kanguragu: January 2015

Annick and Luca love their Ah Koo.

A new year, new things to remember:
- How Annick sings all the time, just as a commentary to whatever she's doing, or as a way to pass the time: "My name is Anniiiiick, I liiiive in a houuuuse, I liiiike my house, my name is Annick!" or "I like making a sun like this, I like making a sun like this, I like making a sun like this!"
- How Luca has rules. We read The Finger Circus and draw faces on our fingers to make finger worms, and when we are finished, we start reading Le Chandail de Hockey, only to have Luca stop after a page and say, "wait, I have to wash off my finger because this is not a finger worm book."
- How Annick, unlike Luca, loves to tell you things, and hauls herself up to the bench to watch mama make an omelet, saying, "you know chickens? Eggs comes from chickens. Then when there is eggs, there is little birds!"
- How Annick says "I luff (insert item she luffs here)!"
- How the sun comes directly in the apartment on summer mornings making Annick complain, "mama, the sun is making sprinkles at me! It's BOTHERING ME."
- How both kids love to 'read' books - Luca's method is to memorise stories and do his best to recreate them (he is very good - current favourite is 'Papa please get the moon for me' by Eric Carle, with the VERY long ladder), while Annick's method is just to make things up, which means she can 'read' from blank notebooks if necessary. "Once upon a time there was a girl called Lulu. Then a dragon comed! And the dragon goes 'ROAR!' And Lulu run and run and run and run and she was scared."
- How Luca could not keep a secret if you paid him. "Mama, later I have a surprise for you!" Oh, that's very exciting, a surprise! "It's CHOCOLATE." *leans in conspiratorially* "Shhh, it's a SECRET." Or alternatively, "Papa, I hid something in my room for you - see if you can find it! It is under the bed!"
- How Annick has absolutely no sentimentality about eating animals - the adorable prawns bringing their letters to Santa in one of her Christmas stories get 'eaten' with relish off the page. The whole steamed barramundi plonked in front her her at a Chinese restaurant is greeted with the question, "can I have the eye?" So I plucked the eyeball out for her and set it on her plate. She looked at it briefly then popped it in her mouth, rolled it about and had an experimental chew, then spat it out and waited expectantly. "Would you like the cheek instead?" I asked. "Yes please!" Ate one cheek, asked if she could please have another one.
- How Luca's most cutting and potent weapon in argument is "I won't be your friend ANY MORE."

Balancing in the sun with Ah Kong.

Melbourne's fountains don't quite match Montreal's, but yay!

Helping mama make bread. Maybe mama made some play doh about five minutes later so she could get on with doing the bread without endless kneading.

Annick is not impressed to be sitting in a gold carousel in the foyer of the national gallery.

Luca and papa check out what it's like to be food under digestion! Or they check out a cool art installation at the NGV.

Annick's art. All her people are terrifying, hollow-eyed monsters. Once she drew mama as a dark-eyed alien skull, then when mama asked her where was the mouth, scrawled a Heath Ledger-esque slash across it and said cheerfully, "you have a grumpy mouth mama!"