I've been thinking a lot of Cami recently, partly because Nic has suggested that perhaps it would be good to get another puppy - something I am in no way, shape or form ready for given I can barely look at pictures without crying. And partly because we're going to the same (poultry) shows and auctions I took her to last year as a little baby and having to tell everyone why she's not here. I'm glad people remember her and I do enjoy sharing the funny little things they remembered about her but it opened it up again and along with remembering comes the guilt and hurt.

Then yesterday Laurent came down with some sort of virus and spiked a fever. He's been running temps between 38.5 and 40C last night and through today. He swings from cooperative to wailing like a lost soul and nothing is right in his world. He hurts, food tastes bad, his stomach is yucky, his feet are cold, the light is bright and everything is too loud. While I was making breakfast this morning, he looked around and asked where Cami was between mouthfuls of cornflakes and started telling me about an adventure he'd had with her last night not seeming to remember she has died. The adventure was totally made up - he and Cami had gone hunting for honey and climbed a tree to get it with balloons and bees a la Winnie The Poo and Christopher Robin - obviously something he'd dreamed of but it started a whole slew of questions.

Probably a dozen times today he's asked where she is. I try to be honest with him instead of hiding the truth or using sugarcoated euphemisms, so we tell him that someone in a car ran over Cami and Cami's body was too broke for her to live in anymore so she died. Death is what happens when your body is too sick or too broke to be fixed anymore and you can't keep living in it. It's about the simplest way I could think of to explain what happens and he seems very at ease with the ideas of some owwies being too bad to fix and of death meaning you leave your body.

He recounts that she had a bad ouchie from the car, that she was laying on the porch and he had to be careful only to touch her on her head and not on her ouchies. (When we found her I had to keep him from trying to hug her better.) We put her on the blanket and took her to the car and mummy was very upset. We went to see the doctors at the vets and they gave her "IB" (an IV) to make her feel better. She was on the table (at the vets) and he pulled up the blanket to keep her warm. We had to put her in the cage on the blankets to be warm. The vets band aids (solution to all injuries in the world according to 3 year olds) weren't good enough to fix her. Cami was too broke for the doctor to fix and her body died. Over and over and over he keeps asking where she is and then remembering and recounting it all through his fever. Hopie doesn't have owwies though. She wants bikkies. Only Cami got bad owwies. Veri and Sisi don't have owwies either. They like to play tennis ball still. But Cami had bad owwies the doctor couldn't fix and died. Over and over.

Pics of the girls

Verity

Blueberry watching a bird

Sierra

Jo, after a hard day of playing around...

Along with one of her favorite toys, a squeeky football

Hopie

"Ohh... what's that? Jo has a squeeky football??? Must dash!"

Christmas

Lots of photos, it's been a weirdly busy-and-at-the-same-time slow past few days. ;-)

After several attempts this is the best photo of all dogs and child. I'll give you three guesses WHICH one wasn't holding the sit-stay and couldn't resist making the girls sniff for bikkies. First two don't count!

One of the little red poppet, clean and dry and NOT covered in water and mud for a change. (She is OBSESSED with digging in the little pool and dam!)

Decorating the christmas tree at home

Cheeky little beggar... he's grabbed one of the little gold musical instrument decorations from the tree and is pretending to play it, complete with hummed not-quite-in-key song tune.

The tree, stockings and such. The gold wire tree on the mantle holds our special breakable baubles, we choose a new one together each year to add to the collection.

Random La photo (Hey look at that! He CAN hold still! Photographic proof folks!)

I asked him to do nice photos for Christmas. "But mum, I want to RUN!"

Pensive critter. While he's mister smiley a lot of the time, we're definitely in THAT stage of things where he's old enough to know what he wants to do, not old enough to do it all and immensely frusterated with that fact.

After he'd been curious about the Santas in the shops for weeks we took him to Melbourne's city square to meet one there. Following in last years footsteps (where he pitched a tanty over having his merry attempts to catch pigeons interrupted to see Santa) he wasn't really clued into Santa's cued speech of 'what do you want for christmas'! We don't really do the "Santa is a magic person who flies around with reindeer and gives you stuff you want if you're good" thing so much as the tale of the original St Nicolas and that the Santa's now represent a visible wish to continue the spirit of using our bounty to help others, the needy and share our love with family/friends.

