What a week

It's been an emotional week here in Ashfield. We made an offer before auction on the house we want but have been told by the agent it's not enough for the vendors to stop the auction. So we have to go along with everyone else on Feb 23 and bid for it hoping the bidding will stop below our ceiling limit. Arrrgggghhh.
Also, Florence started at Scarlett's nursery Wattle Lane today. I thought it would be easier with the second baby but it wasn't. I have been sobbing on and off all week and blubbed all over a couple of the carers this morning. It's silly because I know all girls there and they've known Florence since she was 5 days old and she has been coming with me every week since to see Scarlett off so it's not as if it's all new. Here she is with Scarlett in the baby room just before I left. I just miss her so much. She's such a lovely little cuddler and it just feels weird sitting here in the house without either of my girls. I occupied myself this morning by shopping and am about to trim the rose bushes before going for a run. I am now up to running for 25 mins non-stop three times a week. It is hard as it is so hot. In other news, Scarlett is becoming quite the little cook. Here she is in charge of some chocolate muffins. On Sunday as the sun was shining we had 9 for a lunch of roasted salmon. As you do. Tomorrow we head off down the south coast to Kiama on our first camping trip with the girls, alongwith our mates Zoe and Paul and their two kids. Can't wait. (Bizarrely the real estate agent selling the house we want is camping at the same campground as us this weekend!) Rob and I haven't camped since Liz and Mike were here on their honeymoon and we were involved in an exciting rescue effort when a bloke jumped off a raised area of the beach into a channel of fast flowing water and snapped his ankle. Mike babysat the bloke's kids - the wife was in shock - Liz held the man's head out of the water and I had to keep his leg straight, and Rob ran for the ambulance. But that's another story.

We have found our dream house...

...but don't think we will have our finances organised in time as the auction is the weekend before I go back to work. Banks are soooo picky about seeing evidence of income before handing over large amounts of cash it would seem. It is big enough for us and our guests, is in a perfect street with a gorgeous park at one end and is close to the city. It has a ton of storage, high ceilings, formal living and dining rooms with fireplaces, as well as a great kitchen/family room at the back leading out to the little garden. It even has an external studio space with a bathroom that would be great for guests or as an office or teenage retreat one day. Rob even noted that one day the girls could walk to Sydney Uni from there. It ticks boxes we didn't even know needed ticking. We even have the deposit, but until we sell our house we are stuffed as settlements here are only 6 weeks and it will be more like 2-3 months until we sell our place. The auction is on Feb 23 so fingers crossed pleased everyone for a lottery win for us between now and then. Here are some pix and a hilarious estate agent film about the place. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wU_Cx5xl3zM
If nothing else, it has given us loads of ideas for what we could do with something similar.

Gymtastic!

I did gymnastics for years as a kid and Olga and Nadia were my heroes, so I am really thrilled that Scarlett has taken to her junior gym class so well. She loves it. Whilst trying not to appear like a younger, more attractive, version of Terri Shields I decided this year, as Scarlett is about to turn 4, she needed more activities that she does without us and where she has to listen to other adults. After all, in 12 months she will be starting school. Yikes! Anyhoo, here are a few shots of her bouncing on things, swinging off things and generally having a ball.

In the meantime Florence continues to charm all who meet her. It is only 8 days until she starts at Wattle Lane, but I know she will be fine. It is me who is falling apart. She does this lovely thing when she is tired or when she first wakes up, when she sucks her thumb and rests her head on my chest for a cuddle. It is pure bliss.

We have been getting a lot of rain lately and taking our amusement where we can find it. Did you know an old huggies box makes a brilliant car?

Finally, it's too hot/wet/muggy/pondy/swampy/steamy for long hair so I have had the chop. Everyone says Scarlett and I look like sisters. Gasp - can that really be true?

Am I getting old?

I suspect I am getting old because (apart from glancing casually at the calendar and noticing I am turning 40 this year) I have become obsessed with the weather, or, more specifically, the unpredictability of it. Last week it was so hot, we had sleepless nights, a full day at Balmoral spent mainly swimming and playing in the water and walking on dragon island in search of a view and a breeze,
and Scarlett took the hose to Rob one afternoon in order to cool him off.

Then this week it has stormed and rained and poured 'til old men across the land have snored themselves into hibernation. Yesterday, while Scarlett was watching Play School, I left Flo playing with some toys and took the chance to check my emails. All went quiet and I suddenly wondered what Flo was up to. A quick search of the house and I found Florence had worked out how to open the flyscreen and had crawled outside onto the deck where she was sitting most contendedly in absolute torrential rain. She was soaked through and very, very happy. Although my first instinct was to grab the video camera, I saw sense and picked her up and brought her inside before recording the event.


Here, finally, is a clip of Scarlett and Florence jamming with xylophone and tambourine. Hippies.

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.

It's Christmasssssssss!!!!

