Robin Artemis photo gallery

Outings 1 - Third month, 11 June - 11 July, 2011

Robin and I are off on a train trip together one nice afternoon.

Of course, trips anywhere include nappy changes. This is the parents room on the concourse of Flinders St Station, which you have to get the customer service people to let you into. It's not the most scenic of locales but it was highly functional and convenient given that one little boy let fly just after we got on the train.

We're going to Continuum 7. I'm on a panel talking about alternative energy futures, both feasible/near-future and some blue-sky. My favourites were bringing up the idea mentioned at last year's C6 about "fuzzy buildings", i.e. carpeting them with piezoelectric material for low wind situations, and the idea presented at a talk the day before on Germany's plans to go renewable, which involves putting Savonious-rotor-style turbines into the existing giant whatchamacallems that hold up the long-distance high-capacity power lines. Robin listened intently to some of it, fed for some of it, and then wiggled a bit having done another giant poo partway through the panel. So afterwards we stopped for a change and John Parker said hello. Their two boys are about the same age gap as Sparrow and Robin, and he said to hang in there, they start seeming like people again when they hit the 3/5 year stage. It's just these next couple of years where they go through the terrible twos and threes one after the other that are a bit wearing.

Foyer shot. That's Hespa beside, who was one of this year's chairs I think. Or was it last year? I really didn't get to pay that much attention to the con this time - enjoyed my panel, said hello to a couple of people, but that was it. Didn't even make it back for the panel I was supposed to do on Monday on weather changes related to climate patterns shifting - had to tweet Hespa and cancel. Such a modern world. Robin's asleep now though, so the trip back was fairly calm. He is fun to take out at this age.

This was exciting. We're on our way to a super-secret flashmob thing, and stopping for lunch first at one of the nice South East Asian restaurants I'd seen when I came into the CBD the day before. I like this photo of the two kids and the food, apart from the unfortunate thing where it looks like Robin has chopsticks growing out of his nose. I had to run off before we'd finished lunch though, so that I could find the place where they were giving out the super-secret final destination.

And here we are at our super-secret final destination, hanging around and looking normal. Which in our case means changing Robin's nappy. If you look at the reflection on the bench you might guess where we are, and what Robin is looking at.

It's the Shot Tower and glass cone at Melbourne Central, and we're all under the giant clock, milling, attempting to look normal. Most people are just sitting and chatting, though the guy organising it is drifting back and forth. We're waiting for the signal, a few bars on the flute...

...and the bubble blowing begins. There are about 250 people all in this little area and on the next couple of levels, blowing bubbles into this big area under the cone for just one minute. And then we all wiped up any spilt bubble mix, pocketed our bubble blowers and wandered off. Robin's first flash mob.

Back at the car after our busy and eventful noontime adventure, ready to drive home again. I thought this picture of James managing both kids and all the stuff was kind of cool.

We stopped at the park in Newport on the way home though, just to let the kids have a little more outside time and work off some of that excitement. Or, in Robin's case, to thrash and wiggle out of a wet nappy.

Family trip to Scienceworks. Double nappy change, followed by the WestGate Concert Band performance. Robin didn't seem to mind the music.

I went shopping at Coles, with both kids, and discovered they had a new kind of kid-seat-trolley that had both an infant capsule and a toddler seat. That suddenly made the shopping seem a lot easier! I think the kids were amused at being able to sit next to each other too. Robin likes to look around, the trolley has him up high anyway, so this just gave him a source of entertainment immediately next door if his surroundings stopped being interesting. Of course that meant I also had to keep an eye on Sparrow to make sure she didn't decide that playing with Robin in her usual forceful way was the most interesting thing she could do. Having him strapped right next to her has advantages and disadvantages. But they both face me, and I can talk to them, and it went well enough that when we finished the shopping I walked the trolley back through the shopping centre on a "tour" instead of just straight out the exit to the car, and they both enjoyed that. Especially once I turned the trolley around and pushed it backwards so that they were both facing the way we were going.