The Garage is Jinxed

Its been a bad week for the poor Hyundai as I have managed to scratch it twice. Once reversing out of the garage (understandable) and once driving into the garage! The second scratch - right down the back right hand side of the car - was not quite so easy to explain. However, I blame the fact that I was concentrating too hard given the first small collision. Now the garage doors don't open properly so you get a full upper body workout trying to get the door pushed up past the dent. Oops.

The Hermannsburg Mudman

This weekend was the Hermannsburg Mudman Triathlon. Well done to Wolfgang (swimming), Hermann (25km mountain cycle) and Brenda (Running) for competing in the team race. It was a roaster of a day. Me, Anya, Jan, Katharine, Kate and Jess spent most of the afternoon camped under the trees at the side of the sports field waiting for the runners to finish the race. By the time all Jan's friends had arrived, there were 9 toddlers and babies. It was organised chaos. Kate & Jess competed in the Mudskippers competition for preschoolers and were very cute when they ran the last lap, with Brenda, to help her over the finish line. True to form, 'the boys' took ages to return from getting showered and changed. Eventually we went to look for them and found them exiting the beer tent, beers in hand! The evening was topped off with a braai at Mark's Uncle Dieter's. It was a great evening, but despite Mark's best efforts to get everyone to stay, the Mum's and Babes had the last say. By 9pm it was the witching hour and by 10.30pm there were kids passed out everywhere. The Froonchen slept through most of the noise and dodgy music, only waking up briefly when we got back to Greytown. Just as well, as Hermann was pissed, sunburned and knackered. Nevertheless, he still managed to get up for the 3am feed!

Prawn Cocktail

If Anya won't eat her porridge then there is a queue of wildlife waiting in the wings. We usually dump dirty washing on the floor in the downstairs toilet as this is where the washing machine lives. Last Friday I nipped in there for a pee and mid flow was distracted by something I saw moving out the corner of my eye. I was horrified to discover the pile of dirty washing was crawling with cockroaches - all attracted by the bountiful harvest of regurgitated baby porridge. Needless to say, I screamed blue murder until Hermann came to rescue me. This involved borrowing my flip flop and thrashing the pile of washing until there was a suitable number of decapitated cockroaches strewn accross the floor. Its amazing how much cockroach shit can be generated in such a short space of time. Over here they call cockroaches the 'Durban Prawn'. If there was ever a reason to avoid prawn cocktail then this is it!

Porridge Trauma

After 6 weeks of feeding our little baby solids, it has become apparent that Anya has not mastered the art of eating. However, she does have the 45 minute raspberry down to a fine art. It turns out that we have a very picky baby (Hermann is now questioning parentage - she can't possibly come from his gene pool if she turns down food). This baby WILL NOT eat porridge of any variety unless mixed with copious amounts of stewed pears. Our hopes of sleeping through the night (well at least until 5am) have been well and truly dashed and to cap it all, the Froonchen is now officially under weight for her height. Memories of being force fed boiled courgettes with tomato ketchup have come flooding back as I am now equally guilty of trying to force feed the baby a pear and porride mix that resembles wallpaper paste.

Flying Blue

Anya may not have been flying blue but I certainy was. I gave up my very expensive business class seat so that a certain little someone would have room to play. On the flight from Edinburgh to Schipol we let Anya 'read the newspaper'. This resulted in one baby covered in newspaper print and one parent covered in chewed up newspaper. On the long haul flight back to SA we discovered that sick bags had greater waterproofing properties. Nevertheless, 11 hours is a long time to amuse a baby. We were completely knackered whereas Anya was having a great time and only fell asleep on the drive back to Pretoria. As you can see, she was in her element - I spent the flight perched on one cheek on the end of the seat!