Santa blessed us with a very generous sleigh-load of presents this year. Scarlett's face was a picture when she saw the carrot had been munched, the milk and mince pie eaten, but Santa didn't seem to have left any presents in the living room where the food had been left. We suggested she check under the tree and she stood agog at the sight of all the gifts, declaring 'there are too many presents to count', before breaking into a spontaneous happy dance. As mountains of gifts were replaced by mountains of wrapping paper, Flo happily played with the tape and ribbon. While the Scarlett became engrossed in her fabulous new doll's house ('How did Santa get it on his sleigh?') and painting easel, we set about preparing a lunch

for 11, keeping our fingers crossed that the rain would stay away. Rob boiled and glazed the ham and I roasted the salmon before all our friends arrived at midday with bowls of salads, puddings, quail eggs and foie gras canapes. The weather held and we had a beautiful lunch outside. Merry Christmas one and all.

Christmas Eve

We sadly farewelled Rick and Justin on Sunday night after a brilliant hot day at Balmoral building sand castles and wave jumping. It was so brilliant to see them again.

We had a super festive Christmas Eve, Aussie style, starting with a visit to the Sydney Fish Market. Christmas here is all about the seafood and the fish market opened at 3am on Sunday morning not closing until 6pm on Christmas Eve. There were thousands of people there carrying great boxes of fish, trays of oysters and heaving bags of prawns about. Despite the crowds (we were there at 8am) it was really well organised and fun. We picked up our 3kg salmon and headed to the water's edge for coffee and fresh pastries straight from the baker's oven. Then it was onto the famous AC Butchery to pick up the ham. The queue was out the door and down the street, and included among the crowd the Premier of New South Wales. While Rob queued, Scarlett, Florence and I zipped over to the local library to give our favourite librarian a card Scarlett had made for her, alongwith a Christmas kiss and a hug. We then went back to pick up Rob and then zoomed over to nearby Drummoyne for Christmas Eve drinks with our old neighbours and friends Dave and George and their family. Then it was home to prepare a mince pie and a glass of milk for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph...

The spirit of Christmas

We were filled with the spirit of Christmas last night when, together with Rick and Justin, we went to the brilliant Christmas At The House concert at the Sydney Opera House. The choir and orchestra of Opera Australia performed carols and other festive songs and we had songsheets to join in with the easy ones that didn't require six years' training at the Conservatorium of Music. Rick and Justin loved it but were rendered gobsmacked when the crowd seemed to respond most enthusiastically to a rendition of the Rolf Harris 'hit' song Six White Boomers (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSsffF2xhA) which tells the story of Santa's sleigh being pulled by six old kangaroos. Good grief. We spent the interval on the opera house deck sipping champagne and watching a cruise ship glide away into the night. Driving home at about 10.30pm, we had an encounter that convinced us of the existence of fate. We were driving along the busy motorway and as we reached a point where our two lanes met another two, we saw a young, smartly dressed bloke staggering along in the middle of the road, as drunk as a lord. It was terrifying to watch. Cars were zooming passed, blowing their horns at him and on he walked. We managed to stop on a sort of hard shoulder in the middle of the two motorways and yelled at him to climb into the back of our car, with me wrestling the kid's car seats out of the way to make room for him. He was so drunk and didn't seem to realise he was on the motorway at all, slurring something about how hard it was to get a taxi. In between repeatedly reminding him NOT to be sick in our car, we asked him where he lived and were astonished when he replied, 'Ashfield'. Of all of the hundreds of suburbs in Sydney he lived in ours, in fact only about 300 metres from our house. I found this amazing. Destiny? It makes me shudder to think that if we had driven passed a few minutes later we might have been stuck behind an ambulance scraping him off the road. Before Rob eventually woke him and poured him from our car to his door, he told us his name was Cyril and that he was 22. So that's our Christmas good deed for the season ticked off. Merry Christmas Cyril.

Countdown to Christmas part 4- the hidden room

It's December 21, Scarlett's last day at nursery for the year and it's a scorcher here. Rick and Justin arrived yesterday and are here until December 24 when they fly to NZ for Christmas with Rick's family. Despite severe jetlag, making them feel like it was 4am, they managed a couple of large gin and tonics before we headed out for pizza last night. Yesterday was also momentous for being the day Florence really starting crawling. She has a lovely fluid style and is pretty quick. No more mornings at the shops knowing she is happily sitting on the floor at home with some clothes pegs, car keys and flick knives. Before we head out to a carol concert at the Opera House with Rick and Justin, I wanted to leave you with this picture of our second loo, aka Aladdin's cave, where we have been stashing all the Christmas presents that have been arriving every day. As ever, we are very grateful but can't help wondering whether all this is really necessary for a 9-month-old baby who likes to play with straws and a 3-year-old who is more than happy making rockets out of old milk cartons. May the door never be found....or this blog page for that matter.

