Two Year Olds and Rivers Don't Mix

After walking the dogs at the brook this morning we had lunch (pasta and pesto with a salad dressed with mayonnaise, manuka honey, mustard seeds, and roasted cashew nuts). The RCPA phoned during cook time, annihilating the nuts. Bugger.

After Nicole left for work I put Eloise to bed, in the unlikely event that she might sleep. After an hour of non-sleep I went in and read her a couple of books and put her back down. I had to have a lie down because I was absolutely cream-crackered. This afternoon I had a photographic field trip to go on with the guys from the course I did a little while ago, and I wanted to be vaguely rested up for it.

So I went toi bed and read a book for a bit, half-listening to the noises coming from next door.

I woke up at 2.30 with 30 minutes left to my appointment... and went in to Eloise's room to discover that she had emptied her clothes drawers and moved her space-age cocoon into the middle of the room, as well as driving her pram around a lot. So that's what the noises were. Her room looked like a bomb had hit it. She had also undressed herself and I found her nappy buried somewhere amongst the carnage.

So anyway we set off about ten past three and winged it into town to try to find a parking space which I did fairly easily. The walk to the botanical gardens should have taken five minutes but actually took twenty, for all the usual reasons.

After a couple of phone calls we hunted the gardens for our fellow snappers. Eloise had her little camera with her as well. I gave Eloise my mobile phone to play with so she would sit down in the pram... that's the last I saw of that.

We tracked the posse down eventually, and snapped around for a bit, then went down to a path that runs by the side of the Brisbane River to take some happy snaps of the yachts moored there, as well as some sculptures and the Story Bridge.

I got up onto a bench to take a picture of the Story Bridge and the next thing I knew, my lovely daughter had taken it into her head to roll the pram down a little hill. Little did she appreciate that the hill ended at the edge of the river and that there are certain immutable forces of nature that would result in certain immutable consequences to her actions... or did she? Because when I turned around to the sound of rolling wheels, I saw Eloise looking up at me proudly and the pram rolling into the river.

Geoff the snapper helped me climb down into the river but some friendly people in a yacht got their inflatable out and motored across and retrieved the pram for me, and the baby changing bag. The tripod, however, is history, or very wet toast, if you prefer.