Day Thirteen of Chicklet Holiday

More of the same.

Except Chicklet spent some time with Poppy Bluebarry this afternoon showing him how Minecraft works on her iPad. He showed the perfect amount of interest and asked all the right questions, keeping her happy while I did some chores around the house.

She had started the day quite manic and I felt like she might be on the verge of a meltdown. Somehow, we were able to make it to the beach by lunch time without incident. Thank goodness for the beach and the calming influence of water.

Chicklet LOVES water. Our beach, on an outgoing or incoming tide, is perfect for her because the water is only about two feet deep, it's clean and clear and calm, so that she can do exactly as she likes and I don't have to worry about her being dumped by waves or getting dragged out by a rip.

It was windy and cold on the beach today. We spent an hour walking through the water trying to find the warm patches. She remained submerged except for her head to stay out of the wind ... but eventually she had to walk across the beach to the car ... funnily enough she thought that walking in my shadow, out of the sun, would keep her warm haha. Go figure.

When we got to the car, we found this little (or rather large actually) gem ...

It's a pity that I didn't have my camera with me because he was a beautiful specimen.

We went grocery shopping and then returned home for a quick lunch, some quiet time, her Minecraft class with Poppy and some more work on the Sea Serpent cave ... this cave seems to be ongoing! Every time I believe we are finished, Chicklet comes up with a new idea!

I'll be working tomorrow afternoon so I'd best get some sleep ... it's almost 11.30pm ... again!

Nite all.

Day Twelve of Chicklet Holiday

Today was almost a carbon copy of yesterday, much to Chicklet's joy.

Breakfast in bed with me and a couple of devices playing with dragons.

We had to walk to the beach today because Poppy Bluebarry was on SES duties until well after lunch, so we took the shortest route to the water and then walked right along the river path until we reached the sacred beach.

I was excited to be able to show her the two Tawny Frogmouths in the tree near the Seat of Knowledge. She has never seen owls or Tawnies 'in person' before, so she was pretty impressed.

I named all the birds that we passed and talked about the sort of food that they eat and how and where they nest. She seemed fairly interested.

By the time we reached the beach, she couldn't get undressed quickly enough and became a crocodile for the next hour. While I strolled back and forth along the shore in knee deep water, she crawled on all fours loving every second of playing in the icy salty liquid.

The only way that I could lure her out of the water, was to entice her into the shallower puddles that are scattered along the beach.

Poppy Bluebarry picked us up around 1pm and I carried a shivering little Chicklet wrapped in a towel to the car so that we could return home and stand under a warm shower to thaw out.

We ate a very large lunch with heaps of salad veggies, a boiled egg and an apple, had an hour of quiet time and then spent an hour working on the Sea Serpent cave ...

Mama phoned us from the border of Croatia this evening as she waited for their tour bus driver to sort out some problem with paperwork. She's certainly getting around!

Poppy Bluebarry has hurt his back again ... overdoing it in the back garden, so we have to try and be gentle with him for a while.

It's almost 10.30pm so I'm off to bed.

Nite all.

Day Eleven of Chicklet Holiday

Today was voted, by Chicklet, as the best day of her holiday so far!

Of course, we started with our breakfast in bed and playing Sim Dragons.

At 10.30am, knowing that there was an incoming tide, we decided to go to the beach to collect some more shells and some sticks that we could use to build a shipwreck that will be part of our new dragon cave.

Sporting a bright orange bag to carry our selections in, Chicklet stood on the dry sand and watched me walk onto the wet sand.

"I'm not walking on the wet sand!" she called out.

"That's okay!" I replied "You can stay there. I'm going to splash in the puddles!"

She warily walked to the edge of the wet sand but did an about face and returned to the dry sand where she watched me walk further away from her.

I got so far away that I was feeling concerned I wouldn't be able to get to her quickly enough if anything happened and I turned to look at her just as she shrugged her shoulders and on the soft breeze, her words floated to me ...

"Well obviously Bozzy Wozzy isn't going to stop, so I may as well just go too."

She very carefully walked behind me and didn't even hesitate when she reached the big shin deep puddle that she had to walk through to get to me.

We walked together along the beach, sinking our feet into the muddy sand and laughing at the suction that made it difficult to lift our feet out.

We followed the toad fish into the shallows, watched some Whistling Kites fighting in the sky, copied the sounds of the seagulls, took the superhero pose together, laughed at the big dog dragging his owner by the leash along the beach and then we dared to walk into the deep water until Chicklet's knees were underwater.