Countdown to Christmas part 3

V excited again this week as we now only have 8 more sleeps until the man in red hits town. A viewing of The Polar Express even had Rob and I believing in Santa, it is so fabulous. Scarlett had her friend Ella over to play on Wednesday to listen to Christmas songs and behave angelically (in this shot anyway). On Friday we met up with our friends from the UK Richard Quance and his wife Karen, who now live in Perth. They were over for the opening of the Billy Elliot musical at a theatre in the city. Rob and I went to one of the previews of it two weeks ago and took it in turns to bawl, laugh and sit gobsmacked at how much swearing the child actors have to do. Richard and Karen are friends with the executive producer of Billy Elliot the movie and she was also in Sydney for the launch. She invited Richard and Karen along to the show and the star-studded after-party, which by Sydney standards was a galaxy as actual real celebrities were there like Elton John and Toni Collette, not just the cast of Neighbours. When we all met up for dinner the next night (not Elton or Toni) they were all very hungover. This didn't stop us all enjoying another lively night on the tiles, with Rob and I finally making it home (by bus, due to a taxi shortage) at 1.30am, making this the latest night out we have had since having Scarlett. Thank God then we were able to persuade Scarlett to have a lunchtime sleep yesterday so we could all crawl into bed and catch up on some Zzzzzs. Last night we packed a picnic and alongwith Martin and Drew, James and Amelia and Kendall and his mum Audrey, we headed up to the local church for Carols by Candlelight which was brilliantly festive despite crickets chirping in the background heat during Jingle Bells.

Countdown To Christmas Part 2

We are up to 11 on our multiple advent calendars and on the whole the threat of Santa not leaving anything under the tree has proved an excellent deterrent from any bad behaviour from Scarlett. She's really into the big man in red. This week we had two big Christmas events - the Santa babies proms at the Opera House and Scarlett's pre-school Christmas party. The Baby Proms was amazing - about 100 kids in a room with a small orchestra playing lovely Christmas songs accompanied by a conductor and a singer who had all the kids up dancing. Spot Scarlett in the pink in the middle of this picture with her hands in the air like she just don't care. By total coincidence (as these concerts are on over several days, several times each day) our friends Julia and Amelia were both there too with their kids which was great and made it like a special Christmas outing for them all. At the Wattle Lane Christmas party it was clear that to pre-schoolers no Santa is a bad Santa, not even one with a crap white beard applied so badly it revealed the bloke's real gingery beard underneath. Florence in the meantime is on the move. Not crawling exactly but moving around. We put her on the floor and leave the room and when we return moments later, she's not in the same place. It's like she doesn't want anyone to see her technique until she's finessed it. Now well into her solids, and with two more teeth coming through at the bottom, she got into the festive spirit by tucking into a set of red foam reindeer antlers.

Yum. Rob and I nearly died this week when Scarlett wandered into the laundry to get something and then rushed out shouting 'Mum! Dad! Come and look what I've found!." We exchanged a glance and feared the worse. In our laundry is a second toilet that Scarlett has somehow never seen. It has always been the hiding place for all gifts and currently contains a doll's house (unwrapped) and many, many Christmas presents. We have spent the last week thinking we better be able to come up with something good and quick if she ever finds the door. Before I blurted out that Santa had had to deliver early this year, she came back holding a missing hat we had been looking for. Phew!

Finally, it all got a bit too much for Scarlett after two events this week and she gave in to utter exhaustion. You better keep your energy levels up girl, we've still got 14 days to go, which includes a dinner out and two carol concerts.

Countdown to Christmas part 1

It would be fair to say that we are all a little over-excited about Christmas in the Duthie household this year. Excited to be having our first family Christmas at home in more than 10 years, excited to be our own little family and for Flo to see her first Christmas, and excited to be hosting a lunch with some special mates. As soon as December 1 rolled around, I was ready. We have four - count 'em - advent calendars on the go, the tree is up and decorated with all our special baubles from trips around the world, we have a nativity scene set up and Christmas music playing is nonstop on the i-pod. Also Rob and I have taken to wearing foam reindeer antlers. You think I'm joking, don't you? On Saturday morning after opening all the advent calendars we went to our first Christmas party hosted by kids tv channel Nickleodeon. Scarlett got to meet one of her favourite cartoon characters, Dora The Explorer, whom she rushed and embraced like a long-lost friend as well as Spongebob Squarepants and Santa Claus. Her face was a picture when Santa walked in and she got to sit with him and have a little chat about what she wants for Christmas (a scooter it would seem- oops- no luck there darling, I'm afraid) before he gave her a present. After a great deal of dancing under a giant parachute and eating of cupcakes, we headed home to put up the tree. Scarlett and I did it while Rob and Flo slept. Poor Rob has done his back in, is in a lot of pain and can be found most days lying on the floor or bed in between appointments at the back doctor, gin in hand.