Typical day with a Piano

So we finally got a piano. I was very sceptical at first, the expense, the size and the fact that no one in the household knows how to use it. My only leap of faith for the present was that I learn how to type, I learned to control all of the fingers of my right and left hand, If I did that, learning to play the piano is just the next logical step in the same direction.

There is the bigger fact that we used educational funds for our children to purchase the piano. The piano is really for them. I look forward to singing their nursery rhymes along with the piano. Then their first lessons. Then hopefully a great skill, personal development and great enjoyment.

So now that we have a piano, how is life different. Actually I think life is different because Sarah has a job. On Thursday's and Friday's the kids are dropped off in creche and Sarah works at the water studies lab. Work is pretty drab, doing experiments and analysis for outside customers but it suits perfectly. It is easy for her to disconnect from the job, she is just down the road so she can go out and feed Matilda, and there are some procedure optimisations in the lab that Sarah already has her eye on.

So the job started a couple of weeks ago and at a similar time so did Sarah's regular washing of dishes after dinner. I usually do not even notice as she collects dishes, washes and rinses, wipes down bench tops, everything is ready for the next day. I swear I have been promoting this kind of order for years and finally I have it, wonderful.

The rest of the day fits around this as only it can. Wednesday night dishes, lights out everyone is in bed. Thursday morning is bike ride for me so alarm at 5:00 am and I am out by 5:30 am. Sarah has the radio come on at 5:45 and by quarter past six the kids are up. Half past Sarah has an alarm to make sure she is up.

I presume that Matilda at this time is like a dream, all smiles, crawling around and happy. Felix no doubt sneaks in a 5 minute whinge about "nana" which he gets but at designated times. Sarah loves feeding Felix from the breast but she can only do so much if he asks non stop, and in such a whinge.

The rest I presume also runs like clock work, creche bags are ready, kids get dressed, breaky and they are at uni by half past seven. Wow this is the Sarah that I used to know. I always knew she needs some time guidance and work is best. She also seems to have found some guidance in being more open in her sexuality.

The day is full of frantic calls from me to see what she is up to unfortunately
they are all futile as her phone has discharged. I get a reminder call at five that it is time to go. I get home at six and see that they are all there, a little bit tired from their days. By now it is usually couch time with a book and imagination is low. I do not even get a chance to get changed and it is time
to put dinner on the table. I feed Matilda and on the side eat a whole half
cantaloupe. Again I over ate for lunch so I am trying to under compensate.

I look at the piano, it says play me now. I can not wait to put my fingers on the keys. Strike down hard and here the sound, then try to play as quietly as I can. "Michael you clean up and I will bath with the kids" OK, I do not mind washing dishes. So I clear the table, try and wipe the food of the table cover
from the last week, give the kids chairs a once over and get started on sweeping the floor. I have not even started with the washing and Sarah is already saying that she is planning on finishing up in the bath. I hurry, it is crucial I do not get distracted. If the kids get out I may need to stop and help Sarah, that could mean not finishing the dishes and getting told off by Sarah tomorrow. It may make her late for work.

I firmly say "No". I keep washing trying to make sure I finish. Some harder oven trays and the electric grill which the dogs have already licked clean. I am done. Sarah and the kids are also out but some how I was not required at the other end of the house. Now for the piano.

I go and play a little. Soon there is Felix looking for someone to play with and Sarah trying to read a book in bed where Tilda is happily crawling around on the bed no where near ready for sleep. I decide that this is ridiculous and invite everyone into the living room. I get back to the piano and everyone else seems satisfied for a while. Felix wants to join me. No he wants to have exclusive access to the piano, typical Felix. I get a dining table chair but he is not impressed. Sarah joins us an tries to teach him chop sticks.

