Saturday, April 25, 2015

Books for Kids (and Adults)



My second subject is now over. This last week was an introduction to statistics, and I am wrecked (there were tears). I have two weeks off before I start a six-week statistics intensive (there will be more tears). So, to recover/prepare, I am writing about something I feel like I actually understand:  Here is a review of our family’s favourite books for kids aged 1-4ish, just in case you need tips for gifts or have nothing better to do with your time.

AGE 1: Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek



Oh man - I love this book so much (even more since reading Mem Fox’s ‘making-of’ post). Moses loved it, and Hazel now loves it, too. When I first started reading it to Hazel she was only interested in the page with the train on it, because I would point at each animal on board and make its noise (all but the snail, the pelican and the rabbits. I’ve no idea what noises they make). Now that she’s older, I’m allowed to read through the entire book, after which she says, “More!” and I go back to the beginning and read through the entire book again, after which she says, “More!” so I go back to the beginning and read through the entire book again, after which she says, “More!” and I say, “Hmmm, let’s maybe read something else for a bit instead.”


AGE 2: Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
This book is lots of fun. It’s a great one for learning (basic) colours, and the simple words have left Mo convinced that he’s able to read it all by himself.


AGE 3: The Waterhole by Graeme Base
Moses was obsessed with this book for yonks when he was around three years old. Maybe two-and-a-half. I cant remember (arent you glad Im back?  Thank you. Thank you very much). In the end we stopped reading the words and instead spent all of our book time pointing out animals in all of their memorised hiding places. The pictures are beautiful, the animal-spotting is quite fun, and the story’s an important one (not that a younger Mo paid any attention to it).


AGE 4: The Book With No Pictures by B. J. Novak
This is a clever and cool idea for a book, although its lack of illustrations did mean it took a little while to convince Moses that it really was a kids’ book and I wasn’t about to scar him for life by reading him something intended for much older audiences (he doesn’t trust my judgement on these things! I find this offensive!). I’d seen a video of Novak reading the book to a group of cackling kids, and I worried that perhaps reading it to only one child wouldn’t have the same effect. It had the same effect. (Thanks, Aunty Zillah!)

The downside to this book is that it requires some performance on the part of the reader, and there are nights when neither Alan nor I have the necessary energy to pull it off. Also, like joke books, we can only read it a certain number of times before Mo’s laughter begins to sound somewhat forced – that’s when we hide it away for a while again.

Books that I’ve liked way more than Mo did:

1. Good Little Wolf by Nadia Shireen
Our method for choosing kids’ books from the library mostly consists of Hazel picking random books from shelves and plonking them on a pile, all of which we then borrow. It used to be Moses who’d make the pile of random books, and it was in one such pile that we discovered Good Little Wolf, which is such a gem of a book that I’ve remembered both the title and author’s name despite the fact that it must have been about a year ago that we read it. The ending was so surprising and hilarious that I couldn’t read the last page because I was laughing too hard; it was refreshingly unpredictable and non-didactic. Mo didn’t get it at all (possibly I confused him with all of the snorting). I’ll have to find it at the library again to see how Mo reacts to it now that he’s older.

2. Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas


This is such a beautiful book on so many levels – two levels, actually: Julie Vivas’ illustrations are absolutely gorgeous (as always), and the story of young Partridge’s relationships with the residents of an old folks’ home is just the sweetest thing ever. At the end of the book, Mo’s always like, “Okay, whatever,” while I wipe tears from my eyes. Every. Time. I love it.

Bed time. Well chat again soon.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Easter 2015



This Easter long weekend Alan and I have been “experiencing tummy issues,” and I won’t get more specific than that because I care about you. Suffice it to say, a large proportion of our too-regular toilet visits have been immediately preceded by a panicked look and sprinting. We also all have colds, which I was calling The Colds That Wouldn’t Go Away until I realised they’d only been around for a week and I was probably getting too impatient with them too soon. Moses and Hazel don’t seem bothered by theirs, whereas Alan and I have been totally wiped out and have wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and not have children this weekend. Alas.

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On Friday I worked on my uni assignment, while Alan and Mo and Hazel did stuff.

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I remember when I went overseas with my family as an 11-ish year old, my siblings and I spent a lot of the time wanting to eat something and my parents spent a lot of time trying to tell us how lucky we were to be overseas and to stop whinging about food. And when we got back people were like, “How was overseas, was it totally amazing?!” and I was like, “I was hungry a lot, and my little sister is annoying.”

We went to the aquarium on Saturday, which was something I’ve wanted to do since Moses randomly developed a fascination with sting rays. It was a rainy day, and we had to queue for a while to get in, and we were wondering whether going on that particular day was the worst decision ever until we walked into the first room and saw a platypus, after which at least Alan and I were totally enthralled. Hazel kept excitedly saying “FISH!” while wondering why it was dark and there were so many people. And Moses spent nearly the whole time thinking and asking and complaining about food, while I told him to instead recognise the fact that we were at the aquarium! With dugongs calmly swimming by! And sharks and sting rays! I wanted him to be in the moment and completely forget about the fact that we had chips stashed in the pram in case of emergency. He could not. 

