Three. Four. Go.

Internal Combustion's Reminiscence of In Vitro Pulsations

Daytime sleep for babies is mighty fine, not just for their sanity but for mine! If Lyra doesn't sleep during the day, then come six o'clock there's hell to pay. Hell hath no fury like a baby scorned, and my toddler's scorn is red and horned; loud and unreasonable, screamingly so, devilish - capricious - infuriating, although it burns with no care for right or wrong, it shines twice as bright, so half as long.

So some food, a book and some sleep is ideal. But a building site next door? An ordeal. Well we could take our chances in the automobile.

Tuesday's trip to escape the construction of next-door's attempt at light-obstruction took us on an expanding locus with toddler sleep as our primary focus. Lyra, however, had other ideas, as befits a lady of her tender years. Transportation naming is her favourite game: there's no limit to the cars that she can name when they're all called "car" regardless of colour; it's a game that soon becomes duller than dull. Er.

Ironically, all those cars kept her awake when the car should be calming her, for f**k's sake, for the gentle low noise of the car on the road should remind her of her original abode in the heart of the womb, in that warmth so deep, with the heartbeat of mother suffusing her sleep.

But no, this urchin's for singing along to whatever she thinks is her favourite song.

Through the suburbs then forests and hills we glide out to Samford Valley, and Camp Mountain we ride along back-roads with animals off to the side, so it's animal noises we play, sleep denied.

There's a barrow of honey off the side there, how quaint. I'll stop off for a picture, to break up the trip.

Then some really dull music, Autechre? Mike Oldfield? Surely Mike Oldfield can loosen her grip?

An hour has passed, she has slipped her straps, and we've reached the end of a no-through road. There's no end to her strength in resistance to naps, but my determination has plateaued.

So we head back: 

"Oh look! There's a car. And a car! That's a car! And another one, look! There's a car! A car! Daddy! Look, there's a car! There's a car! There's a car! There's a f**k!"*

It's on Pickering Road, five minutes from home, that she finally loses her struggle. Her eyelids flutter, her head droops a little, and a left-turn allows her to snuggle.

* that's Lyra-talk for truck, unfortunately

Queensland Ballet Provide Incidental Musical Backdrop For Serial Acts of Unsolicited Intimacy

After an awesome day's sleep afforded by the rest of us hoofing it to Lone Pine for a few hours, Nicole woke up non-grumpy and raring to go to the only good thing about the G20 Summit which will be here next week, the G20 Cultural Celebration (the only good thing I'm aware of, I will qualify, before the Thought Police come along and shut my ass down in the interests of publicity whitewashing).

Today's entertainment is an open-air twilight performance of Coppelia by the Queensland Ballet, at the Riverstage, and along with little Maya, one of Eloise's dancing chums, and a stroller laden with goodies, we trundled down there to experience the celebration and see what the night would bring.

First of all, it brought ballet exercises for all the young aspirants, who crowded the mosh-pit in front of the huge stage behind which the amphitheatrical lawns ascended to the peripheral pop-up (probably, that's the phrase of the moment) catering establishments.

Then some interviews on stage which I don't think anybody really listened to, fascinating though they probably were.

All the while, Lyra making herself busy exploring the stage, and whenever music came on, breaking into a pirouetting waltzing ballet-trot around the mosh-pit, gracefully (I use the word advisedly) meandering between the people, occasionally stopping for a cuddle from a stranger's leg, sometimes stopping, and must standing arms outstretched to receive the adulation of the crowd.

We noticed a familiar Chinese face chatting amiably and a queue began to form to have photographs with him. He turned out to be Li Cunxin, the Director of Queensland Ballet, and as I understand it, the very Personage Previously Known As Mao's Last Dancer. He point at Lyra and smiled in a friendly yet occidentally enigmatic way.

So we joined the queue and had photographs with the Director of Queensland Ballet, oooh!

I exchanged some noncommittal platitudes with the Great Man, and we moved on. It was a nice thing for him to have done.

Before long, as part of the educational background of what goes into a ballet performance, and to give the children something to look at, the dancers began to perform their warm-up exercises on stage, pulling unlikely poses whilst being sternly corrected by Madame Za Za (not her real name).

