Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Sparrow goes to a science fiction convention
Galaxies by Gaslight (Continuum 5), 14-16 August, 2009

James and I decided we'd go to Galaxies by Gaslight, the fifth Continuum convention. I was going to go for a day but the man with the wallet said he'd rather have a hotel room and some place we could use as a base or to sleep in. So this became both Sparrow's first science fiction convention, and our first overnight trip away. After spending pretty much all of Friday packing and getting her ready, I was glad we were only going to a hotel that was twenty minutes down the road from our house.

This is Sparrow's suitcase. When it was fully packed, there was a little corner left on one side that was big enough to put my clothes into. Mostly though it was all for her: the clothes, books, toys and general stuff you see here, plus a change mat, change towels, blankets and carry-wrap which have been taken out for the moment. This suitcase is exactly the right size to put our change mat in, which is why I picked it. I guess I can say goodbye to one-backpack-travel for a while.

James met us at the hotel after work and went straight to sleep, so Sparrow and I wandered down to the foyer and bar to see who was around. There's usually lots of people to meet and catch up with at a convention. No sooner had I sat down to work out how to juggle the con bags and badges, than Sparrow got to meet Paul Kidd. Look, it's a big funny hairy man! She likes those. And random bits of paper from the con bag. So far, the experience is going well.

Most of the evening though was spent, well, like this. We went to the brief opening ceremony, after what felt like all afternoon waiting (I'd spent all day getting ready, why isn't everyone else ready??!! -grin-), and then it was evening naptime. (Next time I will assume that the first night may not be worth the energy it takes to get her there, and make other plans.) Seeing as the hotel bed had sheets and blankets of an appropriate weight, we decided to try sleeping her directly in the bed with us instead of in her little portable box-bed (which we'd brought with us). We went to put on some music to help suggest sleep-time to her using the hotel's DVD player, and ended up having to get two porters to come up and show us how to work it. It turns out the button that switches between TV and AV is on the very top of the large, set-on-high TV screen rather than on any of the remotes, and you can only find it if you stand on a chair and look at the top edge of the screen. That's where the volume buttons are too. In the half hour it took us to work all this out, she went to sleep on her own quite happily. The porters thought she was adorably cute in the bed. So did we.

This is our hotel room, the first morning. James is still asleep, and I've just changed Sparrow's nappy. It was a nice room, north facing so very easy to control temperature without the air conditioner - and the window opens! Being on the thirteenth floor I didn't stand too close to it, but it was still a gorgeous view. Sparrow and I are about to head out for a walk to buy new sewing machine needles. I brought the sewing machine so that I could finish making her party dress, but broke the needle the first night and had forgotten spares.

We spent the day occasionally going to panels such as the Guest of Honour speech or the what-does-the-future-look-like-after-climate-change panel I was on, but mostly just hanging out quietly in the hotel room. It was nice to have some place to retreat to where she could go to sleep without lots going on, or have some quieter playtime. I do like reading the Yowie books to her, though mostly that just involves randomly turning the pages.

She is telling Daddy all about something with great animation, possibly the walk out she and I had just had (trying to get the sewing machine needles). Or maybe the piece of paper she saw a minute before. It's hard to tell when it's all coos and gurgles.

I love this father-daughter picture. James and Sparrow were quite happily playing together, and James suggested I run out on my own and try again for the sewing machine needles. So I did, with some trepidation - it's odd to go out without her. It really doesn't happen often. So I was trying to get the errand done as fast as possible, and feeling more and more stressed and panicky the longer it went, and had to go to two different shops and back to the first again, and run around through mazes of fabric bolts looking for things that were unlabelled and stacked randomly, and every time I went to a counter it filled up with an eight-person-line just before I got there, and... it took an hour and a half to do a twenty-five minute errand. By the time I got back I was a mess. James and Sparrow however were completely fine.

