Let her eat cake

Last week the Minx was caught eating blueberries off a cake. I had had a burst of energy and had made a pear and blueberry cake (or tart I guess) and the K-man had left it on the dining room table while he prepared dinner. He looked up and there was the Minx, standing next to the cake, having taken a bite out of it, with a blueberry hanging out of her mouth. Fortunately for her we found it so amusing we couldn't discipline her (which is quite impossible to do anyway). We just laughed. And it was only a small bite.

Less amusing was the afternoon I sat down on the lounge to feed Chet and looked over to the coffee table to see a small pellety cat poo nestling next to the TV guide. The Minx has a problem with follow-through when using her kitty litter and on occasion sprints off with the final product still hanging out of her bum. Charming I know. Fortunately it doesn't happen very often. All I can think is that perhaps she is preparing me for toilet training.

She's a pusskin

I haven't written about the much loved fourth member of the household - our lovely little black and moggy, Minx. Not a day goes by when we don't remark: "she's a pusskin" or "that Minx". And, she really is a Minx. We think she has a lot of personality, although she tends to keep it (and herself) hidden when there are visitors. She is a bit hopeless - she doesn't realise that she can go to the toilet outside and comes rushing in to use the kitty litter, she hasn't grasped the rudimentary laws of physics and as a result cannot open a door by hooking her paw around it and pulling it towards her (her technique is to fling herself on the floor in front of the door, often hitting her head on the floor in the process), and she has a tendency to play with her food, especially chicken which she likes to flick around the dining room. She is our first baby, we got her as a kitten from the Cat Protection Society the day after Kevin Rudd was elected in November 2007. She ended up getting very sick with cat flu in the first week we had her and we seriously thought she was going to die. We had grave reservations about our ability to look after a baby if we couldn't even look after a kitten for a week. Fortunately she pulled through although she often has sneezing fits and I think is a little bit stunted from being so sick when she was so young.

Minx wasn't too keen on Chet's arrival - every time I came home with him in the capsule she would look at me as if to say: "you brought him back again" but now she likes him although she does run away if he gets a bit too boisterous. Chet on the other hand, loves her and gets very excited whenever he see her - kicking his legs furiously and grinning madly. Minx only jumped in his cot once and that was in a bid to get me out of bed to feed her one weekend when the K-man was away. Quite clever really, she knew that the best way to get my attention was to do something to Chet and jumping in the cot was quite inspired as I got out of bed pretty quick smart to get her out of there. She's a pusskin ...

The Slap

My concentration seems to have improved and I have finally managed to do some reading. In the past couple of weeks have read both The Slap and Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas. It was interesting to read his first and latest novels in this way and to compare the differences between them. Loaded was a Ulysses-esque day and night in the life of a young gay-ish Greek boy from Melbourne. It was an angry, uncompromising drug fueled sex romp through the homes and streets and clubs of early 90s inner city Melbourne. I liked it and am not sure why I didn't read it when it first came out. I could certainly relate to a lot of it, although my early 90s experience was in Brisbane. The Slap on the other hand was more assured, more adult, not so angry but equally uncompromising in its' own way. The sex and drugs are both still there and I was pleased to see the teenage characters going to parties and the Big Day Out and getting wasted just as the young and the not so young are wont to do.

The premise was interesting - the accounts of the lives of eight people who were present at a bbq where an angry man slaps a badly behaved 3 year old child who is not his own. The ruminations on marriage and family and parenting really spoke to me and certainly as a new parent it provided a lot to think about. Some critics have mentioned that the characters are not terribly likeable but I think that misses the point and that most of us wouldn't come across as terribly likeable if all of our inner thoughts were revealed in the way that Tsiolkas reveals the thoughts of these characters. I thought it was pretty true to life. I liked the structure although I wanted to read more about Gary, the alcoholic father of Hugo, the boy who was slapped. And, for a sleep deprived mama it was a pretty easy quick read. I bought it on Thursday and finished it on Saturday night, happy to return to my old habit of gorging on a book, reading it at every spare moment until it is finished. And I heard on the news yesterday that Tsiolkas won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Slap - well deserved I reckon.

Not drowning waving

Chet's latest accomplishment is waving, manically, to everything in sight. In the last couple of days I have come across him waving to the fridge, the lounge, the wall and the light fittings. He does on occasion also wave to animate objects such as the cat or the K-man or me but it seems to be a wave of hello, I am here, rather than a goodbye wave which is the more traditional wave. Sometimes it is as though he is waving to an imaginary legion of adoring fans - perhaps it is a nod to the inner performer AKA the K-man, or perhaps he just likes waving.

The waving comes after what feels like months of concentrated hand watching. Chet would be in the middle of something when he would suddenly stop and stare, transfixed at his hands, waving them around in wonder like a microdot casualty from the 80s. It is a sight to behold and I am pretty sure it is one of the reasons he wakes up at night - just so he can look at his hands. But for now waving takes priority.

Other newish skills including getting around the lounge room floor in a kind of commando roll; lying on his back and kicking vigorously whilst holding a maraca and grinning manically; and opening his mouth obediently while waiting for one of us to place a spoonful of food in it. He also now has 5 teeth - two in the middle on the top and two in the middle on the bottom and one eye tooth on the top - with another on its' way through. He remains a happy smiley soul and is more and more fun to spend time with. I truly can't complain.

More what do you do all day ...

Just saw this and thought it apt, and interesting.

TELL ME ABOUT IT: Why don't friends with kids have time

I guess a lot of people can relate. Makes me realise how much life has changed, and will continue to change. We went to the park yesterday, all three of us and the K-man, whilst observing several little boys tear about the place, commented that Chet is quite easy to deal with at the moment, which is true. He can't quite crawl yet so is still pretty portable and easy to manage. I just know that once he gets going he will be unstoppable, not unlike my brother who was doing things like crashing my mother's car aged 3 - oh the things I have to look forward to.