Skitastic baby

Last weekend we took a long weekend break and headed for the snow. It had been raining gloomily in Melbourne for weeks before which meant that the mountains were getting a decent amount of snow cover. So off we headed to Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps. It was about a five hour drive. (You can tell we are getting more aussified as we didn't think too much of that. People over here are prepared to travel so much further by car.) We stayed in a lodge which is a cross between a youth hostel and a European style ski chalet: we had all our meals cooked and the full gourmet luxury experience yet we were expected to all sleep in bunks and depending on numbers, share rooms with strangers! Wisely the lodge manager didn't put anyone else in with us, as Dulcie did her waking up in the middle of the night yelling thing (an hour earlier each night we were there, ARRGGHH) but our friends Richard, Raechel & Abigail had a couple of people sharing with them who came back from a night at the bar and tried to get into the wrong bunk. Chaos ensued.







So, skiing in July. Weird huh? (The last time we went skiing must have been almost exactly 18 months ago, as the day we got back that time I discovered I was pregnant with Dulcie, and she hit 9 months last week.) It all actually worked very well with us taking it in turns to ski and do childcare. Abigail took her Pingu DVD and Thea took her new Fifi and the Flowertots, so the gilrs were happy. Thea said she was desperate to "ski fast" so one afternoon we hired her some boots and skis. Cue all manner of whinging. "These boots are tooooo tight." Will skied her down a very flat slope in between his skis and she moaned all the way down, and of course said "Again, again" at the bottom.

We couldn't help but notice a few key differences between the Victorian Alps and the French Alps, our usual ski haunt. Hotham was smaller & lower of course, but it seemed very uncrowded, no real queues. In fact on our way up the mountain on the way there we kept thinking we had gone the wrong way as there was no traffic. And this was on changeover day. Also, the Aussies who work the lifts etc are eternally cheerful, ask you how your day's skiing is going, help you get on the lift, and would never ever dream of closing the lift if they could see someone skiing down towards it. I couldn't help but feel that they should pop over to France and offer the ski resort staff there some lessons in customer service. Also the Aussies are health & safety freaks and insist on scaring you to death by putting signs at the top of black runs which say, "Expert skiers only. Do not fall over on this run," which is the kind of thing that makes me far more likely to fall over.

Anyway, we all got back in one piece, apart from a nasty bruise I sustained to the kneecap by walking into the tow bar on the back of some ridiculously oversized chelsea tractor in the car park of the place where we were returning the snow chains we'd hired. (Long sentence, but grammatically ok I think).

Being away at the weekend meant I missed the release of Harry Potter 7 which led to a pretty desperate time on Tuesday afternoon whizzing round Melbourne looking for a shop that hadn't sold out of them. I was successful on the fifth attempt and spent most of my free hours last week with my heart in my mouth wondering what was to become of the boy wizard. No spoilers here apart from to say I thought JK dun well.

Other news, I have been looking into doing a bit of work and have a few chats with different contacts I've made to see what's out there. Nothing definite yet but some interesting leads. Salaries seem a bit lower here and childcare costs the same, so I need to just make sure I don't lose any money! I think it's about time I got out of the house without the girlies a little more. They are both gorgeous and I love being with them, but it's too full on at the moment and I think a day or too when Mummy has a rest at work would probably do us all good.

Girlies news: Thea has completely turned into a blue-peter-presenteresque reuser of household junk and I am constantly being told off for throwing something away which she wants to make into something unfeasible. She gets this crazy look in her eyes and nearly always starts the process by saying, "Mummy, I've got a brilliant idea, let's make a ..." Today she threw a wobbly when Will left a cafe without the two empty cardboard cups she'd earmarked to make a mask with (?!). Dulcie has started crawling quite quickly now and as I have mentioned before, sees it as a personal mission to tidy up the by-products of Thea's craft work by eating them. She seems so grown up all of a sudden. A friend has lent us one of those baby entertainment centres that they stand up in and she just fiddles with all the toys on it, upright and perky, babbling a load of nonsense that sounds more like speech now. Anyway, if I don't finish this soon she'll have nothing to eat next week as I'm out of frozen baby mush. More anon.

July jaunts

Hello again from a wet and chilly Melbourne. We are learning to love the rain, cos rain means snow in the mountains and we have booked to go skiiing this weekend! Skiing in July. Crazy stuff. Actually a lot of the Aussies seem to have a sense that it's just not quite right to have the seasons this way round (heritage I suppose) and you see shops selling tinsel, fake trees etc for 'Christmas in July' celebrations that people do.

