I dub thy religion "Parentology".

Wow, how remiss of me to have not posted to this blog for so long.

I think Lynda and I have become victims of Stockholm Syndrome. We now sympathise with the plight of our 7 and 5 year old captors and are thinking of starting our own L Ron Hubbard style religion, where we recruit famous holllywood stars like BradJelina & Tom Cruise (pre the really weird couch jumping phase) to our cause. Those stars who don't convert, we brand as infidels and banish them to hang out with Madonna.

I dub thy religion "Parentology". And so it was that a great movement was born and parents around the globe rose up against their captors and retook their homes and their economies. (Except for the USA economy. We left it. It's just screwed atm).

(Ok, what the hell was that? Did any of that just make sense?).

To sum up, I think we have just become immune / numb to our children's mischief.

I'm going to have to wrack my brain for a little bit, but will start posting stories back here real soon. :-)

Stay tuned.

Lee :-)

Who put strawberry jam on my brand new 42" plasma TV?

I'll give you one guess? Grrrr!!!

Never Let Kids Urinate In Your Vacuum Cleaner (I kid you not).

I came home from work the other day to find that the house had a general bad smell about it. You know, musty and dank. I could see that Lynda had been burning incense and aromatic candles to try and cover it up. So then the penny dropped.... What did the kids do?

We have one of those very cool Dyson vacuum cleaners. You know the ones, they never lose suction....very powerful..yada yada yada. They're expensive too!!

Trouble is, it's bulky. We've never really have a good place to store it, so we tend to leave it out on our back verandah.

It turns out Lynda goes to use the vacuum cleaner to clean the rug in the lounge. As she turns it on, foul smelling urine sprays from the exhaust over "everything". And lots of it apparently. On the walls, rugs, couches. (I am just so glad I was at work and not there to witness or smell it) :-) It took Lynda hours to clean up, deodorised and disinfect everything.

What we think happened was this...

Ben (who is completely toilet trained) has just a couple of times in the past month or two dropped his dacks wherever he's standing and proceeded to relieve himself. Our theory is that he's peed out on the back verandah at some point, directly into the exhaust of the vacuum cleaner (which points up), remaining there for that ill-fated moment when the vacuum cleaner would next be used.

The smell hung around the house just for the day. Everything (except the vacuum cleaner) is back to normal. The vacuum cleaner still smells each time it's used.

Ben and the Dating Web Site

Ben is four years old. He's been going out to my computer and typing what he wants into the Google search bar. He's been visiting the Wiggles web site, Bob the Builder web site and Tweenies, Pooh Bear. He goes to their web sites and play games. He's really quite clever at doing this.

Now there are so many ad's running on sites and search results nowadays that it's easy to get distracted. Have you noticed how many of them are dating sites?

So the other day I walk past our little office, and there's Ben looking at "pricelesspartner.com". The web site looks up your IP address and ties you to a rough location. So I catch him looking at some dodgy pictures of a guy supposedly in Brisbane looking for the love of a lady friend.

There's Ben checking out this guy's photo and scrolling through his Bio. Very dodgy stuff indeed. Why couldn't he have clicked on a girlie pic? Oh that's right, because dating sites are full of 18-35 males who, when they're not playing World of War Craft, are looking for the love of a stunning super model lady friend who also shares an interest in World of Warcraft. Good luck!

Needless to say, I closed the browser pretty quick before emotional scarring could take hold. :-).

The Tjuz.com Web Site

Well I've finally got something up and running on the http://www.tjuz.com web site.

I am using the site to supply information about Coeliac disease and gluten free diets. It's a project I have been wanting to kick off for some time. I am particularly pleased with the Gluten Free List that I've compiled.

I am using the free Google Pages service as a hosting experiment. So far so good. (Their templates are buggy though).

Well it's now 12:16am. So Happy New Year too! :-)

Oh No Melanie

So I'm on holidays, enjoying the Christmas cheer. All of a sudden I hear Melanie yell out "Oh no. Melanie" followed by an evil giggle.

What has she done?

Well she's at my computer with the mouse in one hand and the cord in the other, snapped half way along. For the life of me, I don't know how she managed to break it.

