Easter Break 2015

My camera  - my proper digital SLR camera broke some time ago. I can't even remember when - was it before Christmas?  Actually it didn't break, I dropped it and after that I kept getting an error message.  Google tells me that this is a common problem with this camera and its a relatively easy fix.  I just need to drop it into a camera repair shop but months have passed - maybe even a year - and I haven't done that.  As a result, the only photos I take are on my phone, and I rarely get around to downloading them onto the computer.  So when I do occasionally decide to blog, I use the phone blogger app to put in the photos and then, at some point when I remember, I'll write the content on the actual computer, because I've got to the age where I now have to put my glasses on top of my head to use the keyboard on my phone.

The point of this rather lengthy introduction is to explain why, at the beginning nearly of June, I am writing about Easter.  I actually did put these photos into a post but they didn't upload and next time I visited the blog on the computer, there were no draft posts waiting and it wasn't until I bothered to go back to check the phone that I realised.

Because this blog has become an intermittent sort of journal for me, I feel an obligation to jot down, occasionally, what goes on.  Truthfully, at least part of this is pure guilt that my older girls will have a significant amount of their art work and odds and ends about their interests and lives recorded and, unless I make at least the occasional effort, Lil will have next to none....

So we went to Little Sheoak for Easter - Gracie and Lil wanted to take their old fashioned dresses, and though it was entirely impractical and they were bound to get muddy and dusty I let them, as I knew exactly that they wanted to prance around in the bushes and play orphans and other romantic games wearing them.  I didn't regret it.

We usually see koalas there and I'm always especially keen to show off 'our' koalas to visitng friends It still gives me a thrill to suddenly spy one in the crook of a treee.  Well friends did come and we saw 4 koalas!  It was nearly becoming old - oh there's another one. And another one.  I'm always so happy, though.

The insane kookaburra that dive bombs the windows came back after the first couple of days and this time we had our old dog Winnie with us, who, in her aged confusion, could not figure out how to get back in through the very door she had just exited, and instead would walk round and round the house, whining at the windows.

On Easter sunday we did the Otway Fly zipline.  It was a  considerably longer drive than we had expected, through the very windy Otway roads, with children who tend towards caresickness and some of whom had eaten way too many easter eggs.  Not naming names but let's just say I was very glad to have an old plastic bag handy.

Gracie and Lil spent hours drawing a zoo and then creating animal enclosures out of cushions and blankets and things.

Nina read the Diary of Anne Frank.  I can't even remember what I was reading then, but I just finished A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (oh how I love Anne Tyler) and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente which I also loved.

Autumn started slowly, then, just as the leaves turned, we had a hugely windy wet couple of days and they were gone, at least from our vine. It was a bit of a pity, they normally hang round prettily for a few weeks at least.

In other news I moved offices - just to the other side of the floor, but it means I look out west, over the big ferris wheel that is finally up and running in docklands.  Each day the city turns on something new for me  - lots of gorgeous sunsets, sometimes impressive storm fronts, and now that it is getting dark before I leave, the light show on the ferris wheel.  I find myself taking an insane number of photos of the view from my office, most of which look a bit crap.  Also my office window badly needs cleaning. There are these big pylon things in the distance behind the wheel which move about all the time.  I have no idea what they are  - I guess something to do with the docks?  But it's quite a lovely view. I've always been a bit partial to the industrial aesthetic.  For many years Craig and I lived across from the flour mill in North Melbourne that operated 24/7 (except for good Friday - we had so tuned out the constant humming that its absence seemed suddenly eerie).  I liked looking across at the big silos, with the sunset as a backdrop.

Little things of no great importance.

Every day a hundred words, a thousand thoughts, a million moments forgotten.  Did the invention of the camera aid or inhibit the process of memory.  Do I remember my newborn's face, or do I just recall the photograph?  

Captured forever: the muddy feet; a completed sunflower stitching; singing in the rain; the end of autumn; taking a bow; preparing for lunch with friends.

I'll look back on these in a year or more and perhaps remember the lunch - we had tuscan bean soup and salad and bread; how kinder was unexpectedly closed so Lily came to work with me; how much Grace and Lily loved making a muddy mess of the newly-dug-up veggie patch; walking to tap class through the autumn leaves, Lily and Grace playing clapping games along the way.

I remember Ruby teaching Nina those clapping games.  I remember Pauline Mak teaching me 'My Name is Aitch Eye Aitch Eye Chicken Boy Chicken Boy Uni Uni Eye Eye Eye' in grade 2.  Back and back it goes.

And a few more years will pass and perhaps I'll forget the lunch and remember only the bowl and the tablecloth. I won't remember who did the stitching but might remember sitting with my girls, helping them pull yarn through hessian.  I won't remember why Grace and Lily are bowing, but will remember that house with the high picket fence and the forget-me-nots that poked through it in the summer, Saturday mornings at tap, watching the Fred Astaires and Suzy Q's be absorbed into little feet and minds.

I wonder how our memories are distorted by photographs.  How the act of capturing that image gives it a disproportionate importance and corrupts the truth. 

