Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Continuum 6, 26-28 February, 2010

Continuum is Melbourne's regular science fiction convention, and this was the sixth. I've been to all of them, and it's James and Sparrow's second one. The previous one was in August, but they're having the one for this year early as Worldcon is being held here in Melbourne in September and they didn't want to compete. Taking a baby to a convention is a continuing learning experience. She was happy to just be held at the last one seeing as she was only three months old. But now at nine months there are a few more adventures. We planned our time and activities carefully around her.

Friday I did some quick packing and tidying after she came home from daycare. I was less stressed about it this time than last time, but we still worked to time pretty carefully. James checked in at the hotel when he finished work and I drove with Sparrow in just after 6. So we got to arrive and go straight to dinner with Scott. Here three of us are carefully studying my laptop while waiting for our orders - Scott and I were doing a panel on science fiction music videos and we had several hours worth. That's way more than we could show so we were talking through what we thought was worth presenting and how to make it fit into fifty minutes.

Naturally Sparrow put up with this for only a little, then decided to go charm some strangers instead. These ladies loved her to bits, and a table of men nearby us were amused when she pulled herself up to their spare chair and started trying to pick up their motorbike helmet. It was obviously just her size. -smile-

Next morning Sparrow and I went for a little walk so that Daddy could try and get an extra half hour of sleep. When she's ready to get up, she's ready to get up, and the hotel room while comfortably-sized is not that big when a little baby is squawking at full volume. So she and I did a few morning things then went for a walk and got second breakfast to share with Daddy. I love walking in the city, especially at odd times when it's quiet. This is in (I think it's) Hefferson Lane, which runs between Chinatown and the Greek precinct on Lonsdale St. It's full of odd meaningless, almost koan-like signs. I should have walked down to the end of the alley and taken a picture of Sparrow next to the one that says "Commit no Nuisance", but I didn't think of it. We walked in Chinatown a lot as our hotel was right next to it, and I used the excuse to get an egg tart from Maxim's at least once.

This is Danny. He's a bit funny looking, but he has glasses so that's OK. I had a panel first thing on Saturday morning, collaboratively putting together a little zine called The Post-Apocalyptic Housewife's Domestic Companion. Everyone who was there took part in the brainstorming and we had heaps of ideas. Not a lot translated into content, but what we got was fun and I might try doing it again. While I did that, Sparrow slept under James' watchful eye. They came down afterwards and said hello to people before we went off to lunch. Danny'd organised lunch at the Pancake Parlour, seeing as he was visiting from Canberra and wanted to catch up with people. So we went there. Not the best baby-friendly place, the highchair was very narrow so she kept sliding off it, and the only place to change her was a fold-up table in the ladies loo that needed two free hands to set it up. This was awkward given that James had been going to be the one changing her. I had to do it instead. Which I don't mind, but, you know, I don't see why I should have had to when there was a perfectly willing Daddy present.

Quiet time in our room. Well, sort of quiet. Just before this photo was taken there was an excited coo from the bathroom, followed by the sound of Mummy saying "Was machst du, Sparrow?.... Wait, that's my hairbrush!". She hasn't looked in our loo at home, I think because it's not easy for her to get to yet. But the one in the hotel room was right next to the bathtub, so she could use the bathtub to pull herself up and then "walk" herself across to look in the toilet. And she just happened to be holding my hairbrush... What's not obvious in this photo is that it's only half a hairbrush - the bristly bit had come off earlier in the day and so I was letting her play with it. James didn't know this though, so when he saw her playing with the two halves he got a bit bothered and wondered how he was going to tell me that he let her break my hairbrush. At any rate, I now have a new hairbrush.

Pausing between panels. Scott is fishing for babies. It's a fun sport. I'd just finished my Futureproofing Melbourne panel, where we tried to design a working urban area for the year 2099 given a range of entertaining constraints (no natural gas, 7.9 million people, zero residential emissions etc etc). James had been to a Doctor Who panel before that. I was debating going to the Pointy Hats discussion on what stereotypes women are allowed to fall under in fantasy, but stayed out and talked to people and played with the Spud instead before heading out to dinner.

