threelilprincesses.com

Category: Life and laughter

  • SHED: Dads, what not to do with your iPhone

    SHED: Dads, what not to do with your iPhone

    A recovered photo of Ella at the Don River Railway

    WELL, I lost my iPhone last week.
    No seriously, stay with me, the story gets better.
    There were days gone by when losing a valuable, handy and time-consuming technological device such as this would have made me crawl up in a huddle and cry for days.
    OK, I sort of did do that, but losing the iPhone wasn’t the sole reason for it.
    No, what left me blubbering like a toddler at the Coles checkout after being told for the 50th time they could not have a chocolate frog was the memories that iPhone contained.
    On it was the best part of three weeks of images and video of being on holiday with my li’l princesses.
    Video of Princess No. 3 Holly having a giggling fit, Princess No. 2 Ella’s first ride on a train … And they were gone.
    Losing those memories hurt and, as silly as it sounds, I felt I’d lost a moment of my little girl’s childhood.
    What happened? I was rushing to get Ella into the car to enjoy a sparkling Sunday at the pool. The other Princesses, who’d had a rough night, were staying home.
    In the struggle it can be to get Ella into the car seat – it can be like trying to harness a live eel – I put the iPhone on the roof of the car.
    It was not till I got into the city (probably 4kms) it occurred to me: “Where’s my phone?”
    My heart sank.
    I retraced my steps without luck, reported it missing to the police, spent the afternoon scouring roadside verges and put an advert offering a reward in the next day’s paper – all to no avail.
    It was gone. Out of hope of a miracle I decided to put the advert in for another day.
    On Tuesday at 9 pm, two days later, Princess Kel’s phone rang and I answered it to hear the sweet words uttered by a rugged council worker: “Mate, I think I’ve found your iPhone’’.
    Sure enough, he’d found it not long after I’d lost it, but had only just read the paper.
    The next day, I got the phone back and council worker Shaun got his reward.
    My heart was in my mouth as I plugged the iPhone into the laptop as gently as a bomb squad officer handles a grenade – “PING’’
    You cannot believe the joy I felt as the images and video appeared and downloaded onto the laptop.
    iPhones and technology can be replaced, memories cannot. I owe you, Shaun.

    Here’s the video of Holly laughing:

  • Alphabet Photography Challenge “H”

    Alphabet Photography Challenge “H”

     

    H is for Heads

    By Kellie O’Brien

    Kellie is a budding photographer, who is aiming to switch off automatic and use the manual settings on her Canon PowerShot S95 a little more.

    For more about Kellie or her photography, look around the Three Li’l Princesses blog, become a fan of her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter or checkout StumbleUpon.

  • Lessons For Wives No. 1: Blokes don’t know the location of health shops

    TODAY I had cause to visit a health shop in the local mall.
    Yes, those who know me can pick themselves up off the floor and stop laughing, but Princess Ella and I simply love pea chips.
    While I was there I witnessed the following event which should serve as a timely lesson to female readers –
    Lady shopper walking around the health shop talking loudly on her mobile phone, obviously to her husband: “I’ll meet you if you like, I’m just in the health food shop.”
    Short pause.
    “The health food shop, I’ll meet you there,” she said, cleary getting  impatient.
    “THE HEALTH FOOD SHOP,” she said, again trying to get the message through to her husband.
    At this point I’d paid for my pea chips and walked out to be greeted by a bloke standing less than five metres away from the doorway talking on his mobile.
    “Where IS the health shop?” he was saying loudly into his phone.
    I tapped him on the shoulder: “Mate, you’re standing in front of it.”

    Read more Lessons for Wives.

  • Fur cop! It’s just a cat, Mum

    Fur cop! It’s just a cat, Mum

    Mum, pleeeeeaassee can I have a cat.

    MY MOTHER’S trying to convince this allergy-suffering household it needs to become home to a cat.

    Sounds harder than trying to persuade a three-year-old that no, it’s not chocolate she can smell on my breath (caught again today!).

    However, this is no ordinary cat.

    The ball of fluff she has in mind won’t cause the sniffles, won’t scratch its privates in front of guests and can be turned off when the ‘’new kitten’’ phase wears off.

    It is … Talking Tom Cat, a pet feline with an annoying Smurf-like voice who lives in iPhone land. Yes, some of you may already be aware of what has becomes one of the most popular apps going around.

    Tom not only repeats what you say, but can also be fed milk, KO’d after a decent smack to the head, purrs when patted and ‘’yeows’’ when you pull his tail.

    Princess Ella can’t get enough of him on her Nan’s iPhone, especially bonking him on the noggin.

    Just like some men believe Pamela Anderson is ‘’real’’ (come on, does she have any of her original self left?), Ella believes Tom is also a living being.

    Here’s an actual transcript of one of Ella and Tom’s conversations _

    Ella: Can you stand like a flamingo?

    Tom:  Can you stand like a flamingo?

    Ella: Yes, I can. I’ll show you.

    Tom: Yes, I can. I’ll show you.

    Ella: OK, you go first.

    Tom: You go first.

    Ella: Oh. I’ll go first then.

    Tom: I’ll go first then.

    Ella: How about we do it together?

    Tom: How about we do it together?

    Ella: OK, let’s do it (by this stage her mouth’s too far from the phone for Tom to pick up her voice). See, cat. You stand on one leg. See. You’re not doing it, cat.

    This conversation went on for 45 minutes.

    It then resulted in a slight tantrum when it was time to go home and Tom couldn’t come with us.

    Makes you wonder what on earth they’ll think of next.

    I had real cats (they kept being replaced because they ended up flat on the Riana road) and it wasn’t ‘til I was in late primary school that I got my first taste of a Commodore 64 (that’s a games console kids, not a type of Holden).

