Monday, January 27, 2014

January 26th





Something about the casually disheveled look here makes me see the teenager in her.


We had intended to wake the children earlier than their current 9am-ish morning call, in order to start their internal clock to be aligned better with the school run starting on Tuesday.

Of course the problem with that was we failed to realise that the plan demanded the adults also have to wake earlier.  In protest I managed to stay in bed until 8am myself.  Yes, it was all a deliberate protest a la Lennon and Yoko.










We knew we had to leave the house in order to move a little of that Ted enthusiasm around a little, so after we fulfilled Harriet's stationery desires, we set off for Paddington Reservoir which I have been wanted to visit for years.  For some reason it routinely fell of my radar and today we made the effort.

It is a beautiful restoration and I thoroughly enjoyed the integration of the original building (including petrol bowsers from a later incarnation) into the open space.  I imagine it's in hot demand for weddings, it seemed to scream 'fairy light me'.

Ted and Harriet enjoyed the view down to the Chauvel in the City of Sydney supplied deckchairs.  They had apparently never heard or seen anything quite so fantastic in their short lives.













Ted soon bored of sitting around (least surprising statement written so far in 2014) and it was off to the lift for entertainment of the Ted kind.
























Doors open.  Ted enters. Presses any of the four buttons randomly and often.  Doors close.   Repeat.  Repeat.  Run outside, across bridge, yell "SURPRISE!" to Harriet and James who were sitting there in aforementioned deckchairs looking in the direction of the bridge we just ran over.  Giggle hysterically.
Run back to lift.  Doors open.  Ted enters.  Presses any of the four buttons...etc.
 Harriet managed to crack some jokes that were even more dad-joke-like than James.  She thought it was all hilarious.  James attempted to educate her on how the dad joke thing was really enacted. It made no impact.

 

We then spent about twenty minutes watching the children roll down this hill, towards a sharp concrete wall that dropped directly on to the footpath.  Later that evening I noticed Ted and Harriet both had this weird rash spreading across their bellies.  I suddenly realised it was from their shirts riding up during this period of hill rolling.  Much rolling.  Apparently that hill was "better than Luna Park", so if you would like to save $200, we can pass on the address.
  
 Harriet slept while Ted pursued the adventure for longer than any of us cared to stay for.

 We found a little cafe open where James and I consumed caffeine as a parenting physical requirement.  Ted, as you can see, finally received his glasses back from Zoe when Zoe came to our bbq and not from me being a decent caring parent and getting off my butt to drive over there and retrieve them.  Ah well.

One more day of the holidays! 


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