birth, kinder, dogs and stuff

I need to blog about the recent decisions the government has made in terms of trouncing our rights to choose independent midwifery, not have our choices as mothers and human beings over our uterus, our vaginas, our bodies and our babies removed if a doctor doesn't fancy agreeing with us and our midwives but it's all just too depressing. Krudd and Nicola Roxon suck. Lots. AMA sucks hairy monkey balls. ALP can kiss my shining white arse. It's not articulate, eloquent or stunningly spoken as some of the speeches at the 15 rallies around the nation were today (despite Krudd chickening out and avoiding everyone) but it is a very genuine sentiment none the less. If you haven't already, contact your local MP and tell them how outraged you are that these laws are being pushed through. Make a point that you will NOT vote for politicians who disregard our human rights to self determination. Senate votes NEXT TUESDAY on FEB 23!

On a happier note we had the first parent-teacher conference since La has started kinder and today was our meeting. It went pretty well and wasn't too surprising. The break-down:

• he's very, VERY smart - she reckons he'll move to Cycle 2 inside of 2 years
  
• he's exceedingly good at manipulating tools and stuff like scissors, staplers, hole punches, sticky tape etc (as if the stack of projects he brings home from kinder to join the stacks he's done here don't attest to that! LOL)
  
• he's loves learning how things work (don't I know it, the kid has pulled apart multiple remotes to wires and chips, disassembled the laundry dryer door to component parts and taken apart the DVD player to look at it's guts...)
  
• he adores the guinea pigs (or "any pigs" in La-ese) and she'd suspected he must have been taught about handling animals
  
• he yacks incessantly about all the animals here... no doubt whose kid he is hey?
  
• he loves being able to ring the class bell and is working very hard for the privilege
  
• he climbs like a monkey (they've found him perched at the top of a cupboard to get the aforementioned bell and has scaled the schools sport goal net to get up over the boundary fencing... it's been moved 3m away from the fence now) and is not at all affected by splatting himself. This is of course no shock given I've watched him climb and launch himself from the top of the chook pens, a couple meters up a tree, the top of the woodshed after shimmying up a gutter etc.
• he can be very polite and considerate.... and he can be defiant when he can't do something
  
• while he can be very focused, he's not always good about putting everything away and cleaning up when he's done before he gets something else and he can be disruptive to the other students as he'll go up and insert himself into their tasks willingly or otherwise
  

Hm. What else have we been up to? We did the Melbourne Pet Expo last Saturday with Sierra as one of the breeds demo dogs and had a nice time, albeit we got some typically amusing comments. I had one young lady look at Si's blue eyes and wail in distress, "Oh that poor dog, she's BLIND!" Um. No. She just has blue eyes. The amazing thing is the young lady had blue eyes as well! LOL

In other news, my adult foster cat who'd gone into the adoption program is back as she got ill poor dear. I think she's used up all 9 of her lives now! My foster kittens are getting big, won't be long before they're ready to spay/neuter, microchip and go to new homes. Cinnamon's spay is coming up as well, which is a bit anxiety inducing but a bit exciting as once she's healed we can adopt a friend for her!

I've put my name back down for agility training on the waiting list, so fingers crossed it won't take 2 years to get in this time! Obedience training was back as of the start of Feb but I didn't make the first class due to chest infection. (Joy!) Very much enjoying training again! Si has come up nice and trim, so she'll be in good shape... I on the other hand am a bit slower in the regaining my (non-round) shape!

I've also pretty much made up my mind that when the kids are a bit older and all in school I will look at going back to school to become a vet tech, maybe also looking into taking courses as a trainer as well. I like the trainer idea more but the vet tech is likely to be a bit more steady in terms of income. Laurent heard this and asked the all important question: but mum, will your school have sticky tape? "Um. No La, probably not." "Oh. You should come to my school then," he says with a slightly smug voice, "WE have sticky tape!" Priorities right?

Gratuitous pictures: