Rainy day

What a miserable day! I was very glad to have Art & Move to go to, but then all Louka's little friends turned up with umbrellas. Louka SO wants an umbrella.

Time to go, and all she can talk about is "umb'ewa p'ease". So we head for the shops to find one. I manage to steer her away from the added bug eyes and wings to a pretty rainbow coloured umbrella with a nice yellow handle.

Problem 1: "Put it up, mum, put it up!" "No, only outside. Let's go for a little walk outside, shall we?" "OK!"

Problem 2: She seems to have trouble holding it up over her head. It keeps coming down in front of her, where she steps on it. We slowly have our little walk and make it back inside.

Problem 3: Time to put it down "No no no NO NOOOO!!!" Screams, tantrum. I guess she's getting tired. A little distraction calms her down. I just hope it isn't like this every time...

Fishy

I've been reading quite a bit recently how oily fish is so good for us, so yesterday I decided to cook some fresh salmon. I'd found a simple but delicious-sounding recipe in a book about cooking for kids, so it seemed ideal. We all enjoyed it, and Louka gobbled down probably as much food as she's ever eaten at one sitting before.

She was restless last night, but I thought it was just because she'd been upset before going to bed. Wrong! Halfway through the night she vomited the whole yummy fish dinner all over me. While I cleaned up Louka and me, Graham cleaned up the bed. We stayed up a while until we thought Louka had finished being sick.

This morning, Louka woke up before either of us, bright and cheerful. She didn't eat much breakfast, but then she often doesn't. We decided to go for a drive to Garigal National Park, but when we got there Louka had fallen asleep. So we drove up the coast a bit and stopped at Long Reef where Louka woke up and went for a walk on the beach. We saw some pelicans that allowed us to get quite close to them. But after that she wanted to go home.



Update: On Monday night I woke up vomiting and with diarrhoea too. I felt weak and achey all Tuesday, then Graham came down with it too.

Dinosaur!

Louka is keen on dinosaurs. When I suggested going to see the dinosaurs at the museum she pounced on the suggestion.

When she first saw the huge dinosaur skeleton she was excited and pointed out "dinosaur, dinosaur!" But after a while that palled, and she was more interested in the create-your-own-dinosaur touch-screen computer program, the short movie reconstruction of a lakeside scene at Lark Quarry in Queensland, and best of all, brushing the dirt from buried dinosaur bones.

Later, in the museum shop, she chose a mug with a dinosaur (promptly named Max) and a full-size huntsman spider, while I browsed the dinosaur books and chose one also based on the events at Lark Quarry. She didn't show much interest in the book, but when we got home I had to read it four times.

We spent maybe an hour and a half at the museum altogether, and I think we'll do it again. If I become a member I get free entry, but I'd have to go five or six times a year (or buy lots of museum merchandise) to make it worthwhile.

City to surf again

I was nervous about entering the city to surf this year, as Louka can get it into her head that she wants to run off in the opposite direction to me, and won't hold my hand. Actually I was wishing I'd said no when Graham asked if I wanted to do it.

We turned up fairly late, but there were still hundreds of blue and yellow bibs arriving, and in fact the blues hadn't set off yet. We found a grassy area where people less eager to get to the front were waiting, and let Louka run around there. While we waited, it was announced that the winner had already crossed the finish line at Bondi Beach. When it was eventually time for us yellows to go, we waited a bit longer to join the crush, but we were nowhere near the end of the crowd. And once we joined the crowd, Louka wanted to be carried.


In fact, she wanted to be carried the whole way - by me. When Graham took a turn on an uphill section, Louka staged her only tantrum, until we put her in the stroller. And from the half-way point, about the top of "heartbreak hill", she slept in the stroller till we reached the end.



The forecast was for possible showers, but the cloudless sky put us at our ease. I was wishing I'd worn shorts instead of long pants. But towards Bondi the clouds rolled in and it became very chilly. As we entered the home stretch the first few drops of rain fell and as we reached the pavilion hired by the bank it began to rain hard. Phew, made it just in time.


Louka woke up and ate a chicken satay stick, while Graham and I ate sausages on buns. Then Graham went off and found some ice-creams for us. Eventually Louka tired of the crowds and nothing much to do, so I took her outside, only to find the rain had stopped (still cold though). She played in the park till Graham was ready to leave, then we took the bus home.

Poor little girl

A couple of weeks ago Louka had a cold, and now she's got another one - a horrible, chesty, phlegmy one. And then in the bath this morning her legs and arms came up in horrible welts. I rushed her off to the doctor, who said it looked like a typical allergy rash and sent us to the pharmacy for some anti-histamine syrup. The syrup did the trick, though not as quickly as I hoped. But what could she be allergic to? The bath was just plain water, so perhaps it was something she ate. The only new thing she'd eaten in the last day or so was a tangelo Graham had brought home for her. She'd eaten an oatcake with butter yesterday, and some cashews, but she'd had both of these before. I guess this means we're going to have to monitor her food from now on - what a pain.