Buggy Baby Boogie*

Today was another exercise in coping really, as it was the first day I'd truly been alone to sort out getting Annie to Kindy and then looking after Michael at home. I eagerly though that it might also bring a chance for me to have a bit of time to myself, but given that Michael woke up at 4am this morning, meaning our whole day started late (i.e. everybody slept a bit longer to compensate), and wailed loudly every time I tried to vacuum whilst he was up (he's not really scared of the vacuum cleaner as such, I think he just doesn't like anything that can drown out the noise he's planning on making), the entire day was pretty much a rush of domestic chores. Even when Michael napped for a full 2 and a half hours in the afternoon, I only managed to get about half an hour of that to myself, after basically vacuuming the entire house, and clearing up breakfast+lunch mess (n.b Weetabix (or 'Weet Bix' as it's called here) left uncleaned for a few hours effectively turns into cement - it also has corners, rather than rounded edges over here...are we so incapable of managing cereal with sharp corners in England? [- And doesn't that sound suspiciously like the intro to one of Carrie's 'articles' in SATC...?]

I felt pretty satisfied with how things went today nonetheless, esp. given Cherie's gratitude for the vacuuming when she got home, and the fact that I'd  just (sort of) warded off another nappy-related crisis, when I stupidly undid Annie's nappy, averted my gaze and hands for a second to get a wipe, only to have her lift her bottom off the change table, with the nappy still half on, and the poo fall onto the table (who knew poo could take such solid, rolling-capable form? Nice). Thankfully I managed a successful clean-up operation (of both Annie and change table), the showering of both children, and almost had a meal ready for them as Cherie walked in the door, meaning I could then get out for a run down to the river. The river at night, incidentally, was truly beautiful, if a little hair-raising at times, thanks to path renovations, faintly unexpected bodies of water, boggy ground, and near-pitch darkness). Considering the news here today has been rife with what can happen to little ones when you take your gaze off them (namely two horrendous stories: the Turkish toddler who was carried up the outside of an escalator and the Aussie baby that fell onto railway tracks, both of which thankfully (and pretty surprisingly) ended well), I think I got off pretty lightly. Those stories on the news did inspire a conversation between Cherie and me this evening about the similar recent news stories here (see end of that 2nd clip), culminating in my assuring her that I would continue to always use the buggy breaks when stopping anywhere (I pretty much do this anyway as it's quite hilly on the walk to Kindy, and, irritatingly, they don't seem particularly keen on pavements in this neighbourhood), stand well back from road crossings, and take note at least, of the buggy 'leash' (a strap with a loop at the end to go around the buggy pusher's hand, that has apparently become mandatory on Oz buggys since aforementioned incidents, though I've never seen Paul or Cherie actually use it). So, suitably frightened into responsible buggy-wielding, I bid you goodnight.

A xx

*This title is reference to a supremely irritating song sung by Cookie Monster's (ailing, at least aurally, judging by her inability to hit pleasant sounding notes) Grandma on the 'Sesame Beginnings' DVD Annie and Michael have. In case you care, 'buggy' in that context means 'bug-like', as in, 'moving like a 'squirmy worm' or 'with ants in your pants (on which note, I found MORE ants on the playhouse this morning. I think they've laid eggs elsewhere...urgh)'' etc, rather than the thing you push kids around in, which is more commonly called a stroller/pram(?) in Oz. Now don't say I never teach you anything! (namely, never to watch the 'Sesame Beginnings: Moving Together' DVD, which, incidentally, stars SJP...how meta...or something).

Buttermilk Bread

Today got off to a pretty bad start. I got up early(ish) - at 6.30 - intending to go for a run, only to discover that Cherie, on a safety-consciousness binge following the near-break-in, had hidden all the house keys, and I had no way of getting out. Frustrated, and with an increasing sense of cabin fever, I went back to bed until about half 8, feeling I'd somehow earnt the right to sleep in for a bit. 

When I emerged, Cherie was pretty apologetic (in what I've deduced is a pretty Australian way - i.e. laughing about it) and we went out to the 'Beach House' (the 'Snakes and Ladders'-esque playspace, previous scene of Harry's 3rd Birthday). Things improved from then on out really, the kids were entertained, largely by themselves, there were no accidents á la last time - it was actually a lot easier that going with Paul, and just Michael, weirdly enough. 

