Deck Tales

There's no real tale to this blog post - but it just struck me the other day how much goes on out on our deck. It's completely enclosed and not at all overlooked, and feels a bit like another room of the house.

And you can see how comfortable my children feel out there - I think the naked bike riding came about because the boys have new bikes (Will for his birthday, and James because his £50 bike from Costco four years ago had reached the end of its natural life) and wanted to ride them whilst simultaneously being told to get ready to get in the bath.... I'm not sure, but I think Nick was in Scotland, so normal parenting rules didn't apply - I was so harried they could have got away with anything. Actually, I've just noticed that Will is, in fact, riding his old bike, and James is riding Will's new bike, so maybe new bikes had nothing to do with it and they just felt like getting naked!

The next classic is Laundry Basket Racing - the rules are (1) take one laundry basket, (2) insert sister of your choosing, (3) draw finishing line with chalk on the deck, (4) decide on number of laps, (5) hoon around the deck, drift on the corners and try to complete the race without dumping your sister out of the basket. Ella and Phoebe LOVE this game - I'm still waiting for the first big smash, after which we may need a permanent black flagging...

And finally, Phoebe, hat-fetishist extraordinaire - desperate to put a hat on her head, but still slightly lacking in the skills to do so! Though it's admirable that she could balance it there at all. Actually, it's also impressive that this is even a hat - in the last few days, she has attempted to put a sock, a pencil case and a pair of pyjama pants on her head. Future career as a milliner, perhaps?

Pako Festa

Pako Festa is an annual festival to celebrate all the nationalities which come together in Geelong and is held - funnily enough on 'Pako', or Pakington Street, just down the road from our house....


Will and Ella were walking in the parade this year as they were part of the Geelong Gymnastics Centre group, and James, Phoebe and I watched from a street corner. The day had started off chilly, but in true Geelong style, by the time the parade had begun, it was scorching.




There were hundreds of different groups walking and the parade was so colourful and vibrant - even the pipe bands were up to scratch!! My favourites were the Chinese performers who had drummers, dragon dancers, ladies with fans, beautifully embroidered outfits...



















There was a big representation from Eastern Europe - Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Lithuania - and we made a bizarre discovery - Lithuanian traditional dancing is almost indistinguishable from Scottish country dancing. As we were watching them on one of the stages after the parade, Nick and I both turned to each other and said 'That's a Dashing White Sergeant!' The main difference (in Geelong) being that some of the Lithuanian dancers were under 60. Some of them were even under 20. The same cannot be said of the Geelong Scottish Country Dancing Group. Let's just say I don't think it will be in existence for much longer...

We had fantastic German food for lunch, sushi rolls for dinner, chocolate strawberries for snack... and a really enjoyable day in the sun.

Swimming Lessons

One thing which has been really fantastic in Geelong is the quality of swimming tuition - there is a swim centre dedicated only to teaching (ie you can't just go there for a splash about) and we have lessons for all the kids on a Saturday morning.


The thing that we have noticed is that before they teach children to swim, they teach them not to drown - how to hold onto the edge of a pool and 'monkey walk' along to the steps, how to turn as soon as you go under water - ie turn back to face what you fell from, how it feels in the water wearing clothes or a life jacket, how to float on your back... all simple things, but you can see that it could be the difference between a child panicking and drowning, or possibly just climbing out a bit wet.


Phoebe goes in the pool with Nick and happily jumps in from the side, goes underwater and pops back up facing the right way, holds on to the side of the pool and climbs out and swims to daddy through a foam 'tunnel'. Humpty Dumpty and Ring a Ring a Roses are also part of her repertoire, and she likes to court danger by trying to swim away from Nick, which is only temporarily successful...


Ella is a true water baby and has made incredible progress this year - she can swim short distances by herself and is learning the beginnings of proper strokes. She can retrieve toys from under water and loves to put her goggles on and look under water at other people - especially if they make funny faces at her!

The slide in the picture here only comes out for the last class of each term, so it's a bit of a treat.

Will has also suddenly got the hang of the swimming thing and now seems to genuinely enjoy his time in the water - as with most new things for Will, it took a while for him to get his confidence up. Will can actually swim well and does a beautiful breaststroke (pizza arms!), but doesn't have the confidence to do it for very long! He has been learning back and front kicking with a board to get ready to move onto backstroke and crawl, and has recently started adding the arm movements.


A big milestone for Will has been getting him confident under the water, but with the aid of a few sinking pool toys, he now dives to retrieve them beautifully. Both boys love it when we throw the toys to the furthest ends of the pool and send them off in search of a particular colour.




We have noticed that Will needs to keep going to the pool regularly to keep his skills and confidence up, as opposed to Ella and James who just throw themselves straight back into it after an absence, so I am looking forward to lots of visits to the Dunbar pool once we get back.

James has been our real star - progressing from non-swimmer to fully-fledged crawl and backstroke swimmer - this is a picture of him doing crawl, proper breathing and all, which is better than his mother can do... He can't do 'pizza arms' as well as Will yet, but I guess everyone has a natural stroke they feel more comfortabe with, and James' is crawl. He is absolutely at home in, on or under the water, and, when not actually swimming, is usually to be found doing underwater handstands or somersaults. Or trying to dive, but our efforts to eliminate the comedy belly flop have been less than successful!

We will really miss Geelong Aquatic Centre - both for the quality of teaching and also for the fact that we have all four children accommodated in simultaneous lessons. I don't think we'll be able to manage that in Scotland.

Will starts school

Though it seems about two minutes since I was waving James off to school for the first time, suddenly it was time for Will to start - and I must confess to feeling less emotional about it than I did the first time round.

I think Will has been so ready for school for such a long time now - every day he sees his brother go off to school, and then return home (mostly unscathed) with tales of what he has learned and who he has played with (OK, I admit, I have to drag most of that information out of him, but I can pretend it's freely given and that I live in sitcom-world). Will is familiar with the playgrounds, the buildings, most of James' friends... so I wasn't surprised when he headed into his classroom quite happily on day 1.


I'm not going to pretend that he hasn't had a couple of momentary wobbles in the first few weeks - like the time he said he had a headache in the morning, so I said that if he went to school and still really had a headache, his teacher would call me.... so eventually at midday the call came from the school 'Will is complaining of a headache' - when I picked him up he was grinning from ear to ear, and insisted on eating his lunch as soon as he got in the car cos he was starving. 'Will' I said, 'is there actually anything wrong with you?' 'No' he said 'I mean yes...'

His teacher did apologise for calling, but said he had been adamant all day that his head hurt and his mummy had said that if his head was still sore, the school would call his mum. He has been assured that this should not be repeated, for the sake of his health...

Apart from that he has been mostly fine. We have established that three kisses (no more, no less, and none on the lips) is the right amount before he stands in his line to go into school, that he can't scooter to school with his exceptionally large bag on his back as he falls over, and that (lo and behold) his teacher agress that we need to work on his 'inside voice'!

James has been really pleased to have Will at school too - and Will has spent most of his break time playing with James and his friends - so much so that his teachers have had to encourage him to play with his own classmates sometimes. But he is making friends slowly in his own class and I hear him making plans in the morning about who he is playing with at lunchtime and who he is playing with at little break. I hope he settles in as well when we go home to Scotland!!