The popcorn has arrived!

Well not really popcorn, but you would think that was the special package Amelia got by her utter excitement. She played for at least an hour with the popcorn (it's not the styrofoam kind, but rather the kind which disintegrates in water.)

Actually, my parents sent Amelia a care package with a dozen packages of freeze dried strawberries from Trader Joes, along with a variety of other not to be missed items. I think she ate one entire bag at the first sitting! Since then, we are trying to have just handful with breakfast.

So excited about the popcorn.

The circle in the center was after
Amelia "swam" through the "water."

Before the package arrived, Amelia and I met a new friend for coffee and then onto Waverly library storytime. (We had been waiting for almost a week for it. My dad put the wrong address on it and then, after calling to change it, they still tried to deliver to the wrong one. It took them another 2 days to get it right!) I met a nice woman named Milly at Powerhouse Museum a few weeks before and we finally figured out a day to get together. Her daughter, Ruby, is about a year younger than Amelia.

This was their first time at the library and found it to be a great storytime experience. The librarian put on a little puppet show of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And after the video, the kids colored in butterflies. It was perfect! The 4 of us headed to the mall for lunch (surprise!) and met Milly's husband Matt. Both kids were pretty knackered (I love that word) and in need of a nap. We said our goodbyes.

I later sent Milly a text to see if she knew of a babysitter because my anniversary was coming up. Guess what Milly did? She offered to watch Amelia for us on Saturday night so we could go out! That is kindness you don't see every day. Thanks Milly. You're a dear!

The sun also rises

*UPDATE*
The phone seemed to come back to life after a dozen tries. Whew! I still lost some though but, for the most part, we have them all!

I think my iphone has died. It will not move past the apple logo. After freezing, I tried to reboot (something it's been doing a lot lately and it's not even a jailbroken phone!) The sad part is I have not backed up my photos in the last week. So all of the photos and videos from our adventures this week, are gone. I'm very sad because the dancing videos were among those presumably lost.

The other thing is our bed and pillows suck. I can not get comfortable all night and last night was just the worst! Up since 5am, I finally just called it and got out of bed. No need to toss and turn any longer. Seemed fruitless.

So no photos now, again, for this posting. I will just focus on our adventures.

Amelia's hair is ridiculously long.

 After a day of NOTHING on Thursday (though we did manage to get to the grocery store for a bit) Friday took us on a walk across town to Paddington Library for storytime. Though it's much further away than Waverly, it actually has books! Poor Waverly. They have only one, maybe two of the popular books which means they are always out. It would cost me $1 to put a book on hold or just walk another 25 minutes to the next library and check them out there.

So that's what we decided to do. We walked a new route, a little better than our regular route, but still a rather bumpy-broken-rooted-no ramp kind of walk. I think the sidewalks have not been fixed in 20 years or more.

The storytime was fine. Only a few kids (which is very different than Waverly). I think it's the video at Waverly which attracts all of the children. Personally, I think videos are not meant for storytime. Read the kids some books! Sing some songs! Do a little puppet show! That's what storytime is about. Ok, off my high-horse. Anyhow, this one is just books and a little craft project. The theme of the day was food so all of the books centered around food. In one of them, Spot helped his mom make a birthday cake for the dad. It was his birthday. When Amelia woke up from her nap, she wanted to make her daddy a card because it was his birthday. Awww. That was so sweet! I had to tell her that was from the story.

The carrot she made for daddy at the Paddington library storytime.

Totally zonked out.

At Buzy Bake House while I had my lunch.

Amelia had woken up very early and not gone to sleep until almost 10:30 or later the night before. Needless to say, she was tired. It didn't take long before she had crashed out on our walk home. I decided to take a different way home and walked through Woollahra on Queens Street rather than the loud and terrible sidewalked way we have previous traversed.

Turns out I found a perfect path! It's a little longer, but there's more to see, fewer streets and the sidewalks are actually mostly manageable. Actually, every street corner has a ramp so a sleeping kid does not need to be disturbed. (How sad, this is the exciting part of my day: ramps!)

