Corin Forest

Lilly has been intermittently watching the tobogganing luge from the winter Olympics, with across-the-lounge room commentary I can do that! And so, in a coincidence reminiscent of a Muppet movie, Saturday saw us ballet dance classing, and then off to Corin Forest.

It was a nice day trip (about 45 minutes from Belconnen). The GPS said the coordinates are E149 4' 39.362" and S35 27' 11.922" (since the map location didn't show up in the search list.) Google maps has a great satellite view

Painting Gabriel's room

Last week we began to move Gabriel into his own room. He'd had a random selection of rooms through the holidays, hotels, Nanna's... and so the dislocation was less substantial. Just one more move (or so we kept telling ourselves...)

Flavia and I had talked about jungles, pictures of smiling lions or big trees or something. But we couldn't agree on scale - was it going to be wall-paper sized stick-on animals or a big tree, or lots of thin ones? In the end, our trip North for Christmas decided it: it turns out Gabriel loves wheels, cars and mechanical stuff in general. So we painted hills (see pictures). And a road, for some wooden cars we'd found. The cars are glued directly to the wall: it is my philosophy that should anyone ever buy this house, they'll be welcome to take the kids wall decorations off with a chisel.

Of course, Miss 3 assisted with the rollers (green), and some sponges on the road. Then she decided that stacking the paint tins, and painting on paper on the floor was much better than keeping within the lines on the wall. Small dude was ever present... surely, if Dad and Miss 3 were getting messy with green paint, he'd be allowed too..... he particularly liked the acoustics - empty wooden room, big echoes, lots of "Aahh!     aah? Aah!"

It's now a whole 24 hours since we finished, and both Miss 3 and Small dude are asleep in their respective rooms. Our bedroom feels oddly empty....

Brazil

A random collection of photos from our Brazil trip

Little Miss 3, and the camera

Lilly has a Fisher Price digital camera. It was a present from Gabriel - at his birth.

Now little Miss 3 is wandering the house flash-photographing everything. Some of her photos are quite impressive.

All the photos shown were done entirely by Lilly.















The last photo shows me, at about 10pm, removing said camera from the photographer who was supposed to be in bed sleeping....

Getting ready to go

It's our last weekend before flying to Brazil on Wednesday. We are at the point of knowing we have to pack and not wanting to really start. Well, I'm not really wanting to start packing (I hate packing) Flavia has put out piles of clothes on top of large suitcases, in preparation for my eventual capitulation.

So today we went to Philip to buy a learn-to-finger-pick guitar book. It was recommended by the guitar teacher (I'm now doing continuing) and looks pretty flashy. Then back to Belconnen for lunch and minor shopping - chemist, photos, carry-on bags. We promised Lilly a trip to the park, which is why at 3:30pm this afternoon, we went to Lake Ginninderra park -- the John Knight memorial park, which is the developed part of the larger park area.

It was ridiculously cold and windy, but I was obstinate, and a little cabin-fevered, wanting to be outside for a few minutes. We took a kite we'd bought a few weeks ago, and flew it off the walkway bridge to the lake. Lilly was quite interested in the kite, until she noticed the "crocodiles" lurking below the bridge -- some floating rubber barriers. Then the conversation turned to what the crocodiles were doing, and how she could see them through the gaps in the bridge...

Sadly, we don't have a photo, but next time we're out there (which won't be for a while) I'll make sure we remember to photograph the place. Canberra seems to lack official photographs of the parks, which is a shame, since the area is quite lovely.

Home brought soup for dinner, and we've all been dosed up on lemon, ginger, honey tea. I'm hoping the jaunt doesn't come back to bite us in a few days' time.

Mum's birthday, or, mission impossible

Today was Mum's birthday.

So we started out by cooking a cake. This may not sound a big deal, but mum is allergic to gluten, wheat, sugar, dairy, eggs, iodine, yeast... suffice to say, that building a cake which looks like a cake, and tastes not like a metal sponge is verging on mission impossible stuff. difficult.

But we have found a solution: There are a couple of new brands available at the local supermarket

• Easy Bakers yeast, dairy & wheat free flour. From Lauke Flour. Which is actually flour that looks and feels like real wheat flour, and not (to randomly choose something) re-fried dirt.
• Orgran, gluten free, No Egg - which is an egg replacement.

We sort of followed the "basic cake" recipe on the flour box. Flavia inevitably asks me why we can't at least follow the actual recipe once before deciding that it won't work without substantial creative input. I don't know why recipes are written that way, but the answer is we just can't.

