.

Dee and I had leftover potato bake for lunch, Josh had a ham sandwich. In the a’vo Deanne made a buttercream cake, I put on a loaf of bread to cook, which we’ll use for lunch tomorrow. It was just a plain white one but I chopped up some sundried tomatoes and added them after it had proved. I’ll be really interested to see how it’s turned out as we haven’t tried it yet.

Dee made risotto for tea while Joshua and I played with his Lego. Snuggles actually decided to go out for a while on himself for a bit while we were sat near the back door, which is a bit of a step forwards for him. We’re shutting him out of our room in the daytime so he doesn’t have the option of slouching under our bed the whole day now, it seems to be helping a bit with his agoraphobia.

Josh had made a mess in his room, so when he was getting ready for bedtime I told him to clean up before I’d come back in his room. He did a really good job and I went in and told him so, and that I was really proud of him. He turned to me and said “my plodedge”. I was a bit confused and asked him to repeat what he’d said, this time it was “my pledidge”. I thought for a bit then asked him if what he had meant was “my pleasure” and he confirmed that it was!

We might possibly go see a movie tomorrow as Deanne got free tickets for writing that article for the BuggyBuddies website a while back. Bob is coming over in the afternoon for a while.

Love

Dan

Cake Mix

Holy Job, Batman

Dear Mum,
Great to talk to you today. As you know I now appear to have become the proud owner of a shiny new job! Which is rather exciting. However I’ll wait until after I’ve started on Monday before I write any more on that!
The big day that Joshua and I had yesterday involved a trip to the Rio Tinto Naturescape, then the Synergy playground with the animal sculptures. I’ve chucked a bunch more pictures in the Dropbox, let me know when ToF has downloaded them.
Last night was the writers group meeting. A few new people came along and we all had a good old chat about the writing process, so I got to talk quite a lot about the Snowflake Method that I used to plan my novel.
Today Josh was at daycare, I dropped Deanne off at work afterwards, as she isn’t well enough to drive yet, and then came home and worked on a job application. Which I’m not sure if I’ll finish now, although I probably should as it’s quite an interesting job.
Tomorrow we have to go buy a few things, including s birthday present for Alice, who’s party Josh is going to next weekend. Apart from that, no particular plans.
Although it’s in the Dropbox ones, I’ve put in a photo of the boy from our day out yesterday anyway, ’cause it’s a good picture.
Love
Dan

Bed Time

Dear Mum,
Really busy day, but I’ll tell you tomorrow as I’ve been to the writers group and it’s past my bedtime.
Love
Dan

TV Times

Dear Mum,

I took Josh to school this morning. We played with some plastic building stuff with a few of the other kids in his class and made a very thin tower which was almost as big as me.

Deanne had showered by the time I got home and I spent the morning working, while she sat next to me on the sofa and we watched TV together. She is feeling a bit better and thinks she will go to work tomorrow, although Joshy and I will have to drive her in as she is still taking the anti-dizziness/nausea tablets which can make you sleepy.

I heated up the leftover curry from last night and we had it for lunch, then we headed to Target to do some xmas shopping. Yep, you heard me right. There is a big toy sale on at Target at the moment and both Julie and Olive have given us money to get Josh’s presents for Xmas, so we went along and spent some time looking at and picking things out. This is apparently fairly normal behaviour over here and there were an awful lot of people at the shop picking out yuletide gifts, then laying them over to pick up at some unspecified point in the future.

For your info we have picked him some “bigger boy” Lego from Olive, and ourselves. However we are sticking with our usual principle of relatively non-violent things and non-branded stuff and so have got him a pick up truck and a camper van (a bit like Nana and Poppy Richard’s caravan so he can relate) as well as a water-plane and boat set. They are all from five to eight years old, but by then he is, of course, going to be nearing his next birthday. We also got him three more Dinosaur Train interactive toys…I know, I just said non-branded, but Dinosaur Train is at least educational and is something we know he loves, and hopefully still will in December!

After picking him up we left Deanne doing a bit of stuff on the computer and went to the park so he could have a scoot, as he was a bit overly full of energy. This seemed to help and after having our slice and mash and veg for tea he had some more jelly and ice cream then it was bath time, toothbrush and story time. He got a new library book at school today, about dinosaurs, so he chose that and read it. We were up to the letter Q in his dinosaur A to Z last night (Quetzalcoatlus!) so not a bad place to take a one night break.

The picture is of what Joshua brought home from School today, his cutting and pasting is getting pretty good now.

Tomorrow is going to be the first Joshy/Daddy Thursday for a good while, we might go to Kings Park after we’ve dropped Dee off at work, but it depends a bit on whether Josh is in the mood.

Love

Dan

Farmyard

Television Debut

Dear Mum,

Deanne wasn’t feeling any better today, so after taking Joshua to school and doing some housework I drove her to the doctors. Our new-ish doctor is very good and didn’t take too long to diagnose that the problem is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, mainly in her left ear. In plain English this is a build up of crystals in the ear canal which affects your balance. She was prescribed some pills, which are a bit like travel sickness ones, and signed off work for the rest of this week.

We had lunch when we got back, and then there wasn’t a lot of time before we had to pick Joshua up. When he got home he and I got out his wooden train track and drove some trains around for a while.

Joshy and I had a korma for tea, but Deanne is still feeling a little off so I made her a baked potato with cheese. For pudding Josh and I both had some of the green jelly we made yesterday with vanilla ice cream. Haven’t had it for years and it was lovely.

The picture was from the wall of the kindy this morning, all of the kids had made pigs and sheep, I thought Joshua’s pig was more photogenic than his sheep so you’ve got that today.

Love

Dan

Joshua’s Pig