A blog for friends and relatives to follow us as we embark on the adventure of having triplets (selfishly designed to reduce the amount of phone calls we need to make and photos we need to send - it's all about conservation of energy apparently).
Okay, here's two posts on the same day - wow, eh? For those interested in the kids, see the post below. For the others, here's a couple of shots of my new baby.
She's a 2008 Suzuki DL650 V-Strom.
She's a dual-sports bike, ideally suited for commuting to work in Perth while proven and capable of circling the globe in comfort, with an engine regarded as one of the most reliable ever fitted to a bike. To quote a review "the DL650 may just be the most shockingly competent machine in the world today". Who am I to argue?
Apparently the only drawback is that most riders consider her to have been smacked rather hard with the ugly stick. Well, I don't know...I think she's pretty good looking, but then, I may just be in love...
Let's see now...over the last week so much has happened that there has been no time at all to post. However, as promised, I did find some time to upload some (pretty dull) photos and a video or two. Note that the photos are 'pretty dull' simply because we haven't had time to take any lately.
The boys asleep in the car. I post this here simply to poll whether people think they look 'identical' and, if not, which one do you think is which?
Ava, not asleep in the car - which is a very unusual state for Ava, indeed. The girl could sleep on a razor blade. All that Ryan blood, I reckon.
We did find time to visit the local hillbilly country fair. The horses were prancing, the cows mooing and pooing, the tractors gleaming and the mullet haircuts blowing proudly in the breeze. There was also a small train which, try as I might, I simply couldn't get Breda off of.
I'm telling you the girl loved it.
Loved it...
God, but we live in a cosmopolitan haven.
Helping Mum to bake. Hey, exactly how many fingers should a kid have?
Now look, I never wanted to be one of those parents who hold up every distorted, indecipherable piece of finger-painted smeared 'art' and cry proudly 'Look at my children! Are they not gifted?' But, I've got to be honest, I think this effort (done on an Etch-a-Sketch) by Ava is pretty damn good. It's of Breda (Mummy) and I think she really nailed it - particularly the hair...
Well, I'm here. It's been while I know. To be honest I've not re-entered these pages without a small degree of trepidation. You see, the longer I am away, the more I have to write and the less inclined I am to want to as I just can't face having to backdate what we've been up to. However, fortunately I have Val to motivate me and poke me with the guilt stick when I get too slack. Therefore I hereby provide a quick overview of life here and vow to get my finger out and post some photos next time.
So many mysteries.
A few posts ago I alluded to a mysterious event which was in the offing.I must apologise for the melodramatics but we had a lot of threads to pull together – any one of which could have put the kibosh on the whole project – and so we didn’t want to say anything and then have to turnaround and print a retraction.So here we are then – the news…wait for it…Breda’s pregnant!
No, no, just kidding.We’re not mad.
Actually, we’ve bought a piece of land and are building a house. Or, to put it another way, we’ve committed ourselves to a year of paying both rent and a mortgage in order to put a roof over the kids’ heads.I hope they bloody appreciate it…
Work.
This is a bit stupidly busy at the moment and likely to get more so in the near future. I have also been away in Melbourne for a week stuck 80' up a chimney sampling the air quality inside a motorway tunnel. It has been exactly as exciting as it sounds.
School(s).
There are a number of schools in the Mandurah area; some good, some bad. Finding a good primary school is not a problem but decent secondary schools are another thing altogether. The trouble is that unless the kids are in a good secondary school at primary school level then they won't get into a good secondary school once they have finished primary school. Therefore we need to be looking for a good secondary school at primary school age. Or, to put it another way, in the scale of our schools selection process, the secondary is primary and the primary secondary - except that the primary (which is actually secondary), is primary if we are to achieve the primary secondary, secondary.
It is enough to give me a headache. Or rather, give Breda a headache, as she is doing all the leg work while I am assisting by nodding sagely at whatever she tells me.
The situation is not helped by the fact that because there are so many schools in Mandurah the catchment areas for some appear to be about the size of a very small, small thing, seen through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
The situation is further not helped by the fact that until very recently we did not know where in Mandurah we were going to live - and hence - what catchment area we would end up in. (See note on building a house above. Although, apparently, the catchment area doesn't count until the house is actually built...).
The situation is additionally not helped by the fact that we need to take up three of the precious places at the good schools which is not always possible.
The obvious solution is to give up and fly Grit over here to home school.
Life in general.
