Children's festival

Today there was a children's festival at West Ryde. It was a warm sunny day. We thought it would be fun.

We were first a little taken aback by the distance we had to go for a parking spot. It was obviously quite a popular festival. And when we got there, the queues for most of the rides were very long, especially for the attention span of a two-year-old. So we took turns to wait in line and take Louka round to see other attractions, or buy ice-creams for us all.



Louka liked the pony rides, as expected. She also enjoyed the tea-cup roundabout with me. Graham joined the long queue for the little ferris wheel. It seemed to move very slowly. While he was in that queue, I took Louka through the blow-up train tunnel and twice on the mini merry-go-round, collected a balloon for her while she played with wooden cars, let her play in the playgroup playground, then took her to get her face painted. There was a short but slow queue for the face-painting, and while we were waiting Graham rang to say we should go back to the ferris wheel.


The ferris wheel was quite small, but it was children only. Louka got in and allowed the attendant to put her seatbelt on. She looked a little doubtful, but went up and round a couple of times. Then she started to get upset. We tried to reassure her, touching her hand each time she came round, but she was too unhappy, so we had to stop the ferris wheel and let her off.


Then back to the face-painting tent. There were three people painting, but the queue continued to move slowly. Then, just as we reached the front of the queue, they announced that they were about to pack up! Louka was very upset, and one of the painters suggested I take a brush and paint Louka's face. Then, when she heard that Louka wanted to be a tiger, she said that was a quick one and she'd do it. She also remarked that it was refreshing to see a little girl who didn't want to be a fairy or butterfly.

Louka sat nice and quiet while her face was painted, and was pleased with the result, but she did want tiger stripes on her body too!

The oleanders are all gone

It looks a bit bleak, doesn't it?

Lunch with Carmel and Suzanne

It's been ages since Louka and I saw Carmel, and I haven't seen Suzanne since Louka was born. Pretty shocking, I admit. But now the two of them are working at opposite ends of the Devonshire St tunnel, and when they got together for lunch, they invited us too. We met in front of Basement Books, which was a good idea as I got Louka there half-an-hour early, not knowing how long it would take. But there were plenty of kids' books to read, which kept us occupied.

It's possibly not the greatest place to eat, but there were a couple of food-hall-type places, so while Carmel and Suzanne had Asian food, Louka and I shared a chicken burger and chips. I did have to go back for a second helping of chips.

Louka was happy sitting and eating, and sometimes getting up to spin round and round until she was dizzy, so I was able to have some chat until the others had to go back to work. At which point Louka started getting that bowel-movement expression on her face. She admitted she needed to do a poo-poo, so that hastened the breaking up. Then we went searching for a toilet. None near the food outlets (that we could find), none at the Devonshire St end of Central Station. So we walked around to the city end, and Louka had managed to hang on! Hooray for Louka!

Dog bite

This weekend we again spent at the Freshwater house. Graham removed all but the stumps of the rest of the trees (the stumps are the hard part). While he was busy with his axe, I kept Louka out of his way at the playground, the café, and my friend Mike's house next door. Mike has a very placid greyhound called Jill, and Louka was keen to visit.

Louka was running back and forth between the front room, where Mike and I were, and the back deck where Jill was, when we heard a single bark and a cry. I ran to the back, while the cry continued very distressed. I gathered Louka up and looked her over, but it was Mike who first noticed the blood around her eye. There was a deep scratch on her eyelid, so I rinsed it as well as I could under the sink. It took quite a while to calm her down, and then any mention of what had happened would set her off again.

After a little while I took her to the hospital. She fell asleep on the way, and didn't wake while I took her out of the car, into Emergency, lugged her round to triage and the admissions desk, and sat waiting for her name to be called. Which was actually quite quickly. She slept while I carried her into a tiny examination room, but the doctor wanted to examine her eye, so he woke her. Naturally she didn't think much of being woken, but eventually she let the doctor shine a torch in her eye (which seems to be fine) and waited patiently while he wrote us a prescription for antibiotics.


In the morning the eyelid was very swollen, so her eye only half opened, but it improved during the day. She doesn't seem upset by it at all, and readily talks about big teeth, dogs and biting.

Our "new" weekender

The tenant moved out of the back flat of our Freshwater house on Saturday, and we took some stuff up there yesterday and started removing the "shrubbery" at the back of the garden. Which turned out to be half a dozen rather large oleanders. Graham managed to chop and dig one nearly out, and is very sore today. Only a handful left to do.

Louka seems to consider the park and playground next door as part of the yard. Then again, she also walked into the front flat when the door was left open. Fortunately the yard can be closed off with a gate on either side.

When is she going to toilet train?

Despite early successes, Louka just isn't toilet trained. She's good for poos, but just doesn't seem to "get" the wee thing. So I thought I'd try something new. Thinking back, she was mostly in training pants at the time she was doing well. Not because I was trying to toilet train her at that time, but because they were easier to put on a struggling toddler. Then she grew out of them, and became more amenable to nappies, so we put her in disposables.

So yesterday, I visited Marnie who makes various baby and toddler pants. She walked me through making pocket pants - waterproof pants you can stuff with a bit of absorbent cloth like a washer. I was concerned about how Louka would manage while I concentrated on sewing for hours, but she had no trouble amusing herself with Marnie's girls' toys. In fact, Marnie said she was "a delight".

I left with two pairs, plus the pattern. Now it's just a matter of making a few more at home...

Chowder Bay

It was a cool morning, forecast to clear to a nice warm day, so a bushwalk seemed like a good idea. Instead of our local walk, we thought it would be nice to walk around Middle Harbour. We drove to Chowder Bay which we'd visited once before, then walked down to the beach at Clifton Gardens. After we'd walked out to the end of the pier, Louka saw the playground and had to try the unusual see-saw (which didn't work too well with the mismatched weights of Graham and me, even with Louka added to my end) and the swing. Then we climbed the stairs at the end of the beach for the walk to the headland.


By this time it was one o'clock so we headed back to the café at Chowder Bay for lunch. I shared sourdough toast and jam with Louka, while she decorated her face with the chocolate powder from a babycino.

Jigsaws and dinosaurs

Louka used not to "get" jigsaws. She had some fairly simple ones, but always needed me to do them for her. Then one day, after not even looking at them for weeks, she did them all by herself. I was so impressed that, when I saw this puzzle at the museum, I bought it. It's intended for 3 – 5 year olds, so I thought it would be pretty challenging. But she got it all out, first try, with very little help.