Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Seventeenth month part 3, 9 September - 9 October, 2010

Spring in Melbourne starts awful, but it does eventually make up for it. The trees begin to bloom in September (apart from the almonds which are usually early-to-mid August), so do the flowers, and suddenly by the end of September and beginning of October all those gardens that have been shades of plain green and grey for months and months are just cacaphonies of riotous colours, pinks and oranges and blues and purples and reds and whites and lilacs and blacks and burgundies and yellows all piling on top of each other in almost no order.

So many flowers! It's a lovely time to go for a walk and smell and touch all the flowers. Though hard to avoid getting sunburned with the thinner ozone layer this time of year - even a weak sun can burn you quickly.

We're at the closest playground, one of the ones I visit fairly regularly in the mornings when we go out for a walk. Sparrow is considering which bit she would like to play on.

And the verdict: none of it. That grass over there looks much more interesting. I'll run this way.

This was the first time she'd run off onto the grass to play - up til now grassy spaces haven't really been on her radar except as something you go through, despite my semi-regular encouragement to "play on the grass". But suddenly today she just wanted to wander off into the grass and sit and look at stuff. No interest in the woodchips at all, and that in itself is highly unusual. Maybe it's because it was a day I was really tired and didn't want to run after her.

Walking home myself. This brick fence looks interesting. She loves to stick her hands into newspaper slots and mailboxes if they're in reach too.

Over on Vernon St. We'd been out somewhere and she was ready to run around, so I thought I'd stay in the car and drive an extra few blocks to an area we didn't normally get to walk in. Just to stop me getting totally bored with going around our block all the time. So we had a good walk over near the Vernon St shops, starting at this little corner rest-stop-park. We didn't get far, only a couple of houses down the street, because it turns out all the streets here are sunk low enough that the driveways are on a noticeable angle. This totally intrigued Sparrow, who is just at the stage of working out how to walk on slopes. And we don't have many slopes where we live, it's so flat. So it was quite funny watching her try to work out whether these driveways were something she could walk down forwards or whether she had to turn around and climb down backwards. They aren't steep at all, an adult would barely notice the angle, but they were really new and different and complicated to her.

A walk in Newport. I was making a habit of anytime we went somewhere allowing time to go for a walk around there as well. Regular walks, good for both of us. And exploring is fun, she really brightens up on days she's got to look at new stuff. Saves a lot of boredom grizzling. So when we took Thomas to the vet to be sterilised we went around the block and looked at houses, fences and gates. This fence had a little window in it that presumably is to let a dog look out, but was just the right height for Sparrow to look in and see a mysterious garden.

We also wandered just into the mouth of this service alley behind the shops, because Sparrow spotted this slope and made a beeline for it. She takes a wonderful amount of delight in being able to walk up and down it herself without holding my hand.

We are at the Happy River Cafe at the Footscray Community Arts Centre to say goodbye to Cooper. He's the one boy in our mothers' group - and his family are moving to Sydney. Sparrow and I got there on time for a change but, as is fairly common for our group, no-one else was on time :-) It gave us some time to look around though. This lawn looks a little junky at first glance but it's great - it's the cafe lawn, they put out buckets full of toys for kids to run around and play with, and there's rugs you can lay out and sit on to have your coffee if you don't want to have to make three or more toddlers sit nicely at a table - it's a very kid-friendly place. Sparrow was very impressed.

Though, as is perhaps not so unlike her, she decided that the absolute best thing to play with was not any of the toys, but the steps leading up to the temporary community classroom in the carpark. We must have gone up these steps and down the accompanying ramp at least ten times.

Eventually most other people arrived, and Sparrow was talked into playing with them. That's Cooper on the left, holding Sparrow's tennis ball (which I used in combination with some artful throws to maneuver her into a spot where she would be distracted by the other kids and not keep running off back to the carpark and those steps). Right now Sparrow is busily playing next to Hannah.

Sparrow and Mali climbing on the boxes.