Perhaps due to the above we are both struggling to keep our heads above water at the moment. We are feeling very old, unfit and generally run down and this seems to be supported by nagging cold like symptoms which are hard to shift. The kids, sensing weakness, are playing up a lot. Jonty in particular is going through one of his 'anti' phases and would be hard enough work without the other two. I come home at times to find them all literally hanging off Breda and screaming for her attention. She's shattered after a full day of the same and there is no respite for me either as a busy day at work I don't even get a second to take my shoes off before being drawn into the chaos. As much as we would like to, there is little enthusiasm and less energy for exercise or even eating properly by the time the kids are finally bludgeoned into bed. To be honest the whole thing's a bit of a grind at the moment.
Phases like this come and go and we know that we'll ride this one out as well, but oh, doesn't the thought of collapsing by a pool for a week while being fed and cleaned up after sound attractive. I think this sort of thing is called a holiday but figure it probably exists in the same fantasy realm as dragons and elves and being allowed to sleep in past 0530...
Dancing in the streets
Despite the whole woe is me sob story above there have been some fun times. Like the other day when we were passing a mall which had music playing outside and the kids started dancing and soon we were all laughing and enjoying strutting our funky stuff to the amusement, disgust or total indifference of passing shoppers. The kids - when behaving - are fun and sprouting up like weeds. The only problem is that even when they're good, we're simply too exhausted to be able to enjoy it. This makes us very sad.
Other news.
I know there are quite a lot of things which could be written about here but quite honestly I can't be buggered.
Throughout history mankind has made many successful tripartite agreements, pacts and accords. These have cemented relationships and ensured peace and prosperity between what would otherwise be incompatible cultures and ideologies.
In 1984, George Orwell presents us with a world governed by three intercontinental superstates, any two of which are engaged in a perpetual state of war with the other. Alliances change without any discernible reason and all trace of previous loyalties is erased from history.
Now, for twenty points - which of these two scenarios do you think best reflects life in our house?
And the answer is...actually, you know what? You're all smart people, I'm going to assume you've managed to figure it out for yourselves...
War has been declared here and it's not pretty. Every waking moment the house rings...no, wait, that's the wrong word...the house reverberates with the clash of arms, the cries of the wounded and the battle cry of triplets in arms "You're not my friend!"
Sometimes one poor soul will be singled out as "Not my friend" by the other two for hours on end; other times the not friends change so rapidly that it's impossible to know where the battle lines lie. As in any war there are tears and screaming and frantic appeals to higher (and desperately trying to remain neutral) powers. And it's noisy. So very, very noisy.
There does not seem to be any hope of peace on the horizon. In fact the only time a truce appears to be called is when there is a sudden need to present a unified front against the dangerous foe of parental authority. In this situation they bring out the big guns - "No!"
Ah yes, no. Apparently 'the' holds the honour of most used word in the English language. On the assumption that my kids aren't significantly more horrible than other peoples' I don't see how 'the' can reattain its title as at a conservative guess I would say 'no' is spoken, shouted or screamed approximately 246,000,000,000 times per hour. Perhaps the people who compile 'the most used word in the English language' lists don't spend much time hanging around small children (possibly they can't find anyone who wants to mate with them...)
Unlike the 'why?' stage, I can't say that even in my wildest fantasies have I been looking forward to the 'no' stage (please God, tell me it's a stage). I think I could cope if they said 'no' at reasonable times. "Go to bed" "No!" I could handle. "Eat your greens" "No!" I could understand. "Will you please stop saying no" "No!" I could at least respect. But what gets me is that 'no' appears to be the new 'yes'. "Would you like an ice-cream?" "No!". "Shall we go to the park?" "No!". "Would you like me to be your absolute slave forever and ever?" "Er...No!". Actually to be completely honest, 'no' appears not just to be the new 'yes' but the new 'perhaps', 'maybe' and 'hello' as well.
And that's not all...but, no...wait...that's enough moaning for one night. Deep breath...Hoc quoque transibit, 'This too shall pass'.
Actually to be honest I've been quite looking forward to this stage. In my naivety I fondly imagined myself artfully fending the kids questions with a laughing ease (in this fantasy I am resplendent in a large leather armchair in front of a flickering fire with the children seated quietly at my feet, staring at me in rapt fascination - their little eyes aglow with barely contained hero-worship - as I pontificate worldly. Strangely I also appear to have greying mutton-chop whiskers and am wearing a fez).
In my fevered imaginings a typical 'why' conversation would go thus:
'Daddy (polite child agog at the wonder of the world), why is the sky blue?'
'Well you see little one - it's not really blue at all! (Gasps of astonishment. "Pray father, tell us more"). It all has to do with the refraction of light through the atmosphere known as Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue. Simple!'
(Innocent eyes all aglisten) 'Oh papa, how knowledgeable you are!'
