Family weekend

We just spent pretty much the whole weekend at Mum and Dad's, which was very pleasant! It was Michelle's last weekend in Melbourne before she flies home to Canada (boo hoo!), so we organised to go on a bush walk at Nioka Bush Camp, which is on the Plenty River, very close to Mum and Dad's house. It's hardly what you'd call real bush (it's well on the way to being surrounded by suburbia), but it was still beautiful land and great to be outside. We all had fun, lots of clowning around - in almost all the photos, Gord's pulling some kind of face!

Not pulling a face here though! Michelle, Dad, Kelli, my cousin, Bruce, her boyfriend, and Gord.
Check out more bushwalk photos here.

Mum, Dad and Michelle headed out to a Gala evening on Saturday night. To see photos of them all dressed up, click here. Almost the whole sequence is Dad making funny faces and Mum berating him and cracking up - I love it! Pick your favourite James Bond face!

On Sunday, we went back to Mum and Dad's to have lunch with them and our old family friends, the Vee Dubs. (That's the Van Wollingens to anyone else...) Nice space, very laid back, nice to be part of a crowd at Mill Park - that's not the usual vibe. I managed to finish something I was knitting, cos there were so many people willing to hold the kiddo. Piper of course had a ball, soaking in all the attention. She's been a gem the last little while, probably because lots of different people have invested in her/showered her with attention.


To continue the good vibe with Piper, I decided to go to the zoo today. I was thinking about it, and I really don't think I've been since my hen's thingy, so before Piper was born. Seems crazy, cos Piper's been to the zoo a lot, but that's Pippa for ya! (Thanks Pippa!) So yeah, Heidi Duthie and I took the two kids on this outing. I was glad I wasn't by myself - that would have been pretty tiring. As it was, I almost bit off more than I could chew by arranging to get there so early. Jas woke up at 6.30am, and my alarm was going off at 7am, so I was pretty much awake since then. We got the zoo by 9am, after a dream run in what was supposedly peak hour traffic (this is after planning to take the train and then realising that I probably wouldn't be able to squeeze the pram into a peak hour carriage).

I was excited about seeing the orang-utangs, but they were hiding under a sheet when we were there, so we didn't see much of them at all. We probably spent the most time at the seals. I enjoyed the reptiles. We checked out the bears, which led to this conversation later on at home...

(We'd just been talking about how Opa goes bear hunting, well, bear viewing)
Piper: Does Opa go through the glass?
Me: No, Opa walks into the forest and leaves some donuts on the ground and then he climbs a tree so he can watch the bears when they come to eat the donuts.
Piper: Does he throw the donuts over the fence?
Me: No, sweets, there's no fences and no glass wall in the forest, he just walks in and leaves them on the ground.
Piper: oh... (and after a little while) Is Opa a zoo keeper now?

She just couldn't fathom the idea of animals free in a forest!

Had a pit stop at Heidi's house when I dropped her home, and then was pretty whacked by the time we got back here. Crashed out in bed for a bit, although Jasper took ages to go to sleep. My lesson for the day is, you don't have to get to the zoo early, and more sleep means I'm a better parent, especially at the end of the day. No point having a pleasant outing and then being grumpy back at home (not that I was too bad, but I wasn't all sweetness and light!).

So yeaahhhh. (Can you tell I'm tired, I'm just blahhing away here...) Jasper just screamed his head off in Gord's arms and now he's crashed out in my lap after a bit of boob, but he was so tired he could hardly suck! He's a beautiful boy...

(here he is, my little man! what a cutie!)

On a totally different note, this week, Piper, Jasper, my dad and I are heading to Cairns, which is somewhat sudden. Gord and I had planned to visit my family up there sometime in September, but my grandmother is pretty sick and it seems a good idea to go up there now. She's had ulcers on her legs for ages, which haven't healed. They tried some kind of vein bypass thing recently, but now, after trying everything else, her leg has been amputated below the knee. She had a heart attack after the operation, which isn't a good sign - just a higher chance of more heart attacks happening, post-operative.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, that Dad and I and the kids are flying to Cairns early Friday morning, and returning the following Wednesday (25th). We'll probably spend a night in Cairns and then head to Atherton - that's where my grandparents live, and my brother and uncle and his family are there too. Atherton's about 100km inland from Cairns. Pa will be driving to and from to visit Ma. I haven't seen Ma and Pa since Piper was around three months old, and I haven't seen Phil and Shellie and Harley, my uncle, aunt and cousin, for eight years, if you can believe that, and I haven't seen Simon, my bro, for a couple of months, so in spite of the somewhat grim health stuff, I'm really looking forward to just hanging out with family, and am glad they can meet the kids. If it wasn't for that, I'd consider leaving Piper at home (somehow!) cos dealing with two kids on my own isn't my idea of outrageous fun, but Dad will help!

Funnily enough, Gord's going away for his work this week, from Wednesday to Friday, and I leave on Friday, so we won't see each other for a week. I think he's hoping to fill the whole time with social stuff! And why wouldn't ya? I'll have five days off in a row sometime when I don't have a kid who needs my body for sustenance!

Will be nice to experience some warmer weather! And Piper has her own little pull-along suitcase (a finding Nemo one!), just in time! Anyway, that's enough raving. Here's a few more photos...

