Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Hanging out at Grandma's, 14-20 November, 2009

Sitting with Grandma.

Mum had found this mat on one of her freecycling ventures. It proved an excellent place to leave Sparrow to play while we moved around the space, though we had to take one of the toys off its hanger so she could actually reach something, and several more toys got added to the mat over the course of the week. You could also tell if Sparrow got bored of it, because she'd start disassembling the pipe structure - such a little engineer. We'd hoped that the peacocks would come to the window there, but they didn't.

Early morning, feeding the peacocks with Grandma. I don't think she ever got tired of watching these birds.

A quiet moment with flowers and trees, watching peacocks. Which makes it by definition not a quiet moment, really. Sparrow's challenge this week was to learn to sleep through the peacock calls. She got the hang of it.

Here's the cot where she slept during the day. Mum had talked about getting a cot and I'd ummed and aahed, but she found this one free at the recycle section of the tip and it turned out to be very useful. Sparrow was just starting to roll around when we got to Albany, and having her sleeping upstairs with no stair-top gate or block wasn't the best recipe for peace of mind. She took to sleeping in this cot fairly well, and I think enjoyed the view of the bookshelf.

This is where the three of us slept at night. Mum and Dad brought this California king-size bed out from the States with them, and it really is a good size. There was plenty of room for her to sleep between us without it meaning I got pushed right to the edge of the blankets. She got quite used to sleeping in the big bed with or without us there, would quite happily snuggle her face up to one of our pillows and fall asleep that way.

We tried our little portable convert-any-chair-to-a-high-chair thingy, but it didn't work terribly well. Sparrow doesn't quite sit that well yet so needs a little more support. And I don't know what kind of chair they designed it to fit over, but it didn't go properly over any of Mum's (which look like perfectly normal chairs to me). Maybe we just don't have the right kind of Swedish furniture.

Cuddle time!

This is the stroller Mum found in a secondhand shop. It really is quite cute. We're on our way up to work in the garden, and the theory is that Sparrow can sit in it and see what's going on.

Admiring the tire-wall that Mum's been building at a point where the vegie garden changes level. The gladioli were doing very well.

Grunt, grunt, wave, grunt, hold arms out stiff, grunt, wave stiff arms again emphatically. Which translates to "Oy, pick me up now, stop getting distracted, I said pick me up." You can see the somewhat severe look on her face as she tries to get the message across. The stroller was OK for a while, but her patience for us gardening was usually no more than around twenty minutes. Which is still pretty good for a little baby.

Playing enthusiastically on the tilt-a-chair. The only problem is that this chair has its tilt mechanicsm reversed, so it tips forward instead of back, so if she sat forward too enthusiastically (i.e. fell forward :-) there was this alarming moment. But she had fun.

Lots of kitchen and food time at Grandmas. Kitchen utensils are so much fun to play with. And Mum's new island bench made a good place to prop her up while we worked on different parts of dinner - she could always see what we were doing.

Sparrow got to try a lot of new fruits and vegetables while we were at the farm. Avocado, of course - Mum had picked a couple of early-ripening ones specially for the occasion so that Sparrow could try them (and they were quite good). But she also had asparagus, and artichoke, and some of almost every vegetable we were eating. Artichoke was a surprising winner. Cauliflower leaves were great fun to chew on, though there's still this thing of no sense of scale. I think they felt good on her gums - no teeth yet.

Bathtime! Mum's bathroom sink doubles as a laundry trough, and is a very good size to bath a baby in. Sparrow had fun!

Getting dry after the bath. The mat I made her goes surprisingly well with the decor in the yellow-and-earth toned bathroom.

This is a new top we bought her. It stretches out to fit any size from baby to adult, so she will never outgrow it. She was so excited about eating it however that it was hard to get a picture.

Evenings sometimes Sparrow needed extra distraction. James has been carrying her around in this laundry basket. Very Anne Geddes.

James and I went out to measure slopes in various parts of the farm to see which ones would be feasible to put an underground house in. We didn't have a lot of luck though - most of the slopes are at steepest one in six, and we were looking for slopes of one in three to five. It was a wet and rainy job, mostly but not quite all between rainshowers. Sparrow stayed with Grandma inside, watching the rain and trees through the windows, looking at books and playing with a fascinating new toy...

a rainbow Slinky. It goes just fine on feet or hands, changes colour as it moves and was just all round great. I will have to dig mine out when we get home.

Sparrow, Mum and I were all up early in the mornings when the sun streamed in. This meant extra cuddles in bed with Grandma while the morning gets off to its bustling start.

Sparrow got a lot of rolling practice in - that's one good thing about a house which is entirely open-plan, there was plenty of floor to explore. She loved that bell-shaker that is on the floor next to her and would make concerted efforts to roll to where it was, not always with the best of results. She ended up under this chair a couple of times, not deliberately, and was a little confused about how to get out again.

One last cuddle on the day we left - Mum had gone to work, we finished getting ready and packing up and drove into Albany to pick up some Jesters pies to take with us. Mum came down on her break and met us there for a last hello and goodbye. We'd hoped to catch up with Jane, one of the ladies Mum teaches with, but it wasn't the right day for that so next time. And then we were off, on another long car trip to go to Jasmine and George's wedding.