I tell her that in only 3 sessions I am already playing things with both hands. Sarah agrees and tries out some pieces. I encourage her to start at the start of the book. No I tell her. I think this is so easy if you just follow the steps. I start to wonder how far I could have got if I started this as a kid. If only I had the foresight of following steps when I was a kid. Anyway, this allows me to feel like a kid right here right now. I hope I have other child like dreams saved up for future decades.

Sarah gets through a few exercises and invites me to play some more. No she will recite a book about a cat, cousin of hairy McLairy I think. Tilda cannot take it anymore, she is tired, screams, I pick her up, put her in an ergo carrier, start pacing around the dark rooms of the house. I feel sorry for Sarah, she wants to read the story to do the best for the kids, but Tilda's tiredness breaks the family bond, I am distracted.

I am back on the piano. Tilda on my back. Soon Sarah and Felix go to bed, I run through all my pieces again. Good timing. Sarah is in bed before nine again. I thought she should do some programming, I am planning for her to learn Ruby, MySQL and Rails to build a web app to serve as a contacts database for the toy library. It is good she is in bed, tomorrow will work out for her. She runs in the morning, I get the kids ready. Hopefully I will wake first and get some time in on the piano. I have also a bike race to get ready for, clothes, food, not forgetting my helmet.

I like typing on my laptop, now with a new battery. I have it on my lap simply to highlight I have no cords attached, it is battery powered again. The previous
battery had died down to only thirty seconds of charge. The laptop is old but still serves the purpose as a type writer. Type writer, I have one of those, I just need a ribbon, I like typing on it. Ahh but most of all I want to play the piano.

good night.

bla-lu-lu-lu another word

Well this is another word, and an old one. Actually it is a word I taught Felix and probably one of the first non standard words he learned. We were both nude after a bath. I started running around the house making a blu-lu-lu sound with my toung flicking in and out of my mouth. Felix copied. Next day when he saw me naked for bath, he made that same noise. For a few months following he made the same noise and also ran around the house nude after a wash. Matilda was still in utero at that stage.

Well It's monday morning and we have had an eventfull weekend. Felix must have mentioned the blu-lu-lu word for me to have written about it above even though it is not part of his normal vocabulary. We went down to Geelong on Sunday for Sarah to train for the upcomming Mars Ballarat to Barwon Heads challenge. She got into the lake but could not find the channel to lead her to Barwon Heads. She decided that it is time to give up, and give up the whole Mars thing, at least for another year.

I was with the kids in Barwon Heads. We went down to the river to fish. There were plenty of people with lines out but only a couple of gents that seemed to be catching some near size limit whiting. On my surf rod, with felix always wanting to wind it in or through some white bait into the water we had no luck. Well we were lucky to find some bark for Matlida to crawl around on and she did not even get hooked by any hooks that may have been accidently dropped. Felix did some tree climbing and then, as I was about to think about preparing lunch I got the call from Sarah to say that she needs to be picked up.

A drive across the river showed me the surf beach, low tide and a lot of nice sand where I should have been running the dogs. Dogs were at home on this trip. Felix and Matilda both went to sleep. We picked up Sarah from the lake and drove to the Rawdanowicz house. Felix looked out the window and said "big house". I prompted him by saying that Kamil lived here. He followed this with a soft "and Klara too".

This morning Sarah was putting Matlida to sleep for her post morning nap. She seems to have them a couple of hours after waking up. She is a dream to wake up, smiles almost instantly and is happy just to crawl around the bed. The first attempt failed as Matilda crawled happliy out of the bedroom to meet me in the kitchen. For the second attempt I was almost out of the house for work so Felix would need a distraction in "Bob Budowniczy".

We made all the arrangements which included his doll "lala" some nuts, although we stopped on seperate bowls for lala and Felix, they can share.

You me say

Felix is learning language. Mostly English but some Polish words as well. I speak to him in Polish and he understands but usually he picks up the English words first. That is not to say that he picks them up perfectly.

