Archive for the 'Bairn' Category


53

Published
by
drew
on 22 June 2008
at 10:42
in Bairn and Film
.
0 Comments

I was at the local brickbuster last weekend looking for something for the kids to watch. I had Little Miss L with me, who was turning her nose up at pretty much everything they had there as they were either old rubbish, good stuff that she’s seen before, or new rubbish, including the Bratz movies (though I was turning my nose up at those. Slutz, I call them. And yeah, it’s amazing how suddenly conservative you get when there’s a five-year-old girl involved).

The one thing we did seem to settle on was Herbie Goes Bananas. Strange choice for a 5yo girl, I thought but I was a bit of a Herbie fan when I was around 10, so I thought if nothing else, I might get a giggle out of it.

Anyway, it was a hit. They both loved it and have watched it again every day this last week (it’s due back today). There’s a good bit of info floating around on it but the standouts are that they used 26 prop Herbies in the making of it, and there’s one scene where a prop Herbie is thrown overboard from a ship. And word has it, is still there. The IMDB says that the prop Herbies were auctioned off after filming for as little as US$25 but in the film a couple of them get beaten up pretty badly (that bullfight was savage) so they were probably lucky to get that much.

So yesterday, C went to Brickbuster again with Little Miss L and came back with not only The Love Bug but also Herbie Fully Loaded, so Herbieville here at the mo.

Little Miss M is in her second viewing of HFL right now. The good parts are the original Love Bug soundtrack and Lindsay Lohan’s winning smile. The not so good is the stupid eyelids they put on the VW and the electric, sparky fx. Still, they probably had to do something with all those CG artists employed by the studio.

The highlight of HFL though, is when Matt Dillon looks under the hood (or the boot, in this case) to have a go at sabotaging the engine, and you know that cute little bug is gonna squirt oil in his face, it’s just a matter of when, and then maybe you think he might not do it because it’s an old gag and this is a new movie, the dramatic irony is intense, but then HE DOES IT!!

Comedy gold.

And in yesterday’s paper I was checking out the prices of old veedubs.

Pigfish

Published
by
drew
on 30 May 2008
at 20:55
in Adelaide, Bairn and Food
.
0 Comments

We all went to the Markets tonight and were buying meat from the butcher.

Little Miss M saw the chevapchichis (I have no idea how to spell that) and said “Look at the salami fish fingers!”

They’re so cute when they’re three.

You know you’re a parent when…

Published
by
drew
on 22 April 2008
at 09:57
in Bairn and Media
.
0 Comments

Sunday night, watching TV with C. Richard Roxborough’s girlfriend has just arrived from London. They’re having a conversation.

C: What have I seen her in?

Me: Playschool.

C: Yeah, that’s it.

Ball sports and insects

Published
by
drew
on 10 March 2008
at 18:46
in Bairn
.
0 Comments

Little Miss M said “there’s tennis”.
I asked where
She said in the mud.
I said “In the mud?”
“Yeah, there’s tennis in the mud. I can hear them.”
I think she meant crickets

Dress-ups

Published
by
drew
on 29 December 2007
at 16:35
in Bairn and Ma vie
.
3 Comments

The slightly more significant other had a date to meet an old friend for brunch today. They had dinner last night and the old friend wanted to meet the little misses. C had picked clothes for both of them but Little Miss L, in one of her many bouts of stubbornness and feisty independence wasn’t having any of it. She pulled out a skirt and top that she wanted to wear. C is rather stubborn too, so there was a stalemate. I tried to broker a deal, with C conceding to the L-favoured top as long as the white shorts (not the denim skirt) went with it.

I put this to Little Miss L, explaining the concept of compromise. But she still saw that she was being dictated to, so even meeting half-way was still an infringement on her liberty and was therefore inherently unfair. (Articulate little thing, she is.)

So when diplomacy fails, C did what any parent would do under the circs: she bribed her to wear the originally picked-out outfit. There may have been the promise of chocolate or unfeasibly large lollipops in the offing; I don’t know the details. And the C-picked outfit went on and all was right with the world.

Then C walked in on me as I was doing up my shoes…

“You’re not wearing that, are you?”

Just say No to Bindeez

Published
by
drew
on 6 November 2007
at 15:06
in Adelaide, Bairn, Consumer goods and Featured
.
0 Comments

Little Miss L just had a birthday. She turned five. We bought her (and when I say ‘we’, I mean my wife and her mum went into Big W four months ago and put about $1ooo worth of stuff on lay-by) some of those ridiculous things called Bindeez.

For a start, they wouldn’t have been my choice. Having experienced the fallout of buying her presents with as many as 20 or 30 small parts, you learn pretty quickly that small parts don’t stay together for very long. Pretty soon you’re finding small dolls’ shoes, mini plastic bananas, dolls’ house plates, cups and bottles, toy money, flash cards, tic-tac-toe pieces, My Little Pony combs and assorted bits of train track all over the house. Last week she got into the trivial pursuit box, so we’re still finding bits of yellow pie under the couch.