(Settling back comfortably and stirring my brandy) 'Ah yes, of course this reminds me of when I was based in Antigua in the West Indies..'
(Excited clapping of hands) 'Oh goody, goody, goody, papa is going to tell another of his sailing stories. Oh do run quickly, Ava, and fetch mother so that she may not miss out...'
It was a nice fantasy and I was quite fond of it (particularly the mutton-chops which leads me to wonder if I've been overdoing the Flashman memoirs lately). Unfortunately - but not particularly surprisingly - the reality has been slightly different:
(Me; sloughed in my dining chair, eyes haggard and three-day-old food stains on my shirt) 'Sit down and eat your dinner'
(Child [it doesn't matter which, they are interchangeable in this particular arena]; 'Why?'
'Because it's dinner time'
'Why?'
'Because your mother has cooked dinner and now it's time to eat'
'Yes; but why?'
'Because...because...because I said so'
So that's it then, one week into the 'why' stage and I've already fallen into the same standard, predictable parental catch-all as everyone else.
Out of everything, I think I miss my whiskers the most.
I read a theory once which stated that time really does go faster the older you get. The thinking behind this was that when we are young we have very fast metabolisms and this has the effect of making time appear to pass very slowly. As we age and our metabolisms slow, time appears to speed up. This made perfect sense to me (I may possibly have been in a state of artificially expanded mind at the time) and it still seems the most reasonable hypothesis as to why the fatter and slower I get the faster the rest of the world seems to be moving; until I reach now, a state where time passes in such a blur that I look up briefly and discover four days have gone past and that I appear to have missed them completely.
Tune in next post when I will discuss whether - as I believe - perception really is reality and whether that is why nobody understands me. In the meantime - some more photos...
Judging by the deafening silence which greeted my last post I assume you're not going to be fobbed off by any more 'opps I forgot to post this' posts. Therefore I provide some, relatively, up-to-date ones.
I say relatively as these were taken before Breda clippered off all the boys' hair which has had the effect of making them look like tiny little thugs and extremely difficult to tell apart. We have identical twin boys. Sometimes we lose sight of that...
Some of you may wonder why there are always more photos of Ava than the boys.
The answer is simple - she's the only one who hangs around when the camera comes out.
And so I give you, Ava.
Again.
Okay, to be honest, I did actually manage to get some time to myself this weekend and went out for a game of golf with a mate. Which brings me to a new segment to this blog which I will entitle - The Most Pointless Jobs in the World.
Allow me to kick this off.
The Most Pointless Jobs in the World # 1: The bloke who mows the grass on the fairways.
I mean it must be very disheartening for him to go to all that effort when it's obvious that my ball will only ever have the most transient relationship with his work...
Look - sunshine and kids who are about six months younger than they are now.
Okay, so you can look at this two ways. One says that I'm just a lazy git who can't be bothered posting anything new. Or, two, that this is proof positive that I have no time in my life.
Ooh, ooh, I just thought of a third option. You could pretend this is a trip backwards in time - whoooo...spooky.
Do not adjust your set; there is no sound. No, I don't know why. No, I don't have time to figure it out. Yes, I know this is unforgivably slack.
Things have been...busy. No, wait. Make that...stupidly busy.
The thing is I can't even blame work - although they did ship me off to Melbourne, which is the first time I've been there in twenty years, but that's another, fairly sordid, story. No, I'm afraid this is all our own fault for two reasons.
The first I don't want to go into it in any depth yet as it is still possible that all the running about, meetings till midnight and general madness will turn out to be all for naught and simply an energetic waste of time. We shall see...
The second reason though - and what I believe is probably the real reason - is that we recently went on holiday. We had a couple of days off with the kids and had a simply wonderful and relaxing time and so - obviously - life decided that we should be punished by not being allowed a second to ourselves for the next three weeks (yes, it was that long ago that I optimistically loaded these photos with the honest belief that I would update the next day. Hah. Nice to know I can still be so wrong about things)
So, without further blathering allow me to present some photos from our mini-holiday (of course this was now so long ago that the kids have all grown up, gotten married and left home by now, but, hey, no one promised this blog would be good...)
Artistically posed (but poorly taken) photos of various small children wedged in trees and left for wolves...
Lonan and some woman I vaguely remember meeting once.
Ava of course. Intelligent, beautiful, artistic and blessed with perfect balance and poise. Totally wasted on this family that girl.
Jonty looking a bit 'American Outdoors Man' in denim and jacket with dead animal trim (obviously not a real American child as, at the mature age of three, he should be packing at least two guns by now...)
"I didn't kill my wife! It was the one-armed man!"
The kids had fun on the slides - Jonty
Ava - oh no, wait, it's that odd woman again.