His first sounds I claim to be "gaw" at the 4-5 month mark. His most unforgetable word was "ludulu" and he would "lodl" along for whole sentences. This soon died down as a conversation but became his word for drink/water "ludlu" said in such a fast fashion that both Sarah and my self could not replicate it well. We knew what it meant so we gave him water.

After Ludlu, his next most notable word mix up was "e-ha-ha" said in a cow boy manner to mean exactly that, a horse. I believe this started around Christmas 2005 when we went to Buchan on a day trip from Lake Tyres, sitting in a picnic area, Jane his grandma pointed to some horses in the paddock and "e-ha-ha" was born. Although this is still used in the playfull context, a horse is now a horse and has been for a few months.

In the last few days he has finally got the difference between "you" and "me" sorted out. It was "you want thomas" for I want to play with Thomas the tank engine for months now. In desperate times he would use "you me, you me" can't go too bed hedging your bet both ways.

Tonight he is still saying "ephelant" for elephant and he still uses the outward hand on the mouth as a form of kid sign language.

His most anoying phrase would have to be "look at me mummy" for when he wants to talk to Sarah. I think he picked this up from Sarah when she would say "Felix, look at me when you are talking, please use your words".

I strongly believe in allowing kids to have their little made up words but not confusing them by using them yourself. I have enjoyed each of his mix ups and sure enough, soon enuogh he has grown out of each one of them. I have just had to use plain old english and try and remember that I have had my go as a kid. There are obviously exceptions. I still have made up words: "hunka" for chasing Felix around the house pretending to eat him, "nappa" as a way of saying nappy and ending up also having to chase him, "pukka" as a way of naming the dogs, it just seems to rhyme, "pukka chhina" for zucchini.

Then there is his latest made up word, comming from chocloate easter eggs, a mix from the English "chocolate" and Polish "czekolada" being "checolati" sounding like "gelati" so irresistable for me not to join him in saying it.

As for Matilda, well at 7 months it is hard to call anything talking but she is definitely going to be as talkative as Felix if not more. She is a girl after all and if she is anything like her mother ... Well we have played around with the hand over the mouth, ala indian call, made up talking which she has taken to as much as Felix at a similar age. I belive she has gone one further, grabbing hand in hand and hitting her mouth rhythmicaly at the same time as saying an "ahhhhh" getting the same effect of seperate words sounds that tie into a sentence of sorts "ahh ahhh ahhh"

We have also found that Matlida seems very much more controlled in all her actions, wether moving, crawling, rolling or making sounds. Felix had seemed to have a few more accidents as he would over balance, shout and never really mastered rolling over. Well Matilda seems to be saying a few similar sounds on que, "tata" for dad and "poo" when she has a poo in her nappy. Both are faint but both distinct. Sarah is working hard on a Mama but the smiles she gives her father are all "tata" at the moment.

Yet Another Baby Blog

I am sure that there are a lot of parents blogging about their babies, growing kids and general family antics. That is why "Yet another baby blog", interesting for "Us" just another blog for "others". So lets get yabbing

Camping with Felix

Well it came and went and not much changed. Felix is still in bed at the moment and asking for "na-na" as always. Sarah was worried that 3 days appart may get him off side from her and maybe even get him to wean, I don't think so.

It started on Thursday. Sarah dropped him off at work, which was in Caulfiled attending the Open Source Developers Conference. He was happy to see me, gave mum and Tilda a wave and we were off. A quick bite to eat in the local food mall seemed all to expensive for the crappy food I got, but fish was the recommendation from mum. We ended getting a fried canned tuna patty or something and I got a really old soggy and almost cold burger. Felix had some with which I was not too happy about hoping that it wont make him sick.

Then it was off to another shop, the fishing shop. In between orbits to see the aquarium fish and other fish on the wall, I enquired about the prospects at the planned camping destination Waratah bay. The response was positive with the sales assistent regularily fishing there from his parent's house in Sandy point (at the other end of the bay). "just walk out about thigh deep, cast around in all directions and you are guaranteed lots of flathead" that sounded great. I picked up a tied chart and tried to justify the conversation by purchasing some soft plastic lure. I must say that I also did find out why I lacked success in Lake Tyres during the colder months, this is as the fish move up during winter, but in summer the main lake should be fishing great.

