Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Out and around, twenty-first month, 9 Jan - 9 Feb, 2011

This is in Pipemakers Park. James had just recently bought his iPad, and downloaded a geocaching application, and this was our third go at trying it out. I like Pipemakers Park. This is an interpreted garden, in theory, that has planting and design related to various times in history of the park and nearby suburb. But it's pretty overgrown, not very well tended, and as one parent I know said you can let kids run wild in it without worrying too hard about whether they're damaging stuff. It makes for a great adventure.

There are some beautiful artworks throughout the garden.

More adventure, while Daddy keeps one eye on the Spud and one eye on the GPS and map.

We eventually found the cache in this wisteria arbour. Sparrow is not looking in the right spot for it though.

Walking to Newport Lakes. I often battle with Sparrow to not spend too much time on the first part of the walk (which she sees several times a week) but to allow us to get near to the park before exploring and taking forever. This was one time she might have listened a little bit. She was riding in the stroller, hopped out (I don't strap her in on these walks because otherwise she wouldn't be able to get in and out when she sees something interesting), looked curiously at this garden and then went straight through their fence to get a closer look at all those rocks. Rocks are wonderful. She couldn't work out how to get back through the fence though, I had to walk around the corner to their front gate and call her out that way before she could get free of the garden.

I can ask her to get in the car herself and to some extent now she does, she can often climb in without help if the car's close enough to the kerb. (I use a lot of little independence-related shortcuts to save myself energy now :-) But once she's in, she tends to make a beeline for the dashboard controls. So many buttons, so many beeps and clicks and flashes, so little time.

Somebody's front steps right next to the sidewalk. Steps are really great too. And railings, especially ones she can hold onto herself in order to go up and down steps on her own. She loves wearing the sunglasses, puts them on herself and carries them around with her.

Geocaching with the iPad again, this time in Werribee. I realised I'd never been to the town centre of Werribee and it looked like it might actually be quite nice. So one restless evening James packed us into the car and we went down to have a look. To my delight, the grey skies we'd had at our place for several days were blue just that twenty minutes south, so instead of a cool grey evening we had lovely sunshine and a beautiful walk by the river. We didn't find the geocache though. The river was still running high though by the signs of all the broken trees and debris it had dropped a lot since the rains the week before. This was relevant when we finally paid attention to the name of the cache - "Occasional Island". And yes, it was an island on this particular day.

Please let me out of the stroller. Please.
We're on our way into town on a warm Saturday morning, hoping to do a couple of central city errands before it heats up too much. It didn't actually end up that warm that day (it's been such a cool summer!) but we were glad to get it all done with first thing and have the rest of the weekend more quiet. Right now though she (and we) are at the train station with trains pulling in and out, and neither James nor I are inclined to unstrap her because here she can get into trouble faster than I can catch her.

Once we were on the train, she could roam if she wanted. She mostly chose to stand next to Daddy and tell him about all the things she could see.

And here we are at our main errand - buying me a secondhand laptop. I needed a new one, suggested we get one from one of the stores on Elizabeth St. James is handing over plastic to pay for a machine that in the end I won't get for another two weeks while they try and source a missing cable. Sparrow is seeing if she can rearrange the PostIt notes on the salesguy's stuff while he's not looking. Glad we got the computer though, it's been quite nice to use and I've been able to start doing photos again.

We made a quick trip out, I think to buy me iron tablets or something like that. It was certainly a day I was very tired and having a lot of trouble breathing. While we were out James decided that we should just go straight to the Playshak where Sparrow could burn off energy while I sat in a chair and stared into space. I didn't have the oxygen to argue -grin-. So she's not dressed in the absolute most appropriate way for running and jumping and bouncing all over the place, but she doesn't seem to mind. And I was relieved to not have to do anything but sit still. James is a sensible man.

Shopping trip to Highpoint. Sparrow chose this entire outfit herself. T-shirt, dress, socks, sandals. None of it matches, but she doesn't seem to care, it was what she wanted to wear.