She tried to move quickly through the water, but one foot slipped into a hole and suddenly she was down and completely drenched underwater. The look of shock on her face and the quick intake of air as the cold water washed over her chest, made me laugh out loud and then the expression on her face changed to one of pure joy and happiness.

She spent the next thirty minutes crawling around on all fours through he shallow waters, pretending to be a crocodile, as the tide came in. The water was bloody cold! But she loved it.

I phoned Adoring Husband and asked him to come pick us up in twenty minutes and bring towels!

I then had the problem of getting her off the wet sand and onto the dry sand to come home and it was only when she was worried that we would drive off without her, that she moved her butt.

A warm shower was in order when we got home and then a snack lunch of red capsicum, carrot, cucumber and celery sticks with peanut butter.

I crumbed some Snapper fillets for AH and myself .

We worked some more on our new dragon cave ...

Shells dangling from the ceiling of the cave.

Cave wall paintings - A mermaid (above) A sea serpent creating a mermaid chicken (below)

The bottom of the Sea Serpent cave decorated with shells so far and the tinsel splash.

One of the Sea Serpents - still a work in progress

... and tonight, Chicklet was so hungry, she just kept asking for more food. Capsicum, carrot, celery, cucumber, green beans, 2 boiled eggs, a big bowl of freshly made fruit whip ice cream with chopped strawberries and some shaved chocolate and then she asked for toast with peanut butter and THEN she asked for more ice-cream (which I denied her).

Bath time, cuddle time and then we remembered that we promised to send photos of our Sim dragons to Mama ...

... so we did that, which meant that she didn't fall asleep tonight until after 8pm. The last thing she said tonight was "Today was the best day EVER. I love swimming in the ocean!".

Pretty good coming from a little girl who in the beginning, didn't even want to walk on the wet sand!

Now it's already after 11pm and I need sleep.

Nite all.    

Day Ten of Chicklet Holiday

Yes, you guessed it!

Dragons. Dragons. More dragons.

We played the Sim Dragon ap this morning over breakfast in bed - always fun - and once again, Poppy Bluebarry made our breakfasts and brought them to us on a tray.

We got dressed, did a load of washing and then made our way to the outdoor area to do some more work on the dragon caves.

We added the sign to the first dragon cave and because the spiders that we glued to the front of the cave began falling off, I took them all off and wired them in so that they all look they are spinning webs.

We finished painting our dragons (well, Chicklet is not quite finished) and began creating our new Sea Serpent dragons for the new Cave.

We painted the floor of the new cave in different shades of blue, including some glittery blue.

We created a tall splash out of the watery blue floor using long sparkly blue pipe cleaners.

We selected shells from the huge collection that PB and Ch found on the beach and have stored in a smaller foam box. These will be the shells that decorate the cave and will hold the treasures and jewels belonging to the dragons.

We made a list of things that we'll do to the cave tomorrow, including the types of cave paintings that we'll paint onto the walls and also making a wrecked pirate ship.

We stopped in the middle of all that for a light lunch.

We had some quiet time.

We watched some football ... she gets very excited when the 'Dragons' play!!

We had a final 40 minute play on the Sim Dragon Ap before I made dinner and Vegan Chickie phoned us as I served dessert. She was at the airport about to leave Cologne and fly to Hungary to start a tour that is going to take her to many different countries over the next two weeks.

Finally, we had bath time and cuddle/talk time and Chicklet was sound asleep by 7.15pm.

Now it's approaching 11pm so I should get some sleep too.

Nite all.

Day Nine of Chicklet Holiday

Watching the Royal Wedding ... Noyce ... Unusual ... Different

Glad I'm watching it in the comfort of my own home because everybody there looks uncomfortable and bored out of their brains!

Chicklet and I started our day with breakfast in bed from Poppy Bluebarry and we played some Sim Dragon before we experienced our first big meltdown of epic proportions.

The worst of it lasted for about thirty minutes followed by mini waves of misery.

In the end I called her a "Drama Dragon" and we got on with our day.

We sat outside in the sunshine and watched Poppy Bluebarry chop down the mulberry tree, the roots of which have destroyed our water bore and have crept under the neighbour's fence and threaten to undermine the foundations of their house.