Saturday night dinner, and we bumped into Scott just at the right moment. So we're at a little Japanese restaurant around the corner, choosing from big picture menus while Sparrow hangs out on the table next to the chopsticks. I think that going out for meals with friends, old and new, is possibly one of the bits of conventions I enjoy most now.

Back at the hotel room, getting ready for the Maskobalo. The Spud is the only one of the three of us with a costume. Seeing as it's the steampunk and space theme, she is going as Spudnik, the first potato-powered satellite in space (I am such a nerd). Being a big believer in simple and practical costumes for children, and also being happy to make costumes out of very little (the "crepe paper" approach), we are making this costume by adding silver ribbons and alfoil to one of her hats and putting her in her sleeping bag. James is straightening the ribbons.

The completed costume, at the ball. I'd been going to make her a new sleeping bag anyway, and had a nice soft brown fabric, so it was easy to make that part of the costume. I had thought about making myself a dress out of the fabric of the headband I'm wearing, which is silver stars on black panne velvet so I could be the space she is orbiting through. I thought it would be appropriate given that parents are so often backdrops to their children -smile-. But Spotlight had designated it a "winter fabric" and (as of late July) were out of it til next year, so I just wore the headband and some black.

Unfortunately, most people just said "Hey, you've given her a tinfoil hat to protect her from alien mind beams!". There was no official presentation, just a group huddle on the dance floor, so we didn't get to tell the judges what she actually was. The hat didn't stay on very well in such a crowded place - it kept falling victim to the elbows of people taking pictures of other costumes, or getting its ribbons caught on things. And while I thought I was being so clever dressing her in her sleeping bag so that we could just put her straight to bed after the costume parade, I didn't take into account the ball lights and how hot they were in such a small space. So we had to remove most of the costume in fairly short order anyway. Oh well. There were a lot of fun costumes to look at. And once she was out of the hot clothes, Sparrow enjoyed it too.

Here's the much-cooler Spud with Hespa, who is dressed as a pirate aviator from a comic.

Saturday night, the Spud decided that she was going to wake up and want a feed every one to two hours, instead of sleeping for four at a time. Here she is looking wide awake at seven thirty on Sunday morning, happy to be alive and up and about. Daddy would really much rather be horizontal for a few hours more, thanks, and I'm not feeling a lot better than that.

I gave up trying to sleep at about six or six thirty, and got up and finished the party dress (finally!). She looks a bit like a little wizard in it. I figured it was warm and soft enough to wear on its own and covered her legs, and she'd fit right in at a convention in something like this, and it was easy access to get to the nappy for changing if we needed it. So now that it's the second day of the convention and she has the perfect convention outfit, what are we doing?

Going home, of course. We had to check out at 10 am Sunday morning, and James was in a dreadful state from lack of sleep. So we just drove straight home and poured all of us into bed. In this photo you can see the pile of luggage dumped on the couches, to be dealt with later. James has been distracting the Spud while I finish parking the car and bringing the last bag in, then I'll take her and sleep and play in the book room while he tries to collapse without interruption in the bedroom. We did get some sleep, and Sparrow and I went back to the convention after lunch to see some of the panels I'd hoped to see anyway. There are advantages to being only twenty minutes away.

So I saw most of the panel on whether you need to be a good scientist to write science fiction, and dipped in and out of others such as the one on steampunk fashion (which had great slides of strange-looking people that Sparrow was wowed by). Mostly Sparrow was good with it, but she was a little grizzly and unsettled herself once or twice. So we spent a fair bit of time in the foyer too, and hung out with Sharon and Lex among others. Then it was time to head home for the last time. We didn't stay for the closing ceremony - naps are a lot more important. Though we still ended up being quite late home as I couldn't find my way back to the parking lot I'd left the car in - I was tired enough that I couldn't remember which floor the lift to the parking lot was on, and spent twenty minutes walking up and down one stretch of shops thinking "I know it was right here, how can a lift vanish?".