And, as dusk gathered and peals of classical music rang out across the summer evening, Eloise and Maya watching intently from the fence, the dancers continued to perform their stretches and leaps and grand jetties or whatever. And Lyra made herself comfortable with various families she liked the look of, looked up stranger's skirts and garnered sweeties from whoever would give them to her. Which was everybody.

As the light failed some little girls decided to take a little revenge on Lyra's clothing excesses and played a chasing game which ended up with her in a storage area by the side of the stage, and having been retrieved from that predicament by my good self, proceeded to attempt to invade the orchestral area where the players were preparing to play. The security level was readjusting itself to Toddler Alert.

The performance itself soon kicked off, and an epic in three parts it was. I'm sure it was inspiring but as Nicole and I were taking it in turns to track the Monkey and keep her from going too far in terms of over-familiarity with the general public, we saw precious little.

There was some impressive leaping and some mighty fine displays of physical dexterity and buttocks you could fry eggs on, after they'd been cracked between them. I don't know how many Andrew those boys had down their tights, but By George, if I had to guess the flavour of their packets of crisps I'd be going for smoky bacon.

I mean, look at the size of that thing that I've only digitally enhanced slightly. OK, that's a fallacy; I've enhanced it quite a lot.

Typical Saturday Story

Does My Bum Look Big in These?

Now I have to try to write enough text to occupy the space next to this totally self-explanatory picture of Lyra trying on some way-to-big pants and being pretty delighted about it.

She has mastered, or at least is practicing the art of taking her own nappies off, and has started to use excretion words, and this has been taken in certain quarters as a sign that developmental stages are being hinted at.

Funnily enough, she has shown decreased motivation to wearing nappies and/or pyjamas over the past couple of days, which is almost certainly a coincidence. And by decreased motivation I mean she has kicked up a considerable stink (ha ha) which is a pain in the arse (ha ha).

But she's going to have to put off toilet training for a bit because the pair of pants that fits her won't exist until her rear increases in girth. And if Eloise's experience is anything to go by she'll do it when she's good and ready, and when they start to use the little toilets at nursery.

Rushing, Not Rushing

IN a sea of morning-school-run relative ease, this morning stood out as a notable exception. Trikeulous we were, and consequently aiming for an 0820 departure. Lyra decided that she wasn't cool with wearing shoes or sunscreen and this caused some angst. At roughly 0817, Eloise, heretofore a paragon of efficiency, begun a hairdressing work of art that would clearly blow our target time. Again, a cause of angst. We recovered well, though, and departed for school still on-time, Eloise having written on her hand all the things she need to remember, having forgotten: like homework.

Eloise remembered just after we left that she'd also forgotten her hat: oh no, actually she'd lost it, so we went back and got her a replacement hat.

Things were then going swimmingly, until that is Eloise realised half-way there that she'd forgotten that she had a dance performance at Assembly and she needed her dance costume. So back home we went, Eloise with keys supposedly rushing ahead but actually walking just a little bit faster than us.

Then we drove to school. Eloise forgot the hat she'd taken to replace the other hat she'd lost.

Still, we got there sort of on time, I think....

After getting home, post-rush deflation, with bugger-all to do other than put food in front of the bairn, be hot, bleach and disinfectant the dead-possum-stinking bin, be hot, responsibly dispose of the bleachy tailings, be hot, play with the bairn, reflect on the repetetiveness of the day. It became apparent that a trip somewhere was in order; somewhere air-conditioned, where we could be cool.

In between just being hot, I ummed and ahhed then decided that Chipmunks would be in order, and so we went and spent an amusing couple of hours ticking the Amuse and Exhaust boxes, but well, somehow, well, you know.

Telepiphany

This Lumia phone of mine, which I really like, has been back to the repair shop, wherein lies a story of coincidence whereby, it having been away for a while, I called into the Telstra shop to check on its progress, and they told me that it had been dispatched back to the shop whereupon a little head pops out of the back saying "I just opened the mail, is this your phone?" which I was quite delighted about.

The reason it had gone back was because the headset detection had started to fail, so the phone would decide it wasn't connected, randomly, making listening to music etc quite painful (or arguably more pleasant if you don't like the rubbish I play).

Problem is, it's started to go tits up again, and so this morning I was trying out a different headset to check it out a bit further. I had to fix the headset that's my the piano, and when I popped it on my bonce, Lyra took something of an interest. 