The only other major events of the day were killing a large number of ants who had lain eggs in the roof of the children's playhouse...shaking them out was a pretty grim discovery and *drumroll* making my own bread from buttermilk leftover from yesterday's butter-making lesson. It was pretty exciting (as domestic things go) and I learnt how to get bread to 'prove' (rise, basically) and managed to bake it to perfection just as I finished dressing Michael after his bath. The kitchen smelt amazing all evening, and buttermilk bread is sooo delicious (it has a similar consistency to crumpets) I ended up eating a big proportion of the loaf :S Both events made me feel pretty satisfied on the domestic skills front though, and tomorrow is another day, during which (now I know the location of the keys) I will hopefully be able to finally run by the river and blow off some steam. :D

Ciao for now!

A xx

WArt

My second real day off since being here, and seriously looked forward to! We went to a Chinese restaurant and Cherie treated me to Yum Cha for breakfast/brunch which was an interesting experience (I particularly liked the continual offering of food, though Cherie turned down all the interesting looking desserts on our behalf...booo!), but perhaps not one I'm that keen to repeat - that much meat at that time in the morning isn't really to my taste. I then hung around until Annie and Michael went down for their nap because Cherie was desperately trying to sort out cleaning the Toyota because somebody was coming to view it. Then I took the bus into town (narrowly avoiding a mini torrential downpour) and did a bit more looking around the shopping malls. Feeling a cultural dearth I also decided to visit the WA Museum of Art, where they had a visiting display entitled 'Relativity' by a woman called Christina Puccini. Her stuff - consisting largely of anthropormorphised vehicles, which were pretty cool, and weird humanoid creatures made of acrylic and human hair, which were as grossly compelling as they sound. In the upstairs of the gallery they had some really traditional ' Dream Time' art by Aboriginals, and another exhibition called '12', which was by Year 12 students from across WA, and Japan (in an exchange type situation), some of which were truly fantastic. The whole thing was jsut run on suggested donations too, which was pretty refreshing given the usual charges for visiting exhibitions in UK galleries. the only downpoint - something shared by the goawful Saatchi gallery - was the ban on photos. I really hate when galleries do that. Obviously I can understand the desire to keep art and intellectual property from being mercilessly copied, but it just seems pretty draconian to ban photos entirely. Anyway, after a decidedly cold and dready wait for a bus home, I got back ,and Cherie and  I watched 'High Fidelity' - which was not as a good a film as I remembered it being, but we still discovered a shared passion for John Cusack.

Goodnight!

A xx

Room switching

So today was the first day without Paul in the house and everyone coped remarkably well. Cherie and I took Annie and Michael to the local pool for their regular Saturday swimming lesson, which was quite fun. The lessons are only about half an hour, and Michael, though desperate to run into the water with his clothes on initially, did not take too kindly to being ducked under in the pool, despite having done it before, and being given the warning to which he's accustomed (the wide-eyed look of shock on his face when I pulled him up was a cause of slight schadenfreude. The crying for a large proportion of the lesson afterwards wasn't though...). After the lesson, we battled through torrential rain to the car (seriously, Australia?!) then Annie and Michael went down for their nap, and I went for one too, despite fully intending to go into town after Cherie suggested it (the rain and lack of umbrella was a bit of a hinderance though).

We the spent most of the afternoon disassembling and reassembling Annie and Michael's cots to transfer them to the 'spare room' (which has the nappy changing table/all their clothes in it) so that they could be closer to me and Cherie whilst Paul is away. It was actually quite...well, maybe not actually fun, but certainly satisfying, in a rather masochistic way. Annie and Michael 'helping' (by which I mean using the partially disassembled cots as obstacle courses, and periodically running off with bolts and allen keys) made it quite interesting. Both slept perfectly happily in their 'new' room, whilst Cherie and I had a much deserved glass of wine, and some delicious homemade cauliflower soup. Unbelievably, it's getting cold enough here for soup. Bah!