Saturday evening means the Maskobalo. We'd talked about dressing up as pirates, and making Sparrow into a parrot seeing as we were carrying her around anyway. But we'd not had much time to put a costume together, the costume shop we went to had no male pirate costumes and only had female costumes in sizes 6 and 18, and it was just looking a little difficult. Sparrow's would have been fine, I was going to cut out some colourful fabric wings and pin them to the shirt she's wearing here. I did pack some shirts and bandannas we could use if we changed our mind, and Sparrow and I are now trying them on (she loved that mirror in the hotel room). But we decided we'd rather just dress up instead.

Two ladies in their fine dresses. The theme was post-apocalyptic, but we had given up on that completely already so they are just nice dresses.

And off we went, ready for the ball. Sparrow just loved the elevator rides. Big mirrors, and always full of people who just had to say hello to her and tell her how beautiful she was.

However, we were too early and had to go back to our room and wait. Normally the time immediately before a costume ball is a chance for people to gather and photograph and chat and admire while waiting to enter. However, it's a feature of this convention space that the only place to have the ball is in the spot where people would gather. So you have to be late rather than on time. Sparrow amused herself while waiting by trying to reach the "Do not disturb" tags on our doorhandle. Dresses are much easier for standing games than for crawling games. She had to crawl on her toes to get over the skirt.

Some of the many fun costumes. The DJ's was quite clever - very simple and reasonably elegant - she's just drawn some assymetrical stitching lines onto her face and then dressed normally. So when you looked at her or talked to her over her desk you saw the costume, but it didn't get in her way at all. I thought the CD dress was quite clever too. Very much this decade to have that length skirt with a textured bottom. That's Miriam, who wrote the piece on denizens of the apocalypse for the Housewife's Companion. She is quite a clever maker-of-things, she had a light-up Dalek on her forehead last year that she'd put together out of odds and ends. The gentleman in the complicated suit is Josh, who was on two of my panels and is right into survivalist type stuff, and who I should chase up for further conversations. The remaining unsavoury character is Hespa, who as chair of the convention set us a sterling example by managing to find neat ways to break the masquerade costume rules about messy costumes and fake weapons without actually breaking them. We need to catch up with her sometime too - she has been volunteering for Wildlife Victoria for quite a while now and James is interested in joining their volunteer cadre.

Sparrow is still more interested in people's faces than their clothes, usually. She liked talking to Jack. We left the Masquerade before the judging was complete, so James could watch football and the two of us could have quiet time. We ended up having Jack's brother Vincent come up with us to watch the football too, only he spent most of the time playing with me and Sparrow and listening to stories than looking at the game. It was quite an educational experience looking after two children of that age gap and seeing the differences in ability, attention span and interest.

Sunday was a lot quieter than Saturday. James and Sparrow sat up the back of the music videos panel and danced away while Scott and I played some very good videos and some very bad ones and disagreed on which were which. Then we went to lunch at the Hawker's Cafe around the corner. Sparrow is exploring the table while I keep a firm grip on her nether regions. That blue cup she's making a beeline for is coconut juice. I was planning to not introduce her to any new foods while at the con, just to make it easier on us dealing with her and avoid any potential additional excitement. However coconut was on the list of foods to begin trying, and she ended up having a spoonful of my juice after she was too eager to taste my tofu (silly girl!) and it burnt her tongue. The coconut juice was nice and cold. I am planning to try her on desiccated coconut later in the week. She also tried egg yolk for the first time this weekend - once at the Pancake Parlour, and once with this meal. No reaction, other than that she doesn't think it's worth the effort of eating (what IS this stuff, Mum? Let me poke my tongue out, pick it off and look at it again). We'll see if she gains a taste for it later.

James' Hainanese chicken rice - the signature dish of the cafe - was much more to her liking. She does like rice that's been cooked in sauces.

And a little more playing in our room to finish the day, after the convention ended. She still likes being "flown", though it changes how we do it as she gets older. She doesn't always hold her legs out straight anymore, and she'll arch and bend in whatever way she thinks will get her somewhere which can lead to her almost tumbling off. We played a little, had dinner, then Sparrow and I went home and left James to sleep quietly and go straight to his work the next morning.