So now I've downgraded. It's the $2 mouse for me from Coles supermarket. It's big, chiunky and belongs on the 1980's.

All's good with the nose

Well the day finally came.

Melanie's had her day at the Mater to get surgery. It revealed a piece of purple foam lodged in her sinus'.

It's the purple pom-pom we thought it was.

Till next time... :-)

All's well...

Thursday 7:20pm.

No random acts of Melanie.

The Sandy House / Peanut Butter beauty Mask / MSN Messenger Blast day...

Well the title says it all really. If you're one of those power readers, you can stop reading now if you like?

My day was fine. Thanks for asking. I had a nice day at work while Lynda had the following one ....

*** Sand is Fun ***

• Lynda has the kids in the back yard while she's hanging some washing.
• The kds go upstairs of their own accord.
• Lynda thinks "Hmm. That's nice. I'll keep hanging washing"
• Turns out they've each dragged a bucket of sand from their backyard sandpit into the house and proceeded to build little sand castle in EVERY room in the house. They particularly liked building sand castles on their beds from what I hear.
• There were tears and lots of cleaning.
• Everything's all cleaned up now. There's clean sheets on the beds. The floor's been vacuumed and the rugs no longer resemble a beach.
• But as I walk around the house bare foot there's still that little bit of sand grit in everything.

*** Ben likes to MSN Blast ***

Simple story. This is the thoird time he's done it.

With his new l33t 4 year old computer haxt0r skills he's now going Start / Programs / MSN Messenger. He likes sending the little characters to my contacts. You know the kisses, the pig, the alien. All those annoying little things.

So I've had messeges left on my phone from our company lawyer "telling" me to stop sending mim this Sh*t. My colleagues in my office also keep getting messages from Ben.

He particularly likes sending people the little pig character.

What worries me though is that I have many Microsoft employees and other vendors as contacts in Messenger and I have absolutely no idea what Ben has sent to them and I don't want to ask.

Today's lesson.... If you are stupid enough to let your kids on your computer. Make sure your messenger is set to NOT remember your username and password.

*** Melanie Likes Peanut Butter ***

So we buy food in bulk. It's cheaper.
Now imagine your 6 year old smothered in the entire tub of this...

Enough said. So that was Lynda's day today. :-)

And the nose has it....

Ah yes.

About 6 weeks ago Melly comes running from her room in a bit of distress with blood coming from her nostrils. With her inability to tell us what she's done we had a look in her nose as best we could and summized there was nothing up there.

Yeh. You guessed it. We were wrong :-(

I had last Thursday and Friday off so I could play with the kids on their school holidays. A day where I sleep in and eat breakfast late, then laze around doing pretty much nothing all day. But no, Lynda kept compaining about the "foul smell" coming from Melanie.

"I'm sure there's something in her nose. We're going to get to the bottom of this today." Lynda says.

Yeh, so my holiday........... ended 10:00am Thursday.

First comes the local doctor's appointment. There's the obligatory couple of hours wait. I mind Ben while Lynda takes Melanie to the local doctor. Well "Doctor A" wasn't much use. But wrote a referral to take her to the Mater Chilidren's hospital.

So, we drop Ben at the Grandparents and head up to the hospital and sit in Children's casualty. We sit patiently, amuzing Melanie while trying to subconsciously avoid the very sick little girl next to us with Meningitis.

Eventualy we get seen some time around 4pm between the Mesozoic period and the Cretaceous period. She was a nice Doctor, but after a quick look up the nostrils she says there's nothing up there.

Melanie by this stage was taking offence to having large insrtuments
stuck up her nose all day.

Do doctors actually realise how scarey they are to kids? When you cannot explain to your child what's going on Melanie was getting justifiably scared.

So "Nice Doctor B" organises for Lynda to come back on Monday and see the ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) specialist.

Along comes Monday and Lynda has everything organised with her parents to mind Ben and off she goes back to the Mater hospital again to see the Ear Nose and Throat specialist.

Low and behold. "Nice doctor C" says...

Yep there's a lot of something up there. It's up really high and it needs to come out. We need to book her in for surgery this Friday.