We are finally starting to feel a bit better. I had to go on antibios in the end for a chest infection. The kids are taking a few days break from being snotty, although D is still afflicted with teeth issues. Actually her teeth are coming through in a very odd looking way. The top two middle ones not thru yet but the next ones across on each side have come out mid way down the gum, almost like they are pushing forward as well as down. She looks like a little vampire when she grins! Suffice to say there has been an element of wailing in the night (her and me) and you can't even buy Medised (sure fire knockout drops) here. I had a discussion with a friendly pharmacist today about how I might mix my own. Dulcie has started crawling in a rather determined way. She also hates being carried and deplores being sat down. She tries to hurl herself out of our arms and insists on being stood up against things. Alarmingly this has co-incided with Thea going through a phase of increased creativity which involves cutting, sticking, building, gluing, taping, and a lot of dropping small items on the floor. We are averaging around 3 choke hazards a day..

Photos for this blog entry include the wonderful Pixar exhibition that we went to see in the city centre the other weekend, a trip that we did with our friends Emma, Alec and Sebastian to Weribee Safari Park (the kids had more fun bundling each other on the slide than on the safari bus, I think) and Thea's trip to the wonderful Kew traffic school. This is where kids cycle their bikes round a mini road system, complete with dinky functioning traffic lights and painted sheds to look like little buildings, supposedly to learn the highway code. Hmmm. Thea spent more time playing shops in the huts than actually cycling, but she had fun.

June jaunts

What happened to June?! (And I don't mean poor old Blighty's complete lack of summer.) We seem to have slipped onto some kind of fast forward mode. We've have suddenly been here six months, Dulcie is eight months old, we've done two terms of all our weekly activities, and Melbourne midwinter is upon us. I'll start with the weather since that's so topical. Well, for the first time since we've been here, the Melbourne cliche 'four seasons in one day' is finally starting to apply. You can't really look at the sky and make a plan for the afternoon, as it can change and change back again in the space of a few hours. As a result I have occasionally been caught out in a heavy shower with a buggy full of greengrocery, two small kids, no coats, umbrellas or raincover.

The womenfolk of the house have all had rotten colds on and off for a month. The last bout has been a bit frustrating, with everyone coughing and spluttering. At night there's a cacophony of soprano and treble hacking, with an accompaniment deep bass snoring. It's the school holidays here now for two weeks and all our groups have stopped, so I hope that we'll be in contact with a few less germs and be able to properly get over things. Dulcie has returned to old tricks of waking up when it's still dark, so all in all what with illness and tiredness we've been feeling a bit sorry for ourselves at times.

A couple of weeks ago it was Will's company's annual knees up, which took place at the famous MCG in the members' rooms (which they project managed when it was built). I didn't have particularly high expectations, particularly when I found out the theme was 'hollywood glamour' (nothing in my wardrobe answering that description, had to get the Audrey Hepburn option from local fancy dress hire) but it turned out to be an absolute blinder of an evening, fantastic views over the city one way and the vast sports ground the other way, excellent food and wine and a band playing our kind of music. Here's a pic of us attempting to look glamorous, self portrait when we got home (2am, latest stop out since having kids)! Can you check out my bling?


We've been enjoying family time together at the weekends lately. There are so many great places to go in Melbourne, and as we're still basically in tourist mode, we tend to go and do more things than some of our friends who live here all the time. These pics are us enjoying a bit of family jumping (off a wall next to the Collingwood Children's farm near us) and the visit we did yesterday to MSAC (Melbourne Sports & Aquatic Centre) on the other side of town. To my huge surprise, Dulcie coped really well (first time we've got round to taking her swimming) and stayed in the water for quite a long time. Thea did brilliantly in the waves pool and to my utter shock agreed to go down the water chute with Daddy. This was a really high, dark, enclosed slide with lots of twists and turns, the sort of thing that I have to pluck all my courage up to go on. I think Will was desperate for a go but too embarrassed without a small child as an excuse, so he talked her into it. Apparently as they were spat out into the pool at the bottom she said, 'Again!' This is yet more proof that she has more Williamson genes than Ewins ones. It was a good way to get a quiet afternoon tho as both girls were exhausted from the activity; Thea was so weary that she actually fell asleep with a toy in her mouth.