Saturday, April 21, 2012

Today (not Yesterday)

I know, I know, you want me to start with our holiday.  But today was full of STUFF so I wanted to blog it while it's fresh, since it's still pretty mundane and this blog is usually committed to the mundane in a constant fashion.

After we returned home yesterday, we woke today with the children in intense, crazy mode.  We attempted to do such activities as read the newspaper, drink hot beverages and converse, but it was rapidly obvious that such activities were not going to happen.

So what does a parent do in this situation?  Well create an experiment, of course!  The other day when we were at a cafe in Bathurst, the children (read: Ted) decided to take a shine to the sugar packets on the table.  With some truly inspired quick thinking, I said "Hey, you're right, these are really interesting.  Let me pocket four of them and we'll take them back to the house for an experiment.  Then let's place this container full of sugar somewhere else asap".  Of course when I drove back to Sydney I unpacked, only to find four forgotten sugar packets in my pocket. 

So this morning I whipped them out and Harriet and I set up four glasses with hot water, vinegar, milk and tap water.  We then placed one of the sugar tubes in each glass and wrote up a table for Harriet's observations.  I love that she wrote 'warter' because it's sometimes nice to remember that she's six.








Harriet then decided to create a straw poll on the expectations of the family on the experiment.  I love that she wrote 'licwad' - sometimes her cuteness is just too much. It also helped with explaining the concept of hypothesis.  Cool stuff.











Then it was on to the business of the experiment.  Harriet examined by eye and then by touch each sugar packet at five minute intervals.  Unfortunately there wasn't any definitive change by the end of twenty minutes, so we set it aside for a 24hr assessment. 






But we had to move on to the great outdoors, because we were going to pick up Teddy's violin.  And so it was that I was rapping on the door of a house over the bridge, just a random house of the ebay seller we acquired the 1/10 violin from...or so I thought.  Lo and behold when Georgia's sister, Alex, opens the door!  Well truth be told I am hopeless at recognising people (I can't seem to hold images of people's faces in my head, it's weird and after I read Oliver Sacks' latest tome I realised I may actually have a very mild level of a condition called prosopagnosia, especially when I realised I honestly can't hold the image of anyone in my mental 'eye' [not even my children!  or James!] - but back to the story) and so it was that Alex actually recognised me.  We had a chat, we bought the violin and headed to Jimbo's work for a brief visit.


It was a long wait in the car, in the carpark, in the lift and walking over to James' desk, but Ted made it with valiant effort.  He opened the case and out came the violin and bow.  It took quite a bit of gentle reminding that he wasn't to hold the violin straight out in front of his body, but he eventually remembered his posture and played a little.  Then Harriet played a little.  Then I played a little.  Then James played a little.  Hey!  It was fun!

Considering it was a gorgeous afternoon and we were in the city, James made the snap decision that we should investigate the Tumbalong Park water playground which he visited with Ted a while back.  It's so totally awesome, even with a thousand children there.  There are water trails with areas everywhere that children can manipulate and change the direction of water, pump water, control water and play with the water.


So now you may be grasping why Ted is only wearing underwear in the above photo.  In fact that is underwear we had to purchase from the newsagent opposite the playground, because he got completely and beautifully soaked to the skin within about five minutes of arriving, and was wearing no underwear, so just wandered around naked thereafter.

We purchased some warm drinks at a cafe opposite and Ted insisted on breaking out the violin again.  And so it was that Ted had his first public performance - complete with strangers photographing him, stopping to watch and generally appreciating the gorgeous sight of this chubster getting right in to his violin, oblivious to all around him.




 This is also a video of Ted with his box violin and his violin teacher that I keep meaning to post too.

Anyway, time to head back to the car.  Ted went crazy, and when it was time to go to sleep, sobbed, raged and generally went wild at not being allowed to play his violin (he had played it for ages between dinner and the first attempt at bedtime at about 7.30).  He ended up not  being able to go to sleep until 10pm as a result, but there was no way we could let him near that violin given his inability to even stand upright successfully.  I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a looong day of violin (which I am not-so-secretly totally excited about.  I can't, however, say the same thing for our long suffering neighbour).



 I know you want to know about our trip with Lou and it was awesome.  All kinds of awesome.  All kinds of it's-a-one-kilometre-round-trip-to-the-letterbox sort of awesome.  Here are Harriet and Dexter ambling back up to the house after a long trek out of eyesight having adventures and explorations of importance.  Lou and I exclaimed at how excited we were that we couldn't see them for ages and ages.










We went for walks, ate icecream, ran, started fires, were disappointed by mazes, ATE, swung on willow branches over creeks, carried small children a long way, browsed through op shops and generally reveled in the joy that is being in the company of true friends.  I'll write about it soon, promise.



ps - click on that last image to see it big and to give you an idea of the lovely long horizons we had at our disposal





1 comment:

Lou said...

Oh my. I LOVE the photo of Ted striding through the city in just his undies and sandles holding the violin. Classic! Of course the last 2 photos are divine. Hurry up and post about it, I need to link from my post so folks can see how awesome it all looks through your talented photographer eyes!