Poor Santa... really not what the guy was expecting, though we did get some high fives in.

He loved the big green tree... it was TALL and has BUTTONS you press to make NOISES...

One of him with Nic

And with me

Before turning into a ratbag, flipping upside down to watch the pigeons and carriage horses.

Why is this black and white? Artistic liscence? Nah... it just looks nicer when you can't see how muddy the bathwater is after "helping" garden all day!

In the middle of the week we had a little surprise the only egg from a clutch that had candled clear/non-developing I thought MIGHT be fertile and developing well ended up hatching.

Then on Saturday, Miss Cami was entered in her first show - the Victorian Australian Shepherd Club specialty show under US senior breeder judge Sheila Polk. For her first show and not having experience under her belt she did decently - she placed 3rd in her class - with a few more miles on her to smooth out her habit of stickybeaking I think she'll do nicely. I could so tell that I spent early pregnancy 'resting' though... eek, so out of shape! I spent the rest of the day after running around the ring admiring Kate's new baby who was only 3 days old and just too precious, sitting and chatting! (C'mon, admit it, half the fun of a show is just in the chatting!) The judge did make a nice comment on Cami in her critique but I only heard part of it so will wait until I've got the exact words so I don't misquote. I forgot to take pictures at the show, so we took ones after while she was still clean and groomed! LOL Ignore the goofy looking person in the picture... was very tired by that point!


Sunday was the sports day - herding, obedience and agility. None of my guys entered but no way was I going to miss it! I took Veri and Cami along for the ride... Veri tickled me pink by doing very well all day long - probably the best she's done yet, just happy to be with me, rolling around for bellyrubs and cuddles and demonstrating she has figured out the whole people=give attention/approach/watch=reinforcement game. LOL If they didn't notice her when she came up, sat and watched them, she was fine with 'helping' them notice she was doing "Something Verity Should Get Reinforced For" by hopping up, nudging hands or waving a paw to get their attention. I'll have to watch she doesn't actually turn it into something obnoxious but I do get so much enjoyment out of seeing her be her happy little self more and more in public! :-)

Got back to find out we had another nice surprise, itty bitty Aylesbury has hatched out!

A birthday conversation

" La, what do you want for your birthday?"
" Green balloons. Green fires (candles). Hm... green balloons... and RED balloons! Yeah, a green party! *looks at me waiting for him to say more, points to the paper* "Mum, write 'a party'!"
" Okay, so you want a party. Do you want a cake?
" Yeah!"
................. waits for anything else..........
"Okay, La what KIND of cake?"
"Oh! A chocolate cake."
" Good choice. What should it look like?
" Wiggly. Iced. Oh! I know - a bunny!"
"... *pauses* A wiggly iced bunny???"
" Yeah mum, a wabbit?"

At this point Nic asks him what he wants for his cake.
"Chocolate!" (Points for consistency I suppose...)
"Okay but what do you want it to look like?"
"A choo choo clock!" (Erm... a train/clock hybrid?!? LOL)

"Do you want presents?"
"YEAH!"
"What kinds of presents do you like?"
"Toys."

*sigh* I can see this is going to be like getting blood out of a stone... so far the only solid things we've been able to get out of him is that he wants green balloons and chocolate cake! LOL

Appologies for the sunglare - a certain short person whose name I'll leave to your imaginations rather mashed up my sun hood, the flash on my camera is pathetic and I'm the only idiot on the planet who can't photoshop it out. *g* The shots are far from perfect even aside from the sunglare but I like them anyhow. Sometimes it's the imperfect bits that make you smile. Besides, it's SUN! That's just been in such short supply I couldn't not celebrate it!

Youse my HERO... Cami is such a crack up with Veri

(Poor Veri, there were sheep, the geese/ducks on the dam and the neighbors cattle in the adjoining paddock. She kept trying to "casually" move toward them only to be recalled. LOL)

"Ohhh... so THAT'S what sheep are for!"
Note if you will that the blip of dog dashing after the sheep is a certain Rough Tough Little Powderpuff who previously thought cattle were all she was interested in. Two days ago she reassessed her opinion and has decided they are rather interesting after all...
"I'm a good girl mum... can you release me from this stay now?"