Well I thought that would be enough fishing for Felix till the weekend but this was only the beginning. We went home in the car and Felix rummaged through the bag of goodies. He was not to happy with the fish length ruler nor the fish in the regulation book. I am sure he would not be too thrilled with the weighted jig heads with which I did not take a chance with and took them aside from the beginning. His favourite were the gelly like plasitic fish bodies which go over the jig head. These where his "fishies" and they where his friend.

When we got home it seemed that he was only now set on going fishing. He came to me with the bag of artificial bait and said "stuck" meaning he wants me to open them. Plastic bait, how bad can it be? well it claimed to be 4x scented and it sure did smell a bit. It was also a little sticky and oily. I am sure the fish would love it but we are at home, I need to pack for the camping trip, and manage the todler.

He got out his shark fishing set with a motorised shark and a plastic fishing rod. I set up some toy train track to act as a "pool", we set the shark free and it went around and around following it's simple obsticle avoiding algorith of "turn right". Felix got all excited and even gave me a few moments peace. I could just sit down and look at the daunting task of packing for camping which we had not done for a year to the day now. Last time being at Jess and Damian's wedding near Jameison. Jameison, Lake Eildon, Licola and Wallhala where all options for this weekend until a big fire closed all of them down.

It was not long before Felix came to me with the bag of plastic fish and his toy rod and said "stuck" "fishy sharky". I knew what this meant. I must take him fishing, yeah I get to go and wet a line, probably something I have not done for almost a year also. I look down at him and promise that we will go down to the local lake and do some fly fishing. In fact we can have dinner down there as well. The weather is warm but a little windy and the sun will not be setting for some time yet so It will work out just fine. We just need to sit out the next hour or so of peak hour traffic and we can go. My thoughts do not seem to get across to my son, he looks at me as if I am an idiot and repeats, what seems to him to be a simple request "stuck fishy sharky". I know all too well what this means, dad get this little fishy baits out of their bag onto my plastic hook so I can go fishing for my plastic motorised shark.

In the end we managed to get all the camping gear out for the weekend, all the fishing gear to which Felix promptly upgraded from his plastic set, and we managed to have a good but unsuccesful session at the local pond and a bbq. It was a good night, Felix was exhausted. When I stripped him down to change his nappy it seemed that the poo had been there for quite a while, most of which he was seated in a carrier on my back and his backside was looking quite red. Bad parent, by now a screaming kid.

I knew now what Sarah meant when she feels she sometimes feels she ignores the kids, or feels she is not good enough for them. I sure felt like this at this time and it was a feeling I would come to know a bit better over the coming days. There I have my son very red and in obvious pain. I had to give him a quick wash. I then thickly creamed him but even this was not enough to make him happy. It was not untill I set him upright, leaning on 3 pillows of the softest feathers, nude bum on a couple of nappies and I set out to read him a book that he gave me a nod of approval, proceed dady. A few stories read about some dig-dig-diggers and we were ready for nappy and sleep.

Matilda Smiles - a letter to grandfather Lech

Dear Lech

I finally have a moment to pen(or Type) a letter- the house is quiet! Matilda is almost 6 weeks old and it has been a wonderful time in the lives of the Alexander- Milewski-Milewska family. With 4 people and 2 dogs I really think we classify now as a family- the back of the car is jam packed and the endless bustle and chatter is heart warming.

In classic A-M-M Family style (Alexander-Milewski-Milewska) our Medicare care is a hassle bustle of names a real refection of the house. Michael is now back full time at work and I am with both children by myself 3 days a week. We have managed to do all sorts of things in a given week........................

