kuringai wildflower garden + "a nice lady"

a nature activity
yesterday, i took the bean to a 'bush kids' program at the ku-ring-gai wildflower garden (kwg), which is a lovely bush setting. one of the kwg officers read the 16 children a graeme base book - uno's garden - before leading them to kwg's vegetable garden where they had to search for some of the creatures from the story and then do a craft project*. the kids were also shown a real blue-tongued lizard that was about a year old.

apparently the garden breeds these critters and releases them in suitable home gardens. (they survey the gardens of potential lizard adopters before giving the green light.) it's an initiative** to reintroduce more native animals into the suburban environment, whilst also introducing a 'novel' non-pesticide way to reduce snail populations in gardens: the blue-tongued lizard's favourite meal is snail.

at the end of the session the bean was very reluctant to leave ("i don't want to go home!" she wailed), so on the suggestion from the kwg officer we went down one of the trails that led to the garden's picnic area. some playground equipment there kept the bean happily occupied for a bit, but only after she had some snacks was she happy to leave with me.

kwg is a lovely bushland that is relatively civilised: there are loos, picnic areas, and stroller-friendly tracks besides a couple of more challenging ones for better walkers. we heard the tweeting of fairy-wrens as well as the croaking of frogs in the pond - all surrounded by banksias and gum trees.

however, evidence of civilisation is not far away: we can hear the roar of the traffic nearly all the time as the garden is just beside a major road. but still, it was a delightful way to spend a morning. i just wished that i had done this with the bean sooner.


the nice lady
after lunch that same day, we headed to a fabrics shop to get some haberdashery items. whilst walking down a step to the boardwalk outside the shopping centre, the bean stumbled and fell forward. i caught her in time but an elderly lady coming round the corner was quite concerned. she made a bit of fuss over the bean and then said, "isn't she beautiful!" to me.

naturally, the bean lapped it all up and when she heard the compliment, she said to me, "this is a nice lady."

the 2 of them had a short chat. the bean volunteering most of the information: we were going to buy ribbons, mummy doesn't like the colour pink, mummy likes red. then the bean did a dance - spinning round and round - in the middle of the walkway, becoming a minor obstruction for pedestrian traffic. when she finished dancing, she bowed deeply twice (because the "nice lady" didn't see her bow the first time).

when we finally said our goodbyes to the "nice lady" and walked away, the bean said, "she's old. she's a nice old lady. i did a dance for her."


* i almost forgot: the kids had slices of watermelon that was grown from one of the patches in the veg garden itself. very refreshing...i had a slice too!

** the kwg only releases lizards that are a year old or older because young ones are easy prey for magpies.

our easter long weekend + some choice bean-speak

friday circus
we've just had a rather busy long weekend. it was the easter break and we began by going down to darling harbour for the hoopla! festival on friday afternoon. the fest is/was essentially a gathering of different street juggling/ acrobatics/ magic acts.

there was a 'big tent' where free performances were put on every 2 hours or so, and we managed to catch one act, which could be italian or albanian or gypsy. the most notable part of this couple's act seemed to be how the female half was able to contort her body to fit inside a smallish acrylic see-through box (with lid). w-o-w...

we also managed to watch some bits of a dance/acrobatics performance. a group of 4 men and a girl did rap-style street dancing combined with some human pyramid-type formations. all quite impressive but i was sorely tempted to yell at one of the performers to tie his hair up. it was long, shaggy and flopped everywhere. thinking of the heat and how sweaty he was, it made me wince with distaste whenever it was his turn to perform.

one of the more impressive acts we caught was a french-canadian who cracked lame jokes, usually at the expense of the audience members. his act was of the lying on long, sharp nails, swallowing flaming batons and juggling nasty, short swords variety. not bad overall and we rewarded him with some dosh at the end. oh, the box in which he keeps his paraphernalia is shaped like a coffin, and we did wonder how he managed to clear all the rather sensitive items through customs.