    The debate is still going in our household as to whether we download Talking Tom Cat.

    The clincher is that I don’t have an iPhone (poor me), so there could be daily tantrums when the bloke in The Shed has to take Tom to work with him each morning.

    So, how are your kids coming to terms with technology?

    A video of Ella and Tom having a conversation.

  • Happy holidays with kids? You bet

    Happy holidays with kids? You bet

    No Fairy Floss, but fairy face painting instead.

     HOLIDAYS pre-kids used to be different.

    Pre-kids, holidays were about sipping copious amounts of cocktails poolside at resorts or staying in fancy hotels and blowing money at shopping centres like an Aussie P Diddy (without the bling and just one babe on my arm rather than 10 of them).

    With kids, it couldn’t be any more different.

    Nowadays, a holiday destination is chosen on how many parks it has, whether there’s affordable accommodation and if we can arrive without one of the little tackers spewing the contents of their breakfast all over the back seat.

    That doesn’t mean holidays with kids are any less enjoyable – in fact, I’ve discovered quite the opposite.

    Cue: Three weeks holiday.

    The most common question when telling people I was taking leave was: “Where are you going?”

    The answer: “Nowhere”. This was more often than not met with sad, sympathetic looks as if I’d just told them of a death in the family.

    Well, I can tell you, “nowhere” has proved to be one of the best holiday destinations ever.

    It was a conscious decision with the good wife (Princess No. 1) to simply spend time as a family, enjoy the lack of stress involved with packing and unpacking (with kids) and wake each morning treating the day as a new adventure.

    Also, when you have a four-month-old baby who sleeps less of a night than Keith Richards, then staying in a foreign environment is frankly not appealing.

    So instead, we’ve taken day trips to pools, parks, beaches and the Don River Railway (although Princess No. 2, three-year-old Ella, wouldn’t have her picture taken with the Thomas the Tank-looking train because it “doesn’t have a mouth yet, daddy. I’ll come back later when it has a mouth.”).

    One of the holiday highlights has been a dad and daughter trip to Henley-on-the-Mersey, Latrobe’s remarkable multi-faceted festival on Australia Day.

    Fair dinkum, there’s ferret races, woodchopping, helicopter rides, pony rides, cherry pip spitting comps – even Denise Drysdale.

    Stuff the ferrets though.

    All Ella wanted was a ride on the shuttle bus to and from the event – a legacy of singing “Wheels on the Bus” and the fact she’s never ridden on public transport (something she’ll no doubt make up for in her uni years).

    To Ella, the bus rides that day were akin to bungy jumping from the Sydney Harbour Bridge … that was until she saw kids eating strange pink fluffy wool-like stuff.

    We’d carefully avoided exposing Ella to the wonders of Fairy Floss, therefore naturally she was inquisitive. So, I told her the truth.

    “It’s called Fairy Floss, it makes you really sick if you eat it and mummies get REALLY grumpy with daddies if they find daughters have eaten it,” I said, using the most serious face.

    Note to Kel: As a trade off for my little fib, you get to tell her about the birds and the bees when the time comes. Sound fair?

    Other day trip destinations so far have included the awesome Launceston Aquatic Centre (get there if you haven’t been yet), the good ol’ Dinosaur Park at Ulverstone with adjacent safe beach and the kid-friendly Devonport Aquatic Centre.
    So what’s your best day trip destination? Have any secret spots you want to share?

  • Tasmanian princesses drink from same boob.. er, cup

    Tasmanian princesses drink from same boob.. er, cup

    Breast or bottle?

    TASMANIAN-born Crown Princess Mary may have not long given birth to twins, but this fellow Taswegian is more excited about giving life to her own li’l project – this blog (coincidentally, about my two beautiful princesses).

    We may have been born in the same State, but there’s more than a few differences between my life and the woman who’s living the storybook fairytale (or nightmare, depending on which magazine you read). Our differences? Mainly the money, maids … and manners!

    But what we do have in common, according to all reports, is boobie juice. As I read about Mary doing the football hold with her unnamed prince and princess, this most humbling thought makes me wonder what young Princess Isabella makes of it all.

    My “two girls” (read:  boobs) are a fascinating concept for my own Princess Ella, incidentally the same age as Isabella – three. My princess has decided breast isn’t best. Well, not for her ‘’baby’’.

    To begin with, Ella was mesmerized by me breastfeeding Baby Holly. The child carer did a double take after catching Ella sitting in the corner of the room, her top pulled up, chest puffed out, feeding a doll. Later, the same child carer asked her what mummy fed Baby Holly. Rather than the obvious – milk – she replied: ‘’her boobies’’.

    I asked her the same question again a few days later. ‘’Your big boobies,’’ was her reply. Hmm, heaven help me if that’s the answer she actually gave the child carer.

    The next instalment in the milk tanker saga, after numerous attempts to feed everyone from Jemima rag doll to Astra the Cabbage Patch Doll, was expressing. While I’ve got the Avent pumping like a dairy farmer at 6am, Ella has the kitchen gadget which seals corks back into wine bottles on her own boob. And she’s pumping like her life depends on it. After a few minutes, she stops and looks up disappointed. ‘’Oh no, mum, I mustn’t have any milk left’’.

    The look on her face is one akin to discovering the ice cream is all gone. She’s deflated. Well, not literally – she had nothing in there to start with. Since then, it’s been strictly a bottle for her Cabbage Patch.

    It just goes to show how much kids are influenced by what they see and hear (mental note: don’t use rude words when she decides to draw a Van Gogh on the suede lounge). So what sort of influences do you think Princess Isabella has? ‘’Pardon me maid, but would you mind ever so kindly as to pop those two dolls under my arms. It’s time to do the Buddy Franklin.’’

    OK, so, time to spill. What have you ‘’accidentally’’ taught your little cherubs?