The day before we got the furniture delivered, Nathan was running around the empty house and fell over. He hit his forehead on the lounge room window sill as he fell. He immediately got a huge lump at the site of impact…it really looked nasty.
In the days that followed he got swelling around the bridge of his nose, and black bruising around his eyes. Some 4 weeks on, he still has a bit of a lump on his forehead and the bruising around his eyes is finally disappearing.
Today I took Nathan and Toby to the Collingwood Children’s Farm. On the drive there I was talking to Nathan about what we might see there.
Mummy: we will probably see cows, and sheep…
Nathan: and dinosaurs!
Mummy: we probably won’t see dinosaurs
Nathan: but if we look hard we will see them! Hooray!
We met Janis and Annabella there and spent a relaxing couple of hours wandering around while the kids enjoyed the animals.
It was a coincidence that we happened to plan this outing on a day when entry was free. There were a lot of people and kids there, and parking was difficult to come by.
There were sheep and goats in small paddocks that were tame and could be touched. Nathan, along with many other children, was really interested in the kids (baby goats, that is) drinking milk from their mothers. Nathan loved the chickens..he always seems to be fascinated by chickens. We also saw horses and ponies, a couple of cows, a pig and held a guinea pig.
We had a lovely day, the weather was perfect, and it was hard to believe that we were essentially in the city with all the green open space around. I don’t think, though, that it is a place that we will frequent, but we will go back again….hopefully when it isn’t quite as busy as it was today.
Tonight I overheard Nathan telling Andrew about his day. I laughed when I heard “but we didn’t see any dinosaurs”.
Nathan and I are on a mission to find some great parks/playgrounds in our part of Melbourne. Several people told us that Phoenix Park was great, so we decided to check it out today.
I have to admit that it was pretty amazing. It was like a wooden fortress, with swings, a flying fox-type-slidey thing, plastic slides and climbing spots scattered around the wooden structure that had steps and bridges galore. As far as the practical things went, there was a fence around the entire place except at the entrance, so I guess it isn’t too hard to make sure that your child stays in the playground though it wasn’t easy to always keep an eye on what the more active child is up to. Toilets were close and there was a cafe somewhere there as well (I saw the signs but didn’t track it down).
The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating of it. So what did Nathan and Toby think of it? I think they both had a ball. Nathan ran for nearly the entire time we were there…running up and down steps, across bridges, exploring what was around the next corner. Toby seemed to have a lot of fun crawling from where I’d place him on a platform, up a few steps, and then coming down the slide. He must have liked it because he went straight for the slide every time I put him up on the platform.
All in all, I’d say it is a pretty good playground. It is very different to any that we have come across before, but I’d hate to be there when it was busy as I think it would be very easy to lose your child.
We made it! We got to Albury at dinner time on Saturday night, left on Sunday at 10 am and arrived about 3pm at the place we are living in for the next three weeks. The boys travelled pretty well. Thankfully Toby slept much of the way because he was not happy in the car when awake. Nathan also had long sleeps, but that meant he wouldn’t go to sleep easily at night and at least one exhausted parent had to delay their bedtime until he was asleep.
Sultanas were the big hit for the trip. They kept both boys quiet in the car. 🙂
We might be two hours or more behind schedule, but we are finally on our way to Melbourne. The flat is clean and empty, we have a furniture trailer on behind the car and a full tank of petrol, Toby is sleeping and Nathan is yelling….we are trying to stop that (the yelling, the sleeping is good).
Albury, here we come.
Several weeks ago Andrew had to go to Canberra for two nights for his work. I decided that since we were pretty confident that we’d be moving to Melbourne that I would take the boys to the Blue Mountains and spend a night in Katoomba. I used to go to the mountains a lot for bushwalking and taking photographs, but I hadn’t been for ages. It just seemed too far for a day trip with kids, particularly those who don’t really like to travel.
This kept Nathan happy in the car:
We didn’t really do a great deal in the mountains. We visited Govetts Leap where we had lunch, and poked our heads into Evans Lookout before going to Katoomba. We went to Scenic World and took the Scenic Scender to the valley floor, did the 10-minute walk to the Scenic Railway which we took back up out of the valley. Nathan adored the train and wanted to go on it again both that day and the next! He still occasionally talks about the ‘funny train’.