Why then, oh why would we want to go out and buy her a toy that openly boasts on the box that it contains 800 small, fiddly, and yes… round pieces, 600 of which would invariably end up under the fridge. I somehow knew from the outset that it was a bad idea. This was a week ago.

Today, this (from which I will hereunder quote):

The New South Wales and ACT governments have banned a popular toy called Bindeez - because the colourful beads release a compound closely resembling the illegal drug GHB when they are swallowed.
…

NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney has announced an immediate product recall pending further testing.

“We will advise parents as more information comes along but if you have Bindeez in your home, please remove them from anywhere where children can actually get to them, play with them and use them,” she said.

Miss L had a party on the weekend. She scored two smaller boxes of the things.

With any luck we’ll get a refund. Though I’m thinking I could make more by selling them to the crackheads down West Terrace this Saturday night.

Actually, do you think I could get my mother-in-law arrested for being a pusher?

Upside-down

Published
by
drew
on 26 October 2007
at 08:19
in Bairn and Media
.
0 Comments

The Umbilical Brothers have a kids’ TV show called The Upside Down Show. I’ve never really been big fans of the UBs, who as far as I could tell made a living out of making squelching noises into a microphone, but for kids TV, they’re excellent.

They have this thing at the start of every show where they use an imaginary remote control to start or stop the action. They then hand it through the TV, to the viewers.

My daughters have just had an argument over who gets to hold the remote.

someone.else@gmail.com

Published
by
drew
on 16 August 2007
at 10:41
in Bairn and Internet
.
3 Comments

One of the first things I did when Gmail was released to bloggers, was to sign up my kids. Sure, they can’t read yet but I figure one day they’ll probably learn and will want to email their friends. So instead of them having usernames like littlemissl8382938576298 and little.miss.m09847au, I thought I’d get in early and stake a claim to their names while the going was good.

I have a Gmail address which is firstname.lastname@ and I have an evil twin: someone with the same name as me who obviously thought they got dibs on the good email address, when they didn’t. I get library notices when his books are about to be overdue. Last week I even logged on and renewed his travel guide to Spain (me… sorry, he and some friends are going on holiday to Ibiza. In fact, we may even be there now). I’d hate to have to pay the late fee.

Now it turns out one of the girls has an evil twin also. I had an email for her a few weeks ago from a friend of hers, talking about moving out of home and starting college. She’s from the US, and I figure must be 18 or so and starting uni in September. When I got this email, from Stephanie, her friend, I wrote back and let her know she had the wrong address. Now an email has come from her dad to her and her brother. It’s one of those “you’ve made your mother and I so proud” letters. We’ve all had those.

I’m a little concerned though that this other father of little miss L, who is so proud and making such an effort to connect with his little girl, doesn’t know her email address.

Of greater concern is the fact that he wrote the email in Comic Sans. What is it with Dads?

Friday adventyre

Published
by
drew
on 13 August 2007
at 13:46
in Bairn and Ma vie
.
1 Comment

I was driving around of Friday night, having just picked up the kids from daycare. C was having a post-work bevvy with a colleague, so I thought I’d drive the kids around and look for a bakery or something to give them a bite to eat that didn’t involve a happy meal ( because they play with the toys and the food).

I checked one place in a shopping complex but it was shut, so I left the car park and noticed the car was making a noise. There was a bit of a bump with every wheel rotation, probably the front passenger side.

I stopped in another car park to check it out, feeling the timing of the bump as I slowed down and stopping where I knew the object would be right at the top of the wheel.  I got out to check and bugger me if there wasn’t a bloody great hex bold embedded in the tyre. It was one with a collar, about an inch in diameter, with a standard 12 mm hex head on it. I poked at it and heard a slight hiss whenever I put any pressure on it.

I thought I was well and truly stuffed. If I yanked it out, the tyre would surely go down. But it was in too tight to yank out anyway. If I drove home with it… well, I knew that somehow wouldn’t be good for it. I thought I’d be better off changing the tyre there and then and… had no idea what I’d do after that. And I didn’t like the idea of how completely insane two hungry children would go if I had to spend 20 minutes changing a tyre.

Then, the clouds opened up and a shaft of light came from the heavens and shone down, not on me, but on the Bridgestone outlet just over the road. I quickly drove over there and pulled up by the front door.

I asked the chap inside for his advice and led him to the car and pointed at the bolt.

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“Yep,” he answered.

“Thought so.”

But being a top bloke, he offered to fix it there and then, even though he was about to close and had already turned off the tills. He only wanted $25. Considering the situation I was in, I thought that was a bargain.

So I walked the girls down to the servo on the corner, where we had meat pies with lashings of free sauce, then went back, paid for the tyre work (luckily I had cash on me) and went to pick up C.

And I don’t even care if the guy put the $25 straight in his pocket. I probably would have.

Dairy tears

Published
by
drew
on 12 August 2007
at 22:23
in Bairn
.
0 Comments

They say you shouldn’t cry over spilt milk.

But two litres on the lounge rug is surely worth a few sniffles.