Silver Clouds

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Originally uploaded by jaguarish

Took Anya to the Gallery Of Modern Art today to enjoy the kids' area. My favorite part is a high-ceilinged room with fans blowing around bouyant Mylar pillows (the silver clouds). I had a hard time convincing Anya to pose at all for this "celebrity portrait" as she was more interested in using the controls in the photo booth -- hence the odd expression.

For some reason this photo reminds me of the Frieda Kahlo self-portrait with herself repeated three times as goddess, mother and child sitting inside successive embraces.

Thunderbirds Are Go!

This Easter weekend, we stayed at the family units in Peregian Beach along with our in-laws. Last year Anya had followed her cousins around without real understanding, while they hunted chocolate Easter eggs (the youngest, Isaac, by cunningly following their dog around); this year she actually did some hunting herself, with everyone chiming in, "hot!" "cold!" to clue her in. I wish I could remember what Americans do, because my childhood Easter memories are mostly formed from school activities as my parents didn't do much special for Easter. I remember dying and decorating hard-boiled eggs, crafting bunnies and chicks from cotton balls and pipe cleaners, and just maybe getting to eat a tiny bit of chocolate and marshmallow. (That's another discrepancy -- no marshmallow chicks are sold here.)

Meanwhile, Callum really got moving this weekend and started going across whole rooms and down hallways, groaning with the effort as he went. Life's a whole new ballgame for him now! Today he also stepped up the pace with making not just one, but several different syllables in one continuous burst of sound -- for example: "Mamamam bab bab buh mam mam buh bah boo..." (Until today he would only repeat one syllable over and over.) This morning I could swear he talked for a solid fifteen minutes (and David could hear him from the other end of the house) while I lay groggily next to him and occasionally lifted my head to murmur to him encouragingly.

Other milestones for Anya: sleeping overnight without a nappy (she's been dry for a few months now but we were too chicken to try it); swimming across a lane and back, talking the whole way; writing letters and numbers... and generally acting like a little adult (except for a baffling need to delay and naysay proceedings at random times throughout the day).

Our Celebrity Portrait

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Originally uploaded by jaguarish

I finally made it to the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art this week. Strangely, I ended up feeling that I was more impressed by Yayoi Kusama's works. However, I imagine that it's probably hard to take in Warhol's work because he's been so influential. His way of seeing and creating art has so pervaded our cultural environment that his artworks seem (in hindsight) obvious and nothing special.

Rainwater Tank Installation

This is only a temporary location, but still annoying that the tank completely blocks access through the yard.


David looks like he's grinning, but actually he is grimacing in pain as his head is aching from a cold and the machine vibrations are getting to him (not to mention the general fatigue of a long day of hard labor).


This is the tank overflow pipe (should we ever be so lucky to have that much rain). It was a real bugbear to complete the installation since this neighborhood doesn't have a stormwater system, so we were required to connect to a 1m x 1m x 1m rubble pit. Thanks to the tank installers, we learned this fact after the tank had been placed in the only through access, forcing us to be inventive about how to bring in the earthmoving equipment.

It was lucky for us that our neighbors had their house razed recently (to build a new one) and were happy to let us drive in through their property. David simply cut out some of the rotten old fence (to be replaced anyway as part of construction) and set up a ramp over our back retaining wall. Once situated, the digging was not so straightforward either as he discovered some 60-yr-old construction rubble in the process. Fortunately, the rubble was useful for filling the pit, which was for the rainwater tank overflow. This job took all weekend. Kudos to my manly man!

Terminal Fatigue

David is conked out in bed with a cold and the rest of the household has also been under the weather for about the last two weeks. I haven't gotten terribly sick (had maybe a couple of days of feeling headachy) but I am very tired from coping with two grizzly kids. Callum seemed to be on the mend earlier this week but went downhill again with new, scarier symptoms. The doctor thinks he probably got a second virus just as he was getting over the first one.

Nonetheless, there are some fun things to report. Last night we had several friends over for a games night -- "Man Bites Dog" was first, then "Listen Up!" No PCs or game consoles involved! Just great food and conversation.

Also despite being sick, Callum has continued to show off new skills such as waving his dummy or toy between my mouth and his own -- he also did this with his grandma. It really seemed like he was trying to insert his dummy in my mouth.

Anya surprised me tonight by properly counting objects in a picture. She's known how to count up to 13 or 14 for quite a while, and recently mastered the idea that holding up fingers = a number, but until now had never seemed to understand about pointing at objects one by one to count them, and would randomly point all over the page while reciting her counting sequence.