Leichhardt Council 1 - The Duthies 1

This covert shot was taken from behind Flo's curtains on Saturday morning. It's of the council workmen coming back with pickaxes - seriously - and new wet cement, to relay the section of the path where we immortalized the glorious victories of both New Zealand and England against the Australians in rugby and cricket, as well as the girls' names and handprints (see earlier blog). The Aussies love to think they are great sports and really laid back, but it's all a nonsense. Before the blokes took their picks to our handiwork, they moaned to Kirsty and Simon about finding out which Pommie did this and even asked them for the names of their neighbours' kids to try and track down the culprits. Kirsty rang me, warning me not to leave the house while the men were outside as they were on the lookout for 2 gitls called Scarlett and Florence and their English parents. If an Aussie had done this in England and the council came to remove it, it would have made front page news here in protest against the 'larrikin' spirit of the Aussies. But when the boot's on the other foot...Pathetic.
This is what it looks like now. I'm sure you'll agree it looked better, more fun and more colourful with our original work. If I didn't know it would cost Kirsty and Simon to have it relaid, we would have been out there again, pointy sticks in hand ready to start again.

The skier returns

Rob came back on Thursday night from his mini ski trip to NZ, looking fresh, tanned and relaxed. Unfortunately he's had to go straight back onto day shifts so once again the girls and I are entertaining ourselves this weekend. We're off to the markets now and then, as it's a hot one again, I think the paddling pool will be getting another work out. Tonight Rob and I have the Annandale Public School parents' cocktail party . Should be a laugh. We're mates with a few other parents and there's a band made up of parent musos.

Saturday night, Sunday morning

Fantastically entertaining dinner party at the home of our friends Jo and Mark last night. It's always a food spectacular and last night was no exception. Jo and Mark are infamous not only for arriving very late to other people's dinners but also for always appearing to be totally unprepared for their own guests' arrival. Jo has usually only just stepped from the shower moments before we appear on the doorstep and food prep seems miles from completion. But then as time passes, while we all sit around devouring bread, olives and Champagne and having a great time chatting and shelling peas, something magnificent emerges from the kitchen and we are suddenly sitting down to an amazing meal. We had a great time but I feel a tad on the Boris Yeltsin side of things today. The girls and I have just taken Rob to the airport for a teary goodbye and now have an empty day ahead of us in 30 degrees.

Phew - what a scorcher

It might only be the second week of Spring, but someone forgot to tell the weather. It's 30 degrees this weekend. In other words, it's paddling pool o'clock. We bought this brillliant sports car pool in England in July for 15 quid - for some reason paddling pools here are really expensive - and Scarlett did a great job filling it up on Saturday afternoon. We'd spent the hot morning indoors at a drumming workshop at Carriageworks. There was lots of singing, dancing and drum playing and as Flo has always been a bit of a groover and she in particular loved it.

Here's a shot of Scarlett enjoying the legacy of Kendall's recent visit - a lollipop shaped like an enormous fly. Deeply unappealing. Plus another (increasingly common) sight of the girls playing well together. This time on a trike Flo borrowed from the library.
Scarlett is giddy with excitement this weekend as it is her turn to look after the class toy - Ed the Ted. Each weekend, Ed gets to spend the weekend at the home of a classmate and his antics are recorded by the family in a scrapbook. So far he has taken control of the car, stuffed his face in a cafe and rocked out some drum beats at the workshop.

While we are sweltering away here, Rob leaves for NZ in the morning for a short skiing trip with his old friend Jenny. They'll only manage 3 days skiing, but it's the first skiing he's done since our brilliant trip to Stowe in Vermont with Sarah and Scott in 2002. Rob is a very good skier and he'll have a ball in 8 degree temps and on a 25cm base at Mount Ruapehu on NZ's North Island. Oh and he'll owe me big time for the chance to fly without children - enjoying films and booze unencumbered - and for multiple lie ins and nights out. Oh yes, he will pay.

It's Spring!