Along this road, I also find many coffee shops, a delightful bookstore, toy store, bakeries and more. It was lunch time so I stopped in to Buzy Bake House. I had been there once before, during our first week, but hadn't made it back since. They have an amazing Sicilian pizza. Super duper flat bread with farmers market fresh ingredients. I had half and took the rest home for Amelia. It was $11 for the one piece but I figured split between 2 people, that wasn't terrible. They also have all sorts of homemade quiches and pies and deserts. So many deserts! I enjoyed my pizza and left it at that.

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful.
*PARENTING OVERSHARE ALERT* Please skip ahead if you don't want to read this.
Amelia finally pooped! It had been since Monday. I was so stressed about it. 4 days? Really. Thankfully, I had been practically feeding her olive oil so it wasn't a terrible experience. However, during this time, a potential babysitter came over.

*OK YOU ARE CLEAR NOW*
Elise, a potential babysitter, came by for a little visit. She seemed very nice. I know I should do some extensive background check, but she came recommended from someone on one of the email mom's groups I'm in LA. We chatted for a least an hour and a half and Amelia seemed very comfortable with her. That's really what matters (and that she's not a serial killer). We'll definitely use her for next weekend--it's our 6 year anniversary!

I'm cautiously optimistic that Eric can get my phone to work and I can get all of the pictures off of it. If so, I will edit this posting and add photos. If not, I will be quite sad.

Week 3: What did we do?

Week 3 has really flown by! I can't believe how little we do some days. It's Thursday at 4pm and we haven't left the apartment. We did, however, put our clothes on. That was a step in the right direction.

First thing Monday morning we were lucky enough to talk to two of Amelia's favorite people: Lena and Lily, my mother's helpers. They come over and play with your child while you are still at home. They're 13 and have all of Amelia's attention when they are around. The girls graciously let us call them on Sunday (Monday here) so Amelia could say hello. That was all she could talk about the rest of the day, though when we're Skyping them, she doesn't say much. That would be true for most of the Skype calls we make.

On Mondays (this was our second time doing this) we have been visiting Eric at work. We walk to his office at the Entertainment Quarter, going through a wonderful place called Centennial Park. I've mentioned this before but I can't say enough how much I love this park! This week we saw all sorts of interesting birds, some I've never seen before. It makes me wish Los Angeles had more parks. Honestly, you can't walk more than 15 minutes without encountering some type of green space. Believe me, I've tried! I walk somewhere almost every day and it's just not possible. These people planned well.

It seemed to take us less time to get to the office this week, maybe because I had already been there and it didn't feel as new. On our way, besides seeing birds, we geese, ducks and the most adorable chocolate laberdoodle named Bailey. Awww. I wanted to give Bailey a big kiss! After a brief chat with the owners, they walked on. Amelia saw them playing and said, "that puppy is playing with his mommy and daddy and other mommy!" So darn cute. And wow. Imagine if we were all that accepting of different lifestyles.


I'm sad to report that either Amelia  or I accidentally deleted some really great pictures and videos from the phone. It happens. I don't think there's any way to retrieve them since they hadn't been backed up yet. The iphone is not really great with that. Oh well.

The pictures I do have, which I will have to post later, are from Monday and Wednesday. Monday, as I said, we met Eric for lunch. After which, we ended up playing in a kid store for over an hour. They had a giant doll house Amelia seemed to like. She put the little JellyCat bunny to sleep in the bed, put her on the potty and also made her do other household chores. It was quite darling.

Playing in the store seemed more fun than the playground!

Having fun with the giant doll house

Sitting at the table

Bunny is sleepy

Bunny is going potty

Wearing a fancy headband

Tuesday was library day. This was our 3rd storytime at Waverly library. This week they had Rainbow Fish (which they edited not only for time but content. I actually appreciate that because if you've ever read Rainbow Fish, you'll know it's not actually a great story for kids.) There was a video with Maisy scuba diving with a playful dolphin. And then we had our craft project. My craft project really. We made an octopus and though Amelia did stick the smile and eye on, she didn't really want to do the other stuff. It kind of scares me that she won't even try to do things--she'll just say, "No, mommy, you do it."  Ugh. C'mon girl... try! We need to work on that. As for the rest of the day, I can't remember what we did.

