Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Seventeenth month part 4, 9 September - 9 October, 2010

I needed to make a quick trip to Officeworks for something, can't remember what now. I think I must have had some photocopies to make. They had this little chalk table set up for kids to play with while their parents were trying to do something else or just waiting in the queue, naturally it's one of their products for sale. Sparrow enjoyed it though. It's the first time she's played with chalk, and I will have to think about getting her a chalkboard or easel. I'd bought chalk for drawing on the sidewalk when I bought her crayons, but we hadn't used it at this point. This showed though that I was right to think she must be about up to it - she quite got into it. For a very short time.

Off for a walk again, in a dress as it was actually starting to feel warm this day. And it was nice, though Sparrow did discover that if you go running down the sidewalk and trip on a crack you skin your knees a lot harder in a dress than in pants. She was not impressed. This is the dress her daycare folk gave her as a birthday present, it's labelled size 2, but it's almost too small for her already. Which is funny as so much of her clothing is still size 0. Sparrow is here playing with the gate - opening it, closing it, opening it, walking through it, closing it behind her, opening it again and coming back. She finds gates fascinating. Mostly I let her explore things like that, though sometimes it does lead to conversations with little old ladies who live in the relevant houses.

In the corridor outside the new Altona North library. For some reason, everytime we come here she does a huge smelly poo about five minutes after arriving - just as we've got to the childrens books which are at the very far end of the library. So then I have to work out how to get her back through the library to the toilets and changeroom (which are outside the library itself) without letting her get distracted by every single thing in it (so many books to pull off shelves!). If she's picked out some books I usually can't carry her and the books, especially if she starts struggling to get to something interesting. We had the leash now, so this time I simply said to her "We're going to walk out now and I need you to walk with me and stay with me and not run away. If you can't stay with me I'll have to use the leash to keep you next to me, but if you stay with me I won't use the leash. And she very obediently and meekly walked right next to me the whole way out, or at least almost to the door (at which point she Ooh! Shiny!'d and skived off to the magazine rack). I was very impressed. So was a watching librarian. I had to admit that I wasn't expecting that to work - she'd only encountered the leash once before and I wasn't sure if her comprehension was up to that kind of bargaining. But apparently it is.

Somebody desperately wanted an apple, and was trying to get it out of my basket at the fruit shop. One of the counter ladies gave her one and she hoed right into it. I try to discourage them from giving her stuff because I'm usually buying what she wants, but they do enjoy seeing how much she enjoys the fruit and vegetables. She is very cute about it. And as much as I try to encourage the "pay for it before you eat it" mentality, I can't really discourage her from going nuts over fruit'n'veg.

Naturally, her choices are a little unpredictable. We were out and about with Anna and her tribe, and stopped in one of the many Williamstown op-shops. They had a basket of lemons there for sale and that was the thing that Sparrow desperately wanted. She started picking through the lemons, pulled one out and started biting into it. So I bought it, and she carried it around with her the whole way happily chewing on it. I thought she might decide it was a mistake, but no, she wanted lemon.

Walking along the Williamstown foreshore. It still amuses me that she now has enough hair to get this kind of effect. She was enjoying looking at the rocks and water and telling me about them.

Our goal on that walk on the foreshore was to reach this playground and let Anna's tribe burn off more steam. Which was a tricky balance, as neither Anna nor I had much stamina so the longer we stayed out the more difficult it got for us. But we managed OK. And Sparrow seems quite happy to discover new playgrounds. I took this photo because I simply liked the blue of the dress, the slide and the sky all together.

We took most of the tribe (apart from Anna's oldest, who couldn't be parted from my YA bookshelf) to the children's museum and a cookbookshop on Gertrude St. The walk in town was lovely, and this was Sparrow's first visit to the children's gallery. She and I didn't actually get into the gallery - the corridor leading to it is full of spaces for playing in and there's an outdoor area with (on that day) hoops and balls and skipping ropes and other old fashioned toys. She was awed by everything, but really took to (of all things) climbing on these fake rocks. And I managed to get a photo with me in it at the same time! -smile-

One of the exhibits right at the start of the gallery is this triangular set of mirrors that you can crawl through. Sparrow was really not into this. She very sensibly recognised it as being like crawling out over a hole that went to infinity, and refused to do more than put her hands on it. Her butt stayed firmly planted on solid ground. I'd thought she might find it really interesting, but apparently sensible won out at this stage. I still don't know how well she understands mirrors yet. This was certainly well beyond her experience.

Climbing on the animal sculptures. They have lots of things like this around the gallery, and it's great for a little girl who likes to climb. She's holding a jigsaw puzzle piece in her mouth, and I never did work out where she got it from.

A successful town trip almost over, catching the train home. Sparrow was totally tired out - she'd well and truly missed her normal nap time because there was so much interesting stuff at the museum. I ended up forcing her to sleep by pushing her around the dinosaur walk about five times and then facing her into a darkened grey space where they had some silent video footage playing on one side, so that all she had to look at was a plain wall with nothing else, and as soon as all the distractions were gone she passed out almost immediately. So she was pretty tired still when she woke up. But we managed all OK.