I think it’s such a beautiful thing when dads are close to their daughters. I love to watch Ted interact with the girls and the fact that he isn’t shy to show his affections anywhere, is something I think is wonderful. Correct me if I’m wrong but apparently kids whose parents show them affection like giving hugs and kisses, will be more successful in future relationships ie. mums being affectionate to sons and dads being affectionate to the girls.

This is a shot I took sometime ago. In fact I had forgotten about it until recently. Thanks to me losing my sim card in this new handbag Ted got me for Christmas (yes, Santa came early this year!) It was HARD work picking out only ONE of Marc Jacobs handbags!! lol

I think it’s a beautiful pix of Daddy kissing KR (7mths here) but what’s wrong with this pix?

Hahaha, funny eh? Bottom line is, I’m glad that Ted is man enough to show his emotions because I know men to dont show any sort of affection to their kids and it’s just sad, really. Dads should realise that if you dont show them affection now, it will be too late when they have grown up. Forget about getting a hug or kiss from your teenager, I reckon they rather kiss the dog than their parents!! Life’s like that, like it or not…..

No, not a CHristmas wishlist although that is a rather tempting thought BUT instead, I’ll be making up a list of advice for first time parents and parents-to-be because I have a couple of friends who will be taking on this rather exciting and imporatant role in the near future.

I don’t remember reading anything of this sort before I had Arianna and although I read tons of books, it helped but not much because the books only give you the opinions and ideas from the author and not a collections of personal experience from numerous people. Hence, I thought it would be an excellent idea for my friends and as for me, a walk down memory lane as well as reminding me as well as I too, prepare myself for round 3!

So watch out for the post, coming out soon…..waiting to compile all the advice I’ve been getting from various experienced parents.

*You have to watch this. I thought it was just amazing! The vid is at the end after the explaination.*

This video from YouTube shows the winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent, Kseniya Simonova, aged 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table and showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a rare one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears. Kseniya won the top prize in the series, about AUD130,000.

Kseniya begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. The young woman quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene is then framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man stands outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. The Great Patriotic War, as World War II is called in The Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed. There were eight to 11 million deaths in the Ukrainian population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says she finds it difficult to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is OK. “The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment.”

All methods have tricked me with their promises of easy, painless removal – the Epilady, the standard razor, the scissors, the Nair, the EpilStop, and now… The Wax.

My night began as any other normal weekday night. I came home from work, fixed dinner for my son and we played for a while. I then had the thought that would ring painfully in my mind for the next couple hours: maybe I should use that wax in my medicine cabinet. I set up my boy with a video and headed to the site of my demise, um, I mean bathroom.

It was one of those cold wax kits. No melting a clump of hot wax, you just rub the clear strips in your hand, peel them apart, press it on your leg (or wherever) and ignore the frantically rising crescendo of string instruments in the background. No muss, no fuss. How hard can this be? I mean, I’m not the girly-est of girls but I’m mechanically inclined so maybe I can figure out how this works. You’d think.

So I pull one of the thin strips out. It’s two strips facing each other, stuck together. I’m supposed to rub it in my hand to warm and soften the wax (I’m guessing). I go one better: I pull out the hair dryer! And heat the SOB to ten thousand degrees. Cold wax, my ass. (Oh, how that phrase will come back to haunt me.)

I lay the strip across my thigh. I hold the skin around it and pull. OK, so it wasn’t the best feeling in the world, but it wasn’t bad. I can do this! Hair removal no longer eludes me! I am Sheera, fighter of all wayward body hair and smooth skin extraordinaire!

With my next wax strip, I move north. After checking on the boy and verifying that he was, in fact, becoming one with Bear and learning all about smells, I sneak into the bathroom for The Ultimate Hair Fighting Championship. I drop my panties and place one foot on the toilet. Using the same procedure, I then apply the wax strip across the right side on my bikini line, covering the right half of my vagina and stretching up into the inside of the right ass cheek. (Yeah, it was a long strip.)

I inhale deeply. I brace myself.

RRRIIIIPPP!!!!

I’m blind! Blind from the pain!… Vision returning. Oh crap. I’ve managed to pull off half an inch of the strip. Another deep breath. And… RRRIIIPP! Everything is swirly and tie-dyed? Do I hear crashing drums? OK, coming back to normal again. I want to see my trophy – my wax covered pelt that caused me so much agony. I want to revel in the glory that is my triumph over body hair. I hold the wax strip like an Olympic gold medallist. But why is there no hair on it? Why is the wax mostly gone? Where could the wax go, if not on the strip?

