threelilprincesses.com

Category: The Bloke in The Shed

  • Lesson for Wives No. 2: Disguising vegies does not always work

    Lesson for Wives No. 2: Disguising vegies does not always work

    Olives used to be one of Princess Ella's favourites.

    INTERLINKING old posts into a new post is the task of day eight of

    31 Days to Build A Better Blog.

    Today also happens to coincide with the bloke in The Shed, Julian, posting about our li’l girl turning her nose up to all things green – except the green in her nose, of course. Preschoolers. Phuff!

    Please, leave him a comment. We’d both appreciate any tips!

    By Julian O’Brien

    IN PRINCESS Ella, we used to think we had a dream child. 

    At first, Ella would eat anything; she even used to eat olives like they were M&Ms. Then something happened and she suddenly became extremely fussy about her vegies, particularly “the green ones’’.

    She still has her favourites though. Raw carrot and mushrooms will be consumed faster than you can say “pickle me grandmother’’ and I have literally seen her devour a corn cob faster than Homer Simpson can shotgun a can of Duff Beer. She even ate the broccolini on her plate first the other day – probably because we called it “baby broccoli’’.

    So, what to do?

    Well, we disguise her veggies. We cooked zucchini in the form of both fritters and slice, combining them with some of her “favourites” such as corn, mushies and even bacon bits. It worked for a little while.

    Then Princess Kel had a good idea: what about Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni? That was OK till Ella found out you could unwrap the spinach and ricotta and just eat the pasta.

    Meat? A whole other story. Like her dad, Ella is a meat girl, preferably steak.  Recently, presentations of perfectly good rissoles and sausages have been met with “I want steak, please”. Scotch fillet, to be precise. Sheesh. Talk about expensive taste. 

    Thank goodness we only have to worry about boobie juice for Baby Holly … for the moment.

    So how do you go with your fussy eater? What tips and tricks have you uncovered?

    Want more lessons for wives? Read Lessons For Wives No. 1: Blokes don’t know the location of health shops.

  • SHED: The beginning of the end

    SHED: The beginning of the end

    Ella's very first dance lesson
    By Julian O’Brien

    A SIBLING of mine described it best when he labeled it “the beginning of the end’’. He’s right you know.

    His remark was in response to me noting that Princess Kellie and I were about to take Princess Ella to her first dancing lesson.

    As a dad with two older children of his own, my bro’ prophetically noted my life now was set to be completely dominated by running Princess Ella (and eventually Princess Holly) to an endless stream of dancing lessons, music lessons, sport and social events.

    My life flashed before my eyes  … or was it Ella and Holly’s life, because a lot of it featured me sitting behind the bloody wheel of a car?

    It was easy for my brother to say this, of course, as he sat behind the wheel of his own car in the pouring rain waiting for his boy to finish his footy training.

    The real dilemma came at the end of our conversation when said boy returned and my brother was forced to somehow negotiate a way the boy could get in the car without leaving mud all over it and incurring the wrath of the “boss” of the household.

    Don’t get me wrong, I want my girls to have a myriad of life experiences. I want them to learn an instrument or find something they are passionate about. It would be sensational if one of them turned into a professional athlete – maybe even the next Lauren Jackson (although, given the title of this website, that last one is highly unlikely).

    As long as my girls are happy and healthy I’m fully prepared to pay the price of sitting on my backside waiting for them.

    So, Ella and Holly, bring on the dance lessons, bring on the basketball training and bring on the parties, but don’t think for one minute either of you are going to choose the violin!

    Read how that first lesson went…

  • 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:

  • 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.

  • 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?