Yay! Lynda was right all along. Mother knows best!!! Ha!

So that's it for now. To be continued. We'll see what this Friday brings. It's back to the Mater for a third time for what the smart people in the medical professoinal have affectionately termed "Scheduled Surgery to remove foreign object from sinus cavity of Melanie Wade"

It's been a while...

A couple of the guys at work mentioned to me today that it's been a while since my last post.

Well where do I start?

As I stare at my LCD monitor with the deep pen gouges from when Melanie drew on it last week with a biro pen, or as I tap away on my ice cream soaked keyboard I'm lost for a place to start.

Hmm yes funny that.

The ice cream is a new one. Looks like it's occurred early today and has been allowed to dry into sticky solids. Judging by the globs on the "t" "r" and "o" key and the big icecream stain that's oozed down the monitor and the big sticky patch on my nice timber floor, I'm guessing the kids have been spending the day playing their drawing and counting game on the computer.

We got this educational software from the SEDU the kids go to. It teaches the kids colour recognition, counting and lots of useful computer skills.

Bear in mind my kids are 4 and 6. I'm amazed at how well they have picked it up.

A $400 monitor and a $20 keyboard. cheap price to pay for teaching your kids to learn really. :-)

The first ten minutes.

So Lynda rings me right on 5:30 asking if I can come home on time...

"You’re not working late tonight are you?. She's wild. I need you here".

"Yeh yeh Yeh I'll come home now", I said.

On the way home I think I'll be nice to my lovely wife. I knew she was stressed, so I called in to Woolworths and bought a little bunch of flowers and chocolates.

Then I get home and put the key in the door. I turned the key blissfully unaware of the world that awaited me…

I open the door and Melanie comes running over to give me the usual warm welcome home.
"Don’t touch her she's wet and slimey." shouts Lynda.

Turn out she's tipped out an entire bottle of shampoo on the bathroom floor and proceeded to roll in it.

Sounds not so bad so far.

I'm like "hold on hold on, I'll get changed quickly." rather than wreck my work clothes.

I start by running a bath and dropping her in it. No need for bubble bath, there's plenty on Melanie. So Lynda's trying to wash the slime off her while I'm tasked with cleaning up the floor.

Firstly I use a towel and soak up most the shampoo. All is good…. Well I thought so anyway.

Melanie steps out of the bath with wet feet and the first thing she does is slip over.

Water + shampoo = slippery floor.

Do you know just how hard it is to mop a detergent covered floor? The more water you use, the more suds you get on the floor?

Anyway- after a lot of rinsing over and over with the mop, I finally get the floor clean. (I'm talking really clean).

In the meantime, Melanie has run out of the bathroom and rolled on Ben's bed.

Here's the formula you need to use to assess the temperature of the household at this point:

Wet child + bed = dry child x angry mother(2)

So Lynda's now finished drying Melanie properly and got her dressed. She then starts to strip the bed of the wet sheets.

So while Mummy's occupied with that, and daddy's still mopping the floor, Melanie makes a bee-line for the kitchen where there's pretty flowers that daddy just bought mummy. She destroys the bunch in about 5 seconds flat.

So I then move from finishing the bathroom floor, to immediately cleaning up the flowers petals and mess from the kitchen floor.

Finally everything settles down for a normal night. Oh well. Gotta love it. Lynda liked the chocolates. :-)

Hmmmm Yummy Biskit!

Well I'm back. Long time no blog.

I have just sat down at my computer tonight to find dried biscuit mashed into my keyboard and smeared all over my monitor.

It would seem Melanie was given biscuits earlier today and decided to pay daddy's office a visit.

1. You know when you eat a biscuit and get it all mashed up in your mouth? Now drool it on your keyboard. Yes. Yes it's a pleasant image isn't it?
2. Still got some left? Well spit it in your hand, then wipe it on your lcd monitor.
3. Now disappear and leave it for daddy to find about 5 hours later.

"Hmmm Yummy Bis kit!" is her favourite saying.