Slowly, I eased my head down, my foot still perched on the toilet. I see hair – the hair that should be on the strip. I touch. I feel. I am touching wax. I look to the ceiling and silently shout “nooooooo!!” And realize I have just begun living my own personal version of “The Tar Baby.”

I peel my fingers off the softest, most sensitive part of my body that is now covered in cold wax and matted hair, and make the next big mistake – up until this point, you’ll remember, I’ve had my foot on the toilet. I know I need to move, to do something. So I put my foot down on the floor. And then I hear the slamming of the cell door. Vagina? Sealed shut. Ass? Sealed shut.

A little voice in my head says, “I hope you don’t have to shit anytime soon. Your head just might pop off.” I penguin walk around the bathroom trying desperately to figure out what I should do next. Hot water! Hot water melts wax! I’ll run the hottest water I can stand and get in – the wax should melt and I can gently wipe it a way, right? Wrong!

I get in the tub – the water is slightly hotter than is used to torture prisoners of war or sterilize surgical equipment. And I sit. Now the only thing worse than having your goodies glued together is having them glued together and then glued to the bottom of a tub. In scalding hot water. Which, by the way, does not melt the cold wax. So now I’m stuck to the tub.

I call my friend, C, because she once dropped out of beauty school so surely she has some secret knowledge or trick to get wax off skin. It’s never good to start a conversation with “So my ass and vagina are stuck to the tub.”

She doesn’t have a trick. She does her best to suppress laughter. She wants to know exactly where the wax is on the ass. “Are we talking cheek or hole, here?” she asks. She isn’t even trying to hide the giggles now. I give her the run-down of the entire night. She tells me to call the number on the side of the box, but to have a good cover story for where the wax actually is. “You know that if we were working the help line at XX Wax Co. and somebody called with their entire crack sealed shut, we’d just put them on hold then record the conversation for everyone we know. You’re going to end up on a radio show or the internet if you tell them the truth.

While we go through various solutions, I have resorted to scraping the wax off with a razor. Boy, nothing feels better to the girly goodies than covering them in wax, sticking them to a tub in super hot water and THEN dry shaving the sticky wax off!

In the middle of the conversation (which has inexplicably turned to other subjects!) I find the little, beautiful saving grace that is the lotion provided with wax to remove the excess. I rub some in and start screaming, “It’s working! It’s working!” I get hearty congratulations from C and we hang up.

I successfully remove all the wax and notice, to my dismay, that the hair is still there. So I shaved the damned stuff off. Hell, I was numb by that point anyway. And then I put the box of wax back in my medicine cabinet. Never know when a moustache might start to come in.

Tonight, I attempt hair dying.

*No, please rest assure that this is NOT, I repeat, NOT me. I wouldn’t be able to survive it ~ really. However, it must be my GREATEST (& favourite) CnP effort EVER! Cracks me up each time I read it although I pity this woman. ROTFLOL!! I dont EVER wanna be in her place which is the reason why I’ve sworn off waxing or any other hair removal methods except shaving. After all I got me own horror stories. Another time maybe…. O, thanks Amara!!

I know the blog’s been quiet lately. At the moment, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, hence, I’ve been slow at both blogging and sewing. I’ve actually started to sew a dress for Arianna. It’s the first time I’m sewing it and I’m using Poplin. If ever I go stupid, I blame the lost of millions of brain cells to trying to figure out how to sew these pieces together despite it being a blardy simple A line dress. Me is finding it very despressing!! But ahead I go for I MUST complete it by hook or by crook. And if I can’t figure out how Mum did it, I shall do it my way. *lol* Anyway, here’s a filler post for the fun of it.

The email said that it was tattoos on pregnant bellies but its quite obvious that no woman in her right mind would get a tattoo while pregnant and on top of that, no sane or professional tattoo artist would do a woman who is pregnant. That said, I’d love to have gotten one of these designs drawn on my belly but since if I did, I would not have been walking around baring my belly. It would have been a waste but nonetheless, I think they are cool!

Which is your favourite and if you could, would you get your belly painted?

I wished I didn’t have to change the theme because it can be quite a hassle but thank goodness for auto upgrades and widgets because it’s so easy these days compared to a last year when it came to changing themes. I used to do the codes one by one and now, all I need to make sure is that the theme I want comes with widgets and life is a breeze! O, I had to change theme coz of the previous post.

So this is my current theme, it actually had another header pix so I changed it to some random shots of Arianna to fit the blog since this is her blog. I still have a couple of things to add like the Math Spam, CommentLuv and LivePreview but other than that, I think it’s pretty much good to go.

Please leave me a comment or 2 and if you can’t, do drop me a note and lemme know what errors you’ve bumped into. Ta!