Update

OK. So on Thursday, the bloke finally got on to the turkeys at the US consulate who said "Ooh, that's not right. Luckily it's still in our computer system, so send us the original and we'll fix it." So he did. They claim they'll send it back by registered post.

In the meantime this has been happening a lot.


This particular vid was taken at my friend Amanda's house (which is much tidier than mine, and has lovely cork tiles on the floor) where we went for a play yesterday. Erik was particularly taken by Emily's red ribbon, which she tried to take away from him several times (she's three) but he held on to it and flapped it some more.

Dylan and D'Arcy had a great play together. Dylan is 11 months younger than D'Arcy, and their relationship has been interesting. They haven't seen each other much over the last couple of years, so there's always an adjustment period when they play together. They're both the kind of boy who wants to impress the other, so that can go badly, but yesterday there wasn't much of that. D'Arcy was really keen to go, and they got straight into it when we got there. Emily felt a bit left out though, she usually gets Dylan to herself to play with, and she didn't much like having Erik around I think.

I am a bad bad blogger

It's been more than a month since Erik's birthday, and I did manage to get pics of that up, but that's about all I've done. Apologies. Actually not much has been happening in a busy kind of way. ABout a week and a half ago we finally got to Sydney to go to the US Consulate to submit the 'Consular Report of Birth Abroad' for Erik. This was no mean feat I'll have you know. It involved a lot of paperwork. For a start, the beloved had to prove his citizenship. Not too hard, as he has a passport. Then for his citizenship to be transmissible to his child he had to prove that he'd been living in the US for at least 5 years, some of them past the age of 14. So he got school and university transcripts sent here. That was a bit more of a pain, as the Consulate wants 'official' copies of everything. OK, so far so good. Now for the annoying bit. We'd been advised over the phone (and the literature accompanying the application form also suggested) that despite the fact that we'd got married before Erik was born, the fact that he was conceived out of wedlock maight be a sticking point. SO we started to trawl through all our power and phine bills to prove that the beloved lives here. We made copies of all of these, as the Consulate charges $1USD/page. We also had two friends sign affadavits saying that they knew that we had been together for some time before Erik's birth. Beloved reads some more fine print which says "if you are also intending on applying for a social security number, please provide two copies of your supporting documents". Back to the photocopier. We now have three large piles of paper that are increasingly in danger of getting mixed up. Original, #1 copies and #2 copies. We put them all in cardboard files to try to keep them together. Of course when we front up at the consulate for our appointment the bloke behind the glass screened counter looks a little alarmed. I should point out that this bloke was as Aussie as they come. We'd been joking for weeks beforehand that our interview with a consular official would be with some Ivy League young thing called Chester or Chase or Savannah, but of course on the day, the preliminary stuff was all handled by some bloke called Bruce (or possibly Jayden). We did get to speak to a consular offical later, to sign the forms. His name was Christopher, and as we confirmed later, we both giggled a bit inside that most of the letters for 'Chester' were there. Christopher says "you're all done, the passport and CRBA will be sent to you in the Express Post satchel you've provided within 6 weeks, the Soc Sec number might take up to three months. Fast forward to yesterday when a courier knocks on the front door. Sure enough, it's the passport and official CRBA certificate. I pull out the camer and begin taking pics of my boys with the new passport, and then pause to read the certificate. "Bastards!" I say"?" says the beloved. "They've spelled my name wrong"... so on the phone goes the beloved, only to find that the people he needs to speak to are in Sydney, at the Consulate, and their phone number is only available between 2-4 weekdays. They haven't answered it over the last two days during that time, and the beloved has been leaving increasingly annoyed phone messages....

In the meantime, Erik has been almost learning to walk - he's taken a few steps between me and a chair - and is getting into all kinds of mischief. I fitted child locks to most of the kitchen cupboards. He still thinks that D'Arcy is the funniest thing ever, and he's still reliably using the sign we came up with for 'finished', with a few others occasionally. I've seen 'cat' and 'dog' and 'food' but none of them consistent.



I'm not sure if you can get to my other Youtube videos from the one embedded here, but there are some others that I put up at the same time that might be amusing.

Also pics at Flickr...most of which seem to feature eating, or the immediate post-eating phase.



Part of my problem right now, apart from having the beloved home for a holiday while his mom is here, is that he upgraded his laptop, so I got his old one. This means that I have the current Flash player, so I can play Lexulous and Scrabble on facebook again. 'nuff said really.

A whole year?

scariest birthday cake ever
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken

Yes, it's true. Erik just turned one. We had a small birthday party for him today, and I made the cake (pictured). It was inspired by this blog I ran across in my internet wanderings, although the temperature issues that my oven has affected the result somewhat. Rather than neat layers we got a marbled effect, but that's not so bad really. I don't want to do it again in a hurry though - I think all the food colouring gave me a headache. There are a bunch of pics at Flickr, if you click on the cake pic. But I'm tired now, and can't remember what else to say. Oh yeah, we had fireworks. Erik like the fountainy type ones, rather than the big bangy ones.