We went to get lunch after the aquarium, and then on our way back to the car Moses spotted a play area which he wanted to check out. We explained that we needed to rush home to get Hazel in bed, and that we’d already done fun things that morning, to which Moses replied huffily, “Like WHAT?!” 

My point is two-fold: Children are obsessed with food, and do not appreciate things.

I loved the aquarium, especially the jelly blubber and the dugongs. And the platypuses. And sting rays have eyes that look like they’ve been drawn on with coloured pencils! It’s weird, but amazing. I wish I could’ve spent more time there, or the same amount of time minus my children/husband. I took my camera in order to get lots of artsy photos of Moses and Hazel captivated by various marine creatures:
You see nothing, because my camera battery died as I figured out the appropriate settings with which to take my first brilliant photo. Instead, here are the two I took on Alan’s camera before it, too, threatened to die:

On Sunday we turned our clocks back and had an egg hunt in the garden with our neighbours and did lots of cleaning of things we wouldn’t normally clean (I vacuumed beside the washing machine, which hadn’t been done at all in the year-or-so we’ve lived here, and Alan cleaned the vacuum cleaner head, which hadn’t been done at all in the 4-or-so years we’ve owned it), and then spent the afternoon at the beach.
And this is Hazel at the same beach on Easter Sunday last year:
Today (Monday) I went to the gym after a terribly long break from exercise (originally my gym said they were closing to renovate but then it turned out they’d actually sold the business and my membership had been transferred to a different gym which takes 10 minutes to drive to, which is still close but not quite as easy as a 5-minute walk. Plus I’ve had very little motivation to do anything I don’t have to do, and by “very little” I mean “absolutely none,” and by “anything I don’t have to do” I most certainly mean “going to new places and jumping around and/or lifting heavy things.” But I read a particularly good article about depression which basically told me off for not exercising, so I decided I really should, especially given it was only a few months ago that I embraced ‘action’ as this year’s theme). It nearly killed me.

In the afternoon, Hazel started “experiencing tummy issues,” and, inspired by our friends who were making a similar move this weekend, as well as the fact that we were stuck indoors thanks to the rain, we finally took the toys out of Hazel’s room and moved Mo’s bed in. It’s for that reason both children are still awake, 45 minutes after we said goodnight to them. Let’s hope they get bored of each other soon.

And that was our Easter. THE END.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Sydney house prices



I think we’re staying in Sydney. We kinda decided a couple of weekends ago, when we went on a road trip to Tuncurry (we often make big decisions on road trips). I say “kinda” because, although it makes so much sense to put the dream on hold (there have been no jobs advertised for Alan in the more-than-a-year he’s been looking out for them, whereas Sydney is a geotechnical engineer’s wonderland right now; we know all of 7 people in Adelaide, 3 of whom are under the age of 5), I’m still a bit hesitant to let go of the plan just yet. We would dearly love to live closer to those 7 people! The school we saw for Moses was amazing! The lifestyle we pictured for ourselves in the Hills was peaceful and tree-filled and lovely!

ALSO, the PRICE of real estate in Sydney is RIDICULOUSLY STUPID, and I’m so angry about it that I can’t even think of a worse insult than RIDICULOUSLY STUPID. Actually, I just did: RIDICULOUSLY STUPID. There are lots of other people (who know far more about it than I do) bitching about house prices in this city, and rather than getting me riled up, hearing things being constantly bitched about makes me suddenly feel sorry for the thing being bitched about even if the bitching is completely justified (two words: Tony Abbott). And I’m aware that though I’ve mentioned being flabbergasted by the prices at least twice before (here and here), maybe I’m not a great guide to what’s expensive and what’s not given that I’m a tightarse who will start hyperventilating if asked to spend more than $5 on a milky beverage. But I'm going to bitch about the prices anyway, because LOOK:

This is what $580,000 will buy you in Sydney: a 2 bedroom villa (approximately 112m2) in Bexley, which is 23 minutes from Sydney CBD.

And this is what $580,000 will buy you in Adelaide: a 3 bedroom house (approximately 4000m2 [i.e. an acre]) in Bridgewater (25 minutes from the Adelaide CBD).
It just seems so stupidly unfair. 

(Okay. I know there are millions of people in other parts of the world camped in cramped and uncomfortable conditions because of the fact that their family home has been destroyed thanks to war, or because they’re at risk of being killed if they return there. I know there are people struggling to afford to eat, let alone thinking about where to settle down and plant their vegetable patch. I know it’s a privilege to be able to pay the rent required to live close enough to the city to allow Alan to spend time with Mo and Hazel during the week. I know that on the Unfair Scale, Sydney house prices probably don’t rank very highly at all. Be quiet.)