rachel.blog

Author: Rachel M

  • Gorgeous Elizabeth and quakes

    Elizabeth is such a cutie. I got some good photos of her this week: The news this morning reports of a Mag. 5.2 earthquake in Victoria, Australia. That’s pretty big for Aussie but reassuringly, it’s the biggest earthquake to hit Victoria for over 109 years. I say reassuringly because although earthquakes happen everywhere, they are…

  • Daniel the artist

    Daniel has a tendency to get obsessed with things. His latest obsession is with drawing. He can spend literally hours drawing pictures of all sorts of things. He’s churning through reams of paper too – we have to somehow teach him to be less wasteful. Today I took some photos of his works of art:…

  • Crafty day

    It has been a delightful day of crafts for me. Elizabeth and Daniel have been invited to a birthday party next weekend and I’ve heard, from a good source, that the birthday girl is very interested in Mermaids. So I went to the fabric store and bought the fishiest-looking fabric I could find and made…

  • Playground-hopping

    We went playground-hopping today and found an absolute treasure of a playground at Hobsonville Point which is on the very western edge of Auckland harbour (Waitemata harbour). It had some very interesting  sculptures for children to climb on and interact with and was a big hit with our kids. We saw two magnificent rainbows while…

  • The dog and the children

    Freud is looking really well again and is pretty much back to his old self of chasing cats and barking at strange men. He’s to have another blood test tomorrow so we’ll have a clearer picture then of how much the bacterial infection was to blame for his renal failure. Meanwhile Daniel has an ear…

  • Freud

    Freud took a turn for the worse last weekend so we took him to the vet on Monday. He has kidney disease in addition to his mitral valve disease. The vet gives him months rather than years to live. I felt a tremendous amount of grief about this this week which is sort of strange…

  • Rock star and Kauri trees

    Daniel’s school had a “dress-up as a rockstar/popstar” day last week. Daniel dressed up and made an appropriate amount of noise throughout the day. Ben’s Mum has been with us this past week so we thought we’d better do something touristy. Today we took her to the Kauri Glen Reserve which is a large, forested…

  • The evolving rug and conversations with Daniel

    My rug is growing. It now has some colour and I like it.  I almost wish I hadn’t used the cream-coloured sheets at all because I can see it’s not such a practical colour for a rug. Still, I can throw it in the washing machine which is the main thing. So far it consists…

  • Crochet rag rug

    Elizabeth peed on our living room rug twice this week. In frustration, I removed the rug from the floor and put it in the spare bedroom and began wishing for a machine-washable replacement. Then I remembered seeing crochet rag-rugs online and decided to try making one myself. I began by cutting up some old sheets…

  • I want to ride my bike…..

    I want to ride my bike with my two-year-old sitting in her seat on the back. She loves it. I love it. I want to ride my bike to save money on petrol. I want to ride my bike to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions. I want to ride my bike to help prevent depression…

  • The Art Gallery

    Yesterday Ben looked after the children so that I could go with a friend to the Degas to Dali exhibition on at the Auckland Art Gallery. It was wonderful. The Art Gallery itself is a beautiful French Chateau-style building, originally designed by Melbourne-based architects and opened in 1887. It has just recently undergone some extensive…

  • Vomits again

    Daniel woke up in a pool of vomit this morning. He was at a loss as to how it got there and even tried blaming it on Freud but we just did not believe that Freud could have vomited on Daniel’s pajamas, on his doona and sheets and even in his hair during the night…

  • Sums

    Daniel loves maths. Perhaps he’ll be a mathematician like his Daddy. Last night, we caught him doing sums. He has his own unique notation (although Ben tells me it’s not that unique and looks similar to Reverse Polish Notation), but the calculations are correct. 3+3=6 4+4=8 5+5=10 100+100=200 9+9=18 and 8+8=16 self-portrait

  • “Take my photo”

  • School is back

    Daniel returned to school this week and is very happy to be back and to see his Korean girlfriends again. His teacher is Australian and yesterday he was suddenly quite excited and began flapping his hands and asked me, “If you’re Australian and Mrs Price is Australian, when you were 5 and she was 5…

  • The Chelsea Sugar Refinery

    Before Mike left on Monday, we visited the Chelsea Sugar Refinery in Birkenhead. The refinery is a huge pinky-orange building, visible from all over Auckland in an imposing position over-looking the harbour. There’s a sketch of it on all the Chelsea sugar packets so I’ve long wanted to visit it up close. It also lives…

  • Map of New Zealand

  • Poo and morons at the helm

    Elizabeth pooed on the back terrace the other day and she grabbed my arm and took me outside to see it. Then she pointed at her poo and said, “I did a dog-poo”. Ben’s Dad came to visit last weekend and he’s just left this afternoon for Christchurch. He’s off to see Christchurch as an…

  • A day of doctors

    It has been a day of drama. This morning we took Daniel to Starship Hospital to have his hearing checked which turns out to be absolutely fine. We got a referral for him about a month or so ago and I thought we’d be waiting for ages and ages to get an appointment but someone…

  • I need…

    Elizabeth has discovered the word “need”, as in “I need an Easter Egg”.  Today she reached her hand into the pocket of Ben’s trousers (where he keeps his wallet) and said, “I need wallet”. We weren’t expecting this to happen for at least another twelve years.  Be afraid, be very afraid. Ben took Daniel to…