So. Into 250g of the nifty flour (correct to recipe) sieved, we added 5 heaped teaspoons of No-Egg should have been 4 whole eggs. We also added 150mL fresh-squeezed orange juice that should have been 100mL water and some water because it wasn't looking wet enough and about 20 drops of Sugarine should have been 75g of sugar. I also accidentally added 1/2 a teaspoon of the vanilla essence we have in the cupboard in a moment of non-concentration. We then cut a super-ripe banana and dropped the slices into an concentric-round cooking dish (it was supposed to be a flat square tray) covered the banana in nutmeg and cinnamon the recipe is just looking at me shaking it's head with a why-oh-why do I even bother type look and poured in the (rather small looking) batter. It was starting to rise and bubble in the mixing bowl.

Oven at 150C correct to recipe and the whole thing cooked in about 10 minutes which I take to be reasonable when the recipe said 30 minutes or when golden. The batter was golden when I put it in, so no help there, and after all, they hadn't accounted for half the stuff I did o their recipe..... We just did the classic toothpick test a few times.

Mum loved the cake, it actually tasted like banana bread, and we started the day with a completely out of time and tune happy birthday song in English and Portuguese. Lilly helped blow the candles out, delivered the present, opened the present, stuck her head in the bag and shouted There's chocolate! and after handing Mum the chocolate, shouted And a scarf! So the surprise element of the present may have been lost.

Astute readers may wonder, with all those allergies, what we're thinking giving Mum chocolate for her birthday, but it's (again a recent find) Sweet William chocolate which I have to say is one of the best foods we've found for Mum ever. It is milk, sugar free, but still tastes close to real chocolate.

We've previously bought mum membership to the National Gallery of Australia, and so we took Mum for the first time to the "members lounge". She was impressed with the view and the service. Lilly loved looking at the forest from above, and watching the people walking around the trees. I carried Gabriel in the Baby Bjourn, facing outwards this time, and he had a great time. Never complained once.

In the lounge Flavia noticed some lilies in water - and pointed them out to Lilly. Lilly was fascinated that flowers have names. So after returning home, she noticed that we had some flowers in vases on the table. These are Lillies! No, they are camellias. Oh. All flowers have different names. We looked around the house and pointed to some pansies Lilly had planted a while ago. Pantsees? Pansies. Ah. And did Lilly remember the little tiny blue flowers that grew in the grass outside? Mum asked her What do you think they are called? Harry.

So we now have some tiny blue grass flowers which are named Harry.

We've ended the day with watching the first Mission Impossible movie, it seems appropriate.

Cakes and fun

It's my birthday today.

Flavia bought an excellent mud cake which had (honest) a 5mm thick chocolate coating - not icing, chocolate, and not compound chocolate. Miss three has been extremely excited, telling me for the last day or so Your birthday is in the fridge! [meaning birthday cake] She whispered this to me, because it's a secret.

The cake is from a little bakery in Kippax, called Baker's Best at 8 Hardwick Cres. I don't know if they do all their own stuff, but the food there is always excellent, it's not expensive and the staff are super friendly. I've often walked past at the end of the day, and the manager will give Lilly a few free croissants - it's that sort of place.

An excellent day, and thanks to all.

Painting by footprints

So last weekend, instead of cleaning the house, gardening or doing anything that we ought to have done, we painted.

I begin by noting that the amazingly large paper is courtesy of work, and a never-ending-demand for posters. I also note that Mum is still staying with us, and as an ex-pre-school teacher of many years "doing something interesting with a three year old" takes on a whole new world of meaning.

Enough context. We got up, we wandered around the house finding the paints -- we used squeezie-marker pen type ones, that were supposed to be not too hard for small people to use. I believe Flavia has photographic recall of every object we've ever bought, and where it currently resides. She managed to find and unearth the paints based on no more than my statement "We got some squeezie paints for Lilly a year or so ago, you know, the ones you can hold. Do you know where they went?" With my GPS-like description of the materials in question, and less than one minute, we had the paints. And so with two A0 posters stuck together, we filled the lounge room.

In the end, it was much more fun to finger paint than it was to use the paints as markers. Yes, that's me in the trackies and ugg boots. Lilly is performing her first ice-skating based masterpiece. At this point in time we have (I think) finished breakfast. Flavia has very generously not shown any identifying features of anyone except the artist in the photo.

This weekend we might add some more paint, and put the work-in-progress up on one of our walls.

And the flame grows...
Today Mum started blogging. This takes us from Flavia, Its just a way to put pictures up to me, and now Mum, who is very excited. I am looking forward to the news, and hoping that once we all separate back to normal households in a month or so, we will keep the blogging active.

Steam train

We've been waiting for this for weeks. Today, we caught a steam train from Canberra railway station to Bungendore.

The train is maintained and run by the Australian Railway Historical Society (ACT), who are entirely volunteers. Flavia (the organised) booked tickets for us all some time ago, so Lilly, my Mum, Flavia Gabriel and I would have a train trip. It's Lilly's first train ride. (and its also Gabriel's - but at 10 weeks everything is his first, and so it gets a bit monotonous observing firsts)

I make the observation that I'm just (yesterday) back from San Francisco, and so slightly faded after several hours of United Airlines.

