Australians all let us rejoice...

...for we are young and free...
Yes, this weekend the people of the world's largest island and smallest continent came together as one in a huge over-consumption of beer and prawns to celebrate the nation's 'birth' on January 26 1788. Perhaps a slight oversight seeing as there were a few people already living here when the first fleet spied Sydney harbour and sailed in looking for somewhere to pop up a pup tent and a Union Jack. I heard on the radio the other day that many aborigines refer to Australia Day as Resistance Day. Anyhoo, everyone gets an extra day off work and the bottle shops do well. Australia Day was on Saturday, but the whole long weekend becomes something of a knees up. As Rob was working, Scarlett, Florence and I packed ourselves off to Dee Why, a gorgeous surf beach to meet up with Zoe and Paul for a swim in the ocean pool and to watch the Australia day entertainment. The weather was roasting so we then popped to Zoe and Paul's house to make use of their pool for an afternoon dip. On Sunday we discovered the glorious Blackburn Gardens, a charming, shady park, more like an English country garden, set on the hill behind Redleaf pool. We have been going to Redleaf for ages and had no idea this gorgeous park was right behind it. We met up with Carolyne, Luke, Melissa and Larry for a lovely picnic before heading down the path to the harbour pool, to swim out to the pontoons and cool off. It is soooooo hot again at the moment so we are definitely into night time shower season. I had to get up twice last night to cool off with a cold one. I set up the paddling pool yesterday afternoon for Flo, who was burning up. She liked it but promptly fell out.

It is also the season for spiders. They are everywhere and, of course, being Australia, many of them are potentially deadly, particularly if you are, say, 3 or 10 months old. Rob found a seriously deadly redback spider, in the process of devouring a cockroach three times its size, in a web right next to Florence's high chair. Nice. Here is some info about redbacks : 'Redback spiders feed mainly on ground-living insects that blunder into their webs, but small vertebrates such as lizards and even mice can fall victim. Also eaten - after mating - are the tiny male redbacks [ha ha ha]. Caution is advised as their bite is very poisonous and potentially fatal for children or the elderly. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal or generalised pain, sweating [eh?], restlessness, palpitations, weakness [moral or physical], muscle spasm, fever.' This blog is highly educational, is it not?

Food glorious food, and camping

The weather has been a right dog's breakfast this week, sometimes pouring the rain, the next minute intensely sunny and hot. I have been occupying myself in the mornings with a running programme I found on the net and I am now into week 4. If I stick to the programme, as I have been, by the end of week 8 I should be able to run 8km without stopping, gasping for breath or being given the last rites. We shall see.

On Saturday, it was chucking it down so we went to the Olive Kitchen for one of their great breakfasts. Scarlett loves going out to eat and is good as gold. We filled the rest of the morning in a supermarket where they had trolleys for kids. Scarlett promptly popped Flo in one and they were off. (Not sure what Rob is doing with those mangoes in the background.)

This year I am very excited about reviewing restaurants for the Good Food Guide. We started last weekend reviewing the fabulous two-hatted Aria restaurant http://www.ariarestaurant.com/ Not wanting to leave the kids out, on Tuesday we jumped on the tram into the city to do a review of a lunchtime venue. Again Scarlett behaved beautifully in such a grown up restaurant and looked quite the part wrapped in my pashmina.I've got a few more places to review between now and the end of March, which is great as Rob and I are getting some lovely nights out care of the paper. The book is published in September and the awards are presented at a fabulous party at the opera house later in the year.

In three weeks we are going on our first family camping trip. Last year we bought a new tent and so yesterday Rob put it up, so we wouldn't look like idiots holding the instrcutions when we get to the campsite (let's not forget what happened with the pop-up beach tent). We reluctantly accepted that our much-loved two-man tent, we spent 3 months camping in on our road trip across the US, was not going to cut it with two kids, so this time we went for a 3-room tent that apparently sleeps 12. 12 dwarves maybe. It has a lot more room than we're used to and it is going to be brilliant fun with the kids. Scarlett was so excited when she saw the tent she insisted we read our bedtime books in it last night. We are also considering moving into it full time, in lieu of buying a new house with a massive mortgage. You think I'm kidding.

Finally, we were gutted this week to hear about the shocking death of Heath Ledger. he was a top actor and, by all accounts, a smashing bloke. He and Michelle Williams moved to Bronte in Sydney after Brokeback Mountain, but press photographers made it impossible for them to stay, so they sold up and moved to New York. Rob and I 'met' him once at the premiere of Ned Kelly. At the after party, were he was hanging out with some mates and his then girlfriend Naomi Watts, we drank lots of champagne and then when we left Rob turned and shouted waving across the room to Heath "Cheers, Heath, Thanks very much." Heath looked up at us and sort of waved back in a "who was that?' sort of way.