(Me and Jasper about to race out the door to catch a tram, on the way to see a movie with Michelle, Mum, Nonna (vee dub) and Joy at the Nova.

A photo from the aftermath of our family gathering at The Duck last weekend - my brother Daniel and Jas...

Celebrating Pete's (our house guest) birthday on Friday the 13th.

On Saturday we had the biggest family gathering we've had here in Melbourne for AGES! It was rather impromptu, text messages and phonecalls flying around only two days previous. Kelli, my cousin, and Bruce, her boyfriend, decided to go out for dinner with Bruce's parents and my parents (Kelli is living with my folks). And then more of us Berkeleys lobbed in, so in the end there was Mum, Dad, Kelli, Bruce, his parents, Gina & Con (they're Greek, did you work that out?!), Michelle (my cousin from Canada), Daniel (my brother), David (my cousin, Kelli's brother, who I haven't seen for at least a couple of years), Gord, Piper, Jasper and I.

That's a big family gathering, for us! Michelle and I were commenting after on what a special experience it was, because we both grew up in contexts where there was hardly any, extended family living close by. And I was talking to Gord about it tonight and worked out something else, that the space was dominated by the kids, the cousins, rather than the parents. Not saying this is better or worse, just a different dynamic than usual.

Dave and Dan have a real quirky dynamic going on between the two of them! Fun to watch, if occasionally bewildering! Mum, Dad, Dan, Dave and Michelle hung out at our place at either end of the dinner (the restaurant, where Kelli works, just happens to be a couple of blocks from our place). I managed to start and finish a little gift for someone, while other people cooed over my baby, so that was lovely for me!

The food at the restaurant was great, the chips were perfect, Gord introduced the concept of a napkin race, and then he and Dan proceeded to gulp paper, much to the amusement of everyone. And to top it all off, we ordered two slices of lemon meringue pie, to feed everyone, cos really, at that point in the night we didn't need more food. Blow me down if Piper didn't eat at least half the slice that was down at our end of the table. I was boggled, groaning about the sugar intake but laughing at her incredible capacity! When she wants to eat, man, she can eat! She is a Funk after all!

We took lots of photos, and had lots of fun doing so. I'll put the first three here - if you want to see all of them, you can check them out on our web album: http://picasaweb.google.ca/beckatack/

New blog

Oh yeah, I've set up a different blog, so i can rave on about my crafty endeavours, but there may be one or two of you out there who might be interested - if so, you can click here! At the very least, you can catch a few more photos of us...

Graffitti pose

At the Jam Factory near us (which used to be a jam factory, I believe, but is now a cinema complex), there's a passport photo booth, and I had this idea that Piper and I could pose together each month and then we'd have a record of her changing face (okay, yeah, and mine as well!). So, the strip to your right was taken on the 5th of June, and the ones to your left were taken yesterday.

As you can see, there was graffitti on the screen, which I saw as I parted with my coins, but didn't think through the implications. Anyway, you can see the result! I tell ya, I felt like an affronted citizen and almost came back with a scraper and some cleaning agent, so no one else would get a disappointing surprise after waiting for their photos. What I should have done is taken the phone number given for faults, and let them know, but I didn't think of that at the time.

What was particularly disappointing was that, compared to the first time, Piper had totally gotten the hang of making a different face for each shot - surprised then sad then angry then happy! What other emotions would you like us to demonstrate (leave me a comment!)... anyway...

And apart from that, we are well. Helen, our lovely local babysitter was over tonight, so Gord and I hit Chapel St, with Jasper in the Baby Bjorn, to find a place to eat. Found an okay Malaysian place, after walking past a nepalese, pizza, three thai, an indian, another malaysian, and a few generic, restaurants. I guess you can say that for this area - we aren't stuck for variety!

It's always good to check in with each other. Life feels rich at the moment, as it has done for a while, actually. How lucky are we...

And how are the children, you might ask? Well, Piper has been SOOO vague lately - immersed in her own little imaginative world, and also a little hard of hearing, still getting over a cold. What a combination - I find myself saying things three times before she even comprehends that I'm talking to her! She's also doing this thing where she cries at night for seemingly no reason, and it's really hard to wake her up to snap her out of it. Gord researched this and thinks it's something called night terrors... But other than that(!), she's relatively cheerful, although, now that I think about it, we did have the mother of all tantrums (so far!) this week, when she didn't want to go to be one night!


And the little lad is going sooo well. Looking at him makes me all smoochy at the moment. I remind myself occasionally that one day he too may well throw a mother of all tantrums, but at the moment, that seems hard to imagine! I saw the Mat nurse yesterday and she was very pleased with how he's going, as well she should be! He's put on more weight etc, and is holding his head up really well. Yeah, he's just so fun. I feel like we're really in a rhythm with him now, getting to know when he's tired, etc.

Oh yeah, I am SO chuffed about how we can post videos now! Thanks Gary for the webcam which enabled our first attempt (see previous post). We're hoping to borrow a proper camera from a friend and get some decent footage of all of us, I guess, but in particular the kiddliwinks, so watch this space!

Well, the rest of my family is in bed, and I think I should get myself there too. Love to all...

Jasper's debut

Here's an attempt to give you a bit better look at the lil one...