Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Out and around Yanchep
Sparrow's first visit to Oma and Grandad, 22-28 November, 2009

Heading out for a walk with the dogs, the Spud and Mary. Introductions are being conducted. The stroller is one that Maggie and Gordon got for visiting grandchildren, and we all thought we should add something to protect against flies and sun. Perth's November was such a jump in temperature from anything the Spud had been in before. She didn't seem to mind too much though. Her parents were mostly worried about sunburn - she was only just getting to the age where you can use suncreams, most of them aren't suitable for under 12 months old but you can find some that can be used as early as six months. The scrim was a nice option.

Up through the park. Yanchep's quite pretty.

And over the new bridge. It's apparently quite controversial - it was always part of the plans and a requirement made of the developers, but when they came to put it in some of the people living nearby complained. But it's perfectly located - you get gorgeous views over the dunes without having to trample them, and it connects some roads and footpaths that otherwise don't connect making an excellent pedestrian loop. The construction's a little tame and unimaginative, but I think that's the result of too much argument over the installation. I found it a bit slippery when damp, and a bit hot underfoot at the wrong time of day, but there aren't a lot of good material options for beach boardwalks, they all have pros and cons.

Maggie and I went down to the community centre for one of their morning sessions - they have guest speakers in and you go for a talk and morning tea. Maggie enjoyed being able to show Sparrow off in person to all the people she's told about Sparrow. However Sparrow decided that instead of sleeping through the talk she would chatter, so Maggie took her next door into the children's creche room and they are having a good time. The morning tea was also fun, though Sparrow decided that if everyone was going to be talking then SHE was going to talk too - and did so by carolling at the top of her lungs. The poor old gentleman sitting next to us had to turn his hearing aid down because she kept screeching into it. Sparrow liked the morning tea though, she had apricots, and also cherries for the first time.

This is Sparrow's first visit to a beach. She looks a bit empress-of-the-world about it all, as if to say it's good that everything here is as it should be even if she doesn't know what it all is.

The seaweed was fascinating to touch, to pull, to pick up bits of and just handle. But she very quickly moved off seaweed and onto the sand - you can see where she'd just scraped up a handful of sand and James is very quickly trying to stop it going straight into the mouth. I'm less worried - it's the cleanest sand you're going to find on any of the beaches she'll see, and she'll learn pretty quickly that eating sand isn't much fun. At least, so I thought. I'm writing these captions ten months later, and she still tries to eat handfuls of sand every time she visits a beach.

Let's distract her from that tasty-looking sand by dunking her feet in the waves and seeing what she thinks. And then, time to go home and discover that great communal beach experience - trying to get sand out of all the crevices.

A trip to Yanchep National Park and a walk around the lake.

Sparrow fell asleep almost immediately on the walk, but the rest of us enjoyed it. There'd been a fire through one section so there were some really spectactular post-fire wildflowers, including some thick patches of one of the firebushes with yellow bell-shaped flowers and stripes inside, can't think of its name, that only comes up in the couple of years after a fire.

The landscape at Yanchep is always striking.

Time for a quick snack. Both James' parents and my mother sometimes have trouble dealing with the timing of James' metabolism and need for lunch at certain times, but it works for me especially with the extra food I need while breastfeeding. So our quick snack ended up being more of a meal for him and me. Sparrow is enjoying the conversation.

And enjoying wearing Grandad's hat.

We looked through the souvenir shop and they had these birds that play the real bird calls. I have one at home somewhere, a butcherbird, which I'll have to pull out too. Maggie bought this one for Sparrow - it's a sacred kingfisher. Not a Yanchep bird so much, but one that I see at CERES in early summer so it's a local bird for Sparrow. She is less concerned by the sound (though enjoyed it), and is with great concentration and seriousness gumming down on the beak. It's important baby business, no interrupting please.

About to head out on another walk. Sparrow got to go on several walks, including one where she went just with Oma and Grandad. Which was really nice for the first hour, James and I don't often get a break - but after that we started panicking because we didn't know where she was and had no way of reaching Maggie and Gordon to see what they were up to. James was calmer about it than I was. I spent the second hour pacing and trying not to freak out - it was the longest I'd been apart from Sparrow and not knowing where she was was quite scary even though I knew she was fine. As she gets older I think that'll be much less of an issue, but at this time and age it was a bit hard to take. I don't think Maggie and Gordon realised how long they'd been gone - they'd just seen one friend, then another, then another, and Sparrow had been acclaimed and made a fuss over for most of it, and she loved it all. -grin- My daughter is such a socialite.

Down the path we go...

...to the beach again.

I'm helping Sparrow stand - while she can support her own weight on her feet, she can't stand on her own yet at all, so I'm really just holding her vertical so that we can watch the waves coming in towards us without her sitting in them.

And in comes the wave, up we go! Splish on the toes and then fly!

More chats with people we saw in passing, and showing off of the beautiful granddaughter. Sparrow never has a problem with this. She did seem to want her Grandad's hat though.