there was also a mime artist. she had greasepaint on her face, wore a ruby-red lampshade on her head and was garbed in semi-victorian dress. she seemed rather taken with the bean (who was sitting on her daddy's shoulders) and blew kisses at her. the bean similarly blew kisses back at her with both hands and waved goodbye.

as we walked off though, the bean remarked excitedly to her daddy,
"she's white! she can't talk! she's a may-leeyan dad!" (may-leeyan = alien)

saturday mammoths
the next afternoon, almost on a whim, we went to the australian museum for the special once-off woolly mammoths exhibit. the museum is perhaps the bean's current favourite place. she loves the dinosaur fossils upstairs and also likes touching all the stuffed animals poised around the place.

she seems to have an obsession with death and has been asking nearly daily, "why do dinosaurs die out?"

anyway, after coming back from looking at the mammoths, the bean decided that one of her toy elephants is also a mammoth. and her question morphed into, "how do the mammoths die out?"

p/s. once, after we had given her the theories for how the dinosaurs became extinct, the bean asked, "how did nanny and dordon die?" she seemed very thoughtful at the answers we gave her and was a bit concerned that people she loved would eventually die too.

sunday easter show
we tried to rise early for the sydney royal easter show, but alas, only managed to get there around 10.30am. i think the bean expected a large easter bunny to be prancing around shoving chocolate eggs at everybody, so she was a wee bit disappointed when we got there and none was to be found ("where's the easter bunny?"). i don't know how the idea of one was implanted - certainly not from us.

at the show, i think we did less than last year, for some reason. maybe because i'm preggers and don't have the same stamina/speed. we did get a look-in at the following though: woodchop (just one event regrettably), cat pavilion (bean got to pat/stroke an enormous, shaggy grey and white persian-ish cat), pony rides (bean went on 2 rides, and dh made up the names of the ponies for her as the handlers were obviously students on holiday jobs and didn't know the ponies' names), pig pavilion (there was a cute 3 little pigs pen with a straw house, a twig/wood house, and a brick house, but the piggies were asleep in a children's toy nylon tunnel instead), fashion pavilion, food pavilion (the bean was asleep in the stroller by that stage so dh and i could go do our own thing)...and finally, a ride on a carousel.

we didn't get to see the magnificent diving pigs (apparently the only ones in australia) - long queues were turned away at each performance time slot because of the act's popularity.

but we did get to watch part of an erth dinosaur petting zoo, where 'actors' had their arms stuck up the behinds of puppet dinosaurs or manipulated puppets on strings.

monday mooch day
the only day we didn't have a fabulous activity planned was easter monday. dh mowed the back lawn, trimmed a hibiscus bush, and we went to officeworks for stationery supplies and later to borders bookstore. yes, very exciting.

because it rained in the afternoon, the bean philosophically told us, "we can't have the easter hunt," which was an activity that had been promised her by dh.

weird figures

[figure below] the bean calls this "the maylien". it's actually an impression of the alien from cocoon 2 (the movie) - she saw it last saturday afternoon when dh was watching the film on tv.


[figure below] and this is a "bad man. he catches bad people and puts them in pwison." i had to explain that policemen aren't bad. although they put people in "pwison" it's usually only "bad people" who get put away.

an interesting feature of this figure is that it actually has a body. previously, the limbs of a person just simply sprouted from a giant head, but this time she's added a torso. she's also added fingers to the stick arms - those shorter twig-like additions at the end.

the "funny potty seat" & independent toileting

our current rental home has a non-standard loo, so the toilet seat adapter that we had been using perfectly fine before, does not fit snuggly on this one and slips. the bean often complained "mama i'm sinking!" when the adapter seat shifted under her weight and a part of it sank into the bowl. apart from this fit issue, the bean finds it difficult to climb onto the loo because she's, well, vertically challenged.

she therefore prefered to use her portable potty instead of the grown-up loo because of all the above issues.

so, when we went to a baby equipment shop recently to get some car seat boosters for the bean's cousins (they're coming over from balmy england to see us in may), i scouted round the store to see if there was a suitable loo solution for the bean.