Apologies for the delay

But we're back now. Beloved has gone to the US again to work and bring back his mum for another visit. They'll be back just in time for Erik's birthday, which is planned to be a fairly small event thus far.

In developmental news - I have been using a few modified AusLAN signs with Erik, and he's just started using one himself, which is pretty exciting. He now tells us he's 'finished' with everything - food, nappy changes, sleeping, being held...It's become slightly confused in the last day or so though, as he's also started clapping, which for a few hours was the sign for 'more', but now tends to be tacked on to the end of a 'finished' sign for amusement. Anyway, here's a post-breakfast video, showing these skills.



And while we're at it, here's another one showing another skill, which made me laugh a lot the first time I saw it. I'm trying to find a nice block trolley for his birthday, as he seems to be ready for it. He will stand on his own for a few seconds at a time, but doesn't seem to be very happy about it, and is still a way off walking I think. I hope.



D'Arcy is still Bakugan obsessed, but the school just banned them, so his opportunities for playing/swapping/obsessing have been curtailed now. I remember at school it was always this way, each new fad was banned and replaced by another equally inane thing, but with less marketing than these days. And the benign things like jacks or elastics were pretty safe. In fact, looking back, it was the "games that the boys played" that got banned more, and being "one of the boys" I was affected by this on many occasions. Yo-yos. Marbles. Trading cards. Things that could cause arguments or disfigurement. Interesting, and I don't think it's changed much. All his Bakugan mates are boys, but he is 8 after all, and right now girls are just weird.

Lovely day

Edit

I know I should have written a new post, but by the time I realised that I'd put the photo in... Anyway I forgot to mention my presents. D'Arcy had made me something at school, which turned out to be a bead key-ring, and it's fabulous! I love the colours (pink and orange together - yay!) Beloved asked me what Erik should get me for mothers' day. I replied "more sleep" with a laugh. Beloved and I were shopping on Saturday and went into Myers as I'd seen contour pillows there recently, and I've been looking for one since my physio suggested it might be a good thing. We scoped them out and then went to DJs where there was a better one and it still had its 'sale' sticker on, so Erik got me a new pillow. It is marvellous. I told a friend that it's like sleeping with your head and neck cradled in someone's hands.

End Edit

We had a great mothers' day yesterday. I got to have a morning nap with Erik before my mum and step-father came for lunch. They brought a lamb and quince tagine, and the beloved had made another one with chicken and dates. I'd stewed a bunch of quinces and we had them for dessert with Mungalli Creek honey chai yoghurt. It was totally spectacular eating, and I heard some interesing family stories from mum. D'Arcy came home for afternoon tea, and my stepfather brought his mum over too. The only sad thing was that I totally forgot to take any photos whatsoever. Sorry.

Not much going on here...

This is essentially a not very exciting (and wobbly) video of Erik just mooching around on the kitchen floor one evening. It goes for about a minute. There is a much longer one here which shows him playing his favourite game, "where's Erik?" with a square of silk.
I really just uploaded them for the benefit of The Americans, who haven't seen any action for a while, and his Grandma Joyce is probably getting sad that it's almost his birthday, and she was going to come over for it, but she's got cold feet (swine flu). We've said we'll wait and see if it really is as bad as they say, before we decide. The beloved is supposed to go over for a conference later this month. When he mentioned the possibility of his non-attendance to the organiser she said "But Baton Rouge is nowhere near Mexico" he laughed at her. Everywhere is near to Mexico in teh US.

Plastic crap

Bakugan
Originally uploaded by Crit Chicken

So I finally caved. D'Arcy has been at me for weeks about Bakugan Battle Brawlers. At the start of it we went to the local stupid market where we knew they had them, and saw how expensive they were. $19.84 for one figurine, one 'gate card' and one Bakugan. "Not bloody likely, it's such a rip-off" I said to my darling son, but he was determined. Every time we went to the shop he'd look, and we'd debate the pros and cons of $20 worth of plastic crap. He had an idea "you know that $20 I got for Christmas? I could use that" and I reluctantly agreed that if he wanted to blow his $20 on plastic crap, maybe that was OK. Since then, however, there has been a city-wide Bakugan shortage. Until today. We went to BigW and saw that you could buy a $19.84 pack of 1 Bakugan, 1 'gate card' and 1 'ability card', or you could buy a $38.88 pack of 6 of the above. After some negotiation D'Arcy is the proud owner of 6 Bakugan Battle Brawlers. I've said that that's the end of it. I hope it is. Erik loves the crunchy plastic packaging it came in, so everyone's a winner tonight.

As a kind of post-script to it all, when I showed D'Arcy the picture I took I said "that's the one I'll use for the blog post." He said "What are you going to call it? Plastic crap?"