Happy birthday

Harrison turned 4 today!  Four seems such a grown up age for our little boy – I feel a bit sad about this milestone.  We gave him his first “real” bike with training wheels.  His feet only just reach the pedals.  I made the 4 cake from the Women’s Weekly Kids Party book for him to take to day care.  It looks very impressive for not much effort, as it uses plastic toy road signs, foil covered chocolate cars, and ready-made royal icing for the “roads”.  I converted my favourite chocolate cake recipe (which uses soured milk and a warm cocoa paste) to a gluten free one, and that seemed to work fine. 

ANZAC day

We took Harrison into the city this morning to see the ANZAC day parade. He particularly enjoyed seeing all the marching bands.
This afternoon I killed a couple of hours with Harrison at Uni, and we discovered a "Nearer Nature" marquis on the foreshore at Matilda Bay. They had various animals - frogs, snakes, lizards and snails there for kids to hold and learn about. Harrison absolutely loved it. Didn't want the snake curled around his neck, and got a bit girly about having a frog jump on him, but he loved touching all the animals, so long as someone else was holding them. Snail are his all time favourite animal, so having a basket of snails to explore was heaven for him. Nearer Nature is a Dept of Conservation program. They do various fee based things like overnight camping trips, but this one was free.

Seedy side of life

Simon and I wasted a date night last night on Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.  It was a very disturbing portrayal of a family of people with virtually no redeemable features who spiral into self destruction, and it left us both feeling less than good about the world. 

Piano!

We made a major investment on the weekend.  Simon bought an electric piano (in a single visit to one shop – most unlike him!).  The boys are already making good use of it.  Harrison is able to turn it on and bash away whenever he likes, and he and Simon have a duet of “Froggy went a courtin’” going (Harrison’s role is to hit a single note in time with the music).  The box (literally the size of a coffin) is also being out to good use as a boat, a train, or a hiding place.

 

A couple of weekends ago we took Harrison to a WASO concert for under 5s, and Harrison had his first go on a violin.  He also tried out Simon’s violin at home.

 

Along with Simon’s recent discovery of ITunes, which has reignited his passion for making compilations, the piano is changing the tone of our household.

Shannon to the rescue

Shannon Lush’s Speed Cleaning bible came into its own on Sunday after I discovered Harrison had used a fabric marker to draw with, and not always on his paper!  The laminated top of his kids table appeared to be ruined forever.  Sugar soap had absolutely no effect, and seeing as fabric marker stays on clothes even when washed in Napisan I wasn’t confident.  But Shannon advised that perfume on a cotton ball removes permanent marker from a whiteboard, so I tried it on the table.  Felt a bit silly using Red Door to clean Harrison’s table, but it worked perfectly (and smells nice!).  Not a trace left.

 

Gold digging

We ventured into the wilds of Kalgoorlie over Easter.  We seemed to share the Great Eastern Highway with quite a lot of Gypsy Joker bikies, and even more police on Good Friday.  They were going to Kalgoorlie, and even turned up at the Super Pit lookout on Saturday (police escort in tow).   There were plain clothes police, uniformed officers, marked cars, unmarked cars – it seemed half the WA Police force were tagging along after the Jokers.   We assumed there must be some huge drug raid in progress, or a murder investigation, but there was nothing in the news about it.  Asking around at work it seems that this is just all in a day’s work for WA Police.  Where ever a group of Gypsy Jokers go, so do several patrol cars, just to make sure there’s no trouble.

 

Apart from trying not to inadvertently offend any outlaw bikie gangs, we had a good time in Kalgoorlie.  Harrison got to pan for gold (and picked up a sizable rock that he decided was his very own gold nugget (we wish!)), and go down an underground gold mine.  The Easter Bunny managed to find him at Kalgoorlie and left eggs scattered around the courtyard of our unit.  He also got a soft Peter Rabbit toy with a blue jacket that has barely left Harrison’s side since Easter morning. 

