Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Sparrow's third month - the excursions, 9 July - 9 August, 2009

Out on a walk together, on one of Melbourne's unbearably long streak of grey days. Aren't they both so cute?

I was finally cleared to drive, but we couldn't put her capsule in my car because the safety cable wasn't long enough. So we waited for a weekend when James could go down to get the extension strap from the capsule hire place, and then waited for an afternoon when he would be home so that we could use his jumper cables to start my car and take it for a long drive - it had been sitting unused since its last service near the end of my pregnancy and the battery was flat. Here Sparrow is patiently waiting for her parents to get the car going. We got it started once, then James turned it off as per the manual instructions (??) and we couldn't get it going again. Eventually we gave up and decided it must be the battery. So then I waited for a time to be organised enough to book the mechanic to come get my car and put a new battery in it. But we did eventually get me independently mobile, for which I was very grateful.

Once mobile, my first long trip was out to see Brian Choo, nature geek, palaeontologist and artist extraordinaire. He'd just finished his PhD with Museum Victoria on fossil fish, and was about to accept a palaeontological position in China. So he was farming out his collection of interesting-but-unpackable living things. I claimed all his indoor plants, and had to drive out to South Morang to collect them. Which meant Sparrow got to meet Brian's close companion, Drake - a Centralian Carpet Python. She thought the snake was totally fascinating. It was a little confused by her. We may have a budding herpetologist in the family -smile-. She was also completely fascinated by the fossils Brian showed her and talked to her about as he packed. Another friend later said that Sparrow had just met her future best friend. They may be right.

So here are the plants, brought home but not yet installed in place - their future home is off in the top left corner, overhanging the stairs. They completely filled the back of the Daewoo, so Sparrow got to ride home under a swaying miniature forest and I think she liked the change of scenery. Brian and I had taken her down into the *real* forest along the river in Plenty Gorge right by where he lives, but she fell asleep within the first minute and didn't wake up until she was back in the car.

Shortly after that, we went on a day trip to Organ Pipes National Park. It's along a river gorge out near Tullamarine Airport, and it's got lots of interesting geological features based around the cooling of volcanic rock - some of the most significant volcanic remains in the state (not counting the various remaining cinder and scoria cones). My grandfather would have loved it, though it didn't become a national park until after he died so I'm assuming he didn't get to see it in his travels over here. This is the eponymous Organ Pipes.

From the Organ Pipes, you walk along the river to the next formations - the Roseate Stone and the Tesselated Pavement. This is Sparrow's first visit to a river, not counting the one she wasn't awake for at Brian's a couple of days before.

I couldn't resist this photo of James and Sparrow together under this big old tree. This is also her first experience of this kind of natural woodland, as opposed to very occasionally seeing street trees that go over her head. But she was starting to get tired of it all, so wasn't really particularly caring at this point.

I'm sitting with her on the Tesselated Pavement. She was definitely not happy with sitting still by this point, and the typical Melbourne early spring combination of icy wind and hot sun wasn't helping. Nor was the fact that we'd managed to leave the house without anything to carry her in, so the walk was getting a little, shall we say, hefty. And we'd also forgotten her change bag, so that was another reason to keep the visit quite short and head for home.

But we managed to get a few more photos against the backdrop of the rock before we left. I just love the textures of this place.

The following weekend we drove up to Mount Dandenong, and went to Sherbrooke Forest. This would be her first visit to something actually classed as forest, as opposed to riverine woodland edge. Very tall trees, the mountain ash - way over Sparrow's head. She seemed a bit startled by how far up they were, and liked looking around at the patterns against the sky. We didn't get many photos though as she didn't want to stay sitting at any point. Here she and James are, looking around, I think in a very McCubbin-esque kind of composition.

Because it's the kind of photo you have to take, and she's only this small once.

On our trip up to Sherbrooke Forest we stopped at Geppetto's Workshop in Sassafras. They have wonderful toys and puppets, and her most favourite toy is a wood-and-hide tambourine I got from there a long time back. I was hoping to get another one for Mimi, but they only had garishly-coloured metal ones. I really didn't like either the look or the sound of them. Instead, I got a toy which might be as much for Mummy and Daddy as Sparrow. It's mesmerising watching the balls fall down through the holes. She quite likes it, though the tambourine is still better.

And here's my little fella, cute as a button. I was trying her in some of the overalls Sarah had lent me, and she was so cute in them. But people saw the denim, and assumed that because it was blue she was a boy, not that overalls come in that many other colours, and how totally gay are pink ones? Anyway, so everyone was calling Sparrow "him", and I went along with it (because I don't really care what she is). It gave me more material for my ongoing observation of gender bias in the way babies are treated. Actually, there isn't much at this age. Just occasional little moments, like on this trip when she started grizzling at one of the shop counters and the counter lady said "What's wrong, little fella?". I replied "He doesn't like shopping", which at this point is true. She replied "Good boy!", which made me laugh. She has such long eyelashes some people will see past the blue and assume "girl" anyway. Interestingly, the one group of people who never seem to have to ask whether she's a boy or a girl are little boys. And on this trip, Sparrow got her first kiss from a boy, one little chocolate-cake-smeared cutie who wanted to come up and say hello to the pretty baby. He managed to smear chocolate cake across her cheek, too. She was a bit bemused, is still getting the hang of getting kisses.