We have visited the Collingwood Children's farm numerous times- Felix is in love with the horses (affectingly named Ye-Ha-Ha) and the Goats who we see milked. Last Monday Felix decided that the 10 days old lambs we fair game for a ride- He sat upon his victim and yelled Ye-Ha-Ha. He was a little disappointed when I explained that lambs weren't strong enough to carry him and that perhaps one day he might ride a pony at Jane and Robs place.

I used public transport with both children yesterday to get to Steiner Playgroup. Felix is fantastic and listen so well- he happily get out the of pusher and sits looking out the window for the entire trip. Meanwhile Matilda happily sleeps in the baby carrier- occasionally nuzzling and moving around when I stop moving.

I popped over to see Sylwia this morning so Felix and Sabina could see one another. They play so well together- I am glad that we have Thursday's so they can have time to play together. They love to play chasy around the house and push the trains around the house.

We have brought a second cot and our bedroom looks amazing! We have the queen bed with a cot (with it's side removed)on either side. One huge bed! Sleeping is working very well- Felix will fall asleep cuddling Michael as Michael sings polish songs and read polish stories. This a very important time of the evening for both Michael and Felix as they don't see one another all day- Michael loves gazing at Felix as he sleeps peacefully in the cot next to him. Matilda is in the cot next to me- she has been an amazing baby. Last night she slept from 10pm till 4am no feeds! When she does want to feed she either sucks her hands or strokes my face- no crying- no fussing she feeds briefly and falls back to sleep.

So now back to the title of this email. Matilda is starting to smile. I selfishly thought that she would smile at me but I realise that her big brother is far more interesting- and he first smile was cast Felix's way. Felix is so gentle with Matilda and has never hurt her or get cross with her. Matilda is getting a lot of tummy time and holding her head really well.

When she is popped on her tummy she pulls her legs up under her body and tries to move forward- her arms are failing her- but sooner or later she will all get it together.

Michael is riding 3-4 times a week before work- and feeling and looking very fit. It is a really important time for him and it helps him concentrate at work. I have began riding my bike with Felix each night Michael returns. I plan to join a canoeing club after my 6 week post-baby check-up in the hope to compete in the Murray Marathon at the end of next year.

My brother has planned to remain in England till April/May I am missing him terribly- particularly at the moment when I know he would love to see Matilda. But I am sure he will make up for lost time when he returns. Sylwia has been a wonderful grandmother- spending time with Felix on Tuesdays. I know this time is invaluable for both of them- Felix feels so comfortable with her.

Felix is missing you a great deal as are we all. Every plane in the sky apparently has JaJa riding in it. I think I will bring him to the airport when you come back- he would love to have a look at the planes.

We hope you are enjoying Poland but look forward to having you home.

Lots of Love and Kisses

Sarah (Michael, Felix and Matilda)

PS On Sunday we went to 5pm mass. Felix sat in the pew listening to the service- when ever Father Tony spoke Felix would yell out Blah-blah-blah. When the Father held out his arms Felix also stood and held out his arm- it was so funny that we didn't even hear what the sermon was about- but the magic of watching Felix was perhaps God's message to us- they grow up so fast so make the time today to give an extra hug- share another joke or listen for an extra minute because tomorrow they will be leaving home!g home!

Day to day with the kids

The other day Sarah was observing how Felix was interacting with other kids playing at a playground. Joshua and Inga were chasing around the playground on some paving. Felix joined in but seemed to have missed the minor detail of following the paving. Paving turned left and Felix went on ahead into the sunset screaming with joy, hands waving like a butterfly, having a ball, not even registering that the other kids were no longer following him.

Later that same day Felix took a book out onto a deck to have a read in the sunshine. Not our book and not our deck so Sarah was worried that he may come into a bit of "No" parenting. No! a book is an indoor item, No! do not take it outside, and so on. Ahh to take a book out onto a deck in a sunny spot and just read, I would love to do that.