Splash Splash, Auntie Georgia and Long Hats

One of the first things we made sure we did when we touched down in Sydney was enrol Harriet in swimming lessons. We were lucky enough to arrive just after the start of the semester so Harry was in a Monday 9am class for baby swimmers at Cook & Phillip Park Pool. They were quite reluctant to let her start in the second class but we were adamant that she was fine in the water and could go underwater for an extended period, not just be dunked, so they finally relented (but I think they were still thinking they'd chuck her out of there when we rocked up for the first week).

Of course she just loves it and begs to be thrown underwater and has even started to quell her ongoing fascination with other babies to focus on doing things in the water! This photo was taken when Papa Jimbo was having some fun in the shallow end of the pool on the day we enrolled.


Just after we enrolled Georgia and Nathan were nearby on a rare day off work for Georgia, so we walked down to have a coffee together. Unfortunately the first meeting between Harriet and Georgia doesn't look as happy on film as it actually was in real life, because Harry thought George was just the coolest and in the photo she looks mightily uncertain!

Coffee was lovely and it was great to catch up with Georgia and Nathan but whilst sitting outside the change came in and by the end of it we were racing to the car trying to beat the massive raindrops and dark clouds that were rolling in at a goodly pace.

It was the start of some rather bleak weather generally and later that week when we drove to Bobbin Head to say goodbye to Zara and Adam before they flew out to live in Ireland. The weather was a bummer but at the same time it meant that we had an excuse to put Harriet's cute beanie on her and she didn't mind so much and would let it actually stay on there. Normally it will last about 10 seconds and then she reaches up and whisks that thing off as quickly as she can (this often involves it falling over the front of her face first, covering her eyes, a few little squeals of upset and then one of us will finish the job off for her by grabbing it off her head completely).

There were quite a lot of children around and Harriet enjoyed just people-watching for most of the afternoon. Turns out that Georgia was there trying to find us all but we couldn't see her and all of our mobiles were out of range, so we missed out on catching up again. Zara and Adam were astonished to see that Harriet was actually a little person and that where once there were two - now there were three! I think it is a little harder to come to grips with when you haven't seen someone pregnant and then all of a sudden you just meet up with them and they have a third party who can almost walk and almost talk and is demanding attention. We were very sad to see Zara and Adam head off, especially since we didn't get much of a chance to catch up before they left.