Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Out and about in the fourteenth month, 9 June - 9 July, 2010

Kath and Clara had a joint birthday party - one turning 40, the other turning 2. Kath had hired the local Salvation Army hall and filled one room with lots of different things for kids to do. Sparrow enjoyed this little climbing frame, not to climb on but to go in and out of. The balloons that we could blow up ourselves to make animals with were also fun. Sparrow'd find a balloon that she particularly liked and carry it around with her for a while. Here you see her holding one, but not quite sure how to get out of the frame while still holding onto it.

They had several ride-on and walk-on toys in the hall. Sparrow was quite interested, but when I put her on this little motorbike her feet didn't really touch the ground well enough to start figuring out how to make it go.

This was her gesture-of-the-month, she was making it a lot at this point. It had morphed from a "look at this" gesture to being some other kind of communication but it wasn't clear what. Kath's dad took this photo and she's definitely telling him something. Possibly that she likes icecream-and-jelly cups, which she tried for the first time here.

I didn't do the going-home-from-the-party well. Sparrow needed another sleep, she'd only slept half an hour on the drive to the party, but she was too wired to sleep on the drive home. In hindsight once she was strapped to me in the carrier I should have taken her for a walk - it was a pretty neighbourhood and a lovely afternoon and she'd have calmed right down. But I just went to the car, put her in and started driving thinking she'd go to sleep. One little girl wasn't having any of that. She eventually started demanding a stop, and I pulled off the freeway into this random suburb and found the first park I could. She was much happier once she was out of the car and in a quiet natural place where she could investigate grass and mud. It was quite muddy. And not really that quiet - there were kids on dirt bikes zooming around that big grass area in the distance. But it was a much more still rhythm than the party had been, and she settled down a lot more happily after our little detour. Still didn't sleep, but was much less cranky about it.

One of our trips to the local shopping centre. Sparrow decided that the kids playground in the food court was passe, and she'd go exploring. "These steps look perfect for climbing... still climbing.... man, how many steps are there?". She made it most of the way up the first flight of stairs and then I "rescued" her and put her on the landing. She promptly saw the next flight of steps as her new challenge and headed on up again, but didn't get quite as far before giving up. I think it also confused her a couple of times that the steps are not even width across their length. She'd end up slowly working her way over to where it was narrow like a ladder and then not be sure how to climb up securely.

The new Altona North library opened, which means we now have a library that's almost in walking distance. It's walking distance anytime it's not pouring with rain, unlike the day we came here. I looked at the sky and the weather radar, thought "I can just make it maybe before that front hits" and we did almost just make it. The people who arrived a few minutes after us were soaked. An ideal day for the duffle coat. We've come for Rhyme Time, a session that the council runs for children under the age of two. I haven't been able to get to it before because they have it on a Thursday at this library when Sparrow's normally at daycare. But she had been sick, and while she seemed mostly better I was still keeping her at home with me to keep an eye on her. Half a day of "better" does not recovered make. It does however make it worth a trip to the library to distract one small child. They had some fun cushions here which Sparrow is exploring, and that cube's a toy that the librarian put out after Rhyme Time. She didn't totally get into the rhymes, I don't think she really saw the point of them. But it was fun to do at least once, and they brought out a big parachute for the kids to play under at the end and she did quite like that. I don't really do rhymes with her very often. I'd rather do slightly more complex poetry, and I don't tend to get around to memorising much of it. We have good books though.

Sparrow is exploring the library. I took several photos of her walking in here, trying to get one that showed her looking at the books or people. But they were all her moving at full speed back to these pot plants so that she could try and dig in their dirt.

One day I needed some stuff at Officeworks, and seeing as we were out of the house thought we should take a walk in the park across the road. It turns out to be the start of the Federation Trail, the big cycle trail that I've ridden some of. And when you cross this storm drainage canal, there's a gap in the fence and you can go exploring. So we did. It's one of the lowest rainfall months in the year and we hadn't had rain for a couple of days so I knew it'd be perfectly safe.

Sparrow was happily intrigued by the new surroundings. Walking is still a fun game. Though she did have to stop every so often to look at the drainage joints set into the concrete wall, because those had dirt in them that she could dig in.