And the other one, you know, whatshisname
The only correct way to send triplets down a slide.
Groovy, huh.
We visited a wildlife park where I enjoyed a close encounter with some pretty and completely harmless very small birds.
Breda, meanwhile, was savagely attacked by a series of vicious giant killer hawks...
...and bravely protected her small daughter by holding Ava securely between her and the nasty bird and...hang on...I don't think she's protecting Ava at all...I think she's using her as a shield...
Look at poor Ava laughing in her innocence, unaware that her mother is offering her up as a sacrifice to the avian god. Poor deluded child.
Meanwhile Jonty was making the acquaintance of an old friend.
A boy and his turtle. What could be more beautiful.
Later still we visited (yet another) playground, where there was only room for one driver in charge of the ice-cream van.
"Now boys - flick, flick - I want you working - flick, flick - hard back there or you'll answer to me - flick..."
Lonan the truckie.
Ava "Biggles" Ross
And Ava again. My but she's getting the lion's share of camera time again isn't she.
And finally the obligatory 'family in front of an obscure tourist eyesore' photo (In our case with the obligatory screaming child who doesn't want to be photographed in front of said tourist eyesore. No doubt with an eye to avoiding future teenaged years worth of embarrassment, in which case - sorry for this blog boyo..)
My department at work went out for an extended lunch to farewell a colleague who is off on maternity leave. Another colleague brought along her 18 month-old son who burbled away merrily all through the meal. He was a cute kid and to be honest I was a bit jealous of both how easy it was for the mother to look after just one child (she even got to eat her own lunch), and how simple it was for her to lavish time and attention on him. I couldn't help but feel sad that we never had time to enjoy our kids one-to-one when they were small.
To compound this feeling the main character in the book I am reading commented, from a position of comfort, that 'It reminded me of when I was very young, two or three years old, when my father would sometimes pick me up after supper and hold me until I fell asleep'. And I thought; when have I ever been able to dedicate such time to one of my children as to hold them until they sleep? Not since they were babies that's for sure - and I was way too exhausted to appreciate it then. I fear my children will never have the pleasant memory of that book's main character of drifting gently away in the warm embrace of their father's arms.*
There are many, many wonderful things about being lucky enough to be the parents of multiples (No, honestly. What? You want me to name some? Alright, there's...and then...um...well, let's not forget...oh bugger it, what the hell do you think this blog has been about for the last three years, it's not all been whining and cheap shots at Breda, surely?). Many, many - as I say - wonderful things, but time to pause and saviour the moment is very definitely not one of them.
*To be fair the main character (a somewhat reluctant Saint slumming it in hell, skinny-dipping and discussing cosmogony, teleology and eschatology with the regenerated ghost of Rahab the traitor harlot and an imp with rather cute horns) did make this comment whilst being borne away in the arms of a 100 foot high manifestation of the demonic lord Lucifer through a rift in the time-space continuum on a journey to see Lucifer's boss in an attempt to secure the release of his common-law wife who was now, apparently, a misplaced Danish zombie. (You know, that old plot line). Since the main character finds the above situation 'comfortable' I suspect there may be unresolved father-issues which transend simply being cuddled to sleep.
Remember some time ago I said that Ava was having problems with her ears and might need corrective surgery, or grommets, or superpower giving radioactive spider bites or something? Well good news, after a month of oral antibiotics (and about six months of waiting to see a specialist again) the results are back and - please provide your own drum roll here - Ava can hear perfectly! Hurrah and Hosanna!
Or not.
Ava, or course, is not one to do things by halves and so therefore has naturally done this by halves and can hear perfectly in her right ear but is, to all intents and purposes, totally deaf in her left. So, less 'Hurrah and Hosanna' and more 'Hur... and Hosa...'
On the plus side the specialist is pretty confident that another month on the antibiotics should correct the current infection and she should grow out of the problem eventually. In the meantime we have to ensure Ava is either directly facing us or that we are standing on her right if we want to have any chance of her listening to us. It is a shame, really, that she's played this card so soon as the smart move would have been to spring it on us as a teenager and thereby have the perfect excuse for ignoring us. Hah. Rookie mistake...
She's a 2008 Suzuki DL650 V-Strom.
She's a dual-sports bike, ideally suited for commuting to work in Perth while proven and capable of circling the globe in comfort, with an engine regarded as one of the most reliable ever fitted to a bike. To quote a review "the DL650 may just be the most shockingly competent machine in the world today". Who am I to argue?
Apparently the only drawback is that most riders consider her to have been smacked rather hard with the ugly stick. Well, I don't know...I think she's pretty good looking, but then, I may just be in love...