Tiny happy people

I've become a little bit obsessed with these tiny little wooden dolls lately. It's something about the very easy versatility of the wooden form - a few dots and a dash, there's a face, a lick of paint for a dress. It's also something about the little scraps of felt or lace or linen that it takes to make them undressable.  Nothing is quite so frustrating as a glued-on hat to a child. But truthfully it's just the tinyness of it all. I'm rediscovering my lifelong love of the titchy tiny, a love I had largely shelved until I had children.  Nina's thrill over (for example) the mini toothpaste you get given on airplanes, reminds me of my first visit to Southeast Asia and where I discovered pharmacies full of tiny products - mini shampoos and tiny packets of band aids and single cough drops for sale.  I can't really explain why these things are appealing. I can't understand myself why I can spend hours sewing a tiny red linen cape lined in grey with a tiny buttonhole, when I often can't be bothered measuring things properly. Why do I like cutting out tiny autumn leaves, or making miniature cucumber sandwiches but hate making sure my lines are straight? One sort of attention to detail I am all over, the other totally not. 

Perth Branch

My brother's family visited us this school holiday. It has been two years since we've seen his four boys, but it might have been two weeks. The kids slot back together in that uniquely cousiny way, taking it for granted that they'll get on, find common ground, have fun. I love that his boys seem to spend most waking hours kicking or throwing balls or trick jumping scooters, which encourages my girls to follow suit.  Hours and hours were spent shooting hoops, even Lily, atop her cousin Ben's shoulders, joined in and shot her first goal. Many many trips were also had up the ladder to the shed roof retrieving balls but that was most definitely half the fun. 

We spent a day at Sovereign Hill - tragically unable to get in a photo session as they were fully booked, dashing my hopes of a snap of my four girls and four nephews in 19th century miner's garb. We did get to dip candles, go bowling, and get names stamped on horseshoes and in 'Wanted' posters. It's the same old fun it ever was and the kids loved it.

Such an interesting and different energy, having four boys around. There are so many  similarities and so many differences. I just wish they lived closer.

Good Friday

It's been an unusual couple of weeks on the work front and the uncertainty surrounding a particular project meant we couldn't plan any time away this Easter. So it was a treat that various stars aligned and we were able to nip down to the coast on Thursday night to spend Good Friday away. It was wet and very very muddy, though the sun came out intermittently. At dusk a kookaburra sat in a branch overhead and dive bombed the kitchen window, tapping with his enormous beak, telling us it was dinner time. Perhaps he is used to being fed. He woke us in the morning too, clearly expecting breakfast.  Ruby and Nina accepted Craig's bet to run to the top of the ridge and back without stopping. Despite Ruby 'feeling like she was going to die' they made it. He now has to take them to Haighs for their choice of chocolate...

We read a bit, played bananagrams, Nana and Pa visited and we all ate way too many hot cross buns.  

Autumn Days

Autumn came upon us in a literal deluge.  I cannot remember when Melbourne was last so wet and drizzly for days on end with no let up.  It's entirely wrong to complain, of course, so be clear that I am not complaining, merely noting the damp conditions.

The damp kept us indoors perhaps more than we would want, and the staying indoors meant we had to find ways to keep entertained using methods other than baiting and taunting.  To be fair, the kids seemed reasonably content with baiting and taunting but I felt my brain might explode.

I loved this sunflower next to the house Lily drew and suggested maybe she do a stitching.

She drew another sunflower which I carefully traced onto hessian for her (she found drawing on hessian difficult).  Lily's kinder has been looking at seeds in some detail so Lily was particular about includng the seeds.

Then she started stitching.  I don't know about other four year olds, but Lily needs very hands on help with this sort of thing.  Pretty much a stitch by stitch reminder of which side to go in - otherwise we end up with big loops of yarn around the embroidery hoop.

We did a bit, took a break, did a bit more, took a break.  She brings it out now, most days, and does a few stitches.  When she is upset or excluded or being annoying to the other girls, I suggest we do a few stitches.  She's done all the petals now, and the seeds. I'll post some photos of her progress when I get around to it.  It's a nice way to spend these autumn days, as we watch the season turn.

Escape

Like nearly all of Melbourne we escaped to the bush this weekend. Even the most cursory glance at Instagram suggests that most people took the chance to get down to the beach, the river, into the hills, away to craft. The weather was perfect and everyone, in different parts of the state, seemed to be sharing the same lovely gentle sunsets and glorious morning light. 

We went camping, our first time with all the girls. Our camp spot, on private land above the Great Ocean Road in a field of wildflowers, would have to be as good a place to pitch a tent and sit around a campfire as exists anywhere on earth.  We were blessed with warm but not stinking hot weather and nights cool enough sleep comfortably in a tent with five other bodies. On Sunday night a ferocious wind sprang up and shook out tent for hours, but by mid morning it had died down completely, leaving such tranquility in its wake that it was impossible to imagine it had ever been. We finally saw a koala too - everyone else who has visited this bit of land has spotted at least one, and our good friends saw a mother and baby.  But we were pretty pleased with this sleepy fellow who lifted his head to watch us watch him and drifted back to sleep as we left.

We kept it very simple  - sausages and onions, jacket potatoes baked in the campfire, followed by rather burnt s'mores, bacon and eggs for brekkie and takeaway fish and chips the second night. We didn't have a heap of gear, and didn't need it - chairs and a table, books, a plate and mug each was about it. I did wonder what we would do all day up on the ridge; there is only so much gazing at gorgeous views that can be done.  But between firewood gathering, game playing, book reading, sunset watching, tent pitching, mattress inflating, and a couple of trips to the beach, the time just flew.