Sushi on the Tongue

Today I'm feeling very tired. Not because of Henry (well to be honest he's part of the problem) but because I spent the weekend just gone preparing and enjoying a party for my sister's 40th birthday. Combine that with taking care of a very active 14 month old boy who insists on waking before 5am, a 12 year old teenage girl, a loving husband and trying to help a friend apply for a public service position and I'm desperately in need of a holiday.

Public service job applications are like writing an advertising campaign promoting John Howard's newly proposed Industrial Relations changes. In short it's really all about using buzz words which mean nothing but have the potential to influence your life in several ways. It encourages lies and deceit. Anyway we'll press on and hope for the best.

I took the photo above of Henry just this morning sitting in his chair reading one of his favourite books which Grandma sent to him. He has several favourites and all day long he brings them to us and hits our legs with them until we give in and read them. It's not enough to just read though, one must point to all the pictures and make all the correct sounds otherwise he gets quite upset. The fire engines must make siren sounds. The garbage truck must make garbage truck sounds and the speed boats must "whoosh". Sometimes his books, along with some of his other toys get thrown down the stairs in the hope that we may go and get them and therefore have to take him down stairs with us and maybe get in the car and go for a drive. We've become wise to his ways now and mostly just leave them there until we can be bothered making the trek downstairs to retrieve them. He has several favourite ads on TV and runs from wherever he is to watch them. He particularly likes the ads that have catchy tunes and will stand in front of the tv and dance. He's learned to change the channel too and often interrupts the news when we're watching it.

Yesterday we went to visit John and of course they rarely have very small children in their home so their home is not particularly toddler friendly. They have internal stairs which we have to block with a large leather lounge. He hates that and stands at the chair grunting and groaning while trying to move it out of the way. They do have a lovely little courtyard with some beautiful plants. Henry loves to get in amongst these and yesterday got stuck in the branches of one bush. He just sat there saying "stuck" until I went to his rescue. I've got to admit it would have been nice to leave him there for five minutes peace while I enjoyed my cup of tea. Of course once we left there the house was somewhat worse for wear. He'd managed to unroll the toilet paper, pull all the magnets off the fridge, tear up a few magazines and tip dirt all over the pavers.

He tried sushi for the first time yesterday and didn't like it. He used to eat anything until he realised his tongue was to be used for tasting. Now he looks at the food and then sticks the tip of his tongue out to taste and feel the texture before he puts it in his mouth. Sometimes he does chew things for a bit before deciding he doesn't want it. He no longer wants to sit in his high chair to eat and in fact doesn't want to sit at all when eating. He prefers to snack while walking around. This means we now have peanut butter and vegemite smeared all over the lounge, walls, TV and toys. Ah the joys of having a toddler!

Well I need to have a large cup of coffee while he's still sleeping, and get started again on this job application. I think I'm going to live to regret saying yes to the request for help on this.