Another birthday cake

Another year, another surprisingly definite order from the child who generally knows his mind and sticks to it.
The only thing I was unsure about was what exactly 'carving' a five into the top of the cake meant, but apparently my solution of (wait for it...) making up a paper template and filling that space with hundreds and thousands pressed into the icing was perfect. Older brother helped with m&m placement, which I was happy to delegate.
The icing was not what I imagined - adding some melted chocolate to a butter icing base resulted in a bit of a ho hum brown. not the rich glossy dark brown I wanted (like Mrs Commings' cakes).

Black beans

Needing something to eat other than baked beans, or a mince variety, or steak, or eggs and bacon, plus whatever salad/veggies were in the fridge, I branched out - black beans!
Rinsed off and cooked with some garlic, stock and onion, with some rice and coriander stirred through, this is a surprisingly nice meal.

Last hockey morning

The pros - no more 6am mornings (5.30am for hubby)
The cons - no more hockey (the kids really like it, and it was good activity)
The goal above is a practice goal - it is showing the areas of the goal that are normally not covered by a goal keeper. I thought that was pretty clever!

Baby picture

I cannot for the life of me remember why I took this photo, but it is ok for putting out in public. so there you go. I think she is actually about to push herself over, but I'm pretty sure that is not why I took the photo.

It might be that she is starting to draw her knees under her? 

Popular vote vs Electoral College

I went back and read my earlier post on voting for the President of the United States, and am pleased to report that I understand the whole process more... So I'll try to explain better now. I wanted to do this post last November, because there was so much press about President Trump winning the Electoral College but not the popular vote (only the fifth time in USA history this has happened). but you know, babies, Christmas...

In the second presidential vote (the first being just so the two main parties can chose their candidate), each state has an election. And they vote either for one candidate or the other BUT, there is often an opportunity to 'write in' a candidate (ie, Colin Powell) or vote for an independant. If one candidate gets most (not even 51%) of the vote, they win (first past the post?), and get the Electoral College votes for that state (generally).

The Electoral College are people. I don't know how they're chosen. but they then go to some sort of third round of voting and formally vote for the candidate that their state has chosen. Some states divvy up the Electoral College votes, but most, as far as I can see, most states just give them all to the person who got 51%.

Faithless Electors - are Electoral College members who go against what their state has told them to do, which they can, but it would possibly be a bit like a Liberal candidate in Australia being elected and then turning around and supporting the Labor party in parliament (?). There were about seven Faithless Electors this election. 

So, it is a bit like University - you want to do enough work to pass, but the rest is icing (or marks towards honours, depending on your point of view). Hillary Clinton won the popular vote because in states where she won the Electoral College vote, she won about 80-90% of the vote - ie, heavily blue states. Donald Trump on the other hand, won more 'swing' states, but the vote was more even in many of those states.
For example - Pennsylvania:
Trump - 48.6% (2,970,733)
Clinton - 47.9% (2,926,441)
Johnson - 2.4% (146,715)
Stein - 0.8% (49,941)
(http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president)
President Trump won the electoral college votes (20 of them) in this state by 44,292 votes.

Overall, Hilary Clinton won 48.5% of the total votes, while President Trump won only 46.4% of the votes, but he got the required Electoral college votes to win the election overall.

Swing states (purple states) - If you colour in the map of America according to how they habitually vote - red (Republican) or blue (democratic), there are only a certain amount of states that have a regular close election that could go either way (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin according to one website), which drastically reduces the states that get serious political attention paid to them.

Talking feet

I had heard about this from other mums but never observed it until now - baby lies on mat and when her feet are out, they almost talk to each other!

Bunting

At long last we have had a moment to hang the bunting in the baby's bedroom. It is a lovely splash of colour that presumably she looks at when not sleeping or chucking tantrums.

Flying the kite!

Today was windy! I hadn't quite caught up, but Mr 4 did, and he had a glorious time flying the kite. I got out there for a bit as well and it was a lovely little moment.

More on health insurance

Here is some more detail on the health system, which probably explains the huge discounts we seem to get when paying ourselves upfront.
What apparently happens with costs is that the Dr passes on a bill to the insurance, then the insurance says, I'm not paying that much, I'll pay you this much (a much smaller amount). So, necessity being the mother of many things, the Dr inflates bill by certain percentage, in order to get paid what is a reasonable amount to cover costs (assuming Dr is not also inflating costs to pay for yacht parking here).
Hence, we got a bill for $250 from a certain health professional. But when Steve rang up and she realised that he was just ringing to pay (not to give insurance details) our charge was $85.

Another thing I realised recently is that everything costs money, which means, if you get a rescue helicopter ride, you get a bill for that too. Congratulations, you're alive, now here is our bill...So when you read about people setting up Go Fund Me pages to get some extra money to cover medical costs, and then they raise $20K, they're not making a profit.

Pink and blue

The USA seems very decided about what colours your baby should wear, possibly only slightly more than Australia. I am a bit frustrated that if I want my child to wear orange or green,  I need to shop on the boys side of the store... and that in the everyday (cheaper) baby clothes stores, the only versions of feminine available are pink or flowery (preferably both), with, it seems, as little serious design thought as possible.
Looking up the history of pink and blue - as recently as 1927, pink was for boys (more decided, strong colour), and blue was for girls (delicate and dainty). Somewhere that has gotten turned on its head, and because I put blue socks on my child, people assume it is a boy.
What I am sad about, is that if I want my child to wear blue, it has to have some sort of trim to make it a 'girls' outfit. And that dinosaurs are considered 'boys' outfit worthy, but not girls! There don't seem to be many options of just blue, or even blue with some sort of baby appropriate design. Some suits are not buyable because they have to declare that they're Mommy's Wingman, or a Space Hunk...and I don't want that sort of attitude on any baby of mine.
What I am glad about, is that I have two sides of the store to shop on right now. So yes, that is my [girl] child in dinosaurs and navy blue leggings.

Valentines day cards

I managed to get organised 10 days early, probably out of a latent sense of panic from previous years.
We have two classes to make cards for this year, and because my creativity is fairly limited, I tried to just provide support, and let the boys decide what they wanted. I was interested in the ideas.

Mr 7 - a small postcard style on a black background, which was an intriguing choice. As little writing as possible. He has twigged that he doesn't have to write the classmates names on them, as you just deposit one in each bag on the day. It isn't like you're making individualised cards!

Mr 4.8 - 'proper cards' (with a fold over) with lots of ideas about what to write. I got glitter pens to decorate, so he is drawing each person a glittery decoration - a truck, a car, a person... He is enjoying cutting and pasting, so I encouraged that as much as possible. He is also looking forward to putting them in envelopes and licking the seal to shut the envelope.

Postscript, what he ended up writing on the inside of the cards was his name, in various fonts, big or small, depending on his mood at the time of writing. We managed not to need envelopes.

Getting a hair wash

The cost was playing peekaboo with the baby from behind the shower curtain...

Kids and their knees

It is still Winter, technically, although I have my doubts whether nature got that memo. And my boys are going through their knees at lightning speed. I have three pairs of jeans, two lined tracksuit pants and two corduroy pants to fix...

Lining up the cars

We lined up the cars and counted them today. For good measure, the trucks, airplanes and space shuttles were included too.