If she's good, Scarlett gets to stay up later than 7.30pm on Friday and Saturday nights. Last Saturday, Scarlett joined Rob and I on the couch for viewing of ET. Those who know me intimately know as a youngster I was a proud member of the ET fan club. When I wasn't sitting in my room tearfully staring at my ET posters, I was sitting in my room tearfully listening to the 7" recording of all of ET's speaking parts. I saw the film when it first came out and immediately fell in love with the small alien and with the films of Stephen Spielberg. The second time I saw it at the cinema was several years later, with Richard Hand, while we were drunk. Needless to say it was not the emotional journey I had expected. Instead we found the whole thing hilarious. Three pints of Strongbow will do that. So almost 20 years later, here we were last Saturday watching it again. I made quite a big deal of it to Scarlett and told her not to be scared and not to be sad as it was just a film. She was very good, seemed to understand most of what was going on and sat quietly throughout. Towards the end when ET 'dies' and later when he has to say goodbye to Elliot before boarding his spaceship before the scientists arrive to take him away, I looked over at Rob, with tears flowing freely, to see him similarly moved. Scarlett? Nothing. Rather she looked amused at her pathetic parents.The first week of spring has sprung and the weather has been a mixed bag of beautiful hot days in the high 20s, drizzly rain, massive thunderstorms and chilly nights. We are secret pyromaniacs and are dragging out the last of the firewood knowing the days of open fires at night are on their way out. I've been doing lots of stuff outdoors with the girls including making chocolate brownies, and today Flo and I made our first trip of the season to Balmoral Beach.
We also had our lovely mate Kendall to stay for a night this week. He was up from his home in Melbourne on his way to Lord Howe Island. Kendall makes his living as a freelance travel and food writer and is always off somewhere around the world on a fabulous jaunt. He was looking very relaxed and fit.

I'm a big kid now.

Scarlett had quite a week. As well as the annual book week parade, in which each student dresses as their favourite character from a book, Scarlett also had to lead the school assembly in a group of 6 kindergarten students. While I missed the parade, I did help make the 'costume' - Scarlett went as Slinky Malinki, rapscallion cat - and I did manage to sneak out of work to see her on stage at the assembly (no pix - I know, I'm a terrible mother). She delivered her lines with confidence and panache, and also had to stand up when the weekly awards were announced to receive a merit award. As if this wasn't all too much for me, watching her sing the school song soon had me in floods. I'm not ashamed to say I was the only parent in the room crying.
This week Scarlett has also jumped up 3 reading levels. She absolutely loves reading and keeps saying "Aunty Maria used to read all the time, so do I," as if this is a good thing. She absolutely loves reading to Flo as a distraction from pinching, hitting or shouting at her.
The other new craze in our house is for Scarlett to give Flo piggy backs. Here they are with Gabe and Charlie from next door.
Flo continues to create hilarity and dismay with her various toilet arrangements. Some days she's brilliant at using the loo all day, the next, you'd think she'd never seen the inside of an Armitage Shanks showroom before.

This weekend is the Hallmark holiday, Father's Day. The GFC has called a halt to our usual practice on Mother's and Father's day of buying each other a spa treatment. Instead the girls made Rob this beautiful painting which was presented to him today, as he is at work tomorrow (actual Father's Day). the girls and I will be spending an oestrogen-fuelled day with Julia, Ella and Tess, as Richard is out of town.

Finally a word from our sponsor - Rob.

Whilst Kate says that due to the GFC we have suspended spa treatments for the year I did see that Kiri Te Banana (one of the founding members of Bananarama) was perfroming at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, so I proposed that we reinstate the giving of extravagant gifts from our children for hallmark holidays and took myself off to see the glorious national treasure that is Ms Te Kanawa. Anything at the Opera House is a perfect evening but Kiri was, unsurprisingly, superb. I liked the whole show but as with all the times I've seen her, the highlight is the encore when she sings O mio babbino caro, her signature song used in the film A Room with a View. Heavenly.

Mess

Following on from our assault on our neighbour's wet cement slab, the council have been round to ask them who made a mess of their handy work and are threatening Kirsty and Simon with a bill to re do it. This seems a bit absurd as they'd have to charge homeowners across the land who have made their mark in the quick-drying concrete. In the last few weeks Flo has worked out how to stretch her way out of her sleeping bag and therefore her cot. To this end, we've decided to start getting her ready for a move to her big girl bed. We've ditched the sleeping bags in favour of her own duvet and pillow set and put the side of the cot down so it's more like a bed. We've promised that if she's good and stays in bed, she will get a bed just like Scarlett's. It has been an entertaining few nights. She happily goes to bed and is left in a sleepy state snuggled under the covers. But then the stealth-like Mission Impossible Flo takes over. Without making a sound, she has been climbing out of her cot, removing her pyjamas and nappy and getting completely redressed. We don't discover any of this until she makes a surprising entry into the hallway looking pleased as punch. This is, of course, completely adorable and after some stern words of encouragement and the threat of a return to the sleeping bag, she gets straight back into bed. On Thursday night however, she

upped the stakes. About 40 minutes after she had gone quietly to bed, we heard a noise from her room. I asked Rob to quietly pop his head in. Next thing, he's calling me down the hall with a mixed expression of hilarity and dismay on his face. There was Flo, naked, standing in the middle of the room. In between her and Rob was a large fresh poo, that Rob had just squashed flat by opening the door over the top of it. I'll spare you the details involving the extent of the cleaning up, but let's just say, Flo's door won't need a draught excluder anymore. Other than that, she has been going well with her day time toilet training and has had 2 good days of undie wearing and is very proud of the stickers she gets every time she makes a trip to the loo.