A xx

Training, Planes and Automobiles

This morning I 'slept in' (until 7.50am) accidentally, having set my alarm for 5 to, in theory go for a run down to the river (pfft...like that was ever going to happen). I got up feeling mildly guilty, and hoping Cherie wouldn't be too annoyed, only to find, when I first saw Cherie, that the two cars had been 'broken into' whilst on the driveway. I say broken into, but both had actually been accidentally left unlocked as things have been pretty hectic here recently, organisation-wise (that and this is a 'safe neighbourhood', and they have security gates, so the risk seems minimal anyway). Nothing was taken, thankfully (despite Cherie and the kids' passports being left in one car, and rifled through!), and, thanks to their incomprehensible-to-outsiders immobilisation systems, neither car was actually stolen. This was pretty disconcerting anyway though, as I'd been left as the sole adult in the house last night, because Paul and Cherie went out on their last date night before Paul leaves for the UK. I had felt unusually spooked being in the house on my own - despite having been left there with just the kids before - and weirdly enough, I'd actually gone out to put the buggys down by the side of the house, seen one of the cars unlocked, and with a window down, and attempted to start it to put the windows up. Ironically though, thanks to aforesaid immobilisation system, I'd failed to do so. I wish now that I'd had the foresight to text Paul or Cherie and ask them how to do it, but I didn't want to seem too intrusive, and kind of assumed they might lock both cars when they came back in the other one. The other thing that spooked me the next morning was the fact that there had been a car with its headlights on just across the road, waiting there for an oddly long time (I was trying to fold one of the buggys up, so I know it was at least 10 minutes-worth of incompetent catch-fumbling...), which had then driven off not long after I'd come out. Cherie also told me that whoever they were had been around the side gate, and into the courtyard, despite the fact that Paul had been up until about 3am (attempting to adjust his body clock to UK time). If a big trained military man doesn't deter people from scoping out a house, then it made me wonder what chance Cherie and I have :S. Eh well, if something happens it happens, and Cherie has repeatedly assured me that people can't get into the house, and we (by which she hopefully really means they - I've got into the habit of closing and locking things after me mostly to keep the children out of harm's way) just need to be more vigilant, putting the blinds down (whilst great when the sun is shining, the large windows everywhere do make you feel a bit exposed), and setting the burglar alarm etc.

Anyway, aside from a bit of early morning scare-mongering (Cherie now wants Annie and Michael to be moved into the back nappy-changing room too, to be closer to her and me at night) today was a pretty good day. Whilst Paul went into the city to complete various remaining tasks, Cherie and I took Annie and Michael to 'Braille Nest', which is basically another form of Kindy, again with specific emphasis on extra support for visually-impared children. The facilities were fantastic - it's basically a nursery attached to a Primary School, and they had all manner of outdoor play things (Michael had a whale of a time climbing stuff, pushing carts around, and throwing a giant ball about) - whilst indoors they had the same fluorescent books with braille and sewn on 3D pictures (things like little rubber frogs, teddies etc) as well as all the things you'd find in an everyday nursery ('home corner', craft areas, teeny chairs and sinks and so on). Unfortunately, the day's activity was 'making playdough' (seriously, for someone with a playdough phobia, Annie has to deal with a pretty indecent amount of exposure to it) but Annie was fine until it got to the mixing stage, and the mixture actually started to resemble playdough, at which point she promptyl refused to join in, and looked at books for the remaining time. We stayed all morning, though Cherie hadn't intended to, as Annie hadn't been in a while, so we were supposed to be helping her settle. This resulted in a major 'tanty' when we left though, and I attempted to carry a screaming, squirming Annie out of the gate (she can be heinously stubborn/immovable when she doesn't want to do something). 

After this, things got considerably better though, and we returned home for prolonged naps (I had a bit of a zone-out in my room after ensuring there was nothing more around the house I could feasibly do) then I took Annie and Michael down to the playground right by the river, which was really picturesque, we had 'bathtime' - which turned into 'shower-time', as Cherie has apparently been informed by the kids' swimming teacher that showers might help Annie's developing water familiarity. What with that, the change of bedroom, and the impending absence of Paul, it seems a lot of change for them both to cope with. Paul also warned me that Cherie was likely to be upset for a while at his leaving...(well duh! I know there's the British stiff upper lip stereotype and all that, but we can still empathise!). So how everyone fares over the next few days remains to be seen...

A xx

Hyde Park and little accidents

We dropped Annie off at Kindy this morning, intending to join her later on the class trip to 'Hyde Park' (lol). We went on the DMV for Paul to change the license plates on the Toyota to Perth ones (it was bought in Adelaide), but, bizarrely one of the requirements is documentation on the weight of the car to prove it's not heavy good vehicle, so after a 20 minute meeting with the woman at the desk it transpired that none of the car documentation had this info on, so the car had to be weighed. Whilst Paul went off to do that, Cherie, Michael and I drove around Hyde Park (the UK namesake of which is a heckkuva lot bigger :)) to see if we could spot Annie, but (again :S) she had to be left to her own devices. Thankfully she hadn't been told/wasn't aware that we might have been coming along, although apparently she flat-out refused to get in the bus to the park, and had to be ferried there by one of the teachers, in a car seat. Annie really isn't a fan of the unexpected, and Cherie was convinced that it was the disruption - the fact that she had just got to Kindy, and was then told they were leaving again - that made her freak out. Anyway, the day was pretty standard apart from that, although come bathtime, attempting to be efficient in dealing with two mandatory nappy changes at once (Poofest 2010 continues!), I changed Michael's nappy, put him on the floor of the nappy room, where he promptly started to wee. I yelled - the surprise of which I think stopped him - grabbed him and deposit him straight in the bath. Grab the stain-removing soap on the way back, scrub the carpet and change Annie, then deposit her in the bath. Crisis sort of semi-averted! Woo!