Oh well. It's strange. At some level I'm grateful it was only biscuit. :-)

Moving to blogger.com

Many of my work colleagues have been getting a kick out of my blog, and some have even suggested I share it with the world. So, now I've taken the plunge and moved my blog from MSN Spaces to Blogger.com. under the title "parentingfun".

Goodbye MSN Spaces - you have served me well.

Now for an exercise in cut and paste :-)

That's NOT how you clean the toilet!!!!

Originally Published June 14, 2005.

We found a box of soap bars and our hair brush in the toilet tonight. Ben was trying to help with the house cleaning by cleaning the toilet for us.
C'est La Vive.

No seriously, why does the oven stink?

Originally Posted June 8, 2005

Cooking fish and chips tonight and Lynda says she really needs to clean the oven. "It's really starting to stink".

Turns out we found a little pile of incinerated chop sticks at the bottom of the oven.

Parenting lesson number 1287: When turning the oven on, remember to firstly check that your 2 year old son hasn't been using it as a little hidey spot for his toys. :-)

Daddy's Home

Originally published June 1, 2005

When your kids are young you get great satisfaction as a dad from coming home and hearing "Daddy's home" and being greeted by your kids. Then I sing Zippedy Doo Dah and a blue cartoon bird comes and sits on my shoulder.

Tonight I get...

"Thank God your home. Here... he's wet. They've wrecked the house. Yada yada yada..."

Damn. Back to reality.
When's the next product launch again? :-)

Puke is NOT Pukka

Originally Published May 13, 2005

So the family has settled into a night of television watching Jamie Oliver's new live cooking show. (It's quite a good show by the way. You should watch it).

Melanie starts staring at the floor for 30 seconds or so.

Lynda asks.... "You're not going to puke are you?"
(Hmm.... what do you think happens next?).

On queue, Melanie vomits her chocolate milk on the rug. There's only one piece of carpet in the entire house. Lucky for us she chose to vomit on it (the rug in front of the television).

So a bucket of water and a bit of scrubbing later, we settle back in just to watch the end of the show.

Kids!

What smells of Sh*t?

Originally Published May 10, 2005.

It was Sunday night. The kids had gone to bed. So Lynda and I were lying in bed watching television.

Then I ask the question.... "What smells of Sh*t?"

--C E N S O R E D--

So then we spent the next half hour cleaning before going back to bed emotionally scarred by the experience.

Use your imagination for the censored bit. (Or better still don't).

Daddy will be upset with Ben!

Originally Published May 5, 2005.

I got home tonight to the sounds of Lynda saying "Daddy will be upset with Ben!". Hmmm I wondered. What is Lynda aluding to?

On the weekend, I repainted the doorway in the kitchen. (I had the enamel paint out because I have been painting the renovated rooms in the house).

Well it seems Ben took to the doorway with a screwdriver today and has managed to scrape the enamel paint off.

Apparently he was trying to "help" daddy.

What can you do? :-)

I'll just have to paint it again this weekend.

I piss on you..... and your couch.

Originally posted April 30, 2005

Minor incident really...

Ben's reached the age where he's not wanting to wear his nappy lately. So he's standing in frontof the TV last night with his shorts and nappy off.

I say to Lynda... Better get a nappy on him before he makes a mess of the rug.

Just then, Ben stop watching television and comes over to me. (I'm lying on the couch). He jumps up on me and gives me a big hug.

Oh... What a nice boy. Giving daddy a hug.
It's NOW that he decides to relieve himself. On me and the couch.

Cleaned me up. Cleaned him up (put a nappy on this time). Cleaned the couch up. Went back to watching television.

Lucky the couch is leather and wipes off. :-)

It's no fun when it happens to you :-(

Originally posted April 27, 2005

Well last night and today was Lynda's and my turn. Both really sick. (Details not suitable for publication) :-(

We're just one big sick family at the moment.

Oh well it should give Arash somethng to laugh at. :->

The Adventures of Vomit Boy

Originally Posted April 26 2005

So picture this...

Saturday night. Lynda's prepared a nice roast chicken.

I've gone to the kitchen added some chicken, some salad and a bread roll to my plate and gone to sit down.