In other news, here's a photo of Scarlett chanelling the girl in the pearl earring.

It's book club tomorrow night. Iam relieved to have finished The Little Stranger, a ghost story that had me awake in the night at the slightest noise or wind gust. Am interested to see if any of the other girls suffered from sleepless nights. Our next book is the classic The Fountainhead.

I am now into my 4th week of running podcasts. A 43-year-old smooth-talking Californian man talks me through when to run and walk, times the warm up and cool down and provided loud techno tunes to run to. I make quite a sweaty sight I'm sure as I launch myself around the bay at Glebe. V pleased with my efforts so far as I have been doing it 3 times a week. Well done me. Cream buns all round.

The Galvins come to town

The Galvins came to Sydney this weekend. For the last 10 years, we have visited them at their home in Bundeena. Our new house is the first one we have lived in big enough to accommodate our growing brood (we are now 8) and so this was our first chance to pay them back for all their generosity over the years. The weather was spectacular and after pizza for the kids, they were variously put to bed and in front of DVDs while the we got on with the job of eating, drinking and playing Triv - the girls won. On Sunday we managed a subdued (sore heads) day with the girls all playing beautifully together, while we sat about reading the paper and lolling on the grass in the park.



Slightly horrified this morning when chatting to our lovely neighbour Kirsty. They were all away for the weekend and missed our pavement handwork. Not long into the conversation Kirsty revealed the cement slab we ruined was paid for by them, to the tune of $300 and is part of the compulsary work they have to complete before their recent renovation will be approved by the local council. Oops.

Hilarious

Rob and I broke our recent trip on the wagon with a small outing last night involving 3 large gins. Thus lubricated, we sat down and laughed and laughed our way through the film Airport 75 on Fox Classics. The airline disaster movie, starring Karen "Which of my cross eyes is looking at you?" Black and Charlton" Make mine a shotgun" Heston, tells the thrilling and often hilarious tale of a light aircraft that crashes into a 747 on approach to Salt Lake City. The film is so close to the spoof film Airplane, it's a wonder anyone thought the spoof necessary at all. This morning we woke still chuckling at the memory of stewardess Karen Black taking the controls, with not a hair out of place, despite the massive hole in the cockpit.
We also received visitors in the form of Mark and John Russell, the Duthie family's oldest and closest friends, who are in Sydney from New Zealand for the weekend for tonight's Bledisloe Cup match. The rivalry between the All Blacks and the Wallabies is legendary and they had an inflatable Wallaby at the ready with which to insult Australian rugby fans. On our way out the door with them to the local growers' market, we discovered a huge slab of wet cement right outside the house, recently laid by the council. It was obviously too good an opportunity to miss, so after engraving the names of the girls and our next door neighbours kids for posterity, we also left a comment regarding the Ashes test going on in England at the moment.

Returning 2 hours later from the market we discovered our artwork completely removed, care of a council employee's trowl. That didn't stop us making a second imprint in the now quick drying cement. Ha!

Bundeena is brilliant

We have just spent the most magical weekend in Bundeena, one of Sydney's most southern suburbs on the southern rim of Port Hacking in Royal National Park. We normally go there once a year to stay with our mates Nick and Meg, but this time we were joined by top English pals the McPhersons for a weekend away at a fantastic rented beach house. Perched on the edge of a rocky sandstone outcrop, The House on the Rock couldn't have been much closer to the ocean.


The huge deck was rimmed by a glass fence and child-proofed gates which was just as well, with two of the gates opening out to a rock area with a sheer drop down to the rocks and ocean below. While we were sure that the kids could never go out there, Rob, Jules and I all managed a few moments of quiet time, with a beer or a wine, gazing out over the water at the swimming pool clear water in the bay below.


Jules and Lenka's kids, Tess and Tom, had a great time with Scarlett and Flo, with Tess and Scarlett inseparable throughout the weekend. We spent our days walking along the beach, watching the kids jump in the freezing water, and our evenings eating, drinking and playing Cluedo, Triv ("it's Jason!! The answer is Jason and the Argonauts!!") and Cranium.




On Sunday we were even sunbathing on the beach as the mercury climbed to 29 degrees. This is still winter, people! We were visited by kookaburras and had to keep the gates to the house locked to stop deer popping in too. The house was fantastically appointed and beautifully furnished and decorated so we all felt pretty special. That's the house on the top of the overhanging cliff in photos 1 and 7. Cream buns all round.