Our steps upward and out of the canal. We could have climbed the wall, but this was safer. Sparrow decided that she didn't know how to climb steps and couldn't possibly get up these herself. Either that or she just didn't care to.

This is just a random photo of us in the car on the way to daycare. Sparrow has the whole stripe thing going.

I had to stop here at Coles on the way to or from daycare, I forget what the driver was exactly but something about this shot was fun to take. I ended up buying something I didn't know existed - little single-serve packs of pre-made infant formula. Such an expensive way to buy it, but it was quite handy. I was still having a lot of trouble expressing breast milk while Sparrow was in her full days of daycare, and we were running out of stored milk to give her for her lunches, and she really wanted a bit more milk than she was getting anyway. So I thought we'd try the formula and see if that worked, using the little boxes rather than buying a big tin on spec. If the formula was acceptable that would at least give me a little extra time to restock the freezer with my own milk and take the pressure off trying to express. It had been a bit stressful. Especially the one day a week I was at work at the ATA - most of the strategies I'd been offered for encouraging letdown aren't easy to apply in an office. Trying to explain to the CEO that you're down on your hands and knees because gravity assists the pressure driving the capillary action isn't the most comforting of ideas. Though it's an alternative enough group of people that they'd probably be OK with it, especially if I'm coming at it from a technical point of view. They're used to all kinds of difficult and temperamental equipment.

Sparrow's reaction to having formula instead of breast milk was to go to sleep. And to stay asleep. She started her nap at around 1, and this is her at ten past four. She'd woken up once briefly and Joanne had just put her in her stroller facing the window so she could go back to sleep - and she did. Without a murmur. I don't think she'd ever had a three hour nap for me before, and for Joanne it was quite a surprise as she often only sleeps forty five minutes there. Neither of us were complaining. I ended up sitting and having a cup of tea with carer Joanne while we waited for her to wake up. Unfortunately, later offerings of formula didn't have this effect again, so we couldn't use it as a regular tactic. But it was nice that it happened once.

Here we are, shopping in the central city. I had a couple of errands I wanted to do so we took a train trip in and went exploring. I hadn't walked in this arcade before and it was very fancy. This is me trying to photograph the ceiling while Sparrow tries to look into the camera.

We almost always end up stopping on the top floor of the Australia-on-Collins arcade, because they have a nice accessible baby room and it's off a quiet, spacious, airy mezzanine with comfy couches where Sparrow and I can both be a bit quiet for a little. This is the first time we've been here since she could walk though. It was still good, she could stretch her legs quite well in this area. Lincraft seemed to have a particular appeal, she kept trying to walk in there - but maybe it was the automatic gate that kept opening, I don't know.

After stopping at the Continental Bookshop and successfully finding a nice appropriate German baby book ("Biene Maja", Sparrow loves it), we stopped at the Lindt store nearby (which I didn't know existed but was very happy to discover). They have Lindt balls in all kinds of flavours I also didn't know existed, like peanut butter, or passionfruit, or raspberry cream. So I bought a Lindt ball for James and me, and also a hot chocolate each, and delivered them to his office. It turns out to be incredibly difficult to walk down the street with a baby strapped to your chest while holding two takeaway cups of hot chocolate, if the baby has worked out that the cups contain something that tastes exactly like Lindt chocolate but warm and liquid. Their hot chocolate definitely had Sparrow's seal of approval. But I could only barely keep the cups out of her arms reach, she can flail and stretch a surprising distance when she's motivated enough. And the thing with holding two cups is that you need to hold them one in each hand if you don't want to tilt or spill them at all, so there's always a second one for her to try for if you get one out of the way. Once we got to James' office, he got some quality Spud time and I got to drink the rest of my hot chocolate before she noticed.

A mothers' group outing - we've all gathered at Rachel and Ruby's place. Sparrow has been having lots of fun, as have all the babies. Cheerful chaos everywhere. Mali worked out how to go into the kitchen without anyone watching, open the cupboard and start helping herself to biscuits. Thankfully Sparrow didn't notice this little adventure, so my cupboards are safe a little longer. Sparrow mostly played with some jewellery and toy phones that were around. One shiny silver mobile phone she carried around with her for a rather long time. She's not up to pretending to talk into it though. I don't play very many "lets pretend" games with her yet, I guess I will have to begin that soon but we still mostly do real stuff rather than imagining stuff.