Night night

A xx

Office Babies

This morning I did my first solo morning get-out to Kindy with Annie and Michael. I was so ontop of things (for once) that we actually arrived 5 minutes before Kindy started. This turned out to be rather more a curse than a blessing, as Michael started to get crotchety (the minute somebody else does or gets something (in this case, Annie getting out of the buggy) he wants in on it too) and it was pretty awkward for me, as all the other parents chatted amongst themselves, and spoke to Annie and Michael, but not me :S I've become slightly averse to introducing myself because even when I do people almost immediately revert to calling me 'Anne', even after I've corrected them. The McFaddens previously had an au pair called 'Anne', so I can understand the confusion from some corners, but even those who would never have had contact with her seem to decide that's my name even if they start off saying 'Anna'. It's incredibly frustrating, although I suppose I can take some solace from the fact that it's just not that common a name here (and therefore, hopefully not personal), given the fact that, the range of names I've come across so far includes: Skye, Xavier, Angus, Jayden, Summer (quite a few of these in fact), Savannah, Nikita (but spelt 'Nakeeta'), Allie-Anne, to name but a few. On the flipside of this argument though, these names are uncommon to me, yet I've managed to remember them! Bah!

Anyway, nominal whinging aside, today was pretty fun. Once I'd dropped Annie off, Michael and I did a quick stop-off at the discount pharmacy to get a giant tub of hand-sanitiser (a serious godsend for changing nappies, but narrow shelves, and aisles with items precariously stacked in the middle en route to purchasing are NOT fun to negotiate with a relatively wide buggy). We got back to the house, and I had to attempt to get Paul up to take me and Michael to a tea-party at Cherie's work - they were having a kind of 'dress down' day where everyone came dressed as, or bearing something that represented an aspect of themselves, and a couple of the women, as working mothers, wanted to bring their children in. I knocked for Paul, expecting him to still be in bed (he's attempting to adjust his body clock to UK time) but he was up and assured me he'd be down and ready to go any minute. About 20 minutes later he came ambling down the stairs and started to make himself breakfast, asking me if this was the Blind Association meeting he was going to. I told him, (in a tone that was a cross between scathing and surprised) that it was the tea-party at Cherie's work, and he apologised for being more out of it than usual (although given his usual time management/organisational skills I doubt there was much discernible difference [I am well aware of the irony of me criticising someone else's time-management though, thanks :P]).

So we headed into the City and met Cherie in her dull-as workplace (good samosa and cake today though :D) and everyone cooed over the cuteness of Michael. I felt pretty sorry for Annie at this stage - although I'm sure she was enjoying Kindy, it seems a shame that she misses out on a lot of bonding things like this. People also remark on Michael's cheeriness and affability a lot more, although, if she's in the mood, Annie can be every bit as, if not more, disarmingly cute (if you really get her smiling, she gets these cute Japanese-kawaii style eyes. Somewhat like this a trait that, as Paul pointed out, comes from Cherie). Anyway, Michael had some photos taken 'helping' Cherie work at her desk, much to his delight (he is an incredible ego-maniac Michael, you just have to point his face out to him in any reflective surface and he's making gleeful noises and laughing away (e.g. Paul was on the sofa once eating something from a chrome bowl and Michael toddled over to see [read, be fed] and ended up admiring himself in it!) then Paul went to the infamous London Court to purchase Australiana tat to give as gifts in Saudi (apparently Saudi people are big on gift-giving and personal relationships in the business world), then went to the Citizen's Advice Bureau (Commonwealth similarities a-go-go...) and Michael and I played in a nearby park. Again Michael attracted a number of people, from several cheery elderly ladies and businesswomen, to an 11 month old girl and her Dad (they exchanged sticks a number of times. I think it was love...), and a group of teenage boys who, for some reason, Michael froze and pointed vigorously at, then attempted to follow out of the park, much to their amusement. He seems fascinated by the behaviour of older children, but particularly boys, often trying to join in with what they're doing, which is pretty ironic, given his treatment of baby Angus.