Dunsborough holiday mark 2

At about this time last year we spent a week in Dunsborough with friends and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. We repeated the exercise a fortnight ago, over the long weekend, in a rented house with Granny and Grandad.

The house we stayed in was right on the old Dunsborough foreshore and it was simply amazing. Four bedrooms, two king bedrooms each with ensuite, a bedroom with two single beds for E. (When asked what she did on holiday, E will tell you "we went to sleep. I had TWO beds!")

Here is the house from the outside:

 

If you walk down the front steps this is what you see:

If you cross the footpath that you can see at the edge of the grass above you find a little path:

And at the end of the path is the beach. Quite possibly the most perfect toddler beach in the world. At low tide there was 50 metres or more of ankle depth water, zero waves, rock pools and sandbars.

 

It was so safe we were quite happy to let E explore without having to hover right over her, (although D did decide a certain minmum of clothing might be prudent!) Needless to say, we spent a lot of time there.

Other features of the trip included a lunch at Duckstein Brewery - a table right next to the in-house playground made it very manageable, an ice cream at Simmo's and lots of walks and trips to the playground.

This house would be amazing in summer - we got plenty of use out of the beach and barbeque even though some of the days were decidedly cool, but it would be ever lovelier if it was warm. Anyone want to plan another trip, maybe for early next year?

All the mornings of childhood should be like this

On Monday Little E and I had a lovely outing, just the two of us. We drove to Hillarys Boat Harbour, which is about 25 minutes up the coast. It was an easy drive with no screaming. When we got there, she consented to go in the pram and remained in it until we got to the child-friendly beach. There is a playground there that E loves that is just hard enough to be challenging for her but not so tricky that my heart is in my mouth every moment (given she has neither fear nor sense so far as climbing is concerned). She clambered up the ladder and through the tunnel, stopping at every window to gleefully "peek boo!" everyone on the outside.

The beach itself was about as stereotypically beautiful as anyone could hope for; clear, clear water with barely a movement of waves, white sand, not too hot, crowded but not excessively so with happy families at vac-swim classes. I am crossing all my fingers and toes that this morning will have got E over her beach fears. They certainly weren't in sight as she pranced and splashed and we did dozens of ring-a-rosies, giggling every time she splashed down. We had a mid-swim break to sit on a towel whereupon she insisted upon feeding half her strawberries and grapes to me, after which she actually demanded to return to the water.

Then it was time to wash the salt off ("shooow-a time, shooow-a time!") and put dry clothes on. And then the highlight of the morning for E - ice cream time. She hoovered her way through an extravagantly priced strawberry gelati ($4.60 for a child sized scoop?!), smearing it all over her face as any self respecting child should. After that she announced "home time? Eli watching Bop?" (Bop=Spot). And seeing as it was a conveniently timed request, and she was very pleasant about getting back in the pram, we made our way back to the carpark, and then home.

At home she did get a few minutes of her beloved Bop whilst I produced cheesy pasta, and then she went to bed without fuss.

A lovely morning all round.**

** Followed by a completely feral afternoon in which she screamed every time the little friend who had come to visit touched one of her toys, barely wanted to move from Mummy's lap, and then got put in her room for repeatedly touching the DVD player after being told not to. Sigh. Such are the inconsistencies of toddlerhood.

Today I am (belatedly) grateful for ... the beach and books

1. We live a 5 minute drive from the beach. We don't got as often as we should. This morning we went (to Swanbourne rather than our local beach) and had a lovely walk along the path to North Cottesloe. On the way back I realised Little E had fallen asleep in the pram which is quite unusual these days. It was a weird time of day for her to sleep as she'd only been up for about two hours, but was I complaining? Not when there was a lovely new cafe, the Naked Fig, to provide a cup of tea and a newspaper! Eonly slept for about 30 minutes but woke up happy, and despite not having brought bathers for either of us I decided it was such a beautiful day (and that given E had had such a strangely timed sleep that she should get completely tired out) that we would have a swim. So we sat in the shallows and played with water and sand and were both very happy. The weather lately has been such that if we get out at about 7:30 or 8:00 we have an hour or more before it gets too hot, so my resolution for the week is that we need to get to the beach more often.