We did some washing and then sat in the outdoor area to do some work on both the dragon cave and the dinosaur skeleton that we've been painting in sessions.

We also painted our clay dragons ...

We enjoyed a late lunch and then some quiet time, a bit of football on TV, followed by a light dinner of boiled egg and a whole carrot with a smoothie made from kale, zucchini, broccoli, celery leaf, apple, banana, dragon fruit (to make it pink), raspberries, coconut milk and coconut water.

Her favourite dessert with fruit whip ice cream, banana and chopped up strawberries filled her belly to the brim.

We played Sim Dragon for half an hour before bed and then had cuddle and chat time together.

Vegan Chickie called early this morning because she was going on a cruise along the Rhine and didn't  know if she would have phone reception this evening (our time).

It's almost 11pm so I'd best get some sleep.

Nite all.    

Day Eight of Chicklet Holiday

Chicklet and I were snuggled up in bed together this morning, in our pyjamas, playing Dragon Sim, when I received a phone call from The Motivator asking if I could come into work for a couple of hours. I needed to be there in thirty minutes.

That was at 9.45am.

We walked through the door of the shop at 10.15am.

An achievement worth bragging about!

Chicklet wanted to be at the shop with me, so the achievement was all hers. This is the girl who is so easily distracted in every moment of time - before I've even finished uttering a sentence, her brain is focussing on something entirely unrelated.

She dressed herself, found her shoes, located her water bottle and was waiting at the door for me before I was even ready! I've never seen her do that before.

What was supposed to be a couple of hours, turned into four hours and Chicklet was sooooo good.

I expected that she would get bored out of her brain and start doing all the things that I asked her not to do while we were there ... like run around the shop, touch the stock, talk incessantly or interrupt me while I was with customers.

She was wonderful and kept herself occupied watching kids Netflix in the back room, helping me with the snap buttons and being very quiet while I served.

Once, when a customer walked in the door, Chicklet whispered to me "Can I talk to her?" I told her "No, because she is here to have a look at the shop, so we won't disturb her." Chicklet responded with "But I will talk to her about the shop."

"What will you say?" I asked.

"I'll talk about shop stuff." she replied.

After that, the customer began talking to me and barely took a breath herself inside twenty minutes, so Chicklet didn't get a chance to do any talking at all.

Chicklet was just beginning to get fidgety at about the three and a half hour mark, but brightened up when The Motivator walked through the door and she got to have a chat with her for a while.

We came home and finished painting the dinosaur skeleton.

I cooked another early dinner and we were done and in the bath by 5pm. Vegan Chickie phoned at about 6pm for her daily catch up and I walked out of the bedroom with Chicklet sound asleep at 7pm.

I'm feeling a bit weary tonight, so it will be an early night for me ... as soon as the football is finished. I guess 10pm is early enough.

No photos again from us.

Nite all.

Day Seven of Chicklet Holiday

At about 1.30am, a little person came running into my bedroom, made a flying leap onto the bed, curled up in a ball on top of me and didn't move. I asked her what was wrong, but she was sound asleep and didn't respond.

I somehow manoeuvred my way out from under her and took her back to bed. I turned on her sleep meditation ap and lay beside her for twenty minutes. It only took two minutes for her to appear to be sleeping but I waited, to be sure, and then returned to my own bed.

She didn't remember anything this morning and we laughed about it.

Between Adoring Husband snoring like a freight train (a recent phenomenon), the psychotic dogs needing to pee during the night and Chicklet making special and unexpected appearances some nights (not every night), my sleep habits are copping a beating.

This makes me cranky and moody and poor Adoring Husband is copping the brunt of it. He has big shoulders and will be my punching bag for the remaining three weeks ... especially since he is contributing to my sleeplessness.

Having said that, he has been very helpful by keeping Chicklet occupied in the mornings, making her breakfast of fruit and toast and spending time with her while I catch an extra hour of Zzzzs.

This morning Chicklet and I spent an hour in bed playing the dragon ap. We got up, got dressed, did some washing, made her bed and went into the outdoor area to paint some pieces of dinosaur which will be put together as a standing dinosaur skeleton tomorrow.

It was time for me to get ready for work, so I gave her some strawberries to eat for lunch while I got dressed.

She decided that she wanted to come to the shop with me, so I packaged up some apple, grapes, carrot sticks and smoothie to take with us. The smoothie has baby spinach, cucumber, celery, broccoli, apple, pineapple, banana, coconut milk, water and a drizzle of maple syrup. Vegetables that she doesn't even know she's getting.

