William

So, yesterday was our news day on Baby Bennett IV's kidneys. It should have rounded off as a good day because, although the kidneys were still pronounced, they had not ballooned which means no surgery immediately before or after birth. Instead, we will have another ultrasound in the weeks following baby's arrival to make sure everything is okay.

Afterwards we grabbed a late lunch - I got a beautiful vegan salad from Ruby's Organic Cafe (in Stirling) and celebrated that I should not have to see the Obstetrician again now and that it is me and my home birth midwife the rest of the way.

Oh, what a joyful week that past last week. Along with spending so much time around water in the form of lakes, rivers, rock pools, waterfalls and the beach we have been wash with The Word too. Yes, we have spent the week at Capernwray Bible School for their Refresh 2010 conference with the theme: 'How is your soul? - Reflections from the Psalms'.

The one thing about learning is that it can happen anywhere and that often, for our children it is happening right under our noses. It happens to us often right in our very own backyard. However, since we were in Canberra and in the house that a generous family had given us use of the learning moved to their backyard instead!

Just a place-marker to say that we were in Canberra from 2-9 January 2010. More about that later as it is late now. Lest to say we had a great, relaxing time!

Four drowned rats, four drowned rats,
See how they run, see how they run,
The ran their tails through the pouring rain,
Got so cold they no longer felt pain,
Would you believe they'd do it again?
Four drowned rats, four drowned rats.

Yes, it was wet to say the least in the Adelaide Hills today. We had an impromptu home education activity involving Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens today but with the inclement weather I was not surprised to see an email saying, 'In view of the wet weather it is unlikely that the walk will take place this afternoon. Please feel free to go along if you wish to but chances are many families will stay home in the warm!!!'

After spending the morning at the dentist, the boys were busting to get out so we chanced it and as the only family to arrive at the lower carpark we took what must of been the shortest walk ever in light rain, only to get caught out my a massive deluge that gave us no choice but to run back to the car.

Being the glutton for punishment that I was, and with consideration that the boys had not yet eaten lunch as a result of a fluoride treatment to their teeth, we decided to head to the restaurant at the end of Waterfall Gully Road for a sit down lunch with a view to taking a short trip to the top of the waterfall to burn off some excess energy. After eating lunch there was a break to lighter rain which lasted most of our little exploration but again, drenched us in the final minutes as we headed to the car before heading home as four drowned rats.

I guess it is all worth it for a hot bath or shower when we got home. In spite of the lousy weather I can guarantee we all had an awesome day! :)

No one ever said that parenting was easy. If they did then it would be a lie. That said, no-one ever said that it could not be enjoyable.
Yesterday, was a day of disasters (you know the small time-consuming ones) that actually turned out okay.

For those not in the know I have been on a road trip over the first couple of weeks of the month and spent the subsequent weeks getting over a wicked virus. I have blogged, in an offline mode, over that time and have finally got most of it up. Here are the links to the backdated posts and articles for you to have a cuppa over.

Road Trip!
Melbourne Zoo
Parenting Irks
Accommodation Review
Warrnambool – a place I love
Ickle Kids
My Geeves!
Green & Nutty heads to South Western Victoria
Accommodation & Adventures

I didn't know there was so much I didn't know about William until the last 24 hours. I realised at lunch yesterday that he could drink from a straw. I had never offered him anything with a straw before today, we simply never had a need until we sat down for lunch and I had not grabbed a cup for him out of the car.

This morning he was half way through his cereal when he tipped up his bowl. This was not to tip it out but rather to place the corner of the rectangular dish in his mouth and drink the milk out. The was an act of copying his brothers. My intervention to get him to eat the rest of his cereal first was met by vocal detest but he ate up and then gladly drank the dregs. Where did he learn that habit? From his brothers of course. My biggest problem is that his brothers learnt it from their Gross Onkel Heinz (great-uncle Heinz). Grr, trust one of my uncles to teach my kids the same dirty habits that the had my Mum scowling over when I was their age also!

William, what will you show me next?

The last two weeks have been one big adventure. The first week most so as we packed up the car, not just myself and the boys, but also MC Sandy J, Berocca and Follow Me. I know the rural path to Melbourne very well these days and there is very little on the path that throws me. However, MC Sandy J managed to knock me into barrel loads of laughter when we caught up to a little Ford Focus on the way into Casterton.

In a 'cute' voice, 'It's so cute!'
Then, in a voice of challenge, 'Run it over!'

When we rolled into town and needed to find our way to our accommodation MC Sandy J took the role of chief navigator she did a totally awesome job once I worked out what a 'k thingy meter' was. It is a 'scale' for those who found it as non-sensical as Michael's wine bushes.

So, how do you tell of a morning whether your day will be productive or not? And how accurate is your outlook when assessed in hindsight? The last couple days I have decided that I have had to change the metrics by which I measure my likelihood of a highly productive day and perhaps go for an attitude tune-up as well.

The days where I anticipate that 'anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' (Murphy's Law) are the days where I am awoken to the need to deal with a child who is doing something less desirable like eating last night before's leftovers for breakfast when it was aside as a base for the following dinner. Or that one of my children had decided to glue our playing cards together, not just one set but four. I look at the single minute used to extract myself from bed, identify exactly what is going on and deal with it; and use it as my metric for the likely shape of my day.

Bad metric.

This morning was one of 'those' mornings and by all accounts my day should have gone downhill from there. Unbelievably, thing have been incredibly productive this morning with the dishwasher and washing machine on before breakfast (always a good sign). All children fed at a reasonable hour, Green & Nutty's shipments are all prepared for courier collection and plenty of time to get onto the tasks of business management, homeschooling, finance management and housekeeping.

I have also learnt the virtue of computer and internet time in the late morning for the boys as it means that by lunchtime they are needing to get active and a more than willing to help with household tasks as well as their outdoor learning projects. They get to have some fun whilst I get onto any urgent business matters and maybe find the chance to blog about what we are up to across our home and homeschooling lives as well as in our business domain.

So now the questions remains for me as to what the new metric for whether I am going to have a productive day should be?