Miss Hopie... believe it or not she's neckid. Poor thing has moulted out all her coat, except that ruff!Unintended (Very) Close-up
"How I get in da cam-wah?" while peering into the lense

"Hello? Dorothy Dinosaur? You come to tea? Oh yes! Yummy tea. And Wags? Oh. *pause* And Captain Sorda-feather (pmsl!) and Jeff will he wake up please? Ahhhhhh oh-tay! See you then! Byeeeeee..."
Finally... one of those shots I take to remind myself sometimes life with children can be peaceful!

We've finally got SUNSHINE back! And no rain. And my lovely daffodils popping up - isn't this ruffled one just lovely - a few of which even survive the chooks for more than a day. The camellias are past their peak but the rhododendrons are just starting to put on their show. But best of all the relatively good weather means both child and dogs can romp. Unfortunately La is still feeling a bit under the weather - his normal hyper little self most of the time but ended up spending most of last night being sick poor thing. As for me, I'm trying to keep up with everything, and feeling like I'm lightyears behind given that I'm waking up feeling like I haven't gone to sleep. At any rate, some more pics.

"Mum, I do training!"

Talent

That's right ladies and gentlemen - TALENT... that's what it takes to get every single inch of yourself completely wet and muddy crashing through mudpuddles almost as deep as you are, barreling through the paddocks and wrestling madly...
WITHOUT GETTING A SPECK OF IT ON YOUR FACE!

"THREE! TWO! ONE! LAUNCH!!!"

I'm playing catch-up with my pictures... Verity's birthday just passed and I've got to get her shots up - as well as a bunch of La and a bunch of other stuff. I've been very slack when it comes to jotting down the important stuff I want to have a record of - like for example, La's finally weaning from his beloved bibi a few months back. Remarkably easy really... not at all like I thought it would be and he's never looked back from it. Something to be said for the child-led/waiting for indications of them being ready theory of things. Two years and seven months was a nice little milestone for us.

All the funny little day-to-day stuff with the dogs and La, I keep meaning to sit and write but it seems we're just too busy living to really sit and compose my thoughts properly most days. Which is good because it means things are getting done but a bit sad because it's getting lost in the tumble of hours, days and weeks until many precious moments just melt into the general fabric of life.

Another "little" thing I should have mentioned ages ago - my visa finally (FINALLY!!!) came through. I am officially now a permanent resident and wow does that feel good to not have that shadow of worry (however unlikely it was) hanging over us!!!!

The one month anniversary of Cade's passing has already been and gone, simply doesn't seem possible really. I was set to write a long, rather rambly, emotional post of all the emotions on the anniversary and when I sat to type, it just flew from my fingers how to put thoughts into words that'd make sense.

On a happier note, the other minor, little, teensy, weensy detail I might have neglected to mention... a second rather long awaited little bubba should be arriving sometime in late March or early April. Very, very, very, very over the moon with this! ^_^

Pics snapped while waiting for the car mechanic to finish servicing the car - joys of living in a teeny-tiny town, you can walk the 2k from the mechanics house to the town to putter around for a few hours and instead spend the majority of the time just chatting to people on the way! LOL

Some pics from the day

The whole gaggle of geese and two of the Aylesbury on the dam.

Earliest daffodils sprouting... little paperwhites.

THE WORLDS MOST TOLLERANT CHOOK HOPS UP FOR A CUDDLE
"Mum, I love Sidney. He's a good chook. He has eyes and a mouth and eats corn. He likes tickles. But mum, he likes bugs eatting! I don't eat bugs, tastes yucky. (I do NOT want to know how he knows bugs taste yucky... I just don't!) I eat soup, broccoli and bananas."

The ever adorable fluffy puppykins playing queen of the mountain.
(Of rocks brought in to build the retaining wall.)

Shark-baby has finally stopped teething on us (ow ow ow... baby needle teeth!) and with a mouth that isn't sore she's now discovering the joys of the tennis ball. Funny little pupplet thinks it's just too much fun and after chasing it and prancing around to show off her trophy, drops it to bat it around it like a kitten.