Five Things

I've been a bit pressed for time this week and last night gave the evening over to some work I'd brought home with me. So I'm going to cheat and give you a list of five things we have done in recent times. Here it is.

1. J took Mr M for a boat ride on Lake Burley Griffin. This has been a long-held ambition of Mr M's and because they were the only two passengers on Thursday afternoon, Mr M was even allowed to sit at the driver's wheel for a photo. I don't know if this is the boat they went on but it was probably similar. After all, we don't have that many boats on Lake Burley Griffin.
2. After the boat ride and after picking me up from work, we had a picnic at The Castle in Commonwealth Park. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, The Castle is a kids' playground in the style of a ... castle. It has been in the Park forever. I remember it being there when I was a teenager and that is over 20 years ago. It has recently been improved with that awfully smelly, supposedly soft playground carpet. The improvements haven't addressed the main issue as I see it, which is that if you wanted to climb up high and jump, you still can and you'd probably still hurt yourself badly in the jumping. Mr M isn't into jumping, however. But he loves climbing through The Castle's tunnels.
3. On Friday, a concert of J's music was performed at the National Gallery at lunchtime. Just a small but interested group of people. It was wonderful, however, to hear music in the gallery spaces and especially that that music was J's.
4. Swimming. We've been back to the pool this weekend after a break of a few weeks. Yesterday, J, Mr M and I went to the indoor pool in Belconnen. It's great when we all go together because it means I can actually swim some laps. Yesterday I managed eight (woohoo!), a recent record. This morning, Mr M and I joined the cousins at the Big Splash outdoor pool. Swimming outdoors is a novelty for us and I was a bit paranoid about the sun. But Mr M and his cousins had a fantastic time, gradually getting braver and braver and bolder and bolder at sliding down some of the less daunting slides. And we didn't get sunburnt.
5. Movies. I've been very lucky and been to see two adult movies recently. About a fortnight ago, I saw Atonement and this evening J and I went to see Sweeney Todd. Very different films, although both exquisitely designed and shot. Atonement will make you want to read Ian McEwan's novel, or re-read it. In some scenes, the film was incredibly close to my memory of the book; other bits I just couldn't recall. And it is certainly worth waiting for Vanessa Redgrave's gorgeous cameo right at the film's end. Sweeney Todd is an exuberant, bloody recreation of Stephen Sondheim's musical - and for that alone I love it. There is much to enjoy, including performances by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Both are recommended. But a warning - if you see Sweeney Todd, it will be a while before you can eat a meat pie again.

Rain and Photography

On Friday night, we went to bed with the pitter-patter of rain on the roof. On Saturday morning, we woke up to the rain again. Bliss. It's damp and chilly and the washing won't dry but I don't mind a bit. I also couldn't resist posting this photo of Mr M. It is one of a series I think of as the 'Singing in the Rain' sequence. The evening we took the photos, there wasn't much rain at all. Just a light shower. But the Teletubbies raincoat was a new purchase from the op shop and it had to be worn. Yesterday, despite heavy showers and water rushing along the gutters, the raincoat stayed inside. We did, however, get some use out of the Thomas the Tank Engine umbrella. We have all the accessories - it's the weather that has been the problem.

Photographs have been a recurring theme this week. The one above was the first Mr M has taken on the digital camera that I have actually had printed. It would be close to his first photo. He took it at the National Museum in November. He loves the Museum and often visits with J. In fact, they popped in on Thursday, after playschool and on the way to pick me up from work. At the moment, the big attraction is the small Wiggles display in the Eternity gallery. It features a purple Jeff Wiggle shirt, a very desirable object in Mr M's eyes. He can stand for a very long time in front of that display.

At work, I have been looking at photos by Charles Bayliss (1850 - 1897). I was familiar with his images of Jenolan Caves and the Blue Mountains but had never seen his images of Sydney in the 1880s. These, for me, were like looking at a city in a foreign land. There is nothing about the city in Bayliss's images that I recognise and yet I would argue that I 'know' Sydney. Nor is it as if I can see another city in the images either. This is not a place that could be mistaken for London or even Melbourne at the same period. I'm intrigued - any reading I have ever done that encompasses the period these images were taken hasn't prepared me for how the city actually appeared. And take a look at this image of Balmain. Remember, these shots were taken only 120 - 130 years ago.

Coincidentally, a friend emailed me some pix this week of her grandparents. One is of her great-grandmother with her three daughters, a formal family grouping. The other, of her grandfather, has him dressed in a suit in the foreground but in the background is a small group of workmen, completely out of focus. It's taken in a garden at what appears to be the back of a house. Reflecting on the photos, she wrote "I find the images to be eerie windows back in time".

I like that. I like the idea that a photo lets us slip back through time to another place, to fall through the rabbit hole of our histories. But these are "eerie windows", so what you see may not be exactly what it appears to be.

I'm wondering what Mr M's great-grandchildren will think of his feet.

Have a terrific week and thanks to all of you who have left comments. I'm still working out how I go about responding to them. It's very exciting to know folk are reading.

Milestones

It has been a big week for Mr M. Back to playschool on Wednesday, he enjoyed his last two days as a playschool toddler. Next week, he'll be joining the junior preschoolers in another room. Fortunately, one of his favourite teachers will be with him, as will a number of his pals. But the prospect of moving has caused him some anxiety. We tried to allay it by baking a 'farewell' cake for him to take in on Thursday. Of course, it couldn't be just any cake. It had to be a 'Thomas the Tank Engine' cake! This caused me some anxiety. I had white icing, store-bought red icing to pipe with (having never piped icing before) and a Thomas sticker squirrelled out of a sticker book given to Mr M at Christmas. The result was, I thought, truly horrible but when Mr M saw it on Thursday morning, he declared it 'perfect'. If only he was always that easy to please.