She demanded it from me, popping the headset on, and when her head filled with music her little eyes lit up and a smile of epiphanous fascination and amazement spread across her face like silk sliding across a newly-made bed. 

Listening to the strains of Dr. Phibes she accidentally (on purpose?) phoned Nicole and failed to leave her a message that Telstra's computers could turn into a text message.

She did not want to give up that phone, but that was OK because if I listened closely I could just hear that the headphones were still working, having passed the five minutes or so the other ones normally stop. 

And so, not wishing to tempt fate, I diagnose: the headphones, not the phone.

Three Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad

After a short interlude at home where a spread of berries, fruit and fruit- and berry-based snacks were laid out and summarily rejected, I decided a bike ride was in order. Lyra was in reasonably furious disagreement, pointing meaningfully at the Birthday Trike, but we weren't going to get far fast on that thing so I was not for turning.

After a short struggle she was ensconced in the Seat of Doom and we were off to Kalinga Park, pedalling hard into the damnable sea-breeze headwind that blows up the Kedron Brook, but ten minutes later (roughly) we were there, ambling about, doing the usual playground thing.

Lyra made friends with a little boy who insisted that his name was Poo-poo. He thought this hilariously funny, and I was forming the impression that this apparent two-year-old had a tremendously advanced sense of humour until I asked him how old he was - he was apparently poo-poo years old - and then caught a whiff of the inspiration of his never-gets-tired little joke.

Lyra had a sing-song after her bottle of milky, which was nice... for her.

How the days fly by.

Anyway the intention obviously was to entertain, inform, and exhaust. And with a three-hour nap following shortly after our return (tail-wind this time) I feel I ticked all three boxes.

Trike: Terrific Transport, Temporarily?

So, amazingly we were out of the house and bound for school by 0820 Zulu this morning, with the new trike very much in demand as the transport option of choice. Lyra figuratively leapt on to it, and treated it very much as the Royal Litter (that is, lounging amiably and politely declining the opportunity to contribute towards forward momentum). Eloise was initially dubious as this meant the stroller as luggage trolley was not available, but I shouldered her enormous shoulder-bag of dancing paraphernalia and she rucked her enormous ruck-sack of educational paraphernalia and we took it in turns at the helm while Lyra made intermittent efforts to put her feet somewhere near the pedals, then just dragged her feet amusingly on the floor.

I had initial reservations that it would be an impediment to rapid progress but in fact it's very easy for Eloise to push (joking!) and we got to school actually early, met with Gabriella our dancing lift-share who relieved us of the SBoDP, making Eloise's life a little easier.

On the way Lyra did attempt a couple of dismont manoeuvres but these were quickly nipped in the bud.

Homeward bounds, I discovered the trick to lowering the foot-rest and then by George we were cooking on gas. Trike- / trike- / trike- / trike-ability.

Until she got off to investigate the entertaining rampage system at he disabled resource hit thingy that's round the back of wherever it is that it's round the back of: then it was game over, red rover, and it took us a cool hour of gentle farting about to get home again.

I said to her, if you think I'm the sort of boy who carries a lady along in his arms while simultaneously pushing along her available yet inexplicable unwanted push-along tricycle, looking like a complete winky-walker, you can think again.

Two in the Bush

After we were done with the rainforest hike, we limped back to the car. Eloise had damaged herself swinging on vines; I had damaged myself lugging the Sproglet around; Nicole and I were both the worse for wear for the interminable amounts of time we had spent waiting for Squirty to get her Birthday Arse into gear and try walking for a change.

We drove up to Mt Nebo and visited Mrs Miggins' Tea Rooms, Eloise's possible favourite place ever, and fed the wild birds there. Eloise made friends with King Parrots and had a Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo feeding from her palm - a risky manoeuvre at the best of times. No ill effects as she soon realised what a chance she was taking; but looking at the jacaranda above, there were fifteen of those huge birds waiting for their chance to grab a piece of the action.

After a while we called it an armpit and headed back down the Mountain, making it back in time to fulfil Nicole's dream of an impromptu back-deck get-together where her sumptuously moist spongy segments were consumed with great enthusiasm.

P.S. Hello Maisie and Voilet!