So we arrived 45minutes before the train was due to depart - giving Lilly a chance to wander around the station platform and the train. The staff were extremely friendly, and let the kids go up on the locomotive. Lilly was keen, right up to the point of being there, and then I think the fire and the surrounds were a bit much. We got on the train (having had our tickets checked on the platform) walked to our seat and ta-da! double booked. Some grandparents and their little one sitting in the seat. After much too-ing and fro-ing ("that carriage" "no seats here" "that one..." ) we walked the length of the train. Were placed on some temporary chairs near a window.

Lilly thought it was amazing. Gabriel slept.

As I write this it is 12 hours after the train ride, and Lilly (who has only just gone to bed) has been shouting "Toot-toot, all aboard" for about 6 of those hours. Interestingly, no-one actually shouted all aboard, except for Lilly.... The ride was brilliant - staff were helpful and friendly and although it was teeth-shatteringly freezing walking between carriages, we did so to find snacks and coffee.

Three tunnels, much smoke, half a pack of tiny-teddies, and an hour later, we arrived in Bungendore. Which is damn cold at the best of times. We walked from the station to the Cafe Woodworkers, had a decent lunch. They burned the pancakes. I mean, how hard is it to cook a pancake?!? I think the staff got overwhelmed by a marauding group of steam-trained up pensioners.... We finished our lunch, and walked back to the station and little Miss 3 fell asleep in Nanna's arms.

Gabriel is at the stage of saying "wooooh" and so (since he was awake all the way home) he responded to the train's whistle every time. Train-whistle, Gabriel "wooh-woooh" and so on. I'm not sure if he ever got the answer he was looking for.

So now we are home, and Miss 3 and Small dude are fully flaked - a good day had by all.

Party

Little Miss 3 has arrived.

We wrapped the presents last night, and placed them out in the room for Lilly to find this morning when she woke up. Which she did, at 8am, to squeals of "Santa brought presents!" after all, who else shows up in the dark to deliver presents?

We had our usual pancakes for breakfast, followed by watching two Barbie DVD's and a Disney princesses movie. As part of the preparation, Flavia made brigadeiros - Milo + Condensed milk rolled in chocolate sprinkles. We tried a recipe she'd found which was skim milk and sugar with some coconut, but too much coconut milk sent it into soup world. We modified the recipe, and I record it here for posterity.

Coconut balls 1 cup (skim) milk powder; 3/4 cup sugar; 1 tin coconut cream; milk (to make it like a soup); icing sugar; 2 to 3 cups desiccated coconut; zest of 1 lemon. Put in liquid ingredients with sugar, make a soup. Add solids until mix becomes thick enough to roll balls. Roll in desiccated coconut.

Flavia felt it was one of the worst concoctions made, but I enjoyed them a lot.

The hall that was rented for the party was in Melba - an old pre-school apparently, that had become a community hall. One whole wall of the building was mirrored - which resulted in lots of running in circles by 3 year olds -- with slow stretches as they observed themselves careening past in the mirror.

The fairies were excellent - providing cupcakes, pink lemonade and a birthday cake, as well as pass-the-parcel, treasure hunt and various other activities. Lilly loved it, and the other kids seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.

So little Miss 3 returned home, and since 7:45pm has been sound asleep after her party.

Birthdays & busy-ness

This Sunday (5th July) is Lilly's 3rd birthday.

We've gone for the do-it-by-someone-else option this year. Mostly because with a ten-week old in residence; setting up the house for guests and then de-setting up the house for us living in it again is just too much like hard work. They say money can't buy happiness, but I say it sure does buy plenty of laziness, and that's almost as good.

Lilly's first party was under-the-sea: Flavia and Mum mostly set everything up while I was at work, and then the night before we decorated the entire lounge-room with fishing nets over the ceiling and jangly fishes everywhere. Second party was in Brazil with the other half of the family, and that was mostly done by others. A bunch of people showed up with crepe streamers, boxes of stuff and turned the ground-floor of Vovo's (grandma's) house into a jungle. I am advised it was a garden actually. Big garden, trees and vines....

This year, it's fairies and pirates. We are quietly eating all those pre-parenting slogans such as "We're not going to do all that pink and Barbie stuff, she's unique" Well, she's unique, but she likes pink, princesses, Barbie, fairies and frilly dresses. She likes boots, mud, painting, and running around the house semi-clothed shouting "I'm not naked", jumping (on the wooden floor) whilst holding a finger to her lips to indicate that she's well aware that the small-dude is asleep and is only jumping, rather than jumping-and-shouting and therefore, doing everyone an immense favour at great cost to herself.

Makes me realise how completely naive I was when I thought some sort of coloured clothing might limit her.

We're looking forward to seeing the results of sugar, cordial, an adult fairy and a dozen other 2-4 year olds placed in a room. And then, at the allotted time, we're also looking forward to coming back home with Nanna, Mum, Mr Small & Little Miss 3.