Last night, he had his first sleepover. Completely unplanned but perhaps that was the best way. We were invited to dinner at his cousins' and had a lovely evening sitting under the pergola in the rain (what relief it was after the heat of the last few days - the thing I love most about a Canberra summer, I think, is that it comes to an end) talking with family. Amy and Ruby did a wonderful job of babysitting before dinner, encouraging the littlies to 'be a fruit'. Mr M chose his favourite, watermelon. Then he decided he'd like to stay the night. So he did - although I suspect he might almost have been sent home, as he partied on until 11. That, though, meant he slept through the night and was quite determined he was sleeping over again tonight.

But tonight we have decided to try for another milestone. Mr M is having his first night without a nappy! It's been a long time since he's had a wet nappy at night so, with the heat giving him a heat rash, he decided he'd like to try going without. Fingers crossed I'm not changing sheets at 3am.

J took this photo of the back garden in early spring. If you stand in the same spot now, it is impossible to see the shed. The peach tree is heavy with rusty peaches and I've discovered the ease of making peach granita (this recipe isn't the one I used but it gives you the idea) and the joy of eating it in the heat of summer. The boughs of the Japanese plum are dragging with the weight of the fruit and the nectarine (whose fruit never seems to ripen before the birds get it) is now entwined with the grapevine. Tonight we ate the first plums from the tree behind the shed. This means that soon it will be time to try to make plum jam or plum sauce. Which probably means that the hottest day of summer is still ahead of us.

The First Sunday

Christmas was a big hit with the wee man this year. I think three-years-old is probably the perfect age for the celebration. We said 'hello' to Santa's helpers at least six times, never once questioning why they all looked alike. We went for night drives to look at the 'big' Christmas tree in Civic Square (a disappointment for someone brought up on the Christmas tree in Sydney's Martin Place) and the gardens and houses lit up in the streets near us. We put out grass to feed Santa's reindeer ... and took for granted that the reindeer actually ate it. And there is no doubt in Mr M's mind that it was Santa who left the Jeff Wiggle doll for him. Little wonder that he has now told me twice that he 'wants to have Christmas again'. The only problem was that, after giving someone else a gift (which he did very graciously), he turned to me or to J and asked, 'Is there another present for me?'

We also managed to do quite a bit of Christmas cooking. Mr M really likes making cakes - in the past few months we've made Shrek cakes, Wiggle biscuits, birthday biscuits, more Shrek cakes. In the week leading up to Christmas, we made Christmas biscuits (Nigella Lawson's recipe is very versatile - cookie cutters are marvellous things), jelly, fruit salad and Baz balls with our own variation (crush a packet of Scalliwag chocolate biscuits, add a can of condensed milk, a cup of sultanas and the same of choc bits, mix together, roll into small balls and then role in coconut - the variation was leaving out the crushed nuts, which I couldn't possibly put in now we live in world of nut allergies). These last, however, were topped by Vanessa's twist on a similar family recipe, Chocolate Winnies. Simply by leaving out the cocoa and adding white choc bits, instead of milk chocolate ones, she created a winner - and as they melted in the heat, they tasted even better. Here's the revamped recipe for White Chocolate Winnies:

Crush a packet of Arrowroot biscuits.
Add a tin of condensed milk and a cup of white choc bits.
When everything is mixed together, roll the mixture into small balls and then roll the balls in coconut.
Keep in the fridge until ready to eat.

We've had a slow start to the new year. The heatwave, which hasn't been as severe in Canberra as elsewhere, wreaked havoc with Mr M's sleeping patterns. He's taken to falling asleep at 4pm, worn out by the heat. This means he is ready to party on until midnight so we have had to adopt some strategies for keeping him awake through the day. Too many dvds are the result - as well as trips to the pool and KidCity with Jack and Charlie. Next week we'll be back to 'normal' routines.

The unexpected daytime sleeps, though, have given me some time of my own. I've read books - A House in Fez by Suzanna Clarke, which didn't quite inspire me to head off to Morocco to renovate, and Australian Classics by Jane Gleeson White, which has inspired me to add some Australian classics to my reading list for the year. (Yes, how nerdy is that? I have a 'reading list' for 2008. But I would like to catch up on some Aussie novels I've never read, including Helen Garner's Monkey Grip and Tim Winton's Cloudstreet.)

I have also, finally, finished organising Mr M's photos into albums, even annotating the photos so, when he is 50, he will know who is who and what happened when. Horrid realisation ... I have taken over 700 photos of Mr M and his life and he is only three! I can't even blame J for contributing to the number as, with the digital camera, I am the main photographer. It's made me ponder how personal photography has changed. With a digital camera, it costs me nothing to snap away, often taking half-a-dozen photos to get the one I want. I'm not limited by my poor photography, having a roll of film that allows me to shoot only 12 pictures, having to wait to see whether my photos are any good. This current generation will probably be the most photographed yet. Nothing that happens to them will be undocumented. But perhaps I should think about easing up on the photography now that he's reached three? How many cute photos can you have?

This blog is as close as I'm going to get to a new year's resolution. I enjoyed writing and sending my group emails last year. So here's the plan: every Sunday this year (or Saturday or Monday or, maybe, Tuesday) I hope to post about the week just passed. Let's see if I can keep it up and if, at the end of the year, I have 52 posts. Fingers crossed.