While we were at the shop, she did a very large drawing on a sheet of purple cardboard of a scene from the dragon ap that we've been playing. I set her up at a little table in the training room and she ate her food while she worked on her art.

After that, she came into the shop area to help me unpack some snap jewellery and put some snap buttons into a display sheet. She used her little fingers to open up some tiny snap lock bags so that I could display some new buttons.

She waited very patiently while I answered a phone call that took forever to finish.

Adoring Husband arrived right on time to take us home and brought all of our paraphernalia inside so that I could close the shop.

The phone call really set me back with where I was up to, so I didn't finish my work time very satisfactorily.

AH was supposed to go to SES training tonight, so I went straight into the kitchen to make an early dinner for him before he left. A pointless exercise, because he didn't end up going anyway. That wasn't very annoying at all *insert sarcastic tone here*.

Chicklet and I played another hour of the dragon ap before, bath time, cuddle time and sleep time.

We had a problem with her iPad not charging and I think her charger might be faulty, because it charges on all the other cords in the house. Her iPad was flat and she needs her guided meditation to fall asleep, so I ended up having to buy the ap and put it onto my iPad so that she could fall asleep tonight.

I'll be trying for an early night and will hopefully get some solid sleep tonight.

I'll also be working for the last 90 minutes of our opening hours at the shop tomorrow.

I didn't take any photos today but I thought this was pretty funny ...

Nite all.

Day Six of Chicklet Holiday

The day has been filled with dragons ... how unusual!

We found an ap where we become dragons. Wind dragons. Fire dragons. Earth dragons. Ice dragons.

We have to fight Knights, Wizards and creatures to go through levels and build families of dragons. There are castles and volcanos and glaciers and oceans and floating islands in the sky. There are different dinosaurs of varying strengths to either conquer or avoid.

This ap is pretty much Chicklet's dream come true.

She climbed into bed with me this morning and told me that she was going to get the Sims Cats and Dogs ap so that she could created Jack, Ruby and Colli and play with them all the time. So I did a search for that ap and it didn't exist. Instead, I found a different dog ap, so I downloaded that to my iPad.

As we began to play with that one, an advertisement appeared for the Sims Dragon ap, so I searched for that and found it.

The excitement level was profound.

We played that in between meals and creating our own clay dragons with the moulding clay that Poppy Bluebarry got for us in The Bay. Adult dragons with unhatched eggs, partly hatched eggs and baby dragons already hatched.

Every so often Chicklet runs outside to our cross trainer which is stored under the awning of the shed in the back yard and she spends a couple of minutes exercising before running back inside. It's more action than that machine has seen in some time!

It was much later than usual by the time Chicklet climbed into bed. She wanted psychotic dog Colli to lie on her bed for a little while tonight, so I put the dog on top of the doona, only to discover that she had a dirty butt. This required changing the darned doona cover (while Adoring Husband bathed the dog) and it was after 8.30pm by the time Chicklet fell asleep and I could leave the room.

Ugh! Sometimes 'things' don't go as smoothly as you plan. It's annoying.

I'll be working for a couple of hours at the shop tomorrow afternoon. I'd best get some sleep.

Nite all.



 

Day Five of Chicklet Holiday

I opened the shop and had the morning at work.

Morning coffee with the girls was an added bonus! Love my girls.

The original plan was to work til 11am but I wanted to help The Motivator as much as possible so I spent the time to check off some newly arrived stock, price it, display some of it and find homes to store the overflow.

This took me an hour over the plan.

The funny thing is that while I was stressing that I had pushed both Adoring Husband and Chicklet to their limits, (coping without me), AH thought that I was working until 1pm. So I arrived home to an empty house and they turned up to the shop after I had left!

They had spent quite some time walking along the beach collecting more shells for our next project and then sitting in the shade chatting while Chicklet played in the sand.

I'm pretty sure that Poppy Bluebarry was relieved that I was now home to relieve him of the responsibility.

The remainder of the day wasn't filled with much else.

Chicklet was starving hungry and by the time she stopped asking for (and eating) all the lunch I could muster, almost two hours had passed and it was time for some quiet time.

She spent her quiet time in the bedroom and then she liked the idea of sitting up in our big bed watching Youtube videos about Minecraft. I should have taken a photo because she looks so tiny with all the pillows behind her and the doona covering her body.

