The weather has finally stabilised. It was beautiful today, all day long; the sky was blue, a warm breeze kept it bearable and the temperature in the sun rose to 32 degrees. Will went off to work as usual at about 7.00 am and the rest of us got ready and went out to enjoy the sunshine. We walked down the length of Umina High Street with the girls doing their thing in every clothes shop. I got a little bored and took myself off to trawl the bookshops to search for a reference book to Australian inter-tidal biology. No luck. I endured a little more standing around in clothes shops being push-chair minder-in-chief before Tash made the decision to have coffee at the surf club rather than a high street cafe where Ollie would be too restricted. So I walked on ahead and got Ollie an ice cream and myself a flat white. He was able to run around whilst I sat in the sunshine surrounded by noisy miners, mynas, kookaburras and little wattlebirds. Somewhat out of place were a few European house sparrows and starlings.
Ollie was testing the boundaries, as usual (well, he is two), and when he got too far, I rounded him up and took him over to the relative safety of the enclosed play ground. His first act? To climb up the blocks to the highest point and leap off, slipping as he did so and effectively doing a belly-flop from four feet into the sand. Bravely he got up but was obviously winded and couldn't suppress a tear or two. After the briefest of cuddles and words of reassurance from "DanDad", he returned to the fray and did the jump again, and again and again. Di and Tash joined us and we sat for ages in the sun whilst he played. Di noticed some novel behaviour. Another boy was inside a playhouse and pretended to be a shopkeeper and sell him stones through a hatch. Ollie co-operated and took instructions and seemed to understand the pretence perfectly. I'm sure this is the first time we've seen him play co-operatively. Previously I have always been struck by the way he plays by himself, even when surrounded by others. This was even the case when he was with his cousins in the creche.
Nanny was in trouble this evening because she was in charge of him when we got home this afternoon. After lunch, Tash dropped me at the house for an hour's gardening whilst she went to visit her friend Amanda and Nanny looked after Ollie. She left him far too long in his afternoon nap with the result that he was hyper at bed time and loathe to go down. Still Di did cook a lovely Moroccan chicken cous-cous. And, by the way, still no baby, but I did source a book on Amazon for my beach combing.
No comments:
Post a Comment