Juno

Today Rob and I saved on babysitting by tag-teaming on a visit to the cinema. Rob went to the 12.25pm show, racing home in time for me to leap in the car and zoom off to the 2.25pm show of the same movie. We chose Juno, a totally excellent film by Jason Reitman, who made Thank You For Smoking. It's hard to say whether I laughed or cried more. Go and see it. Here is the trailer.
http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/trailer/me60557275/

Technophobe Luddites, that's us

Now that we have finally worked out how to upload video to the blog, you will now be bombarded with video images of us at play. Just to prove we are up to the technological challenge, here is a short film of Flo's crawling style and her playing hide and seek with the washing. Dad, this should save us a fortune in VHS tapes and postage!

I'm Still Standing

Flo is officially standing. She will be 10 months old tomorrow and although there is no sign of actual walking, the standing thing is a big one for her. Unfortunately, it also frustrates the hell out of her, clearly hurts her legs and often has her collapsing in a tearful heap after a few minutes. This week there was a particularly tearful episode where she was inconsolable. It took me a day to notice a huge bruise on her cheek where she had obviously banged her face while falling without me noticing. Bad mummy. Bad, bad mummy. We move on.

In the meantime, Scarlett loves to dance. Her TV favourites, apart from Play School (obviously) are Angelina Ballerina, Hi-5 and The Wiggles. Here she is in a little clip dancing along to The Wiggles' version of Brown Girl in the Ring. Good grief.

A Top Sydney Weekend

It was hot in the city this week, so we stuffed all sorts of oddly shaped things and children into the car and drove south to Bundeena, a tiny beachside village an hour south of the city on the edge of the Royal National Park. Our friends Nick and Meg and their children Molly and Lucy live there, and it's quite the utopian community where all the kids know each other, there's a local jazz band and even a Bundeena version of Idol. Our friends love it there and it's not hard to see why. There are four lovely beaches, views across Pork Hacking back to the city, the Pacific on the doorstep as well as amazing views from the clifftops of the national park. We arrived on Friday afternoon in time for an early evening swim and a few wines on the beach before heading back to the house for dinner on their deck overlooking the water. Flo slept in with us, but Scarlett was thrilled to be invited to sleep in with Molly and Lucy, which of course meant a very late night for her. I slept so badly not being used to having a baby in the room and having to listen to her nocturnal grunts and early morning tiger impersonations. On Saturday morning after another swim we put Flo down for her sleep and the older girls played in one of the bedrooms, leaving us grown ups to spread out on couches and sun loungers and read the papers. On observing this now alien experience I commented that this must be what it's like for people who don't have children. Blissful. Scarlett loved playing with the older girls and the Galvins' chickens which were kind enough to lay some fresh eggs for breakfast. Back in a roasting hot Sydney on Sunday, Rob chopped up a mountain of fresh fruit and we went to the harbourside Rushcutters Bay Park to meet friends for a picnic. It's a great park filled with large shady oak trees, next to the Cruising Yacht Club so there are some pretty nice boats to perve at. Our friends Anthea, Kendall, Cerentha and Brian plus their kids Jack and Lucinda arrived with huge baskets of fresh bread, dips, cheese, olives, pasta salads and dessert that rather put our fresh fruit contribution to shame. The kids played football and had tickle fights and we ate and chatted and enjoyed the breeze off the water. It was all perfect. After lunch we piled everything back into the car again and drove on to Bondi to see Julia, Richard, Ella and Tess. By now the sunny skies had turned grey and a great storm was rolling towards the coast, but the heat remained and the humidity was unbearable. We strapped kids into prams and legged it down to the beach quicksticks for a swim. While Scarlett and Ella played in the sand Julia and I left the boys in charge and jumped into the surf to catch a few waves. When it was Rob's turn to swim, amazingly he bumped into our dr friend Alec who we haven't seen since the day Flo was born when he was on duty at the hospital. Once the rain started, we ran for the cover of a fantastic fish and chip cafe overlooking the beach for an early dinner. Heavenly.

Welcome 2008

Happy new year everyone. Apart from Flo's joyous arrival, 2007 wasn't a great year for us and we were quite glad to see it pass. As ever, about a gazillion people collected on every spare blade of grassy parkland there is around Sydney Harbour to welcome in the new year with fireworks displays that have made new year in Sydney famous. As for us? Rob worked a night shift and I watched the 9pm fireworks on Tv before falling into bed slightly Princess Margaret. We figured we'd been to enough Sydney fireworks parties that missing one year wasn't going to kill us. We made up for it by celebrating with a festive, long, lazy lunch in our garden on January 1st with our friends Bella and Duncan, and their three boys, plus Bella's parents over from the UK.

We have lots on this year. Flo starts at Scarlett's nursery two days a week from mid February (sob), I go back to work a week later (double sob). We are hoping to sell our house in April before we head to Lord Howe Island for my 40th, and then find and buy our dream family home at some point in the year. If all goes well, we'll be in before Christmas and will hopefully be able to head to NZ for new year. Deep breath, here we come 2008.