Early to Rise

I got woken up when Eloise woke up at 5.20am and got brought into bed with us to sleep some more. She has woken up early a few times over the past few weeks, but generally due to the cold we've all been suffering from (but are over now).

Nicole's alarm clock went off at 5.30am. And general moving around went on until 6.30am. So sleeping was not done.

I gave in at that point and we got up and made toast and coffee/tea and watched a bit of telly, and we were down the beach for 8 o'clock.

The longest beach visit for quite a while, the tide was getting to be pretty much in so we walked behind the mangroves and picked flowers as we went. Ahhhh.

On the headland/sand spit we - well, Eloise - harrassed fishermen by standing next to them, pointing at their bait and forcefully announcing "Fish." And we met a little miniature(!) dachsund puppy, as well as an Irish geezer who lives in Nudgee Beach (the area that is, not under the sand itself) who, since I saw him when Nicole was back in Blighty, has had a baby boy, and an extra dog.

After footling about up there for a while, we headed back, putting the dogs on the lead to walk past a bloated tropical fish lying at high-tide point, and repaired to the café for, guess what, a Baby Chino. Eloise had been requesting one ever since we arrived at the beach. I think maybe we have a café society girl in the making, all we need to do is move her up-market from fish and chip shops and from frothy milk and a teaspoon. And I took the bold step of buying a Sunday Paper, though I wasn't actually permitted to read it as we ate our Vegemite (Eloise) and Peanut Butter (me) sandwiches.

Then to the playground, well two playgrounds, which are arrayed along the beach where the café is, where swings were swung on, slides slid on, and see-sawed see-sawed on, amongst other things, whilst the dogs lounged next to a bench underneath a tree. Eloise met a "Mine mine mine" Nemesis, which was quite amusing in a "Thank God it isn't only me" kind of a way.

Of course it couldn't last and eventually exhaustion set in, little tempers frayed and we got home for a sleep at 1.

An hour and a half later, just as I was heading out to the hammock with my book (The Portable Door), she woke up again.

It's been a long day.