We then went to check out the B&B that we were booked into. The place was lovely, but with Nathan doing his ‘going nuts in the afternoon’ routine it was just hard work for me. He was running around, trying to pull tablecloths off the tables set for breakfast and pulling drawers out, etc. So we went out….we took the bike and walked/rode to Echo Point to look at the Three Sisters. A quick car trip after we got back found us in town for dinner, which was a very frustrating and difficult experience with Nathan unable to sit still at all. I just couldn’t relax until we were back at the B&B with both kids asleep. By then I had come to the conclusion that I would never venture to take both kids on an overnight trip again on my own. The next day we walked/rode again to Echo Point, then headed back to Sydney, stopping only at Wentworth Falls on the way to expend some energy at a playground.
Frustrating as it was, we still had a lot of fun and the mountains are always a lovely place to visit.
Govette’s Leap lookout
Nathan having difficulties with his sandwich
On the walk between the Scenic Scender and the Scenic Railway
Scenic Railway
Funny little train
Echo Point
Look! The Three Sisters
Nathan wouldn’t stay away from the electric blanket control
At night, when we are trying to get Nathan to relax and go to sleep, we tell him that it is sleep time. When he wakes up toooooo early in the morning, we tell him it is still sleep time. Usually it is dark when Nathan wakes up, though it won’t be long before it is light at his normal wake-up time. A few mornings ago he slept in a little and it was daylight when he woke. He sat up in bed and said:
It’s awake time. WAKE UP EVERYBODY!!
Something akin to a miracle happened last night. Nathan went to sleep in his bed by himself!
Mitch and Nathan, Queen Victoria Building in the city
When we do our shopping at the supermarket, Nathan likes to put coins in the guide dog to support blind people. Every time we walk through the check-out he asks me for money to put in the dog. I usually oblige him. I give him a coin, we talk about it’s value, then he puts it in the slot on the dog’s head, and he tells me that it helps people who can’t see.
Last Thursday I had Nathan sitting in the shopping trolley and Toby was in the mei tei on my front when I tried to maneuver the trolley into a position that would allow Nathan to reach the slot on top of the dog’s head. A very grumpy looking old lady glared at me as I tried to avoid touching her with the trolley as she sat on the seat/bench next to the dog. I succeeded as she glared at me, then after Nathan put the money into the dog we had our discussion about how the money helps people who can’t see.
We were just about the leave when the lady asked me if I had two boys, to which I smiled and said that I did. She glared at me even more, and looked very disapproving. Then she asked me something that really made me do a double take…..
“why didn’t you have a girl?” she demanded.
HUH???
We seem to have been looking at lots of animals recently. We had a lovely, if cold and windy, day at the zoo several weeks ago. We had cheap tickets because Optus had a family day. The food provided was tolerable, we skipped the entertainment, and enjoyed ourselves wandering around. Every time we go to the zoo we try to catch the bird show that shows off some trained birds from galah to a wedge-tailed eagle. It was the first time that Nathan had seen the show and he really enjoyed it.
Then, a couple of weeks ago I took the kids to the Aquarium. I bought a ticket that gives me (and accompanying children under the age of 4 years old) an unlimited number of entries to four places; the Aquarium, Wildlife World, Sydney Tower and the Manly Aquarium. The beauty of such tickets is that you don’t feel that you HAVE to stay as long as possible so that you get value for your money, you can just drop in for as long or short a time as you might wish.
Nathan was pretty impressed with the dugongs in particular, but also loved the sea dragons (mostly, I suspect, because he knows that Mummy loves sea horses and dragons). We have now been to the aquarium many, many times but Nathan still really enjoys it. Wildlife world is also interesting, though the butterfly enclosure (which is pretty good) is closed at the moment.
Sydney Tower is also an interesting place for Nathan. He stops still and just looks down for ages, before starting to play with binoculars (winding them uo and down) and brings me things from the souvenir shop. The boy can be a menace at times.
Oh, and I can’t forget that we saw whales from Kurnell on my Birthday in early July.
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