 

We stopped at York on the way to Kalgoorlie and discovered a lovely cafe that had gluten free bread, and a gorgeous home-made gluten free chocolate cake.  Apparently there are several places in York with gluten free food (but on Good Friday only one was open), so a weekend visit is in order.  Kalgoorlie wasn’t so strong on catering for his diet, and we had to take food for him everywhere we went.  I guess it’s just something we have to get used to.

Leaving home

Harrison has announced his intention to move in with Carla, one of his day-carers. Carla has looked after him for 2 years, and leaves today to go on maternity leave. Harrison has decided that the way to cope with her loss is to move in with her and her new baby. He would like the baby to be a boy, and to grow up very fast so that it becomes his big brother. He has also started asking me to pull my hair back in a pony tail like Carla (and when I do he sighs, looks lovingly at me, and says "Hi Carla").... I'm trying not to take it personally.

Buried in books

We took this photo of Harrison as a memento after we came home from the Writers Festival.

Our house

Here are a few views from our house... They're taken from our balcony (sunset and Rottnest) and from our front door. We regularly see the colourful tops of kite surfers from our front door, and at night we can count the flashes of the Rottnest lighthouse from our dining room. On Australia Day we watched the City Beach fireworks from our balcony - close enough to smell and see the smoke.

City Beach sunset

I took Simon to dinner at Oceanus restaurant at City Beach on the 12th - to celebrate his native title book coming out, and also as an early Valentines Day dinner. It was a very hot night (and astonishingly, the restaurant isn't airconditioned!). All that glass directly facing the west, with the tables positioned for sunset viewing made for an uncomfortable dining experience. We did have a nice meal (the Asian influenced tasting plate we shared was lovely, Simon's steak was apparently great, but his dessert was simply scoops of a readily available brand of gelato, and mine was a bit uninspired).

Weather

I have Toowoomba, Brisbane and Perth weather on my iGoogle page...  so I can see if we’ve chosen the right place to live!  Over the last week it looks like Perth has begun its cool-down.  The overnight temperatures are usually lower than Toowoomba’s even if the maximum for the day is relatively high.  And it now takes quite a long time to warm up during the day.  For instance, right now it’s 21 degrees in Perth, and 29 in Toowoomba, and our overnight temp was 5 degrees lower than Toowoomba’s.

Writers Festival

The Writers Festival is on at UWA this weekend, as part of the Perth International Arts Festival.  Simon is away for a 4 day weekend (driving up to Kalbarri to check out places for us to stay in July), so I thought I’d take Harrison along on Sunday.  It’s the “family” day, so there are children’s book readings and actors doing fairytales.  Should be fun.

Best seller?

Simon’s native title book has sold almost 200 copies in the first month (which is about $24,000 worth). Pretty good for a “heavy” academic book.

On air again

Hooray - I'm at home and online! The Telstra guy came (6 hours late, but he did arrive), and found an apparently very simple problem which could have been fixed as far back as January 25th... It's so nice to make a call on the landline, and such a relief to fire up the laptop and find we're on the network.

Juno

We used some movie vouchers Simon got from a publisher the other night, while Marg babysat Harrison. There wasn't much of a choice at our closest Hoyts, so with some trepidation we decided to see Juno. The shorts had looked good, and it got great reviews, but somehow we didn't see how a movie about a sassy pregnant teenager could not end up being cringeworthy and predictable.



Juno turned out to be one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while. Loved the soundtrack, the script, the location, the cinematography... It managed to treat a wide range of diverse characters warmly. The highly strung Type-A personality would-be adoptive mum wasn't ridiculed in the script for her need to have a perfect life, the not-ready-for-fatherhood would-be adoptive dad got a sympathy vote despite some of his actions, the parents of the pregnant teen got much better than superficial treatment, the pregnant teen wasn't just a fast talking too cool for school chick....



Highly recommended.

Off air

We’re still off the air...  Our phone (and broadband) has been dead for 2 weeks, and isn’t likely to be fixed until at least Saturday.   Part of the problem (IMHO) is that Telstra owns the infrastructure, while AAPT provides our “service”.  Telstra won’t talk direct to me as I’m not their customer, but they have to identify and fix the fault.  So my communication goes via AAPT, and I’m sure gets muddled in the process.  Even getting a phone service when we moved was a lesson in telecommunications competition policy.  Optus point blank refused to give us a service because they had no control over how much Telstra would decide to charge them for line rental. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about the previous government’s decision to privatise all of Telstra, including the infrastructure... 

