Talking the talk

I had a wonderful play date today with my 21 month grand-daughter, Alannah. It was a bleak, grey day where the mercury did not break 20C - which is cold for Sydney. We both kept our jackets on all day, but still spent most of the day in the courtyard.

Mummy and Daddy wore flowers in their hair. Mummy also wears a flag. Then you see the apartment and the steps we built.

We had two sessions of 'street watching', two sessions of Lego, read the same book twice ('A Fly went By'), sorted the slide pins into colour tubs and made lots of noise shaking them, then wrote a card which I put in the post immediately after her father arrived to take her home. While we were street-watching today, we watched the post-man cross the road with his heavy back-pack and his fist-ful of letters to deliver. Alannah will find the card in her letter-box tomorrow, which is her home-day with Mummy.

Ma frequently laid down on the job. Whereas, Alannah was 'taken' by her self-named figure, being given a lot of work to do.

When I want to take photographs, I always ask her permission. Often she says ‘NO’ (or today I even heard the variation ‘nope’), but every-so-often I will get a shy grin, a direct look and an ‘Okay’. Recently, on e-Bay I purchased a whole bunch of Duplo figures, because I want the play to revolve around people. I guess we have over 50 now. So we named them – Mummy, Daddy, Alannah, Ma, Grandad, and Pam. And then she spent ages opening the windows, getting the figures out, naming them, and returning them to different windows. She chats continuously, and rarely needs me to interject. Although, I chat about what I am playing, too. She is very good, now, in constructing with Duplo. She cannot build a house or anything like that. That is not what I mean, but she can join blocks together and sort the blocks into same-piles, either by size or by colour.

And our friend just likes to be with us and hear our chatter. When we play Lego he ‘sleeps’ often with one eye open. When we ‘street-watch’, he sits on the brick gate post beside Alannah.

Metamorphosis

It had to happen, of course. That my courtyard garden change into a toddler's playground. Oh, the plants are all still there. They are still growing, and being infested, and flowering, or not. The veggies were a one-season wonder. I get more pleasure from the annuals and the succulents. And they have fewer bugs.


But now that I have a toddler over to play twice a week, THAT is the focus of my courtyard. So, I have decided to transfer the stories about our play-dates from 'Plumbing' to 'Dolwendee'. Back in the years 1982 to 1985 I ran a Family Day Care in my garden in St Ives. The house there was transformed, too. Down on side, there was a go-cart track, with tyres, and planks and a skid pattern into the wall at the bottom. I guess you could say that I have form.

Anyways, look at the difference between these images of Alannah painting, and the shots last week of her first foray (at Ma's place) into painting. For starters, we ditched the smock. Mainly because Alannah insisted 'No more'. Then we got proper artists brushes rather than brushes used by house-painters. And and and ... I put loads my paint into the pots, which caused her to grunt with pleasure.

*Hand on heart* ... this was all Alannah's work, this painting. I did not guide the brush in any way. She would look at me in that way that says 'are you nuts?'