Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

22nd month, 9 February - 9 March, 2011

Playground in Footscray, near the river, in the park that has the pretty gardens. I'd been trying to work out how to get to this park for a while. We tried parking at the far end, and it was a really long walk along the river and up the hill to get to where the playgrounds were - but once she'd seen them, Sparrow wasn't going to let me skip the playground. She went straight up this one. And I mean that - she walked up the slide. I wasn't stopping her because she wasn't that good at walking up slides yet, so I figured as long as I didn't give her any assistance she wouldn't get higher than I could reach. I was wrong. Usually playgrounds are set so that if a child van get up to a particular height they can usually manage everything that's up there. The designers of this one underestimated her determination to get up that farther slide.

So, What you see here is one upset, crying, totally stuck child. She couldn't come back down the slide because it was too high to do on her own. She couldn't get down this step you see her on here to the lower slide because the step's just a little too big for her to reach down to without looking. The only other way up is the blue climbing thing which she can't manage yet. She's well out of my reach height-wise, and I couldn't get up there myself as I was too pregnant - couldn't fit on the blue thing, and couldn't manage this red chain-ladder because it was set too far from the platform and swayed too much for my current agility level. So Sparrow was stuck up here crying and I was stuck down below crying because I couldn't do anything about it. Thankfully another mum and kid came along and that mum was quite able to get up and help Sparrow down to the lower slide, where I could help her slide the rest of the way.

Even though that visit to this park had been a bust in terms of energy and stress, I wanted to try again. It seemed like a pretty, peaceful place, with really nice gardens to walk in and the playground at one end. So I tried again, parking this time at the very top of the hill and the start of the gardens so that I didn't miss out on them again. We walked through the gardens along with lots of other people that seemed to be coming through, some dressed very nicely. And there was this music playing, that got louder and louder. And then we got to near the playground, and discovered that the local Albanian community was having a big family fun day down on the river flat. And of course Sparrow headed straight into it. So my attempt to not have to climb up and down this big hill totally failed, as did my attempt to find a nice quiet place to play. Sparrow loved it. So many people, some young boys with superhero face-painting that she thought were awesome and followed around (to their patent disgust), music and dancing and obvious fun-fair stuff. I loved it too, but only had so much energy and time to spend if I was also going to cook dinner. I had to really work to get her back up the hill and away from it - I wished I'd parked at the lower carpark this time!

At the Williamstown Botanic Gardens. Sparrow has everything she could want for entertainment - some rocks to pick up and a dead leaf to chew on. She had no interest in walking in the rest of the gardens, right here was just right.

I did eventually talk her into trying out this weird grass stuff. It was OK, but only because that's where the rockmelon ("Cantalupa!") was.

I'm attempting to get a picture of the two of us. Sparrow is watching me carefully to make sure I don't take any of the last two pieces of rockmelon.

We then walked from the botanic garden down to the beach, and discovered a playground. Their "horses" (the bouncy-sit-on-things) were in this case little quad bikes. Sparrow was quite amused. I was less amused, because she wanted to keep going back and forth between the two of them and I had to lift her on and off each one. There are limits to how much I'll do that at the moment.

The playground was a good find though, and we'll be back.

Sparrow talked me into stopping at the park in Altona on the way home from daycare one Thursday. I know she likes this park. One day not long before this the daycare group were driving past here and she said to her carer Joanne "Joanne, Sparrow go park". Joanne was very impressed at the clarity of the sentence and request. Today we didn't just have the park though. There was a free concert on, one of the last of the council's summer season, and it was the police bands. They have a pipe band and a rock band. So we stalled our leaving the playground until the music started, and then stayed even longer. It turns out Sparrow loves the bagpipes, she moshed and clapped and danced and really enjoyed herself. In this photo they are playing the Bob the Builder theme on the bagpipes and she did appear to recognise it. I think this was the first time I've seen her clap at the end of a song - she was at first intrigued by the way that the music stopped and suddenly everyone around her clapped, but then got quite excited about it.

It was getting late, the concert had started about the time I'm normally putting dinner on and we'd been there a while. So I suggested to Sparrow that maybe we should go home for dinner. She very clearly said "No", then took my car key and made off with it. She went all the way to the tent where the band was playing (by now it was the rock band, the pipes had finished) and sat down there in front of the speakers - which was just awesome. And even better, there was a flashing red light on top. When I caught up with her she had a great deal to tell me about the flashing red light, and she was very conscientious about telling the band guys that the light was there too, it was very important that they know about it. We did eventually manage to leave, but it took some effort.

Blue sky had come out after a night of rain, so I took Sparrow to a playground, and we picked the one in South Kingsville. When we got there I remembered that it had rained all night and these suburbs are all on hard clay soil - so rain means a lot of standing water on all surfaces until it slowly penetrates. I bowed to the inevitable and just removed everything Sparrow was wearing before sending her on ahead.

Sparrow was quite happy with the situation. There were so many puddles!

I had to laugh. Today was the first day I had ever noticed the tiny little sign that's on a rail right by where I'm standing, which announces that this playground is called the FrogPond playground. It's named for this big climbable wooden frog in the middle of the, well, what's under normal circumstances the sandpit. But today it really is a pond, or at least a puddle about three or four inches deep. Sparrow was thrilled.

We went to the Sustainable Living Festival. This is one of the sculptures outside the Artplay building, which almost always has interesting kids activities and arty stuff during any festival they hold along that stretch of the Yarra bank.

We got to the festival a little early, most stalls were still opening. That was good - we could walk down to the far end without too much distraction, and make our way slowly back. Except what we really did was go down to the far end and stop at the playground.

Note that Sparrow is going down the slope *between* the slides, not on the slides themselves.

As we wandered back we looked at a range of things - recycled-materials wallets, chook-house vegie beds, a petition to try and get Reflex to stop using virgin timber for their photocopy paper and take the heart out of that market. We found ourself at a stall selling prostrate-cycles-with-fairings, for easy personal transport. It was this great yellow thing which had a surprising ability to carry the shopping as well. Sparrow was quite curious about the object, but as she looked it over found her way straight to the wing mirror, tilted it towards herself and then (to the amusement of every adult present) started adjusting her hair.

One of the fun things they had set up was a stand where you could generate electricity for the festival by pedalling on some bikes connected to dynamos. It's good to see this concept starting to get out into the general world. They had quite a good setup, with two ranks of bikes and computer screens showing amounts generated so you could go yourself, or with friends, cumulate your totals, compare to the energy produced in other hours, aim for a high score, or go as a team and try to compete against a team on the other bike rank to see who generated the most. Good to see that they'd really thought about the motivation aspect. Sparrow was interested in the bikes but when James lifted her onto one she got a little bit freaked out and immediately asked to get down.

Playing with the Fregie bags. They were a purchase at the Festival. I thought the idea was quite good and it solves a problem I've been wondering how to solve - dealing with all those little plastic bags that you buy fruit and vegies in. These are reusable net bags, lightweight, see-through, tough. Sparrow thought they were great too, though she was more interested in sorting them or wearing them as a hat.