Wednesday was our big day. On this day Amelia took her first ever dance class at a place called Rhythm Factory located in Randwick. I don't know if she loved it, but I think she loves the idea of. She has been watching and reading Angelina Ballerina so she seems very into everything dancing right now. It's very sweet. I love that when it came time to choose what to wear, instead of picking the traditional pink tutu, she wanted to wear her green turtle skirt (thanks Uncle Andy!) with the blue flower shirt.

First dance class.

Trying to get the hang of the magic line.

Kicking their feet

The pom-poms were a HUGE hit!

Barefoot ballerina.

They had all sorts of props in the class and the music was a tad bit too loud, but it was fun to watch. It took us about the same amount of time to walk there as it did for the actual class. But it was worth it. After dancing, we walked to the park, played there a little, met a nice woman who gave us a lunch recommendation, then headed over there. Three Blue Ducks. It was quite good. Amelia and I split a steak sandwich and I had probably the best coffee I've ever had. Seriously! It was amazing. Why? I don't know why. A flat white, is like a latte but they use microfoam instead of poured steamed milk with foam on top. Some shops in Santa Monica do it this way: Cafe Luxxe and maybe Le Pain Quotidien.

She finished her half of the sandwich. It was delicious!

My flower is getting a little silly.

After a delicious lunch, we continued our walk East to Bronte Beach. Stunning. Gorgeous. Amazing! The ocean in Australia is much more beautiful than California. I will be posting pictures, but for now, take my word for it! We played in the sand for a while, making sand castles (well, trying to anyhow) and tried, twice, to get gelato, but the only shop which carried it, was out! And I watched the surfers. They seems to glide through the water so effortlessly. We took the bus home, which was great because it would have been a steep ass walk back home. I don't know if we could have made it with the stroller.

First view of the beach.

Bronte is beautiful.

Dreaming of warmer water.

Making sandcastles in the sand.

Dreamy.

Today. We've done NOTHING today. Well, we have been ballerinas and read books and played with the shells I collected yesterday and had pistachios and gotten dressed and finally, taken a nap. That's it. I hope to get to the store shortly because we have nothing to eat for dinner. Must go wake the sleeping child now. It's 5 o'clock!

Sadness, tears and rain

Stuck inside.

View from our room on this rainy day.

The end of last week was tough, for both of us. Thursday and Friday we had a hard time getting out of the house. On Thursday, we went to the library and then to look for a few things at the thrift shop.

*Parenting overshare alert*
 Amelia has been having a lot of trouble with constipation. I mean A LOT! I've tried just about everything and am just so exasperated. I thought if I could get her to walk some, rather than ride in the stroller, that would help with it, even if just a little. All I got was sadness and tears. She was very upset.

Thursday's tear fest

I was upset too.

Today we didn't leave the apartment until close to 5pm. I was feeling rather stir crazy as our apartment is quite small. I hope the weekend will bring some needed relief, for all of us!

Book are our friends

Tuesday is storytime at the local Waverly Library. They have a routine here: intro poem or song (depending on who's in charge), read a book, video then arts & crafts project. It seems like a good way to keep the kiddos' attention.

This week, in addition to our visit to Waverly, we walked over to the next town's library in Paddington, just to check it out. The Paddington library, though not that much larger, has many more kids' books on hand. We found 3 Angelina Ballerina books to read there and few others Amelia likes too. I still need to get a card, which is on my list of things to do.

Oddly enough, though, the city of Sydney libraries (Paddington is one of them but not Waverly) does not have public bathrooms. The librarian let us use hers mainly because I had a little kid with me. I wonder what the do during storytime?

Before our potty break, we met a nice little girl named Tea (though I don't really know how to spell her name correctly). Amelia had fun listening to the books and being silly with her.

After our walk to the library, we were both quite hungry. I found a nice little grocery store with delicious meat pies ready to be eaten. We got the chicken, pepper and mushroom pie along with a spinach and ricotta thing (somewhat it's like a frittata). Amelia at the pie up like there was no tomorrow. She loved it! We ate it while waiting for the bus. If I had known she was going to like it that much, I may have gotten two!

That was the extent of our day. After we got back to the apartment, she took a nap and then didn't want to anything after she woke up.