2. Books. I couldn't survive without them. I mainly read fiction, although since I no longer work I do enjoy non-fiction more. I re-read my favourites compulsively, particularly childhood favourites. I can't really figure out why I do this, as there must be several dozen books that I have read literally hundreds if not thousands of times each. All I can say is that I find the process relaxing; the familiarity of the plot and characters allows my mind to switch off, wind down and go elsewhere. When I pick up a book I've read before I don't always read it from cover to cover, I often just dip into it and re-read bits I particularly liked, or sometimes just open it and randomly read chunks. I do also read new things, but they're certainly outweighed by the old.

This post is a late entry to Maxabella's Grateful Saturday, which I didn't get around to writing on the weekend.

The little things aka a happy morning

We had a series of crummy days last week so were well overdue for a good one. It didn't start very promisingly, with E deciding wake-up time was 5:25, however, we were able to string her out until a bit after 6:00 without too much grizzling. D hooned off to work, deciding to eschew the home breakfast options in favour of breakfast in town. I'm not convinced this actually saves him much time (although I know when I was working that getting out the door sooner always felt like it did) but it is more interesting than a bowl of muesli.

"I feel like pancakes" I announced as he whizzed out the door. And then, as the laundry door rattled shut, said to E "well, why shouldn't we have pancakes?"

So we did. We did some whizzing of our own down to Floreat beach, where I discovered we were a bit early for the cafe. While we waited for it to open we had a walk along the boardwalk between Floreat and City Beach beaches. It was glorious: sunny but cool enough to walk in comfort, a very slight breeze, a few hopeful surfers, an otherwise deserted beach.

By the time we got back to the cafe it was open and we were both ready for breakfast. E consented to sit in a highchair and eat her porridge from a plastic tub without smearing it all over her face or hair; the fascination of the nearby volleyball players was such that she was happy just to stare and open her mouth when required. We were both especially happy when the pancakes arrived: a floppy three tiered stack covered in berries and berry juice. Fortunately E had largely finished her porridge as it was immediately abandoned in favour of berries doled out on the porridge-tub lid. She also chomped on a bit of pancake but decided it was more fun to mush it to bits than eat it (probably a good thing as I'm sure it was full of sugar).

In between handing over berries and delivering sips of water I got to read most of a newspaper and had an extremely good cup of tea. It has inspired me to add "leaf tea" to the shopping list as something about it makes such a better cup of tea than a teabag.

We then came home for a few quick stories, a crawl around the floor, and a brief tormentation of the cat. She is now having her morning nap (perfectly timed I might add - straight into bed with almost no crying). We have mothers' group to look forward to at lunch time, our first session at Wembley playgroup.

None of these things are anything major on their own but it's so much nicer to feel like this than how I felt last week. Little things.


(For a version of this post with video, see my other blog).


Image credit:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHtRpUxA5w_NS4F4Zxz23nW9kF7G60xYVNsbKixG3dI96uYvly

Beach expedition

Little E had her first expedition to the beach yesterday and it was not a great success. Her brand new swim nappy leaked (probably partly due to the over-enthusiastic amounts of dried fruit administered by Mummy in the previous few days). The swim nappy may be going back to the shop as its packaging claims it is specifically designed to avoid "embarrassing accidents."

She was happy to sit on the grass and have a look around and thought that the playing in the sand part was ok. But when a wave got on her she cried and cried.

She calmed down momentarily and then she saw a wave get on D and she cried some more. Obviously, at least so far, water must be warm and contained for her to enjoy it. An hour or so later she was perfectly happy in her bath.

We might try the swimming pool next.