As I'm opening a bottle of wine, Ben takes his first mouthful of sausage. (Kids get sausages. They don't eat nice stuff).

Just then, Ben chokes on his sausage and gags. His reflex response is to vomit ALL OVER THE BLOODY DINNER TABLE.

Now he had just had a bottle , so picture the Exorcist spewing a 30 second vomit all over the nice meal you were about to eat.

My meal, Ben's and Melanie's copped it. (Lynda has not put hers on the table yet).

So, choosing not to eat a side of vomit with my chicken, I scraped all meals into the bin, cleaned up the mess with a couple of towels and then started preparing dinner again.

Ah, the joys of parenting.
Lee :-)

Same Sh*t different child

Originally Posted April 22, 2005

Vomit night number 2.

Different night, different child. Ben's turn to throw up all night now. Every 20 minutes.

Gastric.

Staying up trying to complete Business Cases. Not going to get any sleep tonight anyway! Might as well try and do somethign useful.

Need Sleep

Original Post 20 April 2005

Need sleep. Vomiting children suck the life force out of you.

Laquering the floor

Originally published March 27, 2005

Short story this one.

I spent the Easter long weekend preparing and laquering the floor in the renovated part of the house.

Easter Saturday: 12 hours of sanding the floor.Easter Sunday: Three coats of sealer and more sanding (about 6 hours).

The floor looked awesome and it wasn't even finished yet.Easter Monday: Time for the good bit... the lacquering..

I've stirred the can of lacquer ($180 a can), had a complete brain fart and thought I would leave it on the floor while I run downstairs and grab a brush. 30 seconds later I return to find Ben with one leg completely in the can of laquer and he's about to insert the other leg.

I ripped him out of the can. "Aargh!!! You stupid boy!!! I Yelled. "Lynda!!!! I shouted" "Here... you clean him. The floor's ruined"!!!

I started spreading the lacquer he had spilt all over the floor.

In the end Lynda cleaned him up okay.

I had to spend another hour between the first and second coats hand sanding all the bubbles out of the floor though.

Lesson: Lee = stupid.

The Glue Story

Originally Published March 10, 2005.

Lynda's gone downstairs to hang some clothes on the line. Leaving me in charge. (In hindsight, this was the first mistake). Rather than supervise and play with the kids, I was out on the front verandah playing on my conputer.

Then I heard the screaching.... "Oh Shit!" "Lee!!!!!!" (Oh man I knew I was in trouble).

I walk into the kitchen and see a white stain on the floor. (I assumed spilt milk and wondered what all the fuss was about).

Then as I continued to enter the room, I see Ben on the kitchen table physically stuck to the table cloth. He was frantically trying to separate himself from the table cloth but was only making it worse. (In hindsight, this was the funniest image of the event).

• Some background: I bought PVA glue that morning from Bunnings to fix a chair. Melanie had got it down off the window sill, unscrewed the lid and begun to paint the kitchen with it.

There was glue everywhere... on the floor, on the table, on every kitchen cupboard door, all over Melanie and ben, around Ben's mouth (he'd been eating it) and of course all through their hair.

My response to seeing this mess was to exclaim the imortal words.... "Oh F*&k!". Two words which Melanie immediately repeated :-(

I grabbed the bottle, read it. It was non toxic (Wheh! Huge sigh of relief).

I hand the kids to Lynda "Here you clean them, I clean the house".

Lynda drags them into the bathroom and proceeds to bath and scrub them for the next half hour.

I scramble and grab old nappies and begin to wipe it up, mop the kitchen floor etc.
Thinking I had got it all, I went into the Lounge. to discover they've put glue all over the leather couches.

"Shit, Shit, Shit!!!!" (Stress levels through the roof now).

Not the couches.!!!!! (Remember I've discovered this 15 minutes later. The glue's beginning to dry).

It was a race against time...More towels. 30 minutes and lots of spray and wipe and finally it all came off.

The lesson here... Don't store glue in the house.

Start of original blog

This article was originally posted 1 March 2005.

Well today I started my blog. Lets see whether I can type anything meaningful here.

Insert meaningless emoticon here... :-)