et voila!
it's a bambino toilet trainer that folds up and stands against a wall when not in use but otherwise, the bean has been able to unfold it, put it on the loo and climb up and down it by herself.

she sometimes goes on her own without telling me first now, but usually she gives me a holler to let me know that she needs to do a wee/poo. when she comes off it she then goes on the little step stool to wash her hands. thus, now she can do her toileting all on her own.

she calls it the "funny potty". e.g. "mummy, can i use the funny potty seat? i like it. it works very well." (she's a hoot!)

it has been a really good investment as an independence-developing tool. i think it's super.

p/s. oh, on the occasions when she uses the portable potty, she often brings it to the loo to empty it by herself. then she washes her hands. i woke up one morning to hear her conduct the entire process, after which she came into the bedroom to play/change clothes.

school daze begins

in the second week of march the bean formally began her school life --- hub-unit did remark that it's the start of something she will only finish in about 16-17 years time!

however, it was an inauspicious start on a warm, sunny day as the bean fell and grazed both knees as we crossed the road to the school gate. so her initial excitement about attending "big school" was severely dampened as she wailed from the pain. after she was fixed up in the admin office, her directress took her hand after she showed some initial resistance/reluctance to leave my side, and i made a quick getaway. but she seemed fine when i went to pick her up 1.5 hours later (the first 3 days were only 1.5 hours each, to make the transition and separation from me easier). she enjoyed the class and told me that she wanted to bring all the children home to play with her.

however, the excitement or novelty wore off after 5 days. and she was soon telling me "mummy, i don't want to go to _______ montessori school" (she always mentions the school by its full name) whenever we got close to the school in the car.

she did wail once or twice and she often shook her head and shied away from the assistant teacher who greets her at morning drop-offs (the kids have to shake the teacher's hand and say good morning at the door before they enter the premises proper). the first time she wailed, the teacher just carried her in while i ran off.

i later heard from the directress that she would ask "i want my mummy" only to be told by the teacher and/or the older kids that "your mummy is coming at 12" or "your mummy will pick you up at 12". thankfully, the activities in class are usually enough to take her mind off me.

but more distressingly, the directress has told me that the bean has had a few "meltdowns" when she would just stubbornly say "no" and refuse to do something, even when offered alternatives. after reiterating "no" she would then wail and cry very loudly, so loud that the other children would cover their hands over their ears. so sigh...the bean has not exactly exhibited model montessori behaviour...

anyhoo, when the bean hasn't had her "meltdowns" she has been doing typical montessori (and early childhood ed) work (for her age) such as brick polishing, brass polishing, buttoning frames, water transference, beading, threading, pasting, window washing, the pink tower, brown stairs, cylinder blocks, etc. and she does enjoy working on those activities. yet, inevitably, inexplicably, she would end her enthusiastic description with a petulant "mummy, i don't want to go to ______ montessori school".

i don't know if this is because it entails being away from me. she has asked if i could stay with her in the school (often in a tone and with such a hopeful look it made my heart twinge), only to look disappointed when i had to explain that no mummies are allowed in the school, and that i will, however, be there to pick her up when school finishes. this is rarely satisfactory of course, so i only get a sullen, "but mummy, i don't want to go to ______ montessori school" again.

the bright spark for her and often a good way to entice her out of the car is to point out the children i see heading to school. i would say, oh look it's so-and-so and immediately, the bean would ask "where?" and want to get out to see them.

she loves the older kids. and the older girls love her. at home one afternoon, she told me that she was kissed on the cheek by one of the girls. when i said that was nice, and if she had said anything back to her, the bean said, "i said sank you." i then asked if she likes the girl, only to have the bean reply, after the barest of pauses, "she is quite nice."

this is only just week 4 of school of course, so it's still early days as the bean settles in. unfortunately, we have the long-ish easter break now so it means that the bean will need to re-settle into her school routine at the end of april! i wonder if there will be more tears and meltdowns...sigh...