 

All this means that we can’t log in and check email at home, or pay bills online, or talk to friends or family easily (our house is in a bit of a mobile black hole, and unless you stand perfectly still in a particular spot with your right arm outstretched, your mobile connection drops out... plus of course, it’s expensive to talk to Qld on a mobile).

 

Return of the intrepid traveller

Simon had a week off to do some solo driving and camping (his favourite type of holiday). After to-ing and fro-ing about whether to drive north to Kalbarri and Exmouth to seek out good spots for us to holiday in July, or to escape the heat and go south, he decided Exmouth was too hot, and he would go south. He covered a good chunk of the south west – Margaret River, Pemberton, Augusta, Walpole, Denmark, Albany and the Stirling Ranges.

He did a very long driving day on Friday to get back early (he was expected on Saturday), stopping in at Bunbury to buy me a teeny tiny camera to thank me for letting him have this time off. I absolutely love it. It’s a Panasonic (like our other digital camera) except that whereas the other one looks and feels like a “real” camera and has a 10x optical zoom, this one will slip into a pocket or a small handbag and is easy to take out and about.

We went to Hillarys on Sunday morning for a swim (it was HOT!). We also went to Mel and Tim’s to meet their new puppy Coco on Sunday afternoon. H just LOVED the puppy. I think he totally exhausted her, as she’s only 6 weeks old and chasing a 3 year old around is hard work for her.

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Simon has another 2 days leave up his sleeve, so is thinking of taking a 4 day weekend. I’m wondering what kind of gadget I can wrangle out of him for that trip…. Better put my thinking cap on!

I'm looking for my mummy

Simon and Harrison spent a few days down south this week, and one night H got himself worked up about missing me, and wouldn't go to sleep. Each time Simon put him to bed, he would come out a short time later. One time he came out carrying Simon's mobile phone, and handed it to him with a very serious look on his face. Simon noticed that Alison's name was on the screen. The conversation went like this -
Simon - "Hello"
Alison - "Hi, a little boy just rang this number looking for his mummy"
Simon - "Hi, it's Simon!"
Alison - "Hi, my name's Alison. A little boy just rang this number saying he wanted his mummy"
Simon - "Alison, it's me Simon - your brother in law!"
Laughter all round....

Kayley and Laura visiting

We have another set of visitors this week. Kayley and her friend Laura are visiting. Both 16, and lovely guests. The new Weber Q is getting a workout, and Harrison has developed a real 3 year old's crush on Kayley. Lots of hugs and hand holding... Laura is thinking of doing primary teaching when she gets to Uni. She is obviously on the right track, because she chose a lovely, age appropriate book as a gift for Harrison (Bob Graham's Let's Get a Pup). Here’s the Amazon record… I really must get going with Library Thing and catalogue H's books.

Qantas wins hearts and minds

Last January I had the fun experience of being made to wait 5 hours for the next flight to Perth because I missed the check in deadline by 1 minute. Qantas out did themselves this Christmas.

We all flew to Brisbane on Christmas night, arriving about midnight. Unfortunately one of our bags did not. It appeared at the time that another passenger with an almost identical bag had taken mine in error, leaving his behind. There followed 2 weeks of repeated phone calls and several visits to the Brisbane airport trying to get answers about where my bag was, and trying to get them to contact that passenger. The day after I got back to Perth, I got a call from one of the coach places inside Brisbane airport saying my bag had just been handed in (apparently intact). That same day as my bag was discovered in Brisbane, Simon flew in to Perth (he had a different flight from Harrison and me), with his luggage and a jogging stroller. It almost defies belief, but THE STROLLER DID NOT ARRIVE!!!! So now we had TWO pieces of missing luggage to be delivered. Thankfully they are both now at home, and I can hardly wait to get home tonight and make sure that everything that should be in the bag is there.