Simple pleasures

Every Sunday morning, our kids have their swimming lessons. It might seem like a big a rigmarole, but I actually really enjoy the fact the whole family troops off to the pool together to get thoroughly chlorinated. Jack is big enough to have a lesson on his own now, so he takes great pride in kicking, paddling and bubbling around in front of us. He has always been a bit of a fish, and would happily splash for most of the day if you let him. Phoebe is close to going on her own, but still has a parent in the pool for half of the lesson. She's a bit more timid than her brother, but is steadily improving and just loves being in the water. Maisie, who has only been having lessons for a few weeks, is an absolute water baby! The little legs kick madly, the hands splash wildly, and if you're not careful, she tries to drink half the pool!! Just like bathtime, come to think of it. The thing I love best about swimming lessons though, is that even though we're doing it to start good water safety habits, to the kids it's just sheer unadulterated fun. They're not particularly fussed about which songs we sing, and they certainly don't give a hoot about proper technique. All they care about is the half an hour they get to spend in the water, and the more puffed they get, the better!

After yesterday's swimming lessons, we came home as usual and let the kids flake out for a few hours. Usually Christian and I use this time to have lunch together, read the papers or get some work done (poor Christian doesn't usually get that much quiet time in our house to do his work...funny that.) Anyway, yesterday we had also arranged to go out and see Aunty Miffy's young gelding at the stables. So after a quick nap, I piled the kids back in the car and went down to the farm where the horsies live. After seeing Stan (the horse...personally I would have named him Willard but there you go!) and giving him a quick pat, we went to the local Golden Arches (which Jack calls Old MacDonalds) for a coffee and a run on the playground. Would you be surprised to hear that my kids thought this was a perfect day? A swim, a horsie up close, and a play on the playground. It doesn't get any better than this!!

This morning, Maisie experienced one of the simple joys of an Australian childhood - Vegemite on toast! I knew she was ready for a proper breakfast when she began drooling over Phoebe's cereal, so I made her some little soldiers, sat back and watched. It's amazing how much pleasure a baby can get out of some toasted bread! She squished it between her fingers, gummed every piece, flung it on the floor...so much fun to be had with such a small snack! (It just takea a lot longer to clean up a baby covered in Vegemite than it does after a breastfeed.....)

Instead of hanging around the house today, we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and headed down to Sorrento with my grandmother to meet my aunty for lunch. Now again, this was a pretty simple day - lunch on the foreshore and a run around on the grass at the beach. However, the day was made golden by several factors: my aunty brought new dollies for Phoebe, some cars and a whistling Vortex for Jack, and some singing car keys for Maisie Mouse. Not only that, she played endlessly with the kids and their new toys all through lunch. In addition to the boring old Vegemite sandwiches Mummy had packed, the big kids also had orange juice and hot chips for lunch (in our allergy-ridden household, this is the equivalent to Beluga caviar...or something really good!!). And then, to cap it all off, my aunty showed the kids how to do roly-polys down a grassy knoll, and then raced them back down the pier to meet the ferry. Seriously, when you were four years old (or nearly three, or seven months old...), wouldn't this sound like a perfect day?

We didn't spend any money on entertainment yesterday or today...we didn't go anywhere extraordinary...we didn't even really do anything that would register on an adult's radar...but over the last two days my kids have had an absolute ball. On both days they were surrounded by lots of adoring family members who spent a lot of time playing with them, and there were new and exciting things to discover: the look on Mummy's face when you splash really hard; what a horse's hair feels like; how dizzy you can get rolling down a hill; how very, very big a ferry looks up close; the taste of Vegemite on a warm piece of toast. I suppose these last two days have taught me something very special: that I should make more of an effort to enjoy every experience just like my kids, and I should make the most of all this wonderment before they turn into cynical teenagers that need expensive entertainment!