Everyones a critic.

"Uurghhh this isn't very tasty". My son after the first mouth full of the pasta, pesto and pine nuts I'd made for tea.

why is it that those who drive school busses feel the need to set their route number displays to 666? they can't all be satanists can they? is this just a south wales thing or do they do this further afield? the pic on this post is a portrait i made using pearler beads, it something i've wanted to do for ages but never got round to it. can you guess who it is?

brain farts

i've spent a great deal of time over the last few years trying to teach my children that it's really dangerous to put money in their mouths. so i must have been having some kind of brain fart when i bought my son a bag of chocolate coins yesterday.

julie and myself took our two children to a play area in cardiff the other day. we hadn't visited this one before so it was quite exciting having been to most of them in our area many times over. we got inside and dan said to me,
"dad lets play shops"
"ok" and with that he ran into a wooden shed thign they had on one side of the hall. i sat down outside the shed and said
"good afternoon i'd like a hot dog please"
"i dont sell hot dogs"
"oh in that case i'd like some peas please"
"i dont sell peas"
"could i have some ice cream then?"
"no i don't sell ice cream"
"well what do you sell in this shop"
"pancakes"
"i'd like a pancake then please" he banged a wooden spoon against the wall a couple of times and handed me a plastic frying pan. after finishing the imaginary pancake i said,
"that was lovely could i have another please?" sighing deeply he replied
"no. i'm closed now" and then he walked out of the shed slaming the door.

Butter

"I like you dad" my son said as he wiped a hand full of butter into my jeans.

herbert thompson mural

i finished this project last friday (9th of july 2010), only spent four days in the school. the project went so smoothly i thought something was bound to go wrong but it didn't. i loved every minute of this project and i'm really pleased with how it turned out. all the children involved really got stuck in.

tube floats, caerphilly and a troubled individual

me and my son went swiming on sunday morning to our local pool. i'd taken his tube float along as per usual. i'd previously written dans name on both ends of the tube to avoid any tube ownershop related incidents. at the end of our session i realised that our tube had floated away and some other father and son where using it.
"hello" i said "sorry to interupt but thats my sons tube, we're getting out of the pool now so we need it back" i explained.
"huh" the father replied.
"it's my sons tube" i repeated, "if you look at either end you'll see his name".
"oh sorry, i thought daniel was the tubes name".

i've been working in the ely of cardiff area over the last two weeks where i heard the following two lines which cracked me up.
"it's alright but it isn't caerphilly" and my personal favourite
"yeah he's great. till the pills wear off and he turns into a c**t.
i've included a pic of a mural i just finished last week with a gambian theme for the grand avenue times.

i was moisturiing my son yesterday after his bath when he started to examine his "frank and beans",
"i like my willy, i use it to pee don't i, i'm going to pee all day tomorrow". he said.

coffee sqaure mural

here's a pic of mural i finished a few weeks ago for your viewing pleaseure, not much more to say than that really.

ringland snakes and ladders patio

I finished the project i've been working on in ringland today. my clients (ringland communities first) are really happy with the project and have two other projects in the pipe line they'd like me to work on. i was dissapointed that the council couldn't pull their finger out and pressure wash and weed the patio area before we started painting as was aggreed but the young people envolved enjoyed it so alls well that ends well i suppose. there was talk of a snakes and ladders tournament to celebrate the completion of the project so i'll keep you all posted on how that turns out.

shuvit heelflip

ok, so i've been skateboarding for a good few weeks now and i'm still loving it. so much so in fact i've been getting up at six in the morning on the weekend to skate at aberdare skate park. i've posted a video clip i recorded on bank holiday monday. it's just me practicing olies nothing too "ill" or "sick" as us skaters often say. enjoy all.

3/4 length

as i've mentioned in a previous post i've been doing a spot of freelance recently. Last week i was working with a group of young people when suddenly one of them jumped up and shouted
"f*****g c**t, i've got paint on my mothers f*****g jeans" everybody stopped work in shock.
"your wearing your mothers f****g jeans?" another asked
"yeah, but their f****g 3/4 length". he replied
"oh well thats fair enough".

slander

i've just come back from the park in beddau. i took the kids out for the morning to give the wife a much needed rest (and check out the skate park which is next door). it's not much of a play park really most of the play equipment is either broken or has random pieces of graffiti scrawled over it, my favourite is "shaun is bestial". dan always has a good time there running jumping and avoiding pieces of broken glass while aimee either sleeps or looks on nonplussed. as we where walking home chatting about lunch and black birds dan turned and to my absolute horror had blood all over his face and hands. in cleaning it off i realised that it was just a normal nose bleed and nothing to worry about. dan soon forgot about his itchy nose and was asking to have easter eggs for lunch while watching cbeebies. when we got home i mentioned to julie about the nose bleed when dan pipes up with,
"i fell over, i fell over on the road and bumped my head".

thanks a bunch dan.

"I want to see the boats, why can't I see the boats, I never see the boats". My son said as we where standing on Tenby harbour. Another of my favourite lines is " I love milk, I love bananas, I don't like banana milkshake".

busy, busy, busy.

It's all happening here, as well as my responsibilities as a father and husband I've been co-ordinating a project in Ringland (the housing estate in Newport and not a male brothel), painting a mural type thing for the "Coffee Square" in Beddau (if any ones passing call in and take a look, let me know what you think), I've also got the second draft of my final piece of course work to hand in for my evening class, my job search commitments, all this and I'm still managing to fit in nine hours of t.v. a day.

My daughter appears to be some kind of nappy filling Jedi. Don't get me wrong I'm no stranger to baby poo. My son is no amateur in that department. Aimee however is in a whole other league, she can squirt it up the front, down either leg or both legs at the same time. I can only remember Dan getting poo in his hair a couple of times at the most. Aimee's covered from toes to scalp twice a day at the very least.

Frank and beans

My wife and I have always referred to our son's "equipment" as being his "frank and beans". So it came as a compleate suprise when today while in the bath he gripped "frank" between thumb and forefinger and said loudly "dad, this is my willy".

dad tax

Over the last few weeks i've be claiming dad tax from my son. this entails me proclaiming "dad tax" then taking a portion of whatever he's eating. it's brilliant, i highly recommend it to all you dads out there. i can't wait for my daughter to go onto solids so i can claim off her too.

potty training day one, the openning gambit

it was a far wiser man than me who once said "you can lead a two year old to the potty but you cant make him use it". twelve hours, ten wet pairs of "big boy" pants and one actual pee in the potty later and i think we've made a good start. we've decorated the potty with stickers of his favourite things, a banana, bob the builder, thomas the tank engine, a pirate and a broccoli tree. we've established a common language " mam, dad i need a pee or poo". i'd thought we'd cracked it when brushing his teeth he said "i need a pee, i need a pee" quick as the wind i raised him up over the toilet where he made a "psssssh, psssssh" sound then said "finished". thoroughly defeated it was time for his bed.

sleep well chums.

3 seconds

I went to my nieces first birthday party today where there was some flagrant disrard for the three second rule going on.

sportacus

my son had a friend over today to play, after two hours of good natured chaos i decided to cool things down by putting the tv on. while watching lazytown i was sure i saw a knuckle duster in sportacus's equipment cupboard.

"i'm pooing, i'm pooing" dan (my son) shouted. thats hardly worth blogging about i hear you cry. we where however standing in line at our local cafe at the time and to make matters worse dan was sitting on my shoulders.



while your here you may as well read the following true story.

when i was a kid my parents took me to see a traveling circus that had set up in pontypridd park. i'd been to the circus before so i knew what to expect. i wasn't too keen on clowns but i loved the trapeze artists, to me they where just like super heroes in there brightly coloured lycra costumes swinging about gracefully. there where three trapeze artists in all an athletic looking man and woman and the third who looked more like an olympic power lifter. as they swung out over me i remember thinking "yes this is just like batman" as the show went on their routine got more complex until the finale where the athletic looking man hanging form his feet caught the woman who then in turn held out her hands for the power lifter. he swung out, flipped once, twice in the air then grasped the hands of the woman forming a human chain. the audience let out a collective breath the sucked it back in as the power lifter slipped from her grip. luckily for him they had been performing over a safety net, unluckily for the woman sat under his speedy decent that safety net hadn't been tightened properly. he struck the net which hardly slowed him down until he hit the woman beneath shattering the chair under her and knocking her into unconsciousness. the thing about this trip to the circus that always sticks out in my mind is that fact that they carried the unconscious woman off on the back of a baby elephant. even during a health and safety emergency they still kept it show biz. i've often wondered what happened to the woman and the power lifter.

missing veg

about two hours a ago i made my son dinner, a large portion of which was broccoli. a vegetable i had previously thought to be among his favourites.
"dad, i've finished" my son said. he hadn't finished, he'd left several "trees".
"eat those and we can watch tv" i replied.
i walked into the kitchen where i had been sterilising bottles for my daughter. a few moments later my son walked in the room holding an empty plate.
"all done" he said "tv?"
"well done, brilliant, lets get the tv on"
fast forward two hours to me putting some plastic in the recycling bin only to find several "trees" at the bottom.

so that's basically me, a house husband, freelance artist, part time work seeking, comic book reading, vimto drinking, mr tickle fearing, role playing (not in a dirty way), onion ring munching, simon cowell hating, gcse english re-sitting, beard combing, tom waits listening to kind of man. welcome aboard.

next stop, the circus.