Before we knew it, it was time to start preparing dinner.

After all the food she ate at lunch time, there was barely any room left in her tummy for dinner, so she ate a boiled egg, a piece of carrot and the last of the smoothie that I made at lunch time.

Fun in the bathtub followed by cuddles and chats before falling asleep in this position ...

I have no idea how she does that!

Just wanted to make a special mention of the petrified gecko that she found in one of the drawers under her craft box that was stored after her last visit.

She was pretty excited about this find!

Vegan Chickie made a quick call from Florence just before bed, which was a nice finish to the day.

We have big plans tomorrow for the dragon cave, so I'd best get some sleep.

Nite all.  

 

Day Four of Chicklet Holiday

Poppy Bluebarry and Strawberry Shortcake (that's what they call each other) are a combination that require constant monitoring and reigning in.

I'm sure that I am currently caring for two children instead of one!

Once the clock ticked on to 7.30am Chicklet and I spent an hour in my bed bringing dragons to life on that ap that I told you about ...

... after we changed out of our pyjamas and into play clothes, we created a cardboard dragon and read lots of interesting information about the different dragons from countries all around the world. So many legendary tales to learn about.

I went to work at 1pm and the two trouble makers went to the park and then collected some shells from the beach so that we can create a new Sea Serpent Cave next week - after the current cave is complete.

They picked me up from work at 3pm and while at the supermarket, we discovered a fossilised dinosaur egg that requires Paleontological skills to unearth.

It was an amazing discovery because it kept her almost completely silent for more than an hour! In that time, she found two skeletal bones and is excited at the prospect of finding the remaining bones tomorrow. Also in that time, I was able to focus on cooking dinner for Adoring Husband who had to leave early for a SES meeting, and at the same time prepare Chicklet's dinner.

Tonight, after her bath, while we were having cuddle and chat time on the bed, psychotic dog 'Jack' decided to jump on her bed - this is the first time that he has shown an interest in Chicklet and over a period of time, he moved closer and closer until he was right beside her pillow.

Chicklet was both apprehensive and excited about this change in their relationship and just before she fell asleep, stated that the best part about her day was having Jack jump on her bed. She now loves Jack and he has become her favourite.

I was grateful to have a peaceful couple of hours to myself until AH arrive home from his meeting.

I'll be working for a couple of hours in the morning, so I'd best get some beauty sleep.

Nite all.

Day 3 of Chicklet Holiday

We all had a relaxing start to the morning.

Adoring Husband didn't wake up until almost 8am and Chicklet was quietly keeping herself occupied in her room.

Less than an hour later, in walked Chicklet and AH with some breakfast for me and Chicklet climbed under the covers to snuggle while I ate.

AH went for a drive to get me some coffee and when he returned, he called Chicklet out to help him do something. A few minutes later they came into the bedroom with two plants and two Mother's Day cards. She had written her name inside the Grandma one.

After our lazy morning, it was time to get up and continue working on our dragon cave. It seems that the hard work was pretty one sided as I hung fifty bats and spiders from the ceiling of the foam cave. This required poking 50 holes in the foam, removing the paper from 50 wire ties, threading the wires through the bats and spiders, poking the wire through the holes and then bending the wire to keep them in place.

While any one of those tasks could have been completed by Chicklet, and although she desperately wants this dragon cave to be amazing, she is not the slightest bit interested in forming a team with me to complete the contract!

We covered the floor of the cave with red glitter glue and then sprinkled silver and gold glitter over the top of that.

Chicklet created one tree by wrapping glittering green pipe cleaners around a stick that she found in the back yard.

Then she was bored with the dragon cave and made a couple of dinosaur sticker pictures.

We had a colouring book of Mythical Creatures and she explained that there was an Ap with it that made the creatures come to life. Who knew?! So we coloured in our creatures and wallah!!!

Amazing.

She has an hour of quiet time every afternoon which is followed by feeding the chooks with Poppy Bluebarry and a bit more play time with me before dinner.

I've stumbled across a winner with Banana Split for dessert. My usual fruit whip ice cream with a banana, chopped up strawberry and raw chocolate grated over the top. This is her face to show how much she loves it ...

We have cuddle and chat time on her bed for about twenty minutes every night before we turn on the kids guided meditation